Chapter 28
Two Days Before the Hurricane
When I walk through Nora’s front door, my eyes are swollen from crying.
“Oh fuck,” she says, mouth falling open as she looks up from her living room sofa. She’s on her feet in an instant, arms open wide and pulling me into a hug. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, we’re going to figure it out.”
She has no idea how wrong she is.
She was right about one thing at least. Love messes with your judgment on all types of shit.
The words start tumbling out before I can stop them. “I slept with my boss. I never told you. But I did. Years ago. And he’s here now. At the Ritz. I just saw him.”
“Shit,” she says, her face frozen in horror.
“Yeah.” A jagged laugh chokes from my throat.
“Simon. He thinks Beau took down his company with this massive data breach. And I think…I think he’s right.
And if that’s true, Beau blew up the company I built my life around.
And I don’t know why, but I think it has something to do with what Beau and Gemma were fighting about on that security footage. And maybe why Gemma’s dead.”
A sound comes from the kitchen—the soft tap of a drawer closing—and it momentarily slows the cascade of words spilling out of me. I look around the corner, and Marcus is standing at the sink, like he means to be anywhere but here right now.
“What are you doing here?” I say, stunned. “I’m furious with you.”
“Me?” Marcus points a finger to his own chest as if he couldn’t think of one reason why I’d be angry.
“You lied to me,” I accuse. “You told me the security footage was nothing. Covered for Beau and let me think things were going to be fine.”
“Este, I’m sorry,” he says, more defensive than contrite. “Beau didn’t want you to be upset.”
“Well, look at how well that went!” I shout back, and the tears I’ve been keeping at bay start running down my cheeks again. “Are you covering for him? What do you know about that night, Marcus?”
Marcus opens his mouth to protest, but Nora gets there first.
“Okay.” Her voice goes soft and high like a preschool teacher’s.
She rubs my back a little. “Marcus is going to leave.” She cuts a look in his direction signaling him to cooperate with this plan.
“And you’re going to go wash your face, and I’m going to open a bottle of wine.
And we’re going to breathe in and out for a little bit. And then we’ll make a plan. Okay?”
“Yeah,” I whimper, because it feels nice to not be in charge of anything but my own mental breakdown.
And if anyone gets to tell me I’m going to be okay, it’s Nora, who is already piecing her life back together after her fairy tale combusted.
So I turn and wander down the hall to Nora’s bathroom.
Once inside the echoey space, though, all I can do is stare at the bottles of cleansers and tubs of moisturizers and serums on her counter as fear and anger and grief blend together, clamping down on me so hard that the idea of lifting my arms to wash my face feels impossible.
Behind me is Nora’s claw-foot tub. A reminder of the stage of my life when I thought a claw-foot tub would be the most elegant extravagance in the world. Before Simon fired me and Beau and I ran away together.
Is this my punishment for sleeping with Simon? For running away with Beau? Is everything breaking because I built it on the wrong foundation? Beau used me to meet with Simon. Beau used me, and he took down Redwood. And he kept it from me for years.
And then I decide the only logical course of action—in light of my completely on-fire life—is to climb, fully clothed, into the tub.
At first, the slick, glossy interior is so cold on my back, it almost hurts to fully recline.
But I sit back anyway, wanting the pain to keep me grounded and wondering if this is what it feels like to dissociate from reality completely.
And then after a few minutes, my skin goes numb, and the numbness feels something like relief.
When Nora comes in with full wineglasses, I’m staring straight ahead at the white finish of the bath. She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she sets the glasses down and climbs in facing me.
Mirroring my posture, she tucks her knees up to her chest, and in the center where our legs meet, our toes touch.
Because this is what a best friendship is sometimes, sitting in the pieces of the damage someone else caused.
But who’s the villain here? Simon? Beau? Me?
For a long time, the only sound is the occasional hollow movement echoing off the porcelain enamel—I shift my tailbone, Nora slides her feet a little closer to herself.
Then she finally says, “What can I do to help, Este? What do you want to happen next?” And the words are louder at the bottom of an empty bathtub.
Louder is good. Louder shakes me out of my daze a little.
But the questions she’s asking feel impossible.
I’ve never known how to answer that second question.
When my parents died, I didn’t process it.
I moved to New Orleans. And then to college, and then I moved to California.
Every few years, since I was sixteen, I’ve started over.
When Simon fired me, I didn’t fight back.
I ran. And then Beau appeared, and we made a new life, too. A clean slate.
Every reboot offered the chance to pretend nothing had hurt me. Every new place inspired a fresh suit of armor. Until I thought I was untouchable—healed and so far past it all.
But this time the past isn’t staying buried. It followed me here. Or maybe I brought it with me when I came here with Beau. Suddenly Beau, Simon, and Gemma are all tangled together.
No fresh start will save me this time. I’m not sure any of them ever did. Confronting my ghosts doesn’t seem like enough to vanquish them either.
So when Nora’s eyes find mine across the glossy white expanse of the tub, I finally manage to whisper, “I don’t want another new life. I want what I had back.”
She winces, and I watch in her eyes as her heart breaks a little for me. I know it’s because she can feel how deeply I mean it. And because, after losing Will, she knows how irrevocably broken some things can be.
I know it, too. Even if I don’t want to admit it yet.
A widow and an orphan walk into a bar.
“Some things don’t come back,” she says.
I know she’s right. We have to deal in facts right now.
Fact: Beau might be going to prison.
The Eagle Scouts are going to be so disappointed.
