Chapter Eighteen
I sat at my desk after dinner, the house finally quiet. Mia was upstairs, supposedly doing homework with her door cracked, the newest Sabrina Carpenter song playing on her iPad.
Apollo snored pleasantly on the rug beside my chair, legs twitching as if he were chasing something that only he could see. I envied him.
My browser was open to Instagram. Mia's phone lay in front of me, screen dark, face down. I flipped it over, unlocked it with the code I'd watched her use a hundred times, and opened the app.
I started where I'd left off, with LakeshoreTea.
I went to Mia's DMs. Most of her messages were what I'd expect from a teenage girl.
Homework questions. Funny, mildly inappropriate memes.
Comments about the hottest guys at Lakeshore Prep.
Snaps of outfits posted on her own Instagram account.
A long-running group chat with some classmates full of slang and inside jokes that felt like eavesdropping on another language.
I navigated to the "Recently Deleted" folder, expecting to find the usual—bad selfies, failed attempts at aesthetic posts. Instead, I saw a thread of gray boxes where messages should have been, each marked "Message unsent."
All from the same username: @alexis.august.
I exhaled slowly and clicked.
Most of the messages were gone. The visible fragments were one-sided—Mia's responses, still present, hanging in the air with no corresponding texts. The conversation looked like a phone call recorded with only one person's voice.
i didnt say anything i swear
alexis pls
pls i promise
i literally cant do this rn
alexis pls just stop
One message remained, dated the morning after Leah died, unsent but partially cached by a glitch or a lag in the system. A digital ghost.
I leaned in closer.
From: @alexis.august: if u snitch ur literally dead idc
A threat. Against my daughter.
My stomach churned. With anger, with horror, with sympathy for Mia.
I sat back, heartbeat loud in my ears. Alexis August. Once Brooke's highly curated golden child, who now defiantly wore Doc Martins and black hoodies, scarlet lipstick, and charcoal cat-eye eyeliner, with a perpetual scowl on her face.
I recalled how she'd stood next to our mailbox on Tuesday morning, watching us as she held up her phone. That mocking wave as her sweatshirt sleeve slid down her wrist to reveal the mottled bruising.
Bruises like fingerprints. A hand encircling her wrist. As if someone had seized her arm to keep from falling.
Alexis had a capacity for violence. Leah's diary had described the bathroom incident in humiliating detail. Alexis with scissors in her hand, advancing on a cowering Leah. Hair falling to the tile in clumps. Leah trapped against a tiled wall, sobbing and helpless.
Mia had claimed Alexis wasn't in her sleeping bag that night. Then where was she? Outside on the bluff, pushing Leah over the edge?
I checked the time. Past 8 p.m. The kind of hour when respectable mothers were settling into their wine and Netflix, not expecting unannounced visitors.
I didn't care.
If Alexis was threatening my daughter, I wanted to see her face. I wanted to watch her reaction when I asked her where she'd been when Leah died. I wanted to press until something cracked.
But I needed a reason to show up. An errand, a prop.
Brooke no longer had my key, or so she claimed. I made a mental note to get my house key from Whitney as soon as possible. Tomorrow, in fact.
I needed something else. I recalled Brooke at the Easter party a few weeks ago, wearing a mint-green dress sprinkled with white polka dots, her perfect teeth bared in a laugh as she handed me leftover lemon cream pie in a cake stand with a cut-crystal dome.
"Just drop it by whenever," she'd said. "I can't keep dessert in the house, or Alexis will stuff it in her face all in one night."
That would work.
I shut down the app, powered off Mia's phone, and slid it into my pocket. Apollo lifted his head as I pushed back from the desk.
"Want to go for a walk?" I asked him.
His ears perked. He scrambled to his paws and nosed at my thigh impatiently.
"That's what I thought."
I slipped into my jean jacket, then grabbed the cake stand from the pantry where I'd shoved it two weeks ago, wrapped a dishtowel around it to protect the crystal, and tucked it into a reusable grocery bag from Meijer.
Upstairs, the light under Mia's door still burned bright.
"I'm taking Apollo out," I called up.
"Okay." Her voice was flat, cautious. We were both nursing bruises from our conversation on the beach earlier.
I should go up to her. Sit on the edge of her bed. Ask again, quietly, if there was anything she hadn't told me. Hug her and tell her I loved her, the way Marcus would have.
And I would, as soon as I returned.
"Come on, boy." Apollo and I stepped out into the night.
I adjusted the bag with the cake stand as I walked, heading east on Driftwood Terrace. Apollo trotted ahead, sniffing everything. The cool night air carried the distant crash of waves against the bluffs. Porch lights glimmered up and down the street, like little amber islands in the dark.
We passed Vivienne's craftsman home. The curtains were drawn, their porch light dark. No lights in the windows except a glow from a single second-story window. A few minutes later, Brooke's house came into view.
