Chapter 13
Eight Days Before the Hurricane
Beau left Lemon & Fig with Gemma?
I can’t picture Beau doing that to me. I can’t even picture Gemma doing that to me.
Leaving Polly, I walk back toward the house.
The usual soundtrack of our backyard—a blend of lapping water, rustling trees, and chirping crickets—is lost beneath the blare of the last quarter of a college football game on the flat screen by the pool.
Through the window, Nora and Marcus are leaning toward each other, talking in the kitchen.
Autumn must have gone home—I don’t see her with them.
Outside, Beau and Shep puff on cigars while Tippy perches on a sofa nearby, which means I can’t confront Beau yet.
That doesn’t stop me from lingering near the outdoor teak sofa that rounds out the seating area, hoping to capture his attention. But their eyes are glued to the game.
When the broadcast cuts to commercial, the noise dulls for a moment before Kristy Clark fills the screen with a too-bright promise of the news to come. Beau doesn’t look at me.
“As long as there’s no more murder investigation updates,” Tippy murmurs. “Isn’t it getting to be excessive?” She looks around for agreement, and that same expression from the bathroom—the one that hinted she’d like to say more—is back on her face.
When no one responds, Tippy shifts in her chair, and then tries to act like she didn’t.
It would be strange behavior if she wasn’t a little drunk.
I need everyone to get out so I can talk to my husband.
I slip into the kitchen without another word.
Autumn left while I was delivering the food to Polly, and Marcus is cleaning the countertops with a towel as the dishwasher runs.
I’d tell him to stop, but I know he can’t help himself.
Nora’s perched on a stool by the island, but as soon as I step into the room, she hops down.
“I’m going to head out,” she says quickly. “Stuff to do in the morning.”
Marcus starts to say something, then catches my eye and thinks better of it. “See you later, Nora.”
It takes ten more minutes to push—or rather pour—Shep and Tippy out the door. Tippy’s reached the affectionate part of her drunken stupor, and she hugs me for a beat too long before she goes.
When it’s down to Marcus and me, I see my opening. “Did I hear something about security footage behind the restaurant?”
The towel he’s pushing around my countertop stalls, leaving a circle unfinished. After a beat, he looks up. “Not much worth seeing. Shadows, mostly. But…” His jaw flexes. “Knowing it’s the last glimpse of her makes it eerie.”
“Do you still have a copy? Tippy said there was a man on the security video. Polly said it was Beau.”
“Why are you asking? You hate gossip.”
It’s not an answer, and the obfuscation stings. “Gemma and I were friends, but I’m starting to realize there were things I didn’t know about her.”
Like the fact that she emptied out her apartment.
“We all have our secrets,” he says, voice low, too even. His gaze slides past me toward the front door. The headlights of Nora’s car flash through the front of the house as she pulls away. “If it’s eating at you, ask Autumn. She and Gemma talked all the time.”
I nod, biting the inside of my cheek. He’s holding something back. I can feel it. The certainty makes my skin prickle.
Marcus sighs and pulls me into a hug. Friendly. Firm. Marcus is Beau’s best friend, and that has always made him like a brother to me. A solid place to land in this strange new world. But now, the hug is cold. Like the energy in our friendship is broken—an outgoing call that never connects.
“I’m sure the police will figure out who did this,” he says as he releases me.
“You mean Ardell?” I pull a face to signal my renewed low confidence in his abilities. “Like he found Will’s killer?”
“Oh, come on. That worked out in the end, right?”
“Yeah, after he almost threw Nora in jail.” And then I add, “Did you know Ardell was there that night? What do you think about the fact that he’s allowed to be on the case when he was fucking there?”
“I don’t know, Este. I’m just the chef.”
This is a cop-out. Marcus doesn’t meddle and he doesn’t gossip. But this is part of his charm, so I don’t press.
Seeing how edgy I am as I walk him out, Marcus gives me one more hug before he goes, leaving me standing in the foyer for longer than I mean to. I’m not sure if one minute or ten has passed when Beau sticks his head out from the kitchen.
“What’re you doing, Este?” he asks.
I look up, feeling a pit growing in my stomach.
Now that everyone’s gone, it’s time to ask Beau about what Polly said.
I walk into the kitchen, and he’s sitting at the island, one last drink in hand for a nightcap. He pats the stool next to him. I stop in the doorway.
“I need to ask something, and I need you to be honest with me,” I say.
“Okay…?” He’s holding his drink like it’s another casual evening and we’re about to make small talk about the lamb we had for dinner. But from the concern behind his eyes, I can tell he knows this isn’t that.
“Did you leave the party with Gemma the other night?”
His head pulls back. “What?”
“Yes or no.”
“Este.” His frown deepens. “What are you talking about?”
I close the distance from the doorway to him. “Polly overheard people saying it at a party last night. The rumor is you left with Gemma the night she died.”
He shakes his head, but it’s not a denial. It’s disbelief.
“You cannot be serious.”
And the words feel like a splinter between us.
My hands tremble as I reach for my purse, pull out the pocket square sealed in its bag, and put it on the island between us. The silence after is suffocating. Like I’ve drawn a line across the kitchen floor, and whichever side he chooses will change everything.
“Jesus Christ, Este. Why do you have that?”
