Chapter Fourteen
At noon, I stepped into Brooke's sleek, modern black farmhouse. The door had been left open. Brooke had texted me an hour earlier: Just come on in. No response to my text regarding the spare key, though.
The entryway was decorated in neutral shades of charcoal and cream. Black-framed windows lined the far wall, facing several acres of woods where the HOA had constructed walking paths for the community's enjoyment.
The house was huge, ten thousand square feet at least. Twice the size of Rowan's and somehow half as impressive, though it made my tiny cottage look like a dilapidated shed in comparison.
Brooke had money. Everyone knew that. Her husband Jason managed hedge funds and made upwards of seven figures a year, Whitney had informed me once. But they'd bought late, after all the lakefront lots were gone. Whitney had said it like an insult.
"Dahlia!" Rowan's voice carried from deeper inside. "We're in the great room."
Everyone had arrived ahead of me, like I'd been added as an afterthought. Again.
I checked my phone one last time. No response from Vivienne yet about the diary location. A frisson of concern passed through me. I would check on her after this meeting.
I followed the sound of voices through a hallway lined with family portraits: professional, posed, everyone's perfect teeth showing. Except for Falcon, who was nine or ten. He wasn't smiling in any of the family photos. He looked blankly off camera, if he showed up in the photos at all.
In one spot, a pale rectangle marked the wall, edges faint but sharper than the rest, as if a larger frame had recently been removed. A large portrait of Brooke and Jason at their wedding in the Maldives used to hang here. It wasn't there anymore.
The state of Brooke's marriage was none of my business.
I hurried down the hall and entered the great room, a huge open-concept space that was all sharp angles.
White marble countertops. Matte black fixtures.
An expensive chandelier made of geometric brushed brass shapes. It felt modern and expensive.
Brooke stood near the kitchen island, holding a wine glass half-full of dark liquid.
Rowan sat on the corner of the linen sectional, the seat with the best view of the room. She patted the cushion beside her. "Dahlia, sit. We were just getting started."
Whitney perched on the other end of the sectional, her back straight, ankles crossed. Her white Stanley stood on a marble coaster. Her right foot tapped the white oak hardwood flooring.
Camille stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows in a bold African-print blazer over a sapphire-toned blouse. Her gold chandelier earrings caught the light as she turned from the window, her arms folded and her lips pursed as if she'd rather be anywhere else.
She gave me a grim nod. "I'm just here on my lunch break. I've got court at 2 p.m."
I sat between Rowan and Whitney. "Thanks for having us," I told Brooke.
She waved it off, almost sloshing her drink. "Of course." The words blurred at the edges. "How are you doing, Dahlia?"
"One day at a time," I said.
"I was just saying how Chloe keeps having nightmares," Rowan said. "She won't talk about them, but I hear her crying through the walls at two, three in the morning. It's like she's afraid to go to sleep."
Brooke took a long drink. "Alexis wakes up screaming. Which wakes Falcon up, and then he's impossible to get down again. His schedule is absolutely ruined." She pressed her fingers to her temple, as if the thought physically hurt. "He doesn't do well without a rigid schedule. It's been hell."
Camille stared out the window at a cardinal pecking at the birdfeeder in Brooke's backyard. "Zara wants to move away. She says she can't stand the sight of the bluff anymore. She won't go down to the beach, either."
Whitney sighed. "Peyton's been going to school, but as soon as she gets home, she disappears.
Three days now. I checked the nanny cam yesterday—" She caught herself, glanced at me, then kept going.
"She was in the same spot on her bed for four hours.
Just staring at the TV. That's not like my Peyton.
She's always doing something, either homework, practicing the piano, exercising or training. She's usually so driven."
"You have a nanny cam?" I asked.
"Doesn't everyone?" Whitney looked genuinely surprised. "How else do you know what your kids are really doing?"
I thought of Mia's closed door. Her furtiveness with her phone. The way she flinched when I walked into a room.
I didn't need a camera to see she was in pain. It was the only thing I saw.
"The point is," Rowan said, "they're all traumatized. Which is why we need to help them through this. Get them back to normal."
"Normal," Brooke repeated. She let out a bitter laugh. "What's normal now?"
"Structure," Whitney said immediately. "Routine. Peyton has state championships in two weeks. I told her that's her focus. College scouts will be there. This isn't the time to fall apart."
