Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Alemon-scented candle burned on the mantel above the fireplace. Outside, the wind howled through the jack pines along the bluff, rattling the windows like a monster breathing at our backs.
"Mia!" I said again, louder, as I crossed the room.
My voice shook her out of her stupor. A low cry escaped her lips. She clamped her hands over her mouth, moaning softly. I went to her and embraced her, drawing her close. She circled her arms around my waist and clung to me.
I wanted to tell her it would be okay. But I already knew it wasn't true. I felt frozen in place, stricken. Shocked into stillness.
This couldn't be real. Leah couldn't be gone.
"Mom!" Chloe Westinghouse rose and stumbled across the living room into her mother's arms. Her heart-shaped face was blotchy, her big eyes, the same ice-blue as Rowan's, were glossy with tears.
Petite, slender from years of ballet and dance, she was doll-like, luminously beautiful.
Strands of her wavy honey-blonde hair clung to her wet cheeks.
Chloe burst into fresh sobs. "It's awful, so awful."
"What happened to Leah?" My voice echoed, too loud in the too-big room.
Peyton Alistair sat rigid on the sofa, her athletic swimmer's build hunched inward as if trying to make herself smaller.
Her highlighted blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail.
She clutched her purple Stanley like a lifeline.
Swim meet stickers peeled at the edges. "She… she fell. From the bluff."
"When?" I asked. "How?"
Whitney hovered behind her daughter on the sofa, her hands on Peyton's shoulders as if to hold them both steady. Her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line. "They don't know."
"I'm asking the girls," I said.
"It must have happened after we went to sleep," Peyton said. "We did the photoshoot in our dresses, out on the bluff, but then we all went inside to eat and watch a movie. Then we went to sleep."
It was the week before the Sadie Hawkins dance at Lakeshore Prep, the prestigious private school Mia attended on scholarship, along with the other girls in the neighborhood.
The girls had wanted a glamorous photoshoot in their beautiful gowns before the dance, and Mia had volunteered to be the photographer.
"Leah, ah, must have gotten up again and gone out to the bluff in the night." Peyton twisted and glanced uncertainly at her mother, who nodded in encouragement. "I didn't see anything. Nobody did. We were all in here, sleeping."
Zara Hayward fidgeted next to Peyton. She clutched a throw pillow to her chest. Her breath came too fast, in shallow little gulps, like she was trying to keep from drowning. She was lean and lanky, dressed in running gear—a garishly cheerful yellow hoodie with black leggings and sneakers.
"I can't stop seeing her," she said hoarsely, her expressive dark eyes too big in her face. "Lying there like that. I keep thinking... what if we'd stayed outside a little longer? Or one of us woke up and stopped her, or went with her. I never even heard anything."
"Me, neither," Alexis echoed.
"Me, neither," Peyton said.
Chloe lifted her head, struggling to speak through her hitching sobs. "I didn't… I didn't hear anything, either. I—I must've been sleeping—like everyone else."
She shrank back against her mother and let out a low moan. "I could've stopped her. If I'd known—if I'd just stayed awake…"
Rowan stroked Chloe's hair. "It's okay, honey. It's okay."
"Did you hear anything?" Camille asked Mia.
Everyone looked at Mia. Mia shook her head but said nothing. Her shoulders were tense. Her arms dropped away from me, and she pulled back, curling into herself in the armchair.
A pang shot through me. Mia’s eyes were unfocused, fixed on some distant point. What was going through her mind? Why wouldn't she look at me? She was the only girl who hadn't said a word yet.
"Who found her?" I prayed it hadn't been Mia.
"I did." Zara rubbed her arms hard, like she was trying to scrub the horrible memory away, and pushed her long black braids over her shoulder. "I was up early to go running."
"What time?" Camille asked.
"Um… like 5:35? I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m." Zara swallowed.
"When I went outside, I saw her phone in the grass on the edge of the bluff, so I walked over there and looked down.
She was just... lying there, halfway down, on her side, half covered by the underbrush.
Her body. She looked… she looked so strange.
All broken, with her neck turned a weird way. It was—it was awful."
Beside me, Camille's face tightened. She gazed at her daughter but didn't offer comfort.
"Why was she even out there?" Alexis August asked. "I don't get it. Why would she go back outside?"
Peyton took an unsteady sip from her Stanley, then set it between her knees.
"She left her phone out on the bluff, where we were taking pictures, so she must've woken up and realized she didn't have it.
She probably just went back to get it and got too close to the edge, and she…
she must've slipped and fallen in the dark. "
A heavy silence settled over the room. Chloe let out a sob and covered her mouth with her hands. Zara and Peyton sniffled and wiped at their eyes.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Camille glanced toward the front window overlooking the street. "Before the police get here, we need to make sure everyone is on the same page." Her authoritative tone left no room for argument. "Tell us what happened, so there aren't any discrepancies."
The girls blinked as if waking from a nightmare. Zara glanced at Chloe, then Peyton. Alexis and Chloe exchanged another look. Apprehension flickered in their eyes. Mia stared listlessly at nothing.
These were just girls, kids still. They were scared, confused, and hurting. In shock.
Alexis clenched her jaw. Her hands balled into fists. "The cops? Why?"
"The police investigate anytime someone dies," Camille said briskly. Her sharp eyes narrowed as she gazed at each girl. "Just tell them the truth, and you'll be fine."
Zara's breath hitched. "It was an accident. Right?"
