CHAPTER 15
Ineeded to get back on target.
I wasn’t hanging around Carter to try to win against Lydia.
The whole point had been to meet Dr. Pembleton, which, after two weeks, I still hadn’t done. It was time to turn the board back in my favor.
So, when Carter reached out to me Sunday night and asked if I wanted to join them on their yacht for a lazy Sunday, I jumped at the offer.
“Is Carter coming to pick you up?” Mom asked on Sunday morning, dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a billowy white top. She was packing a bottle of sunscreen into a small bag, ready to head out to Ms. Jennings’s to park poolside for the whole day.
I was grateful for the excuse with Carter, because the idea of going to Ms. Jennings’s—of running into Beck after the closet last night—had my skin prickling. No, no more thinking about it. “Yep. Around noon.” So that meant I had about another hour of planning my whole strategy.
Rich men like Dr. Pembleton liked to be asked about their glory days, and honestly, I was interested to hear it from him. Dad used to recount his early days of law school with me when I asked, but it’d been years, and it’d be nice to hear Dr. Pembleton’s path.
“Jamie, you should come with me to get out of the house.” Mom grabbed her purse off the hook by the garage door. “Bring your book.”
Jamie, who ventured into the kitchen to the fridge, shook his head. “I’m allergic to the sun,” he deadpanned.
Under her breath, Mom muttered, “You must get it from your father.”
My father, who I hadn’t seen since Friday when he’d come down to grab his plate of dinner and take it back into his room. The sudden urge to snap rose in me. “How long is he just going to be like that?”
“I—I don’t know.” Mom sighed, hoisting her purse up her arm. “But we’ll be there for him throughout it, won’t we?”
It didn’t seem fair to constantly simmer on the back burner, waiting for him to wake up. But it wouldn’t be perfect of me to say that. I’d gotten good at biting my tongue. Especially when it came to Dad. “I just can’t believe one case has him so… shaken.”
Mom only nodded to that. After giving me a kiss on the top of my head and patting Jamie on the shoulder, Mom left. I hopped up from the breakfast bar, padding toward the staircase.
“What do you think Daisy’s doing today?” Jamie called after me.
I didn’t know. Her mom was off work today, so she shouldn’t have had to watch the kids. “Text her.”
“You text her.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Why do you act like I’m more of her friend than you are? You’re best friends, too.”
Jamie just scowled at me, and for once, Twin Telepathy didn’t save me. He made no sense.
The doorbell ringing kept me from prying further. “Oh, look at that!” I threw Jamie a smile before bounding forward, reaching for the front door’s knob. “Speak of the devil—”
But when I hauled the door open, it wasn’t Daisy on the welcome mat.
It was Lydia.
In hindsight, of course it wasn’t Daisy. Daisy always just waltzed right in.
Of course it was Lydia. Holding a… “What is that?”
“It’s a pie!” She thrust the glass pie dish toward me. “It’s raspberry. It got a little burnt on the top, so I figured adding powdered sugar would hide the charred bits.”
I wasn’t sure how she figured that, since there was barely any powdered sugar to hide the blackened pie crust. There were random slashes through the top, and mushed the deep red raspberries oozed up and out, looking almost like chunks of blood.
“Surprise!” she said with a megawatt smile. “I know it might seem random, but I made it, and I thought of you!”
I took the pie dish from her. The burnt smell was worse up close. “Um. Thanks.”
Lydia slid her hands into the back pockets of her dark denim jeans, eyeing me from head to toe. I wondered if she noticed the swimsuit straps peeking out from underneath my T-shirt collar. “Going somewhere?”
“Carter invited me out on the yacht with his family.”
Her eyes flared, as if her suspicions had been confirmed. “Well, be sure to have a slice of pie before you go!”
Oh, now I absolutely wasn’t having any pie.
“I can’t believe we got to Ms. Jennings’s party last night right as you were leaving,” Lydia went on in a light voice. “When I got there with the Pembletons, we were so bummed!”
It was almost funny to see her trying to match me bar for bar. When I got there with the Pembletons. “Someone’s mother drank more than she should’ve and accidentally dumped her drink on me.”
“I also heard someone dumped her drink on her.”
Stupid, Eleanor, I thought to myself. Why did you do that?
“Dr. Pembleton was mortified when he got into the ballroom,” Lydia powered on. “Said it looked like some college party, not the refined gathering he’d expected of Alderton-Du Ponte.”
