Page 17 of Bluebell Tides

Celia raised her eyebrows. “Is that right?”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Sophie said. “I checked online, and her article about the Eco-Lodge was published yesterday. What else is she doing?”

“Maybe she’s planning more articles about Bluebell Cove,” Celia suggested.

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe she’s thinking of moving here?” Landon proposed. “From what I’ve gleaned about her, she seems lonely. Maybe she feels a community here that she doesn’t have in the city.”

“That’s possible,” Celia said.

Sophie chewed her pasta, thinking that Ruth didn’t seem like the type to want a community, not in the traditional sense. But what did Sophie know?

Sophie might have driven herself crazy were it not for a night in early June, when Lily invited her out for a hike along the water. Sophie had spent the previous weeks working tirelessly, anywhere between forty and fifty-five hours a week, and she was beginning to feel this would be the rest of her life: plagued with work, hopeless, and lacking in creativity. She hadn’t even looked at any of her university notes since she’d left Oregon.

What exhausted her the most was pretending that everything was all right. Since that first time, Mallory had asked Sophie three more times when Ethan was coming to Maine. Sophie’s heart was cracked around the edges. It was entirely clear that Ethan had moved on without looking back.

Now, out here at the edge of the Atlantic, Sophie and her cousin Lily stripped down to their swimsuits and swam in the dark. Had they been younger, they wouldn’t have gone for it. If Aunt Ivy or Celia found out about it, they might have gotten angry. But Lily and Sophie were in their twenties now. They could make reckless decisions and keep them to themselves.

It was also the first time Sophie had been able to swim since the fire. In the dark, she could see that most of her scabs had healed, and she had very few scars.

By the end of the summer, she could probably swim with her mother and get away with not telling her about them. Celia wouldn’t be able to see.

After their swim, Sophie and Lily sprawled out on towels and looked at the moon that hung so low above them. It looked like a swollen fruit.

Out here in the darkness, Sophie couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Did you hear about the fire?” Sophie asked.

Lily turned and looked at her. “The one out in Oregon? Yeah. We were worried about you.”

Sophie pressed her lips together, daring herself to keep going. She had to unburden herself. “The thing is, Ethan started it. I mean, Ethan and some of his friends. I begged them not to make a fire, but they did it anyway. I was in the woods, trying to regroup when I smelled the flames. I got burned.” She gestured vaguely at the white scabs on her arm.

Lily’s jaw dropped. For a long time, she just looked at Sophie as though she’d never seen her before. And then, she threw her arms around her and held her tightly. “You’ve kept this to yourself,” she breathed.

Sophie’s eyes filled with tears that she couldn’t let fall. “It’s okay,” Sophie said.

“It’s not,” Lily said. “I wondered. I mean, I knew something was wrong. You’ve been so quiet since I got back from school. And you haven’t talked about your thesis at all.”

Sophie swallowed the lump in her throat, then explained that she’d left school, too embarrassed to face her professors and explain what had happened. “I’m in legal trouble, too,” she stammered, explaining that she’d have to go back to Oregon to testify soon. “I can’t trust Ethan and his friends not to lie about what happened. I’m in over my head.”

Lily squeezed Sophie tighter. Sophie couldn’t stop crying. She was relieved, but she was also fully facing the truth. She’d been able to hide from it since the end of April, out here along the coast.

Then they spotted the shadow, lurking at the edge of the cliff. Sophie shot to her feet, adrenaline pulsing, and Lily joined her, panicked. But soon, Ruth Landers emerged from the darkness and into the moonlight. She wore a dark one-piece swimsuit, and her hair hung in half-dried curls. She looked at them as though she were just as surprised to see them as they were to see her.

And then she said, “You need to be careful out here, girls.”

Lily and Sophie gaped at her, waiting.

“Dangerous people live in Bluebell Cove.” Ruth shook her head. “You need to watch out.”

With that, she strode past them, headed for the little path that snaked back to the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge. Sophie and Lily didn’t dare say a word until she was out of sight.

10

Winter Semester at Yale: 2003

When Ruth Landers returned to Yale from her disastrous weeks in Bluebell Cove, she set her jaw and got back to work. When Dina, Kelly, and Reese returned from their Christmas holidays, refreshed and pink-cheeked, they found Ruth already hard at work, getting a head start on a semester that hadn’t even begun. The glint in her eye told them not to ask about Quentin or Bluebell Cove.