Big Summer(73)

I decided to stay focused on Nick. “I completely understand why he wouldn’t want to be online. His mother was murdered. Maybe he doesn’t want creepers and conspiracy theory nuts bothering him.” Except he could have used a fake name, or opened accounts that gave no indication of his connection to the Cape. There were lots of things Nick could have done to have an online presence, and he hadn’t done any of them, as far as the two of us knew.

Darshi’s expression was pained. There was a vertical line between her eyebrows, her forehead was furrowed, and the left side of the plum-colored silk shell she had on underneath her jacket was incrementally less tucked in on the right side. For Darshi, that was hurricane-level dishevelment. “Being in a house while your own mother gets murdered… being left alone with her corpse for days… then reading every crazy person’s theories about how being single and sexually active was what killed her… Don’t you think that could have an impact on a person? Affect them?”

“Absolutely. Hundred percent. I’m just not sure it would turn a person into a homicidal maniac who’d wait twenty-five years and then kill a bride on her wedding day.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to kill the bride.” Darshi’s voice was steady. It took me a second to figure out what she meant, and when I finally got it, I shuddered uncontrollably.

“You think he wanted to kill me?” I said. I tried to sound indignant. Instead, my voice was so high that I sounded like one of Bingo’s squeaky toys. “Why? Do you think I’m that bad in bed?”

“Hashtag self-esteem,” Darshi murmured. “What if it turns out that Drue was poisoned?” she asked. “What if it turns out whoever killed her just put poison in a drink, and left the drink by the hot tub? Who had access to that hot tub, besides Drue? Who was it for?” Darshi barely paused before she answered her own question. “You. Just you.”

I cringed, my skin bristling with goose bumps, hearing the echo of Drue’s voice as she showed me my room. I want you to be happy. I’m so grateful that you’re here.

“Okay, but what about a motive? If Nick’s the killer, would he want to kill me?” I asked. I made a face, trying to keep my tone light. “I’m nobody.”

Darshi wasn’t laughing. She reached for my phone, opened up the photo app, and scrolled through the pictures that Nick had taken of me and Drue the night before. “Look,” she said, and angled the screen to show me.

Even after all these years, all the internal pep talks, all the articles I’d read and all the pictures I’d posted online, I still found it hard, sometimes, to look at pictures of myself. Now I forced myself to look, and see what Darshi wanted me to see. Nick had placed me, not Drue, in the center of all of the pictures. A few of them showed Drue with her eyes oddly squinched shut or her mouth half-open, but not me. Not once. I was smiling in one shot, laughing in another; backed by a corona of glowing light, as if I’d been dusted in golden pollen. I looked pretty.

“I think he likes you,” Darshi said.

I waved her words away, pleased and unsettled. “So which is it? He’s into me, or he wants me dead?”

“Maybe he’s confused.” She got off the bed and tucked her shirt back in. “Maybe sleeping with a woman in the house where his mother was murdered set him off somehow. Maybe he’s got some kind of wires crossed, with sex and death.”

“Darshi,” I said, “Nick isn’t a psychopath. No one wants to kill me. And we’re not even sure anyone wanted to kill Drue. I’m sure this is all a big… misunderstanding.” At least, I hoped it was all a big misunderstanding. I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to hurt me, unless that guy from the bar had held a grudge for four years and had come after me. “And again, the police have already arrested someone.”

“Speaking of which.” Darshi held her hand out for her phone. “The woman the cops brought in is Emma Vincent, of Eastham, Massachusetts, which is about fifteen miles from here. She’s twenty-six years old, a part-time community-college student. She waitresses, caters, works at the Chatham Bars Inn. No criminal record that I can find and not much of an online presence.” Darshi’s audible sniff conveyed her frustration. “People upstairs are saying that Drue’s mom is still in the hospital in Hyannis.” She lowered her voice. “They’re also saying that Drue’s dad is MIA.”

I lowered my voice and told her what I’d heard from the Lathrop side of the family, and from my own father, about Mr. Cavanaugh’s finances and infidelities.

“Maybe that’s it,” said Darshi. “Maybe Emma’s a girlfriend.”

I was shocked. “She’s Drue’s age!”

Darshi gave me a pitying look. “Right. Shocking. Because no wealthy, powerful man has ever hooked up with a woman young enough to be his daughter.”

I shook my head, got to my feet, and went back to filling my suitcase with the clothes I’d unpacked just the day before. Darshi gave me one last look, then slipped out the door. I checked the closet to make sure I’d gotten all of my dresses, sat down on the bed, and opened the Instagram app. The picture I’d posted, the one of me and Drue, with all of the wedding hashtags, had gotten thousands of likes and hundreds of comments that I couldn’t bring myself to read. Instead, I hit the “edit” feature and started to write. I typed, By now, some of you might have heard the news… Then I erased it. I typed, I am sitting here, stunned. I still can’t believe that such a beautiful night ended in tragedy. Then I erased it. I slumped back against the headboard, biting my lip. Anyone who’d spent ten minutes on Instagram could tell you that authenticity was the name of the game, that people wanted honest, unfiltered connection; they wanted to feel like the men and women they saw on their phones were living, breathing people, just like they were; they wanted us to be real. But what could I honestly, authentically say about my friend, and what had happened, and how scared I was that the police would decide that I, or the man I’d slept with, had something to do with her death?