I wasn’t sure why she was telling that to me—it hadn’t been my mother who’d been teetering around with two drinks in her hands. I had no reason to worry, unless—
“And I saw something interesting.” Her smug tone was the only warning I had. “I saw Beck leave the overflow coat closet, and then you, a couple minutes after.”
The front porch grew cold. Lydia couldn’t shield her smirk quickly enough, even though she tried, and I caught a flash of it before she schooled her features into something constipated-looking. “The overflow coat closet?” I repeated slowly. “Why would I be in there with Beck?”
My voice was flat. My features were neutral. As long as she didn’t look at the way the pie trembled in my hands, it’d be fine.
“I know, right?” She pulled her phone from her back pocket. “I thought the same thing.”
Lydia turned her screen to me, showing a paused video of me leaving the closet. I was in the process of turning away from the camera, about to head down the hall back to find Daisy, and I hadn’t seen where she’d been camping with her camera.
My mind whirled fast. She couldn’t have seen Beck drag me into the closet.
If she had, it wouldn’t have been Carter poking his head in, but her.
She would’ve dragged him in, made sure Carter had gone further into the closet, and found where Beck was pressing me to him.
But she’d known enough to wait for me to come out.
Understanding dawned.
Beck.
There’d been a window of time after Beck left the closet and before I went to find Daisy. But would he really have gone to find Lydia and told her everything? After helping me hide, he would so easily rat me out?
I lifted my eyes back to hers. “Lydia.” I let her name linger in the air. “Do you realize how childish you’re acting?”
She blinked, probably shocked I wasn’t more desperate. “Me?”
“Blackmail? All so I’ll stop talking to a boy you want?” I tilted my head, fingers squeaking against the glass pie dish from how hard I gripped it. “Are we twelve?”
“I-It’s not just because—”
“I don’t know what game you and Beck are playing,” I went on in the same tone.
“But tricks like this? Photos, videos, threats—Carter won’t side with you because of them.
I mean, going as far as to send Beck on our date is a little unhinged, Lydia.
Imagine if Carter found out about that. I’m surprised you managed to convince Beck to do it. ”
Her eyes flashed. “Beck hates you. He’ll do whatever I need if it means getting revenge.”
R-E-V-E-N-G-E. The words spelled themselves slowly in my mind, wrapping like wisps of smoke. My necklace, loose at my throat, felt heavy. Like I said. I could remember the shaken look in his eyes. Glutton for punishment. “He hates me for something he did?”
“I know you’re the one who lit the garden on fire.” Some triumph came back into her expression. “I could tell the Pembletons that. I don’t think they’d want to associate themselves with someone so crazy.”
Beck had told her. They were closer than I thought. Or maybe it’d been her mother that’d let it slip. Either way, the corner she was backing me into felt tighter. “You know, I’d be more worried about your mom’s drinking problem—”
Without warning, Lydia stepped closer on the porch, so much so that she nearly stepped into the edge of the pie pan. “Is this a joke to you?”
Her sudden severity caught me off guard. “Lydia. Tell me why it’s so important.”
“Why? So you can throw it back in my face?”
My jaw dropped. “When have I ever—”
“Oh, please! You’ll just use it to remind yourself how much better you are than me.
That I’m beneath you, and that it’s obviously true, because everyone likes you more.
The most perfect girl at Alderton-Du Ponte.
” Her features twisted as her voice lowered.
“With a black hole in your chest where your heart should be.”
Her words hit me hard, almost like she’d shoved me with them. The hatred in her eyes so potent that I didn’t know what else to do but hold still. No one had ever looked at me that way before. Not even Beck.
“It’ll swallow you whole one day,” she went on, and snatched the horror pie out of my hands. “I’m waiting for it—no. I’m counting on it.”
With one last death glare, Lydia turned on her heel, her blonde hair flying out as she started down the porch steps. I remained frozen, watching as she stomped toward her car parked on the curb. Her words were ugly, and the smell of the burnt pie still clogged my nose.
“What was that about?”
I turned around to find Dad on the bottom stair in the house, frowning in the foyer. He was in a pair of dark sweatpants and a loose shirt, with his hair combed. The most presentable he’d been in weeks.
And staring at me with a serious expression on his face. Had he overheard any of that? “Lydia,” I answered hastily. “She was… stopping by to say hi.”
Dad watched me wordlessly.
I cleared my throat. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Just to the kitchen.” He came off the last step, seeming to give up on questioning. “I’ve been craving French toast.”
I trailed after him. “Want me to help?”
He just shook his head.