The Cousins(77)

“You know, it’s actually pretty nice here,” I say, a yawn creeping into my voice. “Too bad we’re leaving.”

“Yeah,” Aubrey sighs. Her knuckles knock lightly against my arm. “I’m going to miss you.”

A lump forms in my throat. “I’ll miss you, too.” We’re quiet for a few beats, lost in our own thoughts, until practical matters start creeping into mine. “Have you thought about how we’re going to get back to the dorms tonight?” I ask.



Aubrey giggles. “Not really. Maybe we could text Efram?” Her voice turns considering. “Or we could just stay here. There’s an extra room.”

“We don’t have anything to sleep in,” I object.

She plucks at her mesh shorts. “That’s only a problem for you.”

The grass rustles beside us, and I turn to see Jonah’s sneakers approaching the blanket. He pauses. “Is this just a cousin hangout?” he asks.

I sit up, brushing my hair behind my shoulders. Which is my instinctive, go-to, notice-my-hair flirt move. My subconscious isn’t mad at Jonah anymore. And maybe I’m not, either. “No. Come on, join us.”

He sprawls beside me, and Aubrey sits up too. Her phone falls out of her pocket when she does, along with a thin silver card. She retrieves the phone but doesn’t notice the card, so I pick it up and hand it to her. “You dropped this.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Even in the moonlight, I can see her grimace. “I forgot I took that.”

The guilt in her voice makes me pause. “Took what?”

“Um, so. It’s the keycard that opens the gate at Catmint House. I think. It looks just like the one the chauffeur used. I grabbed it out of Gran’s house when Mrs. Ryan told me to leave.”

“You took that?” I ask, as Jonah starts to laugh.

“Damn, Aubrey,” he says. “That’s some next-level petty revenge. Were you planning to go back in the middle of the night and loot the place?”

“I didn’t actually have a plan,” Aubrey admits. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” She puts the keycard back in her pocket and stretches her arms over her head. “What a weird day. And night.”



“I can’t even keep track of all the stuff that came up,” Jonah says.

“Interesting how we keep going back to Anders, huh?” I ask. While we were cleaning up, I couldn’t stop thinking about my uncle’s smirk at the Summer Gala last night. How he seemed to almost relish telling all those lies.

I expect Jonah to loudly agree, considering how much he hates Uncle Anders. But he says, “Not just him.” I turn to him in surprise and he adds, “We keep going back to Theresa Ryan, too. And unlike Anders, she’s never left the island. She’s been here the whole time. Whispering in your grandmother’s ear.”

I shift on the blanket. “What are you saying?”

“Look, maybe the woman is—unbalanced. Maybe losing her son pushed her over the edge, so she did something to Kayla Dugas and made Dr. Baxter cover it up. And maybe your grandmother learned what it was, but she’s too dependent on Theresa to do anything about it. Like, she already cut ties with all her kids, so who else is gonna take care of her?” He shrugs at my dubious expression. “It’s no weirder than anything else that’s happened here over the past twenty years, is it?”

I have to admit he has a point. “But why would Mrs. Ryan hurt Kayla?”

“I don’t know,” Jonah says. “But your grandmother freaked when Aubrey brought up her name, right? There’s something going on there.”

Aubrey tries unsuccessfully to suppress a massive yawn. “I’m exhausted, you guys. I can’t keep my eyes open. Do you mind if we crash here, Milly? That spare bed is calling my name. It’s a double, so we can share. I don’t kick, I promise.”



“Sure,” I say, plucking at the skirt of my red dress. It’s not ideal for sleeping in, but I guess I can handle it for one night.

Jonah takes in the gesture and says, “You can borrow something of mine if you want. It’s all clean,” he adds hastily.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, and Aubrey gets to her feet with a relieved sigh.

“I’m out, then. See you guys tomorrow.”

I watch until she opens the sliding glass door and slips through. Then I turn toward Jonah with a small smile. “Thanks for lending me a change of clothes. I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in a dress.”

“Especially not a family heirloom, right?” Jonah says. I cock my head, puzzled, and he adds, “That’s your mother’s dress, isn’t it?”

I let out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, but how did you know?”

“You told us, that first day. You wore it on the ferry.”

“I can’t believe you remember that.”

“I remember more than that,” Jonah says. “You wore sunglasses, even though it was raining. You referred to me as a J. Crew model and a constipated gnome in almost the same sentence.” I snicker a little, because that was one of my better lines. “Then you bought us all gin and tonics, and tried to get us to spill some secrets. I had three. The first was that I’m not actually your cousin. The second was that your uncle led my parents into bankruptcy, and I had the ridiculous idea that I was going to make him pay for that.”