“Because it was in your suit in the washing machine the morning after the Lemon & Fig party, Beau.”
He looks wounded. Maybe even scared. “You’ve had this since then? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Seeing the pocket square in front of him makes all of this real in a way that hiding it seemed to have kept at bay. The colors in the room are too bright all of a sudden, like something in a neon nightmare.
“What happened that night, Beau? Whose blood is this? Why did you wash your suit when you came home?”
Beau pushes his stool back and stands up, staring at the pocket square on the counter, rubbing his chin. Like he’s working out how to tell me something. I can feel heat climbing my face.
“Gemma and I talked that night,” he says. “But that’s it.”
“Talked about what?”
“It was almost closing, so she was restocking the garnishes, cutting lemons. She was upset about something—something from a long time ago, and she was distracted. She cut her thumb. I gave her this”—he pushes the square toward me—“so she could go grab a Band-Aid without dripping blood all over the bar. I was a little buzzed—maybe a lot buzzed—when I Ubered home, so I threw the whole thing in the wash, hoping it would treat the stain.”
He puts up his hands, like a man surrendering. Like he has just completed his final act. As if to say: And there you have it.
I want to believe him. Lemons. A cut thumb. A borrowed square of cloth. A story so banal it begs to be true.
But all I can see is the blood, blooming bright against the cornflower blue.
If it was that innocent, why didn’t he tell me five days ago?
That I’d had to put evidence on the counter between us like a weapon to get this information isn’t something a neat explanation can heal.
“You washed your entire suit to clean a pocket square?” I ask, breath catching. “When did all of this happen? How long before she died, Beau?”
He pushes his hands through his hair. “I don’t know! I was drunk, but I wasn’t there when she died.”
“Ballpark it. How long before Gemma turned up dead did she get blood all over your clothes?”
“Hours. Maybe minutes. I don’t fucking know.”
I cover my eyes with both hands for a second. Everything is red. I squeeze my eyelids tighter, trying to make the view black again, trying to tap into my intuition.
Can I believe him?
Ordinarily, the answer would be yes. Unequivocally. But he washed his suit the night Gemma was murdered. And his clothes were stained with her blood.
“Este, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was going to and then she fucking died, and I knew it would sound worse than it actually was. I didn’t want you to be upset,” he insists.
“What was she upset about?”
He starts to answer, but nothing comes out.
I take him in, looking for the cracks, looking for some kind of proof that he didn’t do this. Worse, I listen for some sinister signal from my intuition to tell me that he did.
Beau traps the lizards that get stuck in our house to set them free. He wouldn’t hurt Gemma.
“She was angry about something from years ago. Before we moved—before we were even married,” Beau says, casting his eyes down to the pocket square.
“Then why bring it up now?”
“I don’t know.” He’s off his stool now, animated, and he looks…guilty.
He’s lying.
My mind starts racing to poke holes, searching for the weakness. “If this thing she was upset about was so old, why can’t you just tell me about it? Why was she still bringing it up? And why hand her a silk pocket square when there were bar towels everywhere?”
He doesn’t have a response, but I watch him try to gather one. The knots in my stomach are so tight it’s hard to breathe.
“Este, why didn’t you tell me you found this?” he asks, pointing to the silk square.
“Would it have mattered?” I fire back. “You’re not telling me everything now. Would you have told me the truth then?”
His jaw flexes. “You think I strangled her.”
Strangled. The blunt force of the word lands in my chest like a fist. My body rejects it before my brain catches up. “No,” I insist. “But I think there’s something you’re not saying.”
We stare each other down for a moment, dread thick in the air between us. And I don’t recognize who we are right now.
Feeling distant from him is like being lost at sea. He’s the person I’ve come to count on. The most reassuring presence I can imagine.
And he’s lying.
“You’ve always been the one person I never had to doubt. But—” My voice catches, and I choke the sadness down.
I want him to fight for me. To fight for us by telling me whatever he’s holding back. But he’s folding, and whatever he’s keeping from me feels like betrayal.
“Why won’t you tell me what she was angry about?”
He runs his hands through his hair. “Because it doesn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore.”
He stands there, waiting for me to soften. As if we could find a way to laugh this off or I could say anything that would make it less horrible. But I don’t. I can’t.
So he turns toward the hall, opening his mouth for a second like he might speak, but then he doesn’t. He starts walking away. He usually moves like he has nowhere to be—the coolest of cool guy lopes—but now, his movement is clipped, like he’s walking off a sucker punch.
For a second, he hesitates. Like he might turn back. But he doesn’t. And it stings. He calls out, “Let me know when you figure out whether you’re on my side or not.”
I don’t answer. I let him go, standing in the kitchen with the air knocked out of me.
After a brittle moment of silence, I turn and walk in the other direction. Into the office. Into the quiet. Into whatever version of my life this is now.
The house is so silent the click of the door as I close it startles me. Once, silence with Beau had been the safest place I knew. Now it feels like standing at the edge of a chasm, waiting to see if he’ll reach for me or let me fall.
And the fear climbing the back of my neck tells me it doesn’t matter what he’ll do. Because for the first time, I have to consider the possibility that he’s already done something that will destroy us both.
Fuck. I’m not getting my life back until I know what happened to Gemma.