It Happened One Murder

Chapter One Harriet

Chapter One

Harriet

It’s always amazed me how much can change in a year.

This time last August, I was living in New York City, working as a journalist in a career I loved, absolutely thriving. Everything was great. Perfect even.

But now? A mere 365 days later? I’m unemployed, broke, back in my hometown living with my mother and her fourth husband, celebrating my twenty-sixth birthday at a party I didn’t even want.

Of course, my mother isn’t exactly known for taking what I want into consideration.

“Oh, George,” she says, laughing extravagantly as she throws her head back.

The Cartier bracelets ringing her wrist clink together.

She’s dressed like she’s accepting an Academy Award in a long, green (off-the-rack, but she’d never admit it) Alexander McQueen dress with a plunging neckline, and heels high enough to slice your chest right open.

And she’s not alone. The invitations she sent out (for a party allegedly for me) said formal.

Formal!

Everyone is standing around her living room wearing ball gowns. It’s beyond weird.

The only people I actually want to see today, my best friends Steven and Maggie, vanished twenty minutes ago under the guise of getting some air but really so they could smoke the joint I spotted sticking out from Steven’s jacket pocket.

I tried to slip away after them, but my mother intercepted me, catching my sleeve between her manicured fingers and leading me around the room like a show pony.

“You’re so bad,” she says to George, squeezing his arm. She lets out a gross little giggle, and my stomach turns.

“Bad?” my grandmother asks from my other side. She looks at me, and I shrug.

In my opinion, George is bad, though not in the way my mom means.

More in the sense that he’s the second coming of the Antichrist. A property developer who’s just under six feet tall (but will tell you he’s six two) with a full head of graying-blond hair (thanks to hair plugs), he’s single-handedly responsible for gentrifying NYC’s Meatpacking District and killing tons of small businesses and restaurants.

Not to mention his full name—and I swear I’m not making this up—is George George, like he’s the villain in a bad Pixar film.

He and my mom dated back when they both went to Pleasantville High School but broke up after graduation.

They went their separate ways—George to college up in Boston and then to NYC, my mom to Rutgers and then back to Logan Island.

Three years later, she ran into George’s best friend, Jack, and started dating him.

Nine months into their relationship, they got a little surprise in the form of a wailing infant. Me.

Really romantic, right? An unplanned pregnancy, a marriage forced on them by my mom’s parents.

Needless to say, they divorced before my second birthday.

Now, twenty-six years later, my mom is back with George.

The devil in human form, who happily destroyed innocent lives to make a quick buck.

He’s pretentious, snobby, and condescending.

Oh, and he also happens to own the massive beachfront house where we’re standing, the one my mom happily moved into ten months ago.

Nothing like a little (okay, a lot of) money to make up for a hideous personality, right?

“George said—” my mother starts.

“I said,” George cuts in, looking down his long nose at me, “that it’s interesting your father thought it was appropriate to bring his new teenage girlfriend to this party.”

We all turn in unison to look at my father, who’s across the room, leaning against the arm of a chaise lounge. He’s chatting with his sister Vicky while his aforementioned girlfriend looks on.

To be fair, she’s not a teenager anymore, but she certainly was when they first met. She used to babysit me back in the day, pimples and all.

Did it creep me out when I found out they were dating? Yeah. Of course it did.

Would I ever admit that to George or my mother, thereby validating their gossipy sniping? Absolutely not.

“George, please. That’s my son you’re talking about,” my grandmother says.

She’s wearing a bright purple caftan and a ruby-red necklace she once promised to me.

Legally known as Gloria Baker, to me she’s simply Gogo.

My favorite person in my family, though the competition for that title isn’t exactly fierce. “Cindy isn’t a teenager.”

“Her name is Cynthia,” I whisper.

George smirks. “He’s really hitting his midlife crisis hard, isn’t he?”

“What is she wearing?” my mother says, doing a remarkably bad job of hiding the fact that she’s staring at poor Cynthia. “Is she headed straight from here to work a corner in Atlantic City?”

I take a large sip of champagne instead of replying and almost choke on the bubbles.

“And look at Vicky!” she continues, ignoring my spluttering. Gogo pats me softly on the back. “She’s not even wearing a dress!”

In my opinion, Vicky is wearing what we should all be wearing: high-waisted, wide-legged jeans, a simple white T-shirt, and wedges. It’s the rest of us that are the issue.

I can’t help myself. “Vicky looks cool, Mom.”

My mom scowls. “She should have moved back to New York City when her mother begged her to. She’s lived overseas too long. Lost her sense of decoru—”

“Cucumber sandwich?” a caterer interrupts, shoving his tray at us.

