Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next several hours were a blur. After Mia woke up, we had breakfast. We didn't talk about the slippers, nor did I mention my early morning trash run. I pushed the spray paint and the pills out of my mind until I could focus on them later.
After we ate, we ran some errands. I took Mia to Best Buy with me, the cart rattling over cracked concrete as we walked under the blue awning. We moved through the security aisle, past boxes promising smart protection, wireless coverage, and night vision.
I chose the cheapest system with four cameras, praying I had enough on the credit card to cover it. The guy at the check-out counter wouldn't meet our eyes.
At Martins grocery store, I pushed the cart, going through the shopping list. Brownie mix. Eggs. Butter. Disposable pans.
Mia cocked one eyebrow at me. "Memorial brownies?"
"Rowan requested them."
"They're from a box."
"She doesn't need to know that." I met her eyes. "Our secret?"
The corner of her mouth lifted. "Our secret."
Everything felt distant, like I was watching it through glass. We endured the reporters outside the Blackthorn Shores gates, Mia shrinking into her seat like she wanted to disappear.
To make matters worse, several protesters had joined the media, standing around holding signs that read "Justice for Leah" and "No Child Killers in Our Town."
At home, Mia carried in the grocery bags, then paused at the door. "Want help with the cameras?"
I looked at her, really looked at her. She was exhausted, stressed, despondent, but trying, making an effort. After the interrogation on Friday, followed by the disaster at Viv and Daniel's house, Mia seemed diminished. Of course, she was. I just wished I knew how to help her.
I forced a smile. "I've got it. But thank you, honey. Why don't you relax? Read a book or draw something. And stay off social media."
She nodded and headed upstairs. Before she disappeared, she glanced back. "You're terrible at anything involving a drill, just so you know."
I managed to wink at her. "Have some faith in your mom."
She rolled her eyes at me.
It felt almost normal. Almost.
I set the cameras on the kitchen island, lining them up like equipment before a mission, examining the instructions, spreading out screws and mounting brackets.
Something I could control. Something I could do.
Outside, I hauled the aluminum ladder from the garage and set it against the siding by the front door. One leg caught on the uneven strip of concrete where winter had heaved the slab.
I wore Marcus's U of M sweatshirt, the navy one with the cracked maize M on the chest, the cuffs frayed. I needed something of his near me right now.
The first step flexed under my weight. My hands shook from lack of sleep and adrenaline. The April air bit through the sweatshirt, my fingers stiff around the cordless drill.
The instructions might as well have been in another language. Diagram A to Diagram B, arrows pointing at screws that did not exist. The bracket refused to line up with the predrilled holes on the camera's base. I flipped it. Rotated it. Still no dice.
"Marcus would have had this done in ten minutes," I muttered.
The ladder wobbled when I shifted my weight to reach the eave. I tightened my core, leaned in, and pressed my shoulder against the siding to create a counterbalance.
The drill whirred when I squeezed the trigger. It slipped off the screw head twice, jerking, the bit skittering across white paint. I let out a frustrated curse.
Grief was not abstract. It pressed into my sternum like a blade. Marcus should have been the one up here, one foot braced, forearm steady, teaching Mia how to do this with some corny dad joke.
Instead, it was up to me alone. I measured my breathing against the distant crash of waves from the lake. The sky was overcast; gray light flattened everything.
I rechecked the screws and adjusted my grip. I forced the bracket to line up, but I couldn't focus on what was right in front of me. I kept thinking about my conversation with Whitney last night. What Alexis had told me, and Zara, what I'd discovered this morning in the trash.
Zara had been in our house during sleepovers, group projects, movie nights. She could easily have stolen the key from Whitney's house, or just asked Peyton to borrow it, or hell, maybe she'd made a copy back when Brooke still had it.
The spray paint meant Zara was guilty of entering my home, taking Leah's painting from Mia's bedroom, and slashing it with a knife, then painting GUILTY in dripping scarlet letters.
She wanted to scare us. Or she wanted to frame Mia. Or she wanted to shut me up before I uncovered something worse.
But for what reason?
It only made sense if she had pushed Leah herself.
But did it? Zara had seemed genuinely remorseful. She'd claimed she wanted to help Leah expose whoever ran the cyberbullying account. She'd confirmed the scream Alexis had mentioned, then revealed the sounds she'd heard at 3:30 a.m.
Unless she was lying, deflecting. Manipulating.
Or someone else had put the spray paint can in their trash. But if so, who? And why? It wasn't like anyone expected their trash to be rummaged through by a frantic, half-crazed mother before the crack of dawn.
Zara still made the most sense.
