Epilogue
Miami Beach, Florida
I’m late.
I check my phone and know I’m going to hear an earful when I show up. But I have a stop to make first. I press the button on the gate phone I’m parked next to, and when the giant black iron gates swing open, I drive through.
Marshall Sanders’s palatial home sits on five acres of Star Island. A pond with a bronze statue of a dolphin greets me as I approach the sprawling home.
Marshall and Jasmine are waiting for me by the front entrance.
I kill the engine to my rental in the circular driveway, check the time again, and hop out. I haven’t seen them in three months, since we were all in a police station together, giving statements.
Jasmine runs to me, Heather’s gold locket still around her neck. “Hi.”
I bend down to her. “Hi.” She wraps her thin arms around me, and I return the hug. “Brought you something,” I say, pulling a small wrapped box from my tote.
“What is it?” she says.
“You have to open it.”
She rips into the wrapping paper as she follows me around the car to the front of the house.
“How are you surviving?” Marshall says.
“I like that question,” I say.
“High praise coming from the queen of questions.”
“I’ve got a long way to go,” I say. I don’t elaborate any more than that. I don’t say it’s a miracle no one died in that basement given the amount of blood shed there. Young ears are listening.
Jasmine squeals and holds the box up to her father. “My own pair,” she says, pointing to the small gold earrings I brought for her. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I hate you had to come all this way just to give her those,” Marshall says.
“I was in the neighborhood,” I say.
“Duty calls?” he asks.
“Something like that. I also wanted to give them in person so I could thank you both.”
His brow furrows. “For what?”
“For trusting me that day in Natchitoches.”
He nods. “I’m so sorry for what happened. It’s—”
I hold up my hand and point down to Jasmine, who is fumbling to get the earrings in.
He pulls me aside. “I saw Eleanor Chamberlain is being held without bail.”
I nod.
I’ve lain awake at night thinking of Eleanor and Summer and Crowley and how completely horrific it all is.
Eleanor was the one to push for the school to close shortly after Heather had run off.
She was also the one fighting to have it torn down to make way for an eco-lodge that would ensure he was buried forever.
“Look,” Jasmine says, running over to us and showing us her ears.
“Beautiful,” Marshall says.
“I have one more gift for you,” I say to Jasmine. “But this one’s not wrapped.”
She looks up at me. I reach in my tote and pull out a children’s book, No Matter What. I bought a copy for myself as well. I have to start somewhere. “This was recommended to me by a friend.”
She takes the book and looks it over. “Thanks.”
It doesn’t elicit quite the same reaction as the earrings, but it will come in much handier down the road.
“Gotta go,” I say to her. “But let’s plan a time when we can see each other again soon.”
She hugs me again, and I climb back in my car, watching her run to her father’s side.
Marshall wasn’t the only one who trusted me.
Summer trusted me also, offering me an interview.
Her only public statement. It’s airing tonight, but there’s no fancy party or celebrating.
I’m not even in Dallas with the crew who produced it.
No need to relive it again. Hearing what Summer had to say in person was enough.
How Summer bragged about the money hidden in Johnny’s cottage.
The money Crowley stole for her. Heather planned to steal it that night, but Heather didn’t know Summer, afraid and realizing she was in over her head, had reached out to her mother to come get her the same night Crowley showed up.
A perfect storm of emotions, panic and rage.
Heather succeeding in grabbing not only the bag of money but also a fistful of Eleanor’s hair before running.
But that’s not all Summer told me. The scariest statement she made was off the record.
My phone dings.
Hustle or you’re going to miss it.
I park in the sandy lot by the beach closest to South Pointe Pier. Waves roll into the sand. It’s not Hobie Beach where Laura Sanders’s body was found, but my body is reacting as if it is. I can do this.
I open the door and clip across the concrete in my heels.
I roll my neck. I shut my eyes a minute and inhale the salty air.
Inhale, exhale. My father recovered fully.
He’s stronger than even I knew. Thankfully, Rosalie is recovering as well.
I reached out to her once she was back home, but she and Johnny both asked for privacy. And I gave it to them.
A warm breeze kicks up off the ocean.
I think of Marshall, of little Jasmine. Of the fact her mother’s body is being exhumed to look for signs of insulin poisoning since Mulholland discovered a chartered plane registered to Eleanor Chamberlain landed in Miami on the day Laura Sanders went missing.
Eleanor is still claiming she’s innocent of that death even though she is behind bars for Crowley’s.
The DNA on the hair recovered from the coat combined with Summer’s account of what happened in that cottage resulted in Eleanor’s arrest. Proving Crowley was wrong.
There is one thing more diabolical than a teenage girl—her mother.
Eleanor, Johnny and Rosalie, my father and me. All of us trying to protect someone we love, no matter the cost.
I walk to the edge of the lot and remove my heels, carrying them in my hand as I step onto the warm sand.
Martha Lee had just enough pieces of the puzzle to know money was involved.
Money and power. Enough to keep Martha looking over her shoulder.
She agreed to speak with Erin after everything and said she gave me Rosalie’s number because she thought Rosalie was involved.
She claimed she’d heard rumors of Crowley hiding the money he stole at the school, and she believed Johnny and Rosalie knew where.
