Chapter 20 #2
Around me, umbrellas bloom like flowers, and the course dissolves into chaos.
“The Tartan Lounge!” someone bellows through the crowd. “Our awards ceremony will take place in the club lounge.”
A wild-eyed Carol starts squawking orders at caddies, telling them to grab the awards and trophies as the rest of us chart a fast-walking, hands-over-blowouts course until we’re pushing through the lounge doors, AC blasting us head-on.
Nora exhales, brushing the raindrops off her white ensemble. “Wait. Where’s Beau?”
I look around.
“How are they going to fit everyone into the Tartan Lounge?” Polly asks, swinging the mini-backpack she’s got on to one side and pulling out a Lip Smacker lip gloss.
“Bleck. That stuff smells like a strawberry farted. Here.” I offer her the Chanel lip stain in my belt bag.
“Looks like Carol’s already on it.” Nora smirks. “You’d better go make yourself useful.”
Carol’s by the door, unloading a box full of trophies from the back of a golf cart as rain splashes off the cart’s roof. A patient-looking caddy in a baseball hat sits in the driver’s seat. She jostles the box free of the back seat and starts toward the front of the lounge.
“You’re the worst,” I mutter to Nora as I spring into action. “Looks like you could use some assistance?” I smile with forced cheer, offering to take the box for Carol.
Maybe killing her with kindness is the play.
A little platform is already waiting near the bar, and I don’t ask who dragged it in or when. Instead, I get to work arranging the trophies on the bar top as Carol taps the mic, gathering the room’s attention.
She nods toward Darl, behind the bar, and he mutes the TV while a text bar appears as the closed captions turn on. Something Carol has coached him on, no doubt.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says with a synthetic brightness, “thank you for coming out today to support our charity tournament. I’d like to invite Este Walker to do the honor of awarding the trophies.
While I have the privilege of sharing that this year’s tournament raised seventeen thousand dollars for Give Kids the World Village. ”
Eyes turn to me, and I see Beau in the crowd. He’s surprised at first, but his expression softens to a smile, however faint. It lands like a salve.
Carol hands me a note card with a dollar number scrolled across it, but then Kristy Clark appears on TV screens behind the bar with a grave expression.
The closed caption reads, Coming up at five, new evidence in the Gemma Klein murder case.
We’ve exclusively obtained surveillance footage from the alleyway where—a clip plays onscreen.
The camera is off the brightly lit news desk in an instant as security video of Gemma and Beau standing near a utility door together flashes on the flat screen.
Everything in my peripheral vision goes black for a moment.
Oh. My. Fuck.
It’s less than ten seconds, but she’s waving her hands, clearly angry. Beau’s animated, too, but he looks a little unsteady on his feet. Drunk and still holding a tumbler I can only assume is half-full of bourbon. The room around me fills with a low chatter that I am working hard to tune out.
This is hell. I am in hell.
I catch Ardell’s steely gaze and clear my throat and try to read the cards, hoping to draw attention away from the screens. But people are already looking back and forth between me and the screen, whispering to each other.
I try to find Beau again, but he’s already slipping through the exit, his head tipped low.
“Um,” I say in a shaky voice.
Judging by the rising whispers, though, the damage is already done.
I’m not supposed to be here. Gemma’s not supposed to be dead.
I have a little screen in my bathroom mirror so I can watch Below Deck reruns from my freestanding stone tub. That was the dream.
And now absolutely everyone in Central Florida has seen video evidence of Beau and Gemma together. Fighting.
Glee sparks in the eyes of the crowd swarming the Tartan Lounge—quiet but unmistakable. I am a spectacle, and every person in this room will get to say they saw the look on my face when the surveillance footage rolled.
They live for this shit.
By being here when the news breaks, I’ve handed them a fresh story to perpetuate the rumors about Gemma and Beau. I can already hear the whispers at tomorrow morning’s tennis lessons. “Did you see her face?” “Do you think she’s in on it?”
Beau and I are as good as cannon fodder.
The TV flips to SportsCenter. I blink and look around, hoping I’ve only hallucinated what I just saw. Darl is in the corner of the bar holding the remote. The room falls silent, and there’s a pregnant pause, as if everyone is waiting for me to do something.
What? Run off the stage screaming?
Chills run down my spine as my cheeks heat. Everyone in the room is looking at me. Everyone except Nora, who’s already moving toward the stage. The concern on her face is clear.
From somewhere in the front, I hear Carol clear her throat, trying to get my attention to move things along. “The trophy,” she mouths.
Like that will save this.
Carol tries to salvage the ceremony by handing a trophy to me, but I put it on the bar like I’m placing a live grenade.
Before anyone can speak, Nora appears and slips her arm into mine, ushering me along.
“What the fuck just happened?” Polly catches up to us outside. “Why was Beau on the news with Gemma?”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to say ‘fuck,’ ” I admonish, but the words lack authority. I’m dazed, replaying the footage of Beau in my head.
Polly protests. “That’s not fair. You say it.”
“I’m allowed. I have a mortgage and an aesthetician and a husband who’s in deep shit.”
“Let’s go,” Nora says, not breaking stride. “Give them a minute to cycle through the gossip. This will blow over.”
It’s a nice idea. But as we push through the front door of the club, the air scrapes down my throat in jagged breaths, and I realize I’m panicking.
“I could go back and pull the fire alarm,” Polly offers. “That would change the subject.”
“We commit one crime together, and now, you’re a delinquent? Sorry, Polly. Not today,” I say. “Today we go home.”
“What about tomorrow?” she jokes.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
The air outside is thick from the rain, and the sharp mineral smell turns my stomach.
As Beau’s brake lights disappear down the club’s drive, my phone vibrates with a text.
I check the screen, hoping for a message from Beau.
But that’s not what I get. The 310 number is back.
5:37 P.M.
Looks like Beau made the evening news. Let’s talk in person.
I stop cold. Nora and Polly are a few steps ahead of me, but when they realize I’m no longer beside them, they turn.
The news package that aired to half of Winter Park a few minutes ago is a local broadcast. As in, not available in California. My past has made it all the way to Winter Park.
Talking is one thing. But I’m not meeting in person.
I can’t. From Boston to New Orleans, New Orleans to California, I’ve treated every relocation like a reinvention.
And every reboot comes with the same rule: Don’t pick at old wounds.
The past only has power when you open the door and invite it back in.
Rain comes down in sheets around us, soaking my clothes until my socks are clinging to my feet. The sound of the raindrops ricocheting off asphalt and car hoods is all I can hear for a second.
The night Gemma died? Outside of Lemon & Fig? Was he there then, too?
“Este, are you okay?” Polly asks. Her voice is tentative, but she has to shout over the splashes of the storm.
I paste on a brittle smile. “Yeah. Fine. Sorry.”
“Listen,” Nora cuts in, pulling at the fabric clinging to her skin. “I’m wearing all white in the rain. Can we talk about this somewhere else—”
“Yes,” I say. “Sorry. I’ll drive you home.”
But as I walk toward my car, my body feels heavy.
My phone dangles in my hand like deadweight.
Somewhere between the news clip and the text and that stupid pocket square I’m still carrying around, my life has twisted into something unrecognizable.
But one truth hums loud and clear beneath the chaos.
The noose around my new life is tightening, and my old life knows something about it.