—
It’s late the next morning when I wake tangled in Nora’s top sheet, wearing the clothes I drove over in. They’ve grown heavier overnight. Stuffier. I pull at the neck of my shirt to fight against the sensation of overheating, and my fist aches from clutching my phone to my chest all night.
Eleven missed calls from Beau glare at me from the home screen.
By the time I drag myself to the kitchen, Nora has the news on, and cheerful anchors with bright teeth are gesticulating around the latest storm maps behind them. But the sound is too sharp, too loud for how restlessly I slept.
Nora looks up from the spot where she’s rinsing her breakfast dishes in the sink. “There’s coffee if you want some?”
Before I can answer, there’s a splashing sound behind me. I spin around and Marcus is outside throwing Nora’s patio chairs into her pool.
Beau is probably at my house doing the same. He always says the chairs are safest at the bottom of the pool in a storm, which is not a sentence I’d ever heard about furniture until we moved to Florida.
Honestly, sinking to the bottom of a pool sounds like a reprieve right about now. I might try it later.
Grateful for the distraction from the fiery blaze that is my life’s problems, though, I turn back to Nora. “So you won’t go on a date with him, but you let him do your hurricane prep?”
Her facial features turn down in exasperation. “Not this again.”
“What? I think he wants to kiss your face, and I think you also want that. And in the hour of my discontent, you two finally just kissing a little might cheer me up.”
“Okay. As much as I’d love to help, Marcus called this morning looking for you,” she explains. “I told him you were asleep. But he said he’d come over and wait.”
Looking back at Marcus, though, I’m not buying it. He can’t not be close to her. But he’s patient.
It reminds me of Beau. Maybe that’s why I keep nudging them together. Nora deserves something steady and earnest.
Something like what I thought Beau and I had.
As Marcus appears in the doorway, though, I’m not ready to forgive him for covering the security footage details for Beau.
“I’m still not speaking to him.” I point in his direction.
Nora looks between us.
Marcus sighs. “We need to talk.”
“Why?” I frown, knowing it’s mean and misdirected and hating myself for not being able to stop the words.
“Because I’m here,” Marcus starts, pulling his phone from his back pocket and holding it up like it’s a white flag of surrender, “to broker peace.”
He crosses to the counter and sets the phone down between us with a tap, and the sound carries through the tense silence of the kitchen.
“I shouldn’t even have this,” he says, his voice rough with the guilt of whatever he’s offering. “And I definitely shouldn’t be showing it to anyone.”
My gaze locks on the mobile device. Ordinary. Harmless. But the tension in the air makes my pulse skitter.
“The restaurant’s copy of the surveillance footage is on there,” Marcus says. “From the night Gemma died. Everything my cameras caught behind Lemon & Fig.”
My mouth goes dry.
“Beau and Gemma fight, then split. He goes one way. She goes the other. You see a hand reach out and drag her into the alcove. The one with the arches. It’s where she was found.”
Marcus looks to me for permission to play the video as he unlocks the phone. I nod once, and my skin prickles cold despite the sunlight warming Nora’s kitchen.
With the push of a button, the screen flares and the narrow alleyway appears, and my stomach flips as if I’ve been dropped into the scene playing out onscreen.
There’s no sound, but lights mounted on buildings and a few lampposts cast a faint glow against the cracked asphalt.
He’s timed the bird’s-eye view of the footage behind his restaurant to play right at the moment Beau and Gemma push through the door.
At the sight of her, my heart leaps into my throat.
She’s alive, and in a matter of minutes she won’t be.
Grief spikes hard and fast, but I swallow it back.
Their argument is already under way—hands waving, Gemma crowding Beau’s space, like she’s goading him.
He puts his hands up, keeping his face composed, shaking his head.
And then she shoves at him—once, like the final punctuation of their showdown.
And she turns to go. Beau watches her for a moment, lingering.
He glances left and right, then slips back through the door he came out of.
And then, like Marcus promised, I can see Gemma in the top left corner of the footage.
She’s walking away from the restaurant, past the employee parking lot, cutting a path behind the store to the left, which shares a wall with Lemon & Fig.
And then, from the dark stone mouth of an alcove, a hand—whose hand?
—reaches out, yanking her into the shadow of the arch and out of view.
Nora gasps.
But I lean forward, scouring the screen for any sign of who pulls Gemma into the darkness. And without asking for permission, I snap a photo of the final image, and the grainy, rounded sneaker toe that seems to step out of the alcove for a fraction of a second.
Marcus’s eyes are raw when I finally take my eyes off the phone to look up at him.
“I’d have told you if I thought Beau was in trouble,” he says to me.
“I don’t know why someone leaked the footage of them leaving together, but whoever’s seen that has probably seen this too.
Beau didn’t hurt Gemma.” The ache behind his eyes is for Beau.
“He’s worried about you. He’s sorry. He wants you to come home. ”
Brokering peace.
The words circle above my head. Beau has deputized his best friend to negotiate a truce.
I want to ask whether Beau told Marcus anything about Redwood, but Marcus is risking something by showing me this. I can’t let my anger with Beau spill over.
At least I have one answer—Beau didn’t strangle Gemma. He couldn’t have. Relief sweeps through me at that revelation.
Part of me wants to stay angry, but I can’t shake the question Nora asked me last night.
What do you want to happen next?
I want Beau. I want the answers he’s hiding, and I want them to not be so treacherous that they tear us apart. Because I want our life together. The lazy mornings and the way he can turn everything into something fun. I want his smile. I want him.
And wanting all that means I’ll have to face whatever he’s keeping in the dark.