Another false rumor, snaking its way through the halls of that school.
Gulls dive in the blue-green water in front of me. I inhale a deep, salty breath to keep my heart rate from expecting danger. I’m safe, I tell myself, even though I’m still waking up every morning in fight or flight.
So far it looks like Summer was Crowley’s only victim.
There are whispers about Lisbeth and if she flung herself from the top of a tree because of him.
But no concrete evidence. And even though Summer and Crowley’s affair was public knowledge now, the result of it will stay a secret.
She insisted on keeping that information off record to protect her daughter.
Summer had been hidden away in a home for unwed mothers in Texas where she gave birth to a baby girl who was adopted in a closed, private adoption.
Summer said she never even got to hold her.
Then she told me something I hope she never acts on.
She said she needed something good in her life after all that happened.
That, when her daughter is an adult, Summer will find her and the girl will love her just as Summer still loves her.
I warned her to be careful but who knows if she listened. Time will tell.
I put one foot in front of the other and walk to the scene I’m here to see.
I feel no remorse over Crowley’s death. And in a wildly inappropriate way, I wish he were still in that wall. Hidden forever. But my father has helped me understand justice for his murder is justified even if his actions were not.
Waves crash on the sand in front of two beach chairs, and a woman I’ve come to call my best friend leans out from under the umbrella.
“I texted you. You almost missed the sunset,” Dr. Willa Watters says.
I fall into the chair next to her. “Almost.”
She looks at my shoes in my hand. “Did you wear heels to the beach?”
“You’re the one who said only change one variable at a time. I quit my job. I’m not giving up the heels just yet.”
“Here,” she says, handing me a large pina colada. “Don’t get excited. It’s virgin.”
“I really don’t like traveling with a friend who is a therapist,” I say.
She smiles.
I smile back and take the drink. “Empty calories.”
“We are going to work on that too,” she says, looking forward.
“Oh joy.”
“Did you start your journal?” she says.
“Yes.”
“How does it feel?”
“Weird.”
“Good. That means you’re doing it right.”
I laugh.
“Want to read any to me?” she says.
“I thought diaries were supposed to be private.”
“Up to you.”
I pull it out of my bag. “I’ve only made one entry. About the day in the basement.” I open the journal, my hands not shaking for once. “Dear Diary.”
“Nice touch.”
“Thanks.” I start over. “Dear Diary. It was the blood I remember the most. The smell of it. The feel of it on my fingers. The way it ran down the drain in the shower. So much blood.” I put it down and look up.
“Well, it’s a start,” Willa says.
“What do you think my diagnosis was at that school?” I say.
“Rita, let that go.” She sips her drink.
Let go. They are the words that ring in my ears at night.
My cell rings, and Willa looks over her sunglasses at me. “Grant?”
I glance at the screen. “My dad.” I swipe it open. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, kid. How are you?”
“Well, Dad,” I say. “I’m not fine.” He laughs. “But I am on a beach with Willa,” I say. She waves. “She says hi.”
“Bring her here so I can meet her,” he says.
“I will.”
“All right, I just wanted to check in,” my dad says.
“I’m safe,” I say.
“I am too,” he says.
“Love you,” I say.
“Love you, too, kid,” he says, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Okay, gotta go,” I say before he can say anything else. The last few months I’ve cried more than I have in the last few years. Now it seems those tears are poised and ready at any given moment.
“You okay?” Willa says, glancing at me.
“I’m good.”
“So tell me about the Golden Retriever,” she says.
“Nope. That’s going to take a real pina colada.”
Grant and I have talked some and texted. We are trying to figure out what it is we are, and unlike the way we started, we are taking it slow.
“You know,” Willa says, looking at me. “You and I could make a good team on my new podcast. You could start helping the living.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Maybe’s better than no.”
She looks out at the ocean, and I follow her gaze. The sun is sinking fast. I want to tell her yes, I’ll do it. I’ll work with her, but death has been a part of my life for so long, I’m not sure how to live without it.
“So now what?” Willa says. “I got you on vacation, but what are you going back to?”
“I’m not sure.”
Like a good friend, she doesn’t push or grill me about my answer. She just lets me sip my shitty alcohol-free drink and watch the sun sink into the ocean.
“How was your last interview with Summer?” she says, her eyes forward.
“Bittersweet.”
“You’re going to miss that, aren’t you?”
I nod. I will miss reporting, but I’ve missed things because of it too.
When I go back home, I want to have time with my father.
I want to sit and have a meal with him, talk to him.
I don’t want to feel the urge to grab my phone and check it for a tip or a call from my boss.
My feeling that I’m missing out has shifted from the stories I could report on to the moments I have with my only family.
I’m starting to understand that hours, days, months of my life are gone to a job that kept me running for those stories.
It’s time to slow down and work on my own story.
And even though the thought of that terrifies me, another part of the story of Pandora’s box comes to mind.
The sun slowly dips below the horizon in an orange-and-pink fury, and the beachgoers around us clap. Without a second thought, I clap along with them.
There was one thing left in that box after Pandora opened it. That’s the thing I’m going to focus on.
Hope.