Mrs. Atkins had seen Zara on the beach at 12:30 a.m. in her bright yellow hoodie. She would've had ten minutes to reach the top of the stairs and head over to Rowan's bluff. She'd been at the right place, at the right time.
I had difficulty envisioning bright, vivacious Zara shoving Leah over a cliff. She'd always been so outgoing, kind, and sweet-natured.
But perhaps Leah had turned on her, outed their plan to Alexis and Peyton, and blamed Zara. That would've made Zara incredibly upset. I'd seen in her eyes how desperate she was to be accepted, included, to belong. Her fear of being rejected by the group.
The drill bit finally caught. The vibration ran up my forearm. The mechanical buzz cut through the quiet neighborhood as the bracket finally clicked into place under the eave, and the camera housing settled with a snap.
My stomach clenched. How was I going to tell Camille? How was she going to respond if she thought I was threatening her daughter's freedom? Not well, I knew that much.
And yet, we desperately needed her help.
Apprehension settled in my gut. I needed to talk to Camille. We needed to take this evidence to the police.
Then there were the lorazepam pills. Sleeping pills. Sedatives, prescribed for anxiety. Discarded in Whitney's trash can, but prescribed to Brooke. I wasn't sure what to do about those. What they meant, if they meant anything at all.
Brooke had accused Alexis of stealing her pills that night on their patio. Zara had mentioned something about Taylor Everett taking sleeping pills at Whitney's pool party, which led to the near drowning that left her brain damaged.
Could Alexis be stealing her mother's prescription pills to sell them?
Taylor had lived in our neighborhood. If that was the case, Alexis could have sold them to Taylor, and to Peyton, too, for that matter.
Maybe Whitney knew nothing about the pills, and it was her daughter who'd bought them and carelessly tossed the bottle in her family's trash.
Of course, I was speculating. Maybe the lorazepam had nothing to do with Leah's death. Simply another of the August family secrets that Brooke was desperate to hide from the world.
Another secret I needed to uncover.
I positioned the drill again and drilled the second, third, and fourth screws into the brackets until the casing held firm against the house. I descended the ladder, wiped my palms on my jeans, and reached for my phone on the railing.
No new notifications except junk mail and spam.
I opened messages anyway, then scrolled up to Rowan's last text thread.
Nothing new. I checked other conversations.
Nothing from Vivienne, of course, which hurt the most. Nothing from Brooke or Whitney, or from Camille, whom I'd texted three times today.
Last night, she'd said we would discuss strategy, how to control the narrative and get ahead of the rumor mill. As if that were possible.
Their silence felt louder than any accusation.
I was about to put my phone away and get back to work when a push notification slid across the top of my screen. Detroit Free Press brEAKING NEWS: LOCAL TEEN NAMED SUSPECT IN LAKESHORE DEATH.
Dread and anxiety tangled in my gut. Aghast, I read the rest: Witness Reports "Violent Fight" Before Fatal Fall.
Then two photos, side-by-side. On the left, Mia's school photo, the one we had argued over because she hated her hair parted on the side. Her awkward smile, chin tilted. On the right, Leah in mid-laugh, eyes crinkled, hair caught in motion. Alive.
The text below was clinical, efficient, brutal: Sources close to the investigation confirm DNA evidence and witness testimony place fourteen-year-old Mia Kincaid at the scene.
A witness reported a physical altercation between Kincaid and victim Leah Cho hours before Cho's fatal fall from the Blackthorn Shores bluff.
It hit me like a gut-punch. Mia had said nothing about a fight. Not even an argument or disagreement. She claimed Leah grabbed her arm when she got dizzy from the nosebleed. That explained the scratches. An accident. A panicked grip.
And who reported this new information? What witness? Which girl?
Panicked heat rose from my chest into my throat. How could I protect her when she was still, even now, lying to me? Any of the girls could still be lying. I couldn't know the truth, not for certain.
It felt like fighting blind. Like the edge of the bluff shifting beneath my feet, unsteady, about to crumble. I imagined social media blowing up with this new salacious tidbit. Mia's harassment would intensify now. And this was the least of our worries.
The sky had gone darker, with thickening clouds stacked over the lake. The air carried that metallic smell that comes right before a storm, the kind that worked under your skin.
Footsteps crunched on the driveway gravel. I looked up.
Camille strode up the street toward my house, her phone in one hand, a manila folder in the other. She wore a silk fuchsia blouse, dark jeans, and low-heeled boots.
Her mouth was a tight line, her lips pressed together. She paused in front of the porch as her gaze locked onto mine. "We need to talk."