I stared at her. "A girl died."
Whitney's voice sharpened. "I know that. But Peyton's future is on the line. Scholarships. Recruitment. You can't just decide to go to Stanford on a sports scholarship in senior year. You start now. She can't let this derail her."
"Derail her?" I echoed. “She’s in eighth grade.”
Whitney smoothed her plum-colored leggings with the palm of her hand and sighed. "You know what I mean."
I didn't, but I didn't argue with her. With Whitney, it was better to choose your battles.
Brooke reached for the half-empty bottle tucked behind the stand mixer. It was a Caymus Special Selection, the label still visible. She refilled her glass. "The worst part is not knowing who did it. If they're still out there."
"They're not," Rowan said. "Security's been tripled. There are cameras everywhere, and police crawling all over the place. Whoever it was, they're long gone."
"What if it wasn't an outsider?" I asked.
Silence dropped over the room. Camille turned away from the window and shot me a warning look. Whitney's smile held, but something in her eyes went flat. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anything." My voice sounded thin to my own ears. I swallowed and tried again. "I'm just saying, the police are focused on the girls who were there. Not gardeners. Not contractors."
Brooke grimaced. "You really think one of our daughters did something this terrible?"
"I think the police do." I rubbed my damp palms against my jeans. The room felt stifling.
Whitney's foot tapped faster against the floor. "The police are wrong. They're grasping at straws. Looking for someone to blame because they can't find who really did this."
"Who do you think did it?" I asked.
"A stranger," Brooke said immediately. "Someone who doesn't belong here."
"Like who?" Camille asked.
"The construction workers," Brooke offered. "There's that crew redoing the Martin's new infinity pool, only two houses down from Rowan’s. They're here every day. You don't think they're watching our beautiful daughters? Walking around in their crop tops and shorts?"
"They have background checks," Camille interrupted. "The HOA requires it."
"Maybe one of them lied," Whitney said. "Maybe someone slipped through."
"It's April, no one's in crop tops," I said, but no one heard me. Or they chose not to. I hated the way they were looking at me with consternation, like I was the problem, the outlier. Something they didn't understand and weren't sure they wanted to.
I listened to them circle the same theories—the construction workers, the lawn service, someone's socially awkward nanny. Some faceless intruder who'd managed to sneak in from the public beach access. Anything to avoid looking at what was right in front of us.
My gaze drifted across the great room to the opposite window where Camille stood tense, typing something on her phone.
A ring light stood on a collapsible tripod, its circular LED face tilted toward a white oak side table.
A camera and a lapel mic lay coiled next to a pop filter, and behind it, a carefully arranged vignette: a lavender candle, a stack of design books with the spines facing out, a small potted succulent.
It looked like Brooke had been filming just before we arrived. Her "authentic life" content was shot, lit, and staged with precision.
I glanced at Brooke, at her anxious darting eyes, the tremor in her hands, the single droplet of wine that stained her ivory turtleneck. She was still clinging to false perfection while everything was falling apart around us.
"The detectives will figure it out," Rowan said, bringing me back to the conversation.
"Once the forensics come back. Once the autopsy is finished.
It takes time. And speaking of time, the memorial is in four days.
We need to talk about photos for the slideshow.
Dahlia, do you have anything from that night?
The girls were dressed up so beautifully.
Leah was practically luminescent. I'm sure Mia took some lovely photographs. "
My throat closed. I forced myself to meet her eyes. "We still haven't found it."
Brooke's brows rose in surprise. She and Whitney exchanged a weighted glance. "Really?"
"It's still missing?" Whitney asked. "The police didn't find it?"
"Someone definitely stole it that night." I didn't say it must be one of their daughters. But I watched them closely.
"Someone must have misplaced it accidentally," Whitney said airily. "Or maybe Mia forgot what she did with it. I asked Peyton, but she has no idea."
"Alexis hasn't seen it, either," Brooke said.
Camille frowned down at her phone.
No one said anything. I felt their attention on me like heat. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck.
"I'm sure it'll turn up," Whitney said.
"I'm sure," I echoed faintly. I didn't share their optimism.
"What is it, Dahlia?" Rowan prodded. "There's something else bothering you. I can see it."