20
Reyes and O’Neal showed up at August House twenty minutes later, taking us into the library and interviewing each one of us in turn—or trying to, anyway. The Kendricks called their lawyer more or less immediately. Meredith refused to say anything until her parents, both corporate litigators, made their way out to the Vineyard from Connecticut. The police put her in the back of their squad car anyway, a flash of red hair and a haughty expression; Aidy was already sitting in the backseat, eyes trained resolutely forward.
“You ready?” Holiday asked once they were gone, nodding at her sedan in the driveway. It felt like lifetimes since she’d scooped me up at the ferry this morning, like it had happened to someone else altogether.
“Yeah,” I agreed slowly; then, at the last possible second, I shook my head. “Actually,” I said, “two minutes? There’s something I should do first.”
Holiday raised her eyebrows with an expression that pretty clearly indicated she didn’t want to stick around this place for anylonger than we had to, but all she did was gesture up at the house. “You know what, Michael?” she said. “Be my guest.”
I grimaced, remembering that we’d never actually made up after our fight in the library. “Thanks,” I said, knowing the word was wholly insufficient for the circumstances. “Two minutes.”
I found Eliza reading in the hammock, which had somehow survived last night’s storm. Even after everything that had happened, she still looked like all I’d ever wanted, lying with an arm tucked behind her head, in shorts and a Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. I had to remind myself that I didn’t actually know her at all. I hovered at the edge of the yard for a moment, gathering my courage. Then I cleared my throat.
“I should have known you still weren’t actually gone,” she said, barely bothering to look up at me. “You’re like a possum or something. Some animal that lives in someone’s alley and eats their garbage. Who’s always on the lookout for something rotten.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, forcing myself not to fidget. “That…pretty much sums it up.”
Eliza was quiet for a moment, running the corner of her book cover back and forth underneath her thumbnail. “None of us wanted this to happen, you know,” she said softly. “I mean, you’ve made it pretty clear that you think we’re a bunch of remorseless country-club monsters, but we were real friends, once upon a time. All of us were—my brothers, Meredith, Greg.” She shook her head. “Haven’t you ever hated your friends a little?” she asked. “Haven’t they ever said or done something that made you think you’d be better off without them?”
I swallowed hard, trying not to glance in the direction of thedriveway. “Yeah,” I said again, then: “Eliza.” I ran a hand over my jaw. “We both know I owe you one hell of an apology.”
Eliza let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “Oh, Linden,” she said, looking at me with some pity. “Please don’t.”
“No,” I said, “I mean it. For last night, obviously. I was drunk, and I was amped, and I had no idea what I was talking about, but that’s no excuse.”
“No,” she agreed coolly. “It’s really not.”
I could feel myself shriveling under the weight of her obvious contempt, but I made myself keep going anyway. It had been more than just small behavior, the way I’d treated her. Whatever fucked-up stuff had happened in this house the last couple of weeks, I didn’t want to be someone who added to it. “That’s not all I want to say, though. I wanted to apologize for just…how I’ve acted with you in general. For being so distracted by the person you were in my head that I couldn’t see the person you actually were. The person you were trying to show me. You deserved better, and I’m sorry.”
I saw surprise flicker over her face at that. For a moment I thought it might have gotten through, that we’d be able to part ways as, if not exactly friends, then at least not as enemies.
“Well!” she said, her voice taking on that bright, cheerful cruise-director quality that I knew meant I was headed for danger. “Whatever image of me you’ve got in your head now, you should try to forget about her.” She smiled, and it looked like a razor blade. “I’m going to forget about you the minute you leave.”
I nodded. “I deserved that,” I told her. “But I hope we see each other again.”
“I don’t.” Eliza’s tone was final. “Goodbye, Linden.”
I looked at her for another minute, then turned to go, skirting back around the side of the house to avoid the Kendricks and the police. I was just making my way through the garden, which was bursting with end-of-summer produce the Kendricks wouldn’t be here to eat, when I heard the sound of someone sucking in a ragged breath. I turned and there was Jasper on one of the wicker couches on the side porch, his head dropped so I couldn’t see his face. “Hey,” I said. “You good?”
“What?” Jasper snapped upright, like a soldier being unexpectedly called to attention. There was an expression on his face I didn’t recognize, vulnerable and half-wild. In fact, it almost looked like he’d been…crying? “Dude,” he said, clearing something phlegmy from his throat, “how the fuck are you still here?”
He was smiling as he said it; he’d pulled himself together just like he always did, forever an illusionist. But this time, I didn’t believe the trick. “I don’t actually know,” I admitted sheepishly, “and I swear I’m going to get out of your face for real in a hot second, but…seriously. Are you okay?”
I watched as he drew himself up, his mouth opening to launch into what I knew would be assurances about how fine and okay he was. But then he just sort of…sagged. “You know,” he said, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear him, “he wasn’t always such a bad guy.”
For a moment I truly had no idea who he was talking about. Then it clicked. “Greg?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah.” Jasper wiped his face roughly with the back of his hand. “Look, I know everybody thinks he was a total shithead. And don’t get me wrong, I hated his fucking guts this last year. But we werekids together, you know? Like, my literal first fucking memory is us catching hermit crabs together down on the beach.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happens to someone,” he told me. “When they’re just…gone like that.”
I nodded slowly, wanting to say the right thing to comfort him and not sure exactly what that might be. I thought again of them all growing up side by side, the Kendricks and Greg and Meredith—all of them born into these long, golden dynasties, none of them having any reason to think it would ever end. Jasper was nothing if not a prince of privilege, and in a lot of ways it was hard to feel sorry for him. Still, at the end of the day his best friend from when he was a little kid was lying dead in a morgue somewhere. Mine was waiting for me out in the car. “I’m really sorry, Jas.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, lifting his chin in a way that was almost defiant. “Shit happens, right?”
“Shit does.” I smiled a little, half-hearted. “Can I ask you something?” I said. It had been eating at me since the first night I’d gotten to the Vineyard, an unanswered question at the back of my mind. “All last year, back at the dorms…why didn’t you tell me about what was going on with your dad?”
“I’m not embarrassed,” Jasper said immediately, his voice fierce. “Whatever my brother might think, I’m loyal to this family. But there’s some shit in life you don’t really want to talk about, you know? Not even with the people you’re close to.” He glanced at me sidelong, smirking a little. “Not that it made a difference to you and Ms. Singh. You guys dug up the dirt on everybody, whether they wanted you to have it or not.”
I cringed at that, a prickly heat creeping up the back of my neck. I wanted to explain to him that it wasn’t what Holiday and I had been trying to do, that we’d only wanted to help, but even as the excuse formed in my head, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. There was a part of me that had resented the Kendricks, whether or not I’d admitted it to myself. A part of me that had wanted to prove they weren’t as perfect as they seemed.