“I’m good, thanks,” I say. My eye catches on his face. Something about him is so familiar. “Did you go to Pleasantville High?” I ask. How awful if he did and is now serving all his former classmates.

“I’m not from here,” he says quickly, then turns to George. “Would you like one, sir?”

George, busy typing something into his phone, doesn’t reply, and the caterer’s face falls. His tray droops precariously to one side, sandwiches sliding toward its edge.

“Not that you asked, but I’ll have one.” My mother picks up a tiny sandwich and takes the tiniest of nibbles off its corner as the waiter shuffles away.

“I just hope,” George says, pocketing his phone now that the help is gone, “that you’re enjoying the party, Harriet. I spent a lot of money on it.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, apropos of nothing, and walk away. I’m reluctant to abandon Gogo with the two of them, but I can’t handle another second of the insipid sniping they think passes for polite conversation.

I plaster on a smile as I weave through a (not so) venerable who’s who of Logan Island: George’s business partner, Luke Dalio, wearing a suit and a scowl, talking with Logan Island mayor Courtney DiPetrio, who graduated from Pleasantville High four years before me.

Police Chief Mick Sharkey, out of his uniform for possibly the first time ever, sips his drink next to Fire Chief Dutton.

And Mrs. Barbara Patterson, head librarian and member of the Logan Island Town Council, is standing alone by the fireplace.

The sight of her makes me pause. What the hell is she doing here? From what I understand, she’d rather rip out her own toenails than have a voluntary conversation with George, and the feeling is very, very mutual.

I steer around a tight circle of large, burly men I don’t recognize and stop by the glass doors leading out to the back deck.

Somewhere out there in the falling night are Maggie and Steven, but in order to reach them, I’ll need to pass several clumps of old classmates, all of whom will inevitably ask me the same question: What brought you back to the island, Harriet?

It’s not that I’m ashamed I was fired from my journalism job in the city and forced to move back to the island because I couldn’t afford rent. It’s more…

Okay, fine, yeah, that’s a lie. I’m embarrassed as hell about it.

Instead, I slump against the wall and open LinkedIn for the umpteenth time today, doomscrolling down my feed.

It’s a knife to the stomach: a slew of articles my old coworkers recently published, jobs my classmates from NYU managed to land, and the taunt of a still-empty inbox. No new responses to the many (many) messages I sent out to my contacts; nothing from the positions I applied to.

And then, because I am nothing if not a masochist, I open Safari and type an h into the search bar.

fills automatically, a testament to just how often I’ve trolled the site since they fired me. I skim a listicle about celebrity babies named after fruit, then angrily shove my phone back inside my clutch. I snap it shut, glaring out into the crowd.

I find Vicky’s eyes across the room. Her mouth quirks up into a bemused half smile, like she knows just what I’m thinking.

Like she gets it: my frustrations, my doubts, my feeling of being lost at sea.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to have more than a five-second-long conversation with her since she got into town, not with my mother monopolizing all my time planning this stupid party.

With that depressing thought, I push myself upright and walk through the doors to the veranda.

I promptly crash face-first into a brick wall.

“What the hell?” I jerk back, rubbing at my smarting nose.

Through my haze of pain, it takes me a moment to register what I hit. The chest of a man. A very tall man. With a very hard, wide chest.

I look up. And up. And up some more, until I finally find his eyes.

They’re green, tinged by gray around their edges. The color of a stormy ocean. Deep. Beautiful. I could swim laps in them.

He’s Glen Powell’s better-looking twin, something I would not have thought possible until this very moment. Both of his arms are covered in intricate tattoos.

It takes me a moment to realize I’m staring. Possibly drooling. Heat flushes my cheeks, and I drop my eyes to the ground. What’s gotten into me? Sure, it’s been a while since I had intimate relations with another person, but…drooling? I surreptitiously swipe at my lips.

“Harriet, I am so sorry,” the hot man says. He’s clutching my shoulder like he thinks I’m going to topple over if he lets go. “Are you okay?”

He knows my name. How the hell does he know my name?

I say as much.

The softness around his eyes collapses. “Are you serious?”

I frown. “Serious about what?”

He barks an unamused laugh. “Amazing. Just amazing. You are serious. You really don’t remember me, do you?”

I study his face. “Am I supposed to?”

His upper lip lifts into a sneer, and his hand falls from my shoulder. “Are you supposed to— Jesus Christ. Yes, Harriet. You’re supposed to remember me. Seeing as I lost my fucking virginity to you.”