Van thrust his chin out. “Why not? It’s a real job, doing something important, feeding people. Did you know that almost all the fish caught by commercial fishers in New York state are landed on Long Island? I don’t want to be a lawyer or a finance bro or whatever. Inside all day. I’m happiest on the water. And I just turned nineteen. I’m a man.”
“Happy birthday.”
“But here I am, stuck getting ready for a college I don’t even want to go to.”
“Then don’t go. You should do what makes you happy,” she said. “It’s your life.”
His face brightened. “It is, right? It’s just that my parents would flip.” He leaned forward and pulled his phone from his back pocket. The movement brought him closer to her, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something expensive, no doubt, that Jo had picked out. “My mom has Life360 on this thing, tracking my every move.”
Tori’s stomach tightened. “She can see you’re here?” Panic rose in her at the thought of Jo realizing the dot on her screen was Van, sitting right here.
“Don’t worry. I turned it off. I’m sure I’ll get a text telling me to turn it back on. But I have a few hours of freedom.” His eyes met hers, and in them, she saw a hunger that mirrored her own—for connection, for understanding, for escape.
“So what do you want to do with your few hours of freedom?” she asked, the words barely above a whisper. Her heart hammered against her ribs, knowing she was standing at the edge of a cliff.
He didn’t answer, just held her gaze for a moment. Embarrassed by the silence, she brought her hand to her face to brush a stray hair away. From outside came a rumble and then apop pop pop.
“We’re missing the fireworks,” she said.
“I think we’re doing all right,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t move. I want to look at you.”
His eyes traveled her body, thirsty, drinking her in. A splinter of fear cut through her. Was he just like his dad? Would he spurn her as Daniel did, taunt her, humiliate her? But before she could brace herself for rejection, his mouth was on hers, and she was lying back on the thin rug of her living room feeling herself being crushed by him, the thrilling sensation of helplessness that her mind had forgotten but her body remembered.
In that split second, she knew she should push him away.
Nineteen or not, she knew that across the hedge, in the well-appointed houses of Eastbrook, there was a world eager to judge her, to condemn her being here with Van. Jo and Daniel would destroy what little reputation she had left if they found out. But as Van’s weight pressed against her, as his hands found her skin, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
She was falling, and for now, the fall felt too good to resist.
TWENTY-THREE
I watch a police officer string a garland of yellow tape that readsCAUTIONacross the front door of the house, the plastic rippling gently in the welcome breeze. It’s official now—the house is a crime scene and I am the victim. I feel woozy and weak. I don’t know what I expected when Finn walked me over here earlier, but not this.
Not my blood on the basement floor.
I stand in the shade of a maple tree while Kugel pants rhythmically at my feet, his warm body pressed against my ankle, anchoring me to reality. Around me uniformed officers hustle about their business, but I am stilled by the shock of what’s happening.
Finn returns to my side.
“I called work and said I would be late.”
“Thanks,” I say.
His steady presence beside me feels like the only solid thing in a world suddenly gone fluid and uncertain. At first, I encouraged him to leave and get to work on time, but now I am gratefulhe is here with me as Officer Jankowski approaches. I don’t relish talking to him again. He didn’t believe me the first time, and I don’t hold out hope he’ll be more sensitive now.
I tell him the whole story, how Finn and I were walking and we decided to stop by the house to see if anything jogged my memory. How I headed to the basement, almost on instinct, and that it came to me that I had been there. How we found a pool of dried blood on the carpet.
“So just to be clear,” Jankowski says, his pen hovering above his small notebook, crow’s-feet deepening around his eyes as he squints against the sunlight. “You all of a sudden remembered you had been inside this house, and you took it upon yourself to break in?”
“We didn’t break in,” I say. “The door was open.” I shoot Finn a sidelong glance. This is a lie, and I feel bad telling it. But I don’t want to get Finn in trouble for using the Allards’ code without their permission. “I take full responsibility. Jo Allard, the owner, is a friend of mine. I’m sure she won’t care.”
“We have someone on the phone with the Allards right now, actually. So we’ll see.”
I plaster on a smile. I am praying that Jo won’t want to make a fuss. “They’ll tell you, we’re old friends.”
“So you take it upon yourself to enter this house and look around. A house you say you don’t remember entering on Saturday night, but now you claim to remember leaving Sunday morning.”
“That’s right. I don’t remember how I got here, that part is all blank. But I remember waking up, feeling confused, and stumbling out into the light.” Sunday morning’s details are coming back to me now, where once it was just a void in my memory.
