And what about Poppy? Who had she really been? Would Rowan ever know?
Unbidden, a memory floated to the fore of her mind. At the end-of-summer party when Steven died, the band had played “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which Poppy had always loved. She ran to James and looped her arms around him, nestling into his shoulder. They’d swayed to the whole song, holding each other tight. Rowan had stood on the sidelines, envy throbbing inside her like a second heart. A sob had escaped from her lips, and she’d looked around, hoping no one had heard.
Only Danielle Gilchrist was around. She looked pretty and pink-cheeked that night, and when she saw Rowan’s expression, she handed Rowan her full glass of wine. “It’s not fair, is it?” Danielle had said softly, her smile sad. “Her life just falls into place, while the rest of us have to struggle.”
Rowan nodded. She was so jealous of Poppy in that moment. Her cousin made things seem so . . . effortless. Rowan would have killed for just a little of that grace. For a little of that luck.
But was Poppy’s effortlessly perfect life real? Or was it just an illusion she’d carefully cultivated and maintained?
James sighed next to her, and Rowan looked up at him. “So that means there’s no way you and I . . .” He trailed off, his brows raised. There was a sheepish but hopeful look in his eyes. “I’ll try to change, Rowan. I’ll try as hard as I can.”
Rowan wanted to believe him. But James had said it himself: he was who he was, and he couldn’t help himself. She saw that now. She could take his hand and then look the other way when she found lipstick smudged on his collar or a suspicious text on his phone. Maybe that was what Poppy had done.
But Rowan wasn’t Poppy. She had the choice, and she didn’t want to fake it.
She touched the top of his hand. “I’m sorry, James,” she said softly. “But I think I’m going to have to let you go.”
And then, just like that, she finally did.
28
The sunporch in the house at Meriweather had always been Corinne’s favorite place to hang out, probably because the room was mostly unused by their parents. Edith complained it smelled like mildew and salt and was full of bugs, but Corinne loved it. It reminded her of long nights on the slightly damp old wicker couches, the citronella candles lit all around, the various swings and chairs squeaking, and the sounds of the waves loud in their ears. She and her cousins used to tell secrets in this close, humid little room—about boys, fights with their parents, their dreams. Back then, their futures had seemed as limitless as their fortunes.
Strange to think of that now, Corinne mused as she lay on the porch swing late that night, her head on Rowan’s shoulder. Through the years she had boxed herself in, little by little, the boxes getting smaller and smaller until her knees were bent and her legs cramped. Now it felt as if someone was placing a lid on that final box.
“It was a really nice rehearsal dinner,” said Aster, who had changed into yoga pants and a long, fitted T-shirt. “Great band.”
“Yes, everyone had a good time dancing,” Corinne said lightly. “Especially the kids.”
“Sky looked really happy,” Rowan said. The little girl had been on the dance floor all night, finally falling asleep on James’s shoulder as he carried her upstairs. Everyone had beamed at Skylar happily, but there was a sadness there too. She no longer had Poppy’s parents. She no longer had a mother. And what about a father? James was here tonight, but he looked totally vacant.
“Men are jerks,” Aster mumbled, as if reading her thoughts.
Corinne wanted to agree, but all she felt was sadness. Dixon wasn’t a jerk. Will wasn’t a jerk. But it was what it was. She was getting married tomorrow. Anything else was too much. Too hard. She felt like she was looking down a long, straight road; no twists, no unexpected turns. She wondered how something could feel like relief and regret at the same time.
Aster’s phone rang, a jarring bleep against the soft roll of waves and humming crickets. She sat up and glanced at the screen. “I’ll be back,” she whispered.
The screen door banged, and her footsteps creaked across the wood floor to the front of the house. Corinne stared into the room, which a cleaning crew had scrubbed after the rehearsal dinner. Not a single glass remained on a side table; the floor had been swept and the dining tables and chairs removed and folded up to be reused tomorrow, in the tent outside. The only indication that there would be a wedding the next day was a collection of silver-framed pictures of Corinne and Dixon on the mantel. Tomorrow, those images would greet the guests as they walked to the backyard. Corinne barely recalled the photos she and her cousins had chosen.
