Chapter 12
It’s up to me now, I guess.
The assistant who doesn’t have a clue.
There’s a certain level of motivation that comes from having a purpose like this, at least, something that feels right if
compared to just filling out workshops and scheduling social media posts. I mean, Neena’s clearly not in her right mind, and
what could Crystal do? Waterslide an answer to this?
No, if there’s one thing I can help with, it’s this.
I know poisons.
I know core motivations for murder.
I know how to erase fingerprints, just as I know how to find them with nothing but a little cocoa powder in your pantry.
Just as I know how to forge them for someone else (a skill best left unsaid at the moment).
This is just another one of Hugh’s books. That’s the way I’m going to have to chase this, or else I’ll never be able to take
it on.
Surgically.
With all emotion removed.
One page at a time.
And, I guess, with a knife behind my back and one eye over my shoulder.
“Easy there, Pip.”
I pull out of my mental resolve moment and realize I’m gripping the sugar spoon over my coffee like a knife. Jackie, sitting
opposite me at the breakfast table, looks entirely appalled.
Nash gently takes hold of my hand and lowers it.
We’re back at the dining hall, all carried off by the breakfast march with Neena in the lead. To be fair, nobody really wanted
to stay behind in the author/murder wing alone.
Nobody, I’ve realized, seems inclined to want to go back to the “safety zones” of our bedrooms—or that doomed hallway—ever
again.
The sun is bright over the horizon, giving the room full of windows a heavenly sort of air. Light glints on everything. The
chandeliers above. The gold-rimmed glasses. The heavy silver platters heaped up with egg casseroles and bacon. A harpist plays
in the corner.
You’d never in a million years imagine a corpse, or two, below deck.
Jackie frowns at me and I realize I’m doing it again, this time choking the sugar packet. She moves over to the other side
of the table. It’s just Nash and me now.
“Okay,” Nash says, “who are we going to interview first?”
“We?” I say, screwing up a brow. “Who’s ‘we,’ cowboy?”
“Yes, we. You do all the talking. I’ll just be in the background.”
“You have a workshop this morning. There is no ‘we.’”
Nash frowns. “You can’t imagine after everything, I’d let you do an interview alone with a potential killer. There’s no way—”
His voice goes distant. He simply shakes his head.
I imagine the mental image of Carragan on the floor, face down, is fresh in his mind.
“No,” he says simply. Firmly.
Is this what it feels like? To have someone so staunchly by your side? A knight in shining armor, if you will?
I’ve seen it in the movies.
Read about it a few times in books.
But man, it feels good.
A small smile slips up my lips.
“What about your workshops?”
“I don’t care about my workshops.”
“I care about your workshops.”
“Why do you care about my workshops?”
“Well, the people came to hear your workshops.”
“So?”
“And the ship is expecting you to carry on your workshops.”
“So?”
“And I’ll deal with potentially a four-million-dollar demand for refunds and a thousand angry messages and be harassed by
both the ship and the guests here with no way out if you don’t do your silly little two-hour workshops.”
“Fine. But for the record, aside from all that, I just care about survival. That’s all I’ve got in mind. Survival. How to
get us out of here. For that to happen in the room we were in . . .” Nash shakes his head.
It’s clearly gotten to him.
“That’s fair. Survival it is.” I load up another piece of bread with butter.
Nash tilts his head, watching me. “Hey, who’s this calm, composed Penelope right now? You’re steadier than I am in all this.”
I shrug. “I guess . . . I feel like you can do all the worrying for me. It’s oddly comforting.”
“My fears are oddly comforting?”
“Grounding, I’d say.”
“My fears are oddly grounding,” he repeats, more to himself than me.
“Yup. You’re shouldering the worry. I appreciate that.”
Nash takes a minute, and then a smile cracks on one side of his face. He rubs his chin and lips with his hand. “Shouldering
the worry. Smooth wording, Pip. I might have to put that in my book. Hey . . . so why didn’t you tell me about Michael?”
My knife slips.
He’s shifted his weight forward in the pearl-rimmed upholstered cream chair, all flannel and boots in a seat made for a tea
party.
“You got the whole story?”
“Uh-huh.”
I look back to my bread and knife. “Who told you?”
“Neena. Sometime after the delirious crying spells and before she went to Candyland.”
Neena’s making her way round the room now, squatting at a table of readers, chatting her heart out without a care in the world.
She’s wearing a purple feather boa.
“For what it’s worth, I’m not sorry.” Nash is looking back at me now.
