Big Summer(54)

I’d gotten dressed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and finally noticed my phone, still lying on my unmade half of the bed. Dully, I picked it up and saw texts from last night scroll across the screen. Where are you, Darshi had written at eleven p.m. I need details. A line of question marks at midnight about an event that seemed like it had happened in another lifetime. And, at one o’clock in the morning, If Drue messed this up for you I will kill her. Followed by the emojis for a bride, a knife, and a skull.

I must have gasped. Then, quickly, I deleted the texts, knowing that it wouldn’t matter. Text messages existed in the cloud, in the ether, in perpetuity, like every single other thing on the Internet. My friend was dead, and my roommate had just unknowingly turned us both into suspects.

Eventually, Minerva had returned to my room. “The police want to talk to you.”

I stood up. “Hey,” I said, my voice steady, my tone casual, “did you happen to see a guy named Nick anywhere around?”

She looked at me, unblinking. Without answering, she’d gestured toward the stairs, where Detective McMichaels had been waiting. He’d led me through the empty living and dining room and into a small pantry just off the kitchen, with a built-in desk and shelves full of canned food, boxes of pasta, and canisters of sugar and flour. A lobster pot, high as my knees, sat on the floor, next to a package of paper cocktail napkins printed with the announcement that at the beach, it was always Wine O’Clock. I’d sat and told him my story, then I’d gone through it all again, and now he was looking at me, eyebrows raised in expectation. Instead of starting my story for the third time, I asked, “Do they know what happened? How she…” I swallowed hard. “How she died?”

“It’s too early to tell,” McMichaels said. True, but I’d heard the whispers, before the cops had come and cordoned off the crime scene, when people were still out on the deck and I’d been able to hear them through my bedroom’s sliding doors. Maybe she was drunk, and she passed out and drowned Maybe she hit her head. Someone had remembered the story of an NFL player’s toddler who had drowned after her hair had somehow gotten stuck in a hot tub’s drain, and someone else had mentioned the bride who’d been paralyzed the night before her wedding, after a bridesmaid pushed her into a pool.

“If you don’t mind, I need you to walk me through the events one more time.”

My lips felt frozen when I said, “This wasn’t a… a suspicious death, was it?” I’d thought about saying unnatural, but wasn’t it unnatural anytime a healthy young person died?

“Please, miss. If you could just answer my question.”

“Of course,” I said. I told him how Drue and I had taken the ferry over from Boston the day before, how we had gotten ready for the rehearsal in the afternoon, and descended the stairs together as the party on the beach began. “Drue spent most of the night circulating. I had dinner with one of the other guests, an old friend of Drue’s, a guy named Nick Andros.”

“So you didn’t spend much time with Drue last night?”

I shook my head. “I only saw Drue for a few minutes, here and there. We took pictures.” I reached for my phone.

The detective said, “I can take a look later. Why don’t you keep going?”

Deep breath. “We’d just gotten up to get dessert when the fight started.”

“What fight was this?” he asked, his tone neutral.

“Drue’s parents were fighting,” I said. “Lily and Robert Cavanaugh. This was down on the beach, right by the stairs.”

“And the fight was about…?”

“The cost of the wedding. I mean, I think. That’s based on what I heard. Drue’s dad was yelling about how much the rugs cost—the rugs they’d put on the sand—and the houses they’d rented. Drue was trying to talk to her dad, and he started yelling at her. He said that she and her mother were like peas in a pod. He went up the stairs, and Drue went after him, and then I got some drinks and went after her.”

“What drinks?”

“Two shots of tequila. A glass of ice water. A bottle of wine.”

He raised his eyebrow. “I didn’t know what she’d want,” I said, hoping that I didn’t sound defensive.

“You went to Miss Cavanaugh’s bedroom?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see Mr. Cavanaugh? Speak to him?”

“No,” I said, remembering how relieved I’d felt when I’d found Drue alone, how reluctant I’d been to confront her father. “Just Drue. She was very upset. She told me that she’d learned that her parents were getting divorced. They were fighting because her father thought the wedding was just a way for her mother to stick her dad with a huge bill.”

“Did Drue indicate when she’d learned that her parents were divorcing?”

“She just said that she’d found out recently,” I said. “She said she’d just found out. I’m not sure if she meant just then, down on the beach, or at some other point, but it had been recent.”

“So you came up from the beach to see her?”

I nodded.

“With the drinks?”

I nodded again.

“There was bottled water in all of the rooms, right?” When I nodded, he asked, “Why did you carry a glass of ice water all the way up the stairs when there was bottled water waiting?”