She wandered over to look at them, grabbing the whole assortment and carrying the photos back to the sunporch. The biggest one was of her and Dixon in New Haven, their junior year at Yale. She was on Dixon’s back, her legs splayed out playfully. Dixon had just had an interview for Skull and Bones, Corinne recalled, and he’d been thrilled because the guys who’d interviewed him had made it clear he was a front-runner to join the group. They were both beaming. Corinne couldn’t remember being that happy.
Another, in the left-hand corner, was taken at a party in this house’s backyard overlooking the sea. There were shots of the two of them alone—a baby picture of Corinne in a cotton eyelet dress, a shot of Dixon on a horse, Corinne again on the back patio at yet another party, her gaze fixed on something out of view. Corinne squinted at that particular photo, recognizing the floral Lilly Pulitzer dress she was wearing. She’d worn that dress only once: the night she’d discovered she was pregnant.
Corinne was the only person in focus; a swarm of other party guests spun around her in the background. Mason chatted with Penelope. Steven, blurry, tipped his head back and laughed. A blond waitress served him a drink on a tray, her arm outstretched. A couple kissed in the background.
She showed it to Rowan. “Who picked this photo?”
Rowan squinted hard. “Not me. Why?”
“It’s from the night Steven died,” Corinne pointed out.
“Hmm.” Rowan regarded it for a long time. “Well, you certainly look happy.”
Looks can be deceiving, Corinne thought. Especially that night.
Aster’s footsteps pounded back, and then she appeared in the doorway. Her face was flushed, she was breathing hard, and she carried an iPad in her right hand. “I have something to show you guys.”
She burst onto the sun porch and sat down. “So my date, Mitch, was able to access the lobby surveillance video the morning Poppy died. It’s on this, right now.”
Rowan wiped her eyes. “Wait. Foley said the video didn’t yield anything.”
Aster shrugged. “So? Maybe Foley didn’t know what to look for.” She looked up at them. “What if this shows us everything?”
Corinne scuttled forward, her heart suddenly pounding with the possibility. “Open it up!”
“Seriously.” Rowan sat upright.
Aster placed the iPad on the wicker coffee table, then touched an app icon labeled Remote Camera. A QuickTime video appeared. A clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen said that the video feed was from 6:30 a.m. on Friday, May 6—the date of Poppy’s death. The screen split into four separate camera images, each of a different view of the Saybrook’s building. One was a side door that went straight to a back elevator. Another was a side-street entrance for maintenance workers. The third was the main entrance, where employees swiped their IDs through a turnstile or signed in with a guard. The fourth quadrant was a set of emergency stairs that led to the street.
They kept watching, the picture black-and-white and occasionally speckled with static. In a few moments there was Poppy herself, walking through the main entrance. Everyone jumped. Corinne clapped a hand over her mouth. It was like seeing a ghost.
Poppy gave the security guard a distracted wave and walked through the turnstile. Corinne touched Poppy’s face on the screen.
Rowan leaned forward. “She looks . . . good.” Her voice was chok
ed.
“Busy,” Aster agreed. There were tears in her eyes. “But not scared.”
“She doesn’t know she’s going to die,” Corinne whispered.
Poppy got into the elevator, pressed the button for her floor, and disappeared through the doors. Corinne swallowed hard. There she goes, she thought. Poppy would never ride that elevator down.
She settled back to watch, her heart still pounding. Rowan gripped her knees. Aster didn’t blink. No one passed through the lobby for a while, though a maintenance worker walked in the side entrance and a few unassuming-looking women in hairnets pressed the down button on the side elevator for the basement cafeteria. Corinne and Aster’s father appeared on the video that showed the main entrance. A few other people Corinne didn’t recognize swept past too, but they were employees of the other businesses in the building, going to the other elevator bank. A woman paused at the back elevator door, also pressing the down button for the cafeteria. Finally another woman walked in. Even though the image was black-and-white, Corinne recognized Danielle Gilchrist’s profile and that tacky color-block dress.
