Chapter 40
Shep is put into the back of a police car in short order, but I stay with Tippy until she’s loaded into an ambulance. She comes to as they’re closing the doors, swearing a string of woozy curses at Shep as they cart her off.
When the sirens kick on and the ambulance pulls away, Ardell advises that they have finished processing the scene at my house, and I can go home.
The sun is setting over the lake as I walk from Tippy’s driveway to mine, and hues of pink and purple and gold are spilling over the water.
And all I can think of is how peaceful the viewusedto be.
Beau and I made ourselves an idyllic, insulated existence.
And then every ghost from our past came back to haunt us.
There’s a news truck on the side of the road, and it feels eerily like the scene after Will’s death.
But otherwise, there’s no sign of the chaos from the morning. Not the hurricane—people around here move lightning quick when it comes to rounding up debris and moving on—and definitely not the army of police officers who descended on my house in the early morning hours. If it weren’t for the piles of broken branches stacked up like fire kindling along the curbs, awaiting yard trash collection, I might never know a hurricane ripped through town less than a day ago.
Winter Park. The queen of the cover-up.
As I reach my driveway, though, the cracks of the neighborhood’s perfect veneer reveal themselves in the form of yellowpolice tape draped over the entrance to our side yard. The physical signs of the police search in my home sink fresh dread in my stomach.
I don’t want to see what the house looks like now that the police have taken Beau into custody and searched every corner. But I go inside anyway, because the alternative is standing out here like a spectacle, waiting for some neighbor on a walk to wander past. I can already hear them.
There she goes, the wife of a presumed killer.
Apparently, even I can’t ignore public opinion forever.
Turns out my zero-fucks-to-give attitude comes with fine print. All it took was my husband being in jail to find it.
Nora and Marcus are waiting for me in the living room, and when I come through the kitchen, it looks like they’re spring cleaning. Marcus is mopping the floors while Nora wipes down my kitchen countertops.
“I know how gross it can feel,” she says, pulling cleaning gloves off her hands as she comes to hug me. “Knowing people have been rummaging through your house. But, oh my God,” she says, eyes bright, “I’ve been thinking, and this makes us search warrant twins.”
When I don’t laugh, her shoulders fall, and she hugs me again.
“What happened?” she asks. “I thought Tippy would be on her way to jail by now.”
“Tippy didn’t kill Gemma,” I say, wandering into the kitchen. “It was Shep. But he says he didn’t kill Simon.”
“And we’re just believing him?” Nora asks.
But I don’t answer.
I look out to the pool deck, and it’s like the murder never happened.
“Marcus power-washed everything,” Nora says in a small voice. “He didn’t want you to have to see that.” She looks to Marcus with that adoration she always seems to show without voicing.
“Thanks,” I say to them both.
I want to shower and wash the late-afternoon heat and grief off my skin. I want to crawl into bed and never come out.Want to run screaming down the street. Want to pack a bag and leave.
Every instinct is telling me to move, to fix something, to undo the last twenty-four hours. I can’t do anything, though, because Beau’s not here.
And it’s not like my parents being dead, because I can’t pretend his absence isn’t real. Because it’severywhere.
I feel like I’m missing an appendage. Like any step I take is resignation to the fact that Beau was arrested. I’m stubborn enough—not to mention angry and defiant enough—to stand still in a cold rebuke of the facts at hand.
I notice the light outside is changing—afternoon giving way to evening—and I see a crumpled figure huddled on a lounge chair in the McGinnises’ yard. The puffy clouds and golden glow of the sunset serve as an incongruous backdrop for a pathetic scene. There, amidst the fading daylight, is Polly, her small frame curled in a sorrowful ball.