Noise drifted. Muffled voices, punctuated by something sharp. The sounds were coming from Brooke's black farmhouse.
I slowed.
One of the HOA walking paths through the wooded acreage behind the community's property lines was located next to Brooke's house, separated by a line of tall arborvitae trees.
From the gravel walking path, the back patio was partially visible. Brooke had complained often about the lack of privacy.
Before I could think better of it, I swiftly moved off the sidewalk onto the pathway, heading as near to the backyard as I could without drawing attention to myself. Apollo followed close behind me.
Angling myself behind the prickly branches, I cautiously peeked between the trees. Fifty feet away, Brooke and Alexis were standing outside on their 2000-square-foot bluestone patio. Light cast a halo through the sliding glass doors.
Brooke stood a foot from Alexis, angrily shaking her finger in her daughter’s face. Alexis was barefoot, in ripped jeans and a cropped Nirvana T-shirt, her hair a wild purple-black mess. Even at this distance, the tension was visible in her shoulders, her chin down, eyes averted defensively.
Brooke's voice rose, slurred and vicious. "You think I don't know what you've been doing? Sneaking around. Taking things that don't belong to you."
I went still, though I was hidden behind the screen of tall arborvitae trees. I should move on, leave them to their privacy. But the acid in Brooke's tone pinned me in place.
Alexis's voice came out thin, pleading. "Mom, I didn't do anything."
"Don't lie to me." Brooke's hand shot out, gripping Alexis's wrist. The girl flinched. "My pills, Alexis. You think I wouldn't notice? You think I'm too drunk to count?"
"I didn't take your stupid pills!"
"Liar." The word came out wet, the consonants blurred. "You steal from me. You embarrass me. You ruin everything you touch."
I pressed against the needle-like foliage, the woody conifer scent strong in my nostrils, heart hammering. Pills. What pills? Brooke was clearly drinking heavily, but pills, too? Or was she accusing Alexis of something else entirely?
Guilt pricked at me. I shouldn't be hearing this. But I couldn't unhear it now. Apollo sniffed around the base of the nearest arborvitae. I pulled the leash, keeping him close to me, praying he wouldn't choose this moment to bark at a squirrel or a falling leaf.
"Let me go!" Alexis tried to pull away. Brooke yanked her back. Alexis inhaled sharply. "Mom, please. Stop it! You're hurting me." Alexis's voice cracked, stripped of its usual bravado. She sounded so young, so scared.
Brooke's hand flashed up, not quite a strike, but close. A practiced threat, as if she'd done it before. Alexis recoiled like she'd been hit.
Brooke swayed on her feet. "You think I'm stupid? We're in this mess because of you. You steal, you lie, you embarrass this family. If this gets out, what do you think will happen?"
"Mom," Alexis pleaded.
"I need you to tell me you understand, Alexis, or I swear, I'll ground you until you're 25, and worse. You think I'm a terrible mother now? Just you wait."
"Fine! Okay, okay!"
From inside the house, a young male voice yelled something. Brooke and Alexis stiffened.
"Now look what you did." Brooke swore under her breath as she shoved Alexis toward the door, then herded her daughter inside with a hand between her shoulder blades. The gesture looked affectionate from a distance.
Now I knew better.
I swallowed, my mouth dry, and backed away cautiously. Brooke had a drinking problem. We all knew that, though she was a master at hiding it from the rest of the world, especially her rabid Instagram followers.
This was far worse than I had imagined. Behind Brooke's carefully curated Instagram persona, the perfect house, the perfect family, and the perfect life, something much darker was lurking.
Apollo whined.
"Yeah," I said under my breath. "I know, buddy."
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw a text from Rowan: Thinking of you. Don't believe what you read. We know who Mia really is.
There were now so many posts and articles. The comments calling Mia a monster, threads dissecting her Instagram photos, think pieces analyzing her "dead eyes" in the school yearbook. I couldn't keep track anymore.
I sent a quick text thanking Rowan and pocketed the phone, my mind churning. I had painted Alexis as a violent bully in my mind, but here she was, a frightened, hurting kid, harmed by her own mother.
What didn't Brooke want Alexis to talk about? The abuse itself? The pills? What accident was she talking about?
Hurt people hurt people.
Was this the terrible secret Alexis didn't want exposed? That she'd threatened both Leah and Mia over? That her mom was a closet drunk. That the image of their perfect family had devastating cracks. Or something else entirely, something related to Leah's death?
I felt sick. I wanted to hug Alexis, not investigate her.
Just because she was a victim didn't mean she wasn't also a perpetrator.
There was the circular bruise on Alexis’s wrist, bruising Leah may have caused as she fell, grabbing wildly at the person who'd pushed her.
Alexis at our mailbox right after our house was violated, and my notebook was stolen.
Alexis, the bully, who threatened Mia and assaulted Leah months before she died.
The pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling into place.
I had to stay focused, to keep my head clear.
I needed answers. It was time to talk to Brooke.