“Danielle’s at work early,” she commented, watching as the elevator dinged and Danielle walked into the car.
“Suck-up,” Aster muttered.
“Oh my God,” Rowan said.
She was pointing at something on the main entrance feed. Another familiar face passed through, but at first Corinne couldn’t place her. Then something in her brain caught—this person shouldn’t have been in the building. Not yet, anyway.
“Is that—” Rowan pointed a shaky finger at the screen.
“I think so,” Aster whispered.
Corinne paused the tape and slid her finger along the time bar, rewinding it so she could look again. The figure pushed through the revolving doors and nodded curtly at the security guard. The guard seemed confused, but then he was distracted with another guest signing in, and the woman pushed through, unchecked. Corinne leaned in close, her heart pounding hard. All sorts of alarms blared in her head. It was who she thought it was, all right. A light-haired young woman in a black skirt suit. Straight mouth. Furrowed brow. Her rigid posture all business, steely determination.
It was Katherine Foley.
Corinne sat back, spots forming in front of her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
But then something hit her. She grabbed the picture back from Rowan, the one of her from the night Steven died. She focused on two of the figures in the background, both of them a little out of focus. One was Steven Barnett. His face was in profile, his hand outstretched to accept a drink from a blond waitress. Now that she looked closer, there was a secret, conspiratorial look between Steven and the waitress; a shared little moment no one else saw.
Corinne had just seen those features, that same blond hair.
“What is it?” Rowan asked, rising to her feet.
Corinne hurried back into the sunporch and flipped on the light. The room flooded with fluorescence, and everyone squinted. “Look,” she cried, placing the picture on the table next to the iPad.
She compared the blurry image in the photo to the frozen face on the iPad screen. The faces were the same.
“Oh my God,” Aster whispered. And Rowan sank back down to the chair.
Katherine Foley had been to Meriweather before. She’d been there the night Steven was killed. And she was there the morning Poppy died.
Maybe they’d been looking in all the wrong places. Maybe Katherine had been in the picture all along.
29
The cousins were silent for what felt like ages. Rowan’s breath shook as she inhaled and exhaled. The weight of what they’d just discovered slowly sank in. She looked again at the two images, one from the surveillance camera and one from the party five years before, serving Steven Barnett a drink. Smirking at Steven Barnett, as though they shared a secret.
“Foley was at that party,” Corinne whispered, falling back into a seat. “She knew us.”
“She never let on that she did, though,” Rowan murmured. “Why?”
Aster leaped to her feet, looking at the picture of Katherine from the party again. “Elizabeth told me Steven Barnett had a thing for girls around town. She even said that there was one girl in particular with blond hair.” She pointed to Katherine Foley’s face. “Look at the way they’re staring at each other.”
Corinne paced around the room quickly like a windup toy coiled too tightly. “Maybe Katherine was in love with Steven?”
“It’s possible, right?” Aster said. “Maybe she was devastated when he died—but maybe she didn’t know who did it. Maybe she somehow just recently figured out that it was Poppy . . . and she got her revenge.”
Rowan nodded slowly. “And she took this case so she could control it. When she said the surveillance tape didn’t show anything suspicious, we all believed her without questioning it because she’s FBI. But she conveniently left out the fact that she was on it.”
Aster clapped a hand over her mouth. “And think about how quickly she got to the hospital the night of our crash. What if she was at the house? What if she heard us talking about Steven and was worried we were getting too close to the truth?”
“And remember how weird Foley was after we mentioned Poppy killing Steven?” Rowan added.
“She could have bugged the house—and broken into our homes,” Corinne whispered, her eyes wide. “She had access to Saybrook’s, Rowan. Do you think she stole the video from your computer?”
“Maybe,” Rowan said, suddenly thinking of the moving cursor on her work computer. “Or she could have found a way to remotely access my machine.”
