Page 25 of Bluebell Tides

“Terrible guys,” Celia affirmed.

“What took you past their place?” Theo asked.

“I was on a hike with one of our guests,” Celia explained.

Alarm bells sounded in Sophie’s mind. Ruth had wanted to walk past the Caldweck mansion. Sophie remembered how Ruth had said there were “bad people in Bluebell Cove.” But what had led her to the mansion? Perhaps her story about a novel was just that: a bit of fiction. Perhaps she was secretly writing an article about the sinister people in Bluebell Cove. Perhaps she was doing exactly what Celia and Sophie had done three years ago—attempting to set the world to right.

Jealousy made Sophie’s throat swell.

“It wasn’t a very good trail,” Celia stated. “I tried to convince Ruth to do something else, but she was committed to taking that route. Maybe I can show her something better later.”

“Who knows how long she’ll stay?” Juliet said. “The girls are convinced she's an international spy or something.”

Although Sophie’s stomach felt crushed with annoyance, she forced herself to laugh along with Lily.

“We don’t think she’s a spy, exactly,” Lily explained. “We’re just curious about her.”

“We all are,” Celia said, tilting her head. Celia’s eyes met Sophie’s for the briefest of moments, before she sprang up again to help Ivy with the salad.

Soon enough, their conversation shifted to other things. Theo had secured funding for the new menu, thankfully, and Ivy and Lily had had a prosperous morning at the flower shop. Elliot was away on business, but Ivy expected him back later that night. “Maybe we’ll all still be together to welcome him,” she said dreamily.

Sophie still remembered how dark and alienated Ivy had been during the first summer she and her mother spent in Bluebell Cove. It was remarkable to watch her aunt’s heart melt.

People really could change, Sophie knew.

But as she ate her grilled chicken and listened to her family’s bubbling conversation, Sophie was reminded again of all she hadn’t been able to tell them over the past two months: not about her breakup, nor about dropping out of school (unofficially), nor about the fire. She felt like an exposed nerve. The fact that Lily knew it all was more than frightening. What if Lily decided that Sophie needed help? What if she decided to spill the beans to her mother, who would then spill those very same beans to Celia? Sophie shuddered and set down her fork.

“What’s up, lady?” Juliet smiled at her from across the picnic table, swirling her rosé in her glass.

“Nothing,” Sophie said.

“She’s just thinking her genius thesis thoughts,” Celia said proudly. “I’ve been dying to read over your notes all summer, but you’ve kept them a secret. How much longer, honey?”

“Just a little bit longer,” Sophie said, offering her mother a smile.

Later that night, after a gorgeous dinner at Ivy’s and a few good, creative conversations with her family members, Sophie walked home with her mother and found a letter waiting for her on the table in the foyer. It was from Oregon state. Directly beneath it were letters for her stepbrother and stepsister about their upcoming dental exams, something innocuous that called attention to how serious Sophie’s letter was. Before Celia could see the sinister envelope, Sophie snuck it into her pocket and scrambled upstairs to read it. Her heart pounded.

It had been nearly two months since the forest fire that had nearly claimed Sophie’s life. But the long arm of the law never forgot a thing, she knew. Her hands shaking, she tore open the envelope and read a letter from the court, demanding that she appear to discuss the fire that had broken out in mid-April. Sophie’s thoughts scrambled to make sense of this. Aloud, she muttered, “I need a lawyer? Do I really need a lawyer?”

For the first time, Sophie wondered if she should contact Ethan and see how he was handling this. The cops certainly had his name. He’d been the one to drop her off at the hospital, after all. If she remembered correctly, he hadn’t been the one to light the fire. That had been Lizzie—Lizzie with her so-called incredible Girl Scout skills and her “understanding” of how fires worked. But could Sophie really pin the full blame on Lizzie just because she’d been the one to officially light the match? Ethan and Freddy had been trying and failing to light the thing for a while before Lizzie popped up to help.

And what had Sophie been doing during that time? Standing there like a fool, waiting for something bad to happen. Now, her life was over.

14

During the hours after Celia returned to the Eco-Lodge and left Ruth to her own devices, Ruth struggled to make sense of anything. Her eyes burned with the image of the Caldweck mansion, sitting there on the opposite side of the fence, waiting for her.

Eventually, Ruth collapsed in a little French café not far from the courthouse, where she ordered a glass of wine and tried to will her hands to stop shaking. The woman behind the counter eyed her as though she wasn’t sure whether to call an ambulance. Ruth took a breath, then raised her glass, smiling to herself. She’d never felt weaker in her life.

In her little notebook, she wrote: I’ve never felt so close nor so far from what I need. I don’t know how to break this boundary. I know better than to go to the library and dig around. I know they’ll start watching me the minute they get wind that I’m here. I know I’m taking a risk, just sitting in this bar. Maybe I’m playing an elaborate game of chicken with them. Maybe I want them to approach me so I can finally tell them to their face what I think of them.

Eventually, Ruth paid for her wine and walked the rest of the way to the Eco-Lodge. She made up a story in her mind about what she did in town, just in case she ran into Celia and had to answer questions. But when she entered the Eco-Lodge, a woman behind the front desk she didn’t recognize greeted her, and Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. It was clear that they’d hired new people for the summer season. Maybe she could be more or less anonymous.

Upstairs, she opened the window of her new, smaller room and lay on the bed, listening to the laughter and conversation at yet another Harper family party. It seemed there was no end to the joy they could find with one another. Sometimes Ruth was reminded of the horrible fights and crying that broke out during her childhood, when she’d been responsible for so many brothers and sisters, as well as for her mother’s happiness. Not for the first time as of late, her stomach felt tight with sorrow over the death of her mother. Ruth hadn’t known she was sick. She would have gone to her bedside if she’d been told. But her siblings had always thought she was “too good” for them after she’d graduated from Yale. She’d only introduced her siblings and her mother to her daughter, Sloane, a handful of times.

It was then that, down on the Harper porch, she overheard Celia ask her daughter, Sophie, yet again about her thesis, her research, and all she still needed to do that summer to please her professors back in East Oregon. Ruth’s ears perked up. As Sophie spoke about her research plans and thesis obligations, Ruth realized Sophie was lying. The girl was hiding something.

Ruth wondered whether she only sensed that Sophie was lying because she herself was lying so frequently now. Maybe all liars could recognize one another. Maybe it was a curse.