"Of course it was." Rowan's voice was calm, warm, soothing. "It was an accident. Not your fault. A terrible accident."
"No one's in trouble," Whitney said.
"You don't know that." Alexis made a sound in the back of her throat and rose to her feet.
She circled the sofa, retreated to the archway separating the kitchen and living area, and leaned against the wall.
She wore an oversized Nine Inch Nails T-shirt over boxers.
Her dyed, purple-black hair hung loose across her face. "Not for sure."
Brooke moved across the living room toward her daughter, skirting the sofas and coffee table. "Oh, honey, you must be devastated. I’m so sorry."
Alexis waved her mother away, her mouth set in a scowl. She'd always been the tough one among the girls. Her gaze locked on Camille. "What if she did it on purpose?"
Everyone stared at her in shock. Brooke's arm dropped limply to her side. She looked at her daughter, aghast. "How can you say that?"
Alexis swiped fiercely at her face with the back of her arm, as if embarrassed to cry in front of her friends, though Chloe, Peyton, and Zara were teary-eyed. Only Mia's eyes were dry. "She'd been acting weird lately, like depressed or something. Maybe she did something to herself…"
A fresh wave of shock washed over me. Not Leah. Not Mia's best friend. Though she had seemed more withdrawn lately when she'd visited my house, so had Mia.
They were eighth-grade girls. Moodiness was par for the course.
Mia had been fine. Leah had been fine. Hadn't she?
Rowan clapped her hands. "Let's not talk like that. This is sad enough. We'll wait for the police. There's no blame on any of you."
The sirens grew louder. A terrible nervous energy rippled through the room.
Peyton pulled her knees up and curled her bare feet beneath her. Her toenails were painted lavender. "What if the police think it's our fault?"
Whitney said, "Just tell the police what you told us. Everything will be fine."
I wished I shared her certainty. I glanced at Mia again. She was so still, so distant. She was in shock.
A chill ran down my spine. A thousand questions swirled in my mind. How could this have happened? Poor Leah. Poor Vivienne. My poor daughter.
The sirens closed in. Several police cars and an ambulance pulled into the driveway. Through the front bay windows, the flashing lights of the police cars bathed the street in stark red and blue.
Neighbors clustered on the sidewalk and across the street. So much for Rowan not wanting to wake them. They pointed at Rowan's house, covering their mouths in shock, dismay, and morbid curiosity.
Several officers strode up the sidewalk. A moment later, the doorbell rang.
Rowan disentangled herself from Chloe, glided to the foyer, and opened the front door. Three uniformed police officers entered, followed by a man and a woman in plainclothes. They spoke with Rowan at the door in hushed tones, then entered the living room.
"I'm Detective Judah King," the man said. "And this is my partner, Detective Sarah Callahan."
In his forties, Detective King was a mountain of a man. Dressed in a camel-colored overcoat, his broad shoulders filled the entryway, and his grizzled black beard and dark eyes carried an air of quiet authority.
The female detective was also in her forties, with her red hair cut short in a pixie style, a spray of freckles across her nose. There was a sharpness about her face, a canniness, like a fox.
Detective King spoke first. "We're so incredibly sorry for your loss. We're here to talk to you about your friend Leah and how she died, okay?"
Peyton and Zara seemed to shrink further into the sofa. Against the wall, Alexis stiffened. Chloe's eyes widened in trepidation. Whitney squeezed Peyton's shoulders. Mia didn’t move, her gaze on the detectives.
To my right, movement caught my eye. I glanced across the living room, through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Michigan, to where a half-dozen police officers and a few EMTs milled in the backyard.
Some officers wore PPE gear, including disposable suits with gloves and booties.
One carried a medical bag with him. The medical examiner.
Several officers descended the bluff. Two of them carried a stretcher between them with a body bag on top of it.
My stomach lurched. Leah was still out there. On the bluff.
No, not Leah anymore, but a body.
Detective King turned toward the girls. His baritone voice was steady, measured. "About what happened last night—"
"We were all sleeping!" Peyton burst out. "We don't know what happened. She was in her sleeping bag when we went to bed, and then when we woke up, she wasn't. That's all we know."
"She must've slipped and fallen," Chloe said through her tears. "She fell, and none of us saw it."
Callahan turned to Rowan. "May we look at the basement where the girls were sleeping? It's standard procedure."
Rowan nodded numbly. "Of course, officer. Anything we can do to help. Please go ahead."
Camille's head snapped up. She'd been staring at her daughter, Zara, with a distant, dazed look on her face. "You don't have to let them look, Rowan. In fact—"
"It would just be a quick walk-through," Callahan said, "to gather Leah's things and see where she spent her time last night."
Camille opened her mouth to protest again, but Rowan waved a hand. "This was a horrible accident, nothing more. Vivienne and Daniel are our dear friends. Of course, we want to aid the police however we can. The stairs to the basement are down the hall to the left, off the living room."
Callahan and a male officer made their way to the hall and disappeared. King turned to the girls again.
Before he could ask another question, Rowan's front door burst open. A woman rushed inside, dressed in a long-sleeved nightgown with lacy frills at her wrists and collar. Her bare feet tracked grass and dirt inside Rowan's pristine foyer.
Vivienne Cho's whole body convulsed. Her jet-black hair, normally styled in a sleek bob to her chin, was in disarray around her head like a dark corona, her pupils blown with fear and panic.
Her frantic gaze swept the room, searching, desperate. "Where's Leah?" she cried. "Where's my baby?"