“But I don’t understand why,” Aster whispered, her gaze sliding this way and that. “We didn’t have anything to do with Steven’s death.”
Rowan cocked her head. “No, we didn’t. But maybe she thought we were in on it. We were so close with Poppy. She could have thought Poppy told us everything.”
“Or she might be trying to cover up Poppy’s murder,” Corinne suggested. “Pin it on someone else.”
Everyone exchanged a spooked glance. Aster leaped to her feet. “We have to tell someone.”
“Who?” Corinne asked. “Not the FBI—she is the FBI.”
Rowan climbed off the couch. “We’ll go to the Boston bureau. There’s got to be someone over her head—someone who will take us seriously.” She slipped her feet into her sandals. “We should go. Foley could be listening to us right now.” She glanced at Corinne. “You can stay here if you want. Rest up for tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding?” Corinne draped a cardigan over her shoulders. “I’m not letting you guys go by yourselves.” She flipped on a light in the main room and found the keys to their SUV. “Let’s go.”
They slipped out the front door and walked into the cool night. The air was thick with the scent of salt water, and the night was moonless and misty. The only light was from the porch and a single light in the caretakers’ house. Rowan sprinted to the SUV in the driveway, feeling that if they didn’t get out of here this moment, something awful might happen to them. Her head hummed with the terror of what they’d just pieced together. She thought of all the times she’d been in the presence of Foley. She’d been in their offices, their homes. Edith had even invited her to Corinne’s wedding.
Rowan unlocked the door to the Range Rover and swung into the driver’s seat. Corinne slid in next to her, while Aster climbed into the back. But when Rowan jammed the key into the ignition and turned it, nothing happened. Frowning, she tried it again. Still nothing.
“What’s wrong?” Aster whispered.
“I don’t know.” Rowan tried to flick on the lights, but the driveway remained dark. “Maybe it’s the battery.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Aster’s hands fell limply to her lap. Then her eyes widened. “What if she drained the battery on purpose?”
Rowan reached over and locked the doors, suddenly afraid to head back into the house. “What are we going to do???
? Her voice screeched with panic. “We have to get out of here!”
Suddenly there was a loud knock on the car window. Everyone screamed at the shadowy figure barely visible behind the tinted glass. Foley, was Rowan’s singular thought.
“Hello?”
Tears ran down Rowan’s cheeks as she tried the ignition again and again. “Hello?” the voice called once more. “Corinne? Rowan? Aster?”
Rowan blinked. Over her pounding heart, she suddenly realized it wasn’t Foley’s voice at all. She pulled the key from the ignition. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Julia.”
“Mom?” called a voice outside the car. There were footsteps. “Rowan?” the voice called. “It’s Danielle.”
Rowan clicked her phone into flashlight mode. Two redheads stepped into the light. Danielle and Julia Gilchrist. Rowan exchanged a look with the others, then rolled down the window.
Danielle was in a T-shirt, and her hair was messy with sleep. Julia wore yoga pants and a Sherpa hoodie. Both women peered at them worriedly. “Are you ladies okay?” Julia asked.
Rowan shook her head. “N-no.”
“Our car won’t start,” Corinne blurted.
“Maybe it needs a jump?” Danielle offered.
“Or we could just give them a ride somewhere,” Julia said uncertainly.
“Yes, please,” Aster said, shooting out of the car. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Julia gestured toward the caretakers’ house. A Subaru sat under the porte cochere. “Just let me grab my purse.”
The other cousins stepped out of the car and hurried across the driveway. A stiff wind knocked against Rowan’s cheek, and she heard a rumbling sound in the distance. As they climbed into the vehicle, headlights appeared at the other end of the drive. Rowan’s heart seized.
She leaned into the front seat and touched Julia’s shoulder. “We have to get out of here,” she said nervously. “Now.”
30
Aster crammed into the backseat with her cousins. “Drive,” she commanded Danielle. “Please.”