The Winters(64)

Max rolled his eyes. “Here we go again.”

Louisa took out her phone and reading glasses. “Let’s take a look, shall we?” She tapped the app on her phone, instead of going through a browser, as I did.

“You have an account?” I was genuinely surprised; she didn’t seem the type.

“Oh good God, no, I’m too old. It’s just a dummy account for snooping. And not just on Dani, by the way. My friends are complete idiots. Grown women doing duck-face selfies. Using puppy-ear filters. Imagine. What am I looking for?” she asked, peering down her nose through her tiny glasses.

I puffed up like an expert. “Here. I’ll show you.” I took Louisa’s phone from her and scanned through Dani’s last few postings. “See? Here. The greenhouse one. Just below. Read that comment.”

Louisa took her phone back. Her lips moving as she read the words. Then she honed in on the account’s name. “At R . . . Winter forever. R Winter. That’s . . . Is someone commenting as Rebekah?”

“I don’t know. It’s weird, though, isn’t it?”

“What the—” Max snatched the phone, squinting to read the comments. Louisa handed him her glasses. “You talked to her about this?”

“No. I didn’t have the courage,” I admitted. “I’d never hear the end of it from her. But when the comments started popping up, that’s when she started acting strange, disappearing, turning sullen, wandering the greenhouse in a daze. You know how she’s been, Max. I tried to tell you about this yesterday.”

He poked through her other posts.

“Who would do this?” I asked, looking at all three of them.

“Let’s see.” Max put down the phone. “Her friends, or rather her ex-friends. They’re all little shits.”

“Claire especially,” Louisa said.

“Yes, she’s a particular piece of work,” Jonah said. “From a whole family of assholes, to be honest. Wasn’t the father nabbed for insider trading or something?”

“Embezzlement,” Max said.

“Right.”

“Well, the girls are fighting right now,” I said. “I overheard Dani yelling at Claire on the phone, accusing her, I think, of doing this.” I left out the part where I had my ear pressed to the door.

“Dani’s been a very talented bully over the years. Especially online,” Max said ruefully. “It could be Claire, or someone else she’s pissed off giving her a taste of her own medicine.”

Louisa took her phone back and continued to scan the posts. “I hate to say this, but . . . this . . . this might also be Dani,” she said. She placed her phone down on the table as if she had solved the mystery, case closed.

I looked towards the door, suddenly worried Dani would walk in on four grown-ups analyzing her social media. I lowered my voice. “You think she did this and she’s faking anxiety over it? To what end?”

“Does she know you snoop?” Jonah asked.

“No. Yes, maybe.” I remembered how she had laughed at me at the restaurant, said that she’d made a bet with Claire.

“This is classic Dani,” Louisa said, tapping her phone with an index finger to punctuate her point. “Dramatic. Weird. Puts her at the center of attention.”

“Look at us all talking about her right now,” Jonah added, with a laugh.

“And she likes to rub Rebekah in your face,” Louisa said to me. “You know it’s true. Plus, she knows how to play a long game.”

There was a collective groan. Louisa continued.

“Remember, Max, when she wanted everyone to hate the Waterston girl for some mysterious reason? She planted a few of her belongings at their house and then later accused the kid of stealing them. She was eight. When she finally told Rebekah the truth, what did Rebekah do? She laughed. She thought Dani was so clever.”

“I can’t believe she’d do this on the off chance that I’d see it. We’ve been getting along so well. She’s been such a help.” I turned to Max. “What if one of her friends is taunting her? What if it is Claire? We have to do something. We have to help her.”

“Are you always like this?” Jonah asked.

“Like what?”

“Kind and lovely and perfectly sane?”

“Oh, look, Joe’s got a crush on the second Mrs. Winter, too,” Louisa said. Jonah shot her a look and shifted in his seat.

Max covered my hand, ignoring them. “I’ll talk to her,” he said. “I promise.”

My shoulders dropped, relieved he was going to take it on and not me. “Thank you, Max.”

“No. Thank you. For your big, good heart. For caring about Dani. It’s having an effect on her. Or maybe it’s that damn kitten.” He reached over and scratched Maggie’s ruff.

“You mean this sweet little thing that you told me to get rid of?”

He smiled. “This kitten was your wedding gift. But that’s all you’re getting,” he said, touching my cheek, confirming he could no more get rid of Maggie than he could Dani or me.





TWENTY-THREE


There wasn’t much left to do for the wedding, so Dani mostly stayed in her room those last few days, watching endless amounts of TV and playing with Maggie, only dragging herself out of her hole to help Gus load the horses heading to their new stables in Montauk. I watched her from the kitchen window, laughing with Gus as they made several attempts to back the trailer up to the barn. She calmly walked each horse up the plank and into a long trailer, Isabel and then Dorian, stopping to whisper into their flickering ears. She seemed happy, comfortable, like her old self. Max came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and we watched them for a moment.