I tilt my head.
Cock a brow.
“Well, I gotta say, I’ve had a lot of responses. Not being sorry for me is a first.”
“Let me finish,” he says calmly. “I’ve held it in a long time.”
And there it is. A jolt of electricity up the spine. “Yeah?” I say calmly. “What?”
“And I’ve held my tongue through the years, but now it’s nice to finally say it.”
I set the knife down.
Turn to give him my full attention.
Everything in me. My cardigan giving him full attention. My hair that’s been wound up into a too-tight bun that I’m really
regretting right now. Even my shoulders are leaning toward him a little, like daffodils reaching for the sun.
He takes a breath. Cricks his neck like he’s prepping for some real conversation. “Yeah.” He’s leaning forward now, elbows
on knees. I’m now the sun to his daffodils too. “It’s a relief really. I hope you can allow me to say this even though it’s
not . . . well, it’s not the best time.”
“Go for it,” I say automatically, more breathily than I mean to.
Yes, it’s terrible Hugh is dead. Terrible.
Lifetime of therapy terrible. But this is Nash.
“If there’s anything to learn from all this,” I begin, while thoughts of All’s fair in love and war, There is no time like the present, and Seize the day poster bubbles spur me on, “it’s to live fully and in the present.
Say anything you want, Nash. I’m listening. ”
He nods.
I’ve given him full permission.
Three hundred people surround us.
The hum of excitement as waiters begin to stream out toward the tables, carrying curiously elaborate yogurts in cotton-candy
pink and blue.
But I’ve never been more focused in my life.
A knife could whiz by my head and I wouldn’t move a muscle.
Nash takes another breath. Rubs his hands together for a few seconds.
And plunges in. “I’m not the kind of man to put another man down, but .
. . Michael was worthless. I’ve come across a lot of filthy people in my life, but, and I mean this with all my heart, he’s the absolute worst. I’m glad he did something so brazenly stupid you couldn’t possibly ignore it before it was too late. ”
. . .
Wh—
. . .
What?
The little flutter of wings in my chest falls flat, dead on the ground in the pit of my stomach. Whatever thing I had hoped he would say was obviously not said, and instead was replaced with . . . well, with . . . this.
“I’m not an idiot,” I say, pushing my coffee cup away from me on the table as if it’s at fault and not him.
“I know,” Nash says quickly, putting both hands up in a stop position. “That’s not what I mean. I just . . . he’s been a . . .
well, when he didn’t meet you on your birthday, for instance. What was that? Two years in a row—”
“He told me he missed the flight,” I reply heatedly, cheeks flaring.
I know there were signs.
I know all the things people have said to me, thought about me over the years.
Doesn’t he know how embarrassed I am?
I was glaringly the girl who gave excuses.
I once made excuses for him for ducking out halfway through a funeral.
That I was attending for someone from his family.
Don’t I know what an idiot I am?
I know what he’s doing. He saw an open door during the middle of a rocky relationship and he’s desperately sliding in big brotherly words of wisdom before the door shuts again and I go back.
He’s desperate to help the idiot girl who can’t stand on her own two feet before she gets whisked right back into the darkness.
Yes. It was rocky. But I’m done. Really done.
My face is beet red. I know it. I can feel it.
It’s precisely the shade of red that women get when they thought they were being told something infinitely flattering, and they thought they were fulfilling a dream they never thought possible and haven’t consciously come to terms with, and instead are blasted with the sense that they are actually quite a child and are being publicly embarrassed, and by the way, everyone watched
you be incredibly stupid all along. They were talking behind your back about it.
They had conversations that started with, “Oh, silly Penelope . . .”
He’s the very mature, successful adult man with brilliance and personality, and I’m the girl who . . . well, who can organize things almost as well as ChatGPT.
The room feels suffocating and I stand.
I’ve got to get out of here.
“Listen, Nash, if you want to pull together a bandwagon to tell me how you knew he was a bad guy all along, don’t bother.
There’s already one and I’ve heard it the past six weeks from everyone in the world but you. Congratulations on being the
last person in humanity to accomplish the task. Who knew? Who knew that all this time there really was something in the world
every human on the planet could agree about?”
He makes a grab for my wrist, but I pull away. “C’mon, Pip. Please. Let me start again—”
“I was desperate, if that’s what you want to hear,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “I was a stupid girl who wanted so desperately for someone to love her unconditionally—”
“That’s not a crime. That’s admirable—”