Chapter Three
Now
All that wine I’d forced down almost made a reappearance when the screen behind Chelsea changed to a photo of my mother and me.
In it, she was standing on the dock, the lake behind her winking in the late-afternoon sun. A flame azalea was tucked behind her ear, and her cheeks were bright with color and warmth. I was just a baby, toothless and grinning.
It was jarring, how much I had grown to look like her, though there had been no brightness in my face for a long time. We had the same sun-streaked, dark blond hair that we kept at our shoulders; the same round brown eyes and the same dark freckles dusting our cheeks and chests.
It made me feel both terribly close to her and unbearably alone.
I screwed my eyes shut when the screen changed again to a picture I hadn’t been expecting. One that was somehow worse.
This photo was not of my mother but of Stephanie Bennett. The dead girl, I thought before I could stop myself, the woman’s cruel words from earlier making my teeth ache.
She was standing in front of Black Bass, the cabin the four of us had shared as counselors that summer—Steph, Chelsea, Margo, and me—arms thrown in the air, her smile effortless and face-splitting.
A pair of my sunglasses perched on her head.
Everything came rushing back, in a way that almost knocked me out of my chair.
The memories were vivid, gut-churning, and it was all happening again.
She was burning alive again.
I wanted to jump out of my skin, flee the premises, flee the state. As Chelsea spoke, tears dripped down my face. So much for holding it together.
Having to face my mother’s memorial tomorrow was going to be hard enough. But watching a slideshow of more photos of that summer was going to fully break me in half.
Only when I rubbed my fist to my eye did I turn my head and see her, sitting at one of the press tables.
I wasn’t sure how I’d missed that violent red lip.
Her once waist-long hair was chopped into a stick-straight bob that now fell just above her shoulders, making her somehow prettier and more severe.
I couldn’t read her name tag from here, but it didn’t matter—I already knew what it said: Margo Pierce, The Atlanta Times.
Even if she hadn’t been clearly identified as a reporter, you could tell by looking at her that she didn’t belong.
It was in the way she was sitting, maybe; back ramrod straight, chin lifted so that she was perpetually looking down at you, hand gripped around her champagne flute like she might be about to use it as a weapon.
Or maybe it was in the way that her lips were pursed, in near-permanent disapproval, like she couldn’t believe she’d somehow ended up here, of all the places in the world.
Like she’d been kidnapped, forced against her will to drive the winding mountain pass into the dense forest, down the curvy, three-mile road that spit you out onto the shores of Lady’s Lake.
Part of me wanted to stand and go to her, figure out what the hell she was doing here, but I couldn’t cause a scene. Mostly I just didn’t want to talk to her. I was embarrassed, even years later, that she’d never answered any of my texts or calls.
Chelsea was still speaking, the whole room hanging on her every earnest word.
She was doing her gracious hostess duty of scanning the crowd, a pageant-worthy smile spread wide across her face.
I wondered, with a stab of guilt, if there was anyone in the crowd who’d simply assumed she was Anita’s daughter.
Could she have invited Margo here? It seemed impossible, knowing what they thought about each other. Knowing how broken we’d all left things.
But somehow, here Margo was, sitting at a table at the welcome dinner.
There was no question that it was her, and yet my brain was having such a hard time computing it that I thought there was a distinct chance that the wine and the heat and the stress of it all had somehow collided to conjure this single, shocking hallucination.
“At Dread’s Cove, we think of Stephanie Bennett fondly,” came Chelsea’s voice, cutting through the roaring of blood in my ears.
“And although her life ended far earlier than it should have, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she’s smiling down on all of us.
That she, like Anita, would be nothing but proud to see this place finally open its doors again. ”
It made me nauseous, hearing her speak about Steph that way. I remembered all the things she’d said about Steph—and about me—the night she’d died.
“And that’s what this weekend is all about. An opportunity for us to celebrate the resilience of Dread’s Cove. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are to see so many of you back here in the mess hall tonight. There was a time when we didn’t think this would be possible.”
I scanned the room, desperate to lock eyes with someone, to point out Margo and make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Someone else had to see her, to confirm her existence.
My gaze snagged on Trevor Townsend, and my heart bumped painfully up against my rib cage.
I could see only the back of his head, but I knew instinctively that it was him.
I would be able to find him in any room, in any universe, try as I might to avoid him entirely.
My hands flexed, some long-dormant part of me aching to run my hands through his hair—like Wes, he’d grown it out, and it was longer than I’d ever seen it.
It was such an unwelcome, distracting urge that I cracked my neck looking away, desperate to banish any more thoughts of him.
But God, I still missed him so much that I wanted to throw myself into the lake. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold him and punch him and make him cry like he’d made me cry.
The sound of a chair scraping backward caught my attention, but I didn’t need to look to know it was Margo. Fleeing outside, likely overwhelmed by the influx of memories. She must have had nightmares about that night, too, though I’d never been able to ask her.
I fought the urge to go after her. I didn’t even know what I would say. Worse, I didn’t know what she would.
No, my official stance on Margo Pierce for the rest of this weekend would be to stay out of her way and hope she stayed out of mine.
Hope that whatever story she was planning to write for the Times was simple, straightforward, and didn’t call us all FUCKING MURDERERS, like she had the morning after the fire.
It’s not that I hadn’t fantasized about seeing her again. I had. I knew we were both living in the city, and not surprisingly, she was far more successful than me. Not writing novels yet, like she used to talk about, but interviewing all of Atlanta’s best and brightest for the Times.
Sometimes, I’d imagine running into her while walking the Beltline, or standing in line at a coffee shop. Or maybe she’d even come into Dogwood House and ask me to make her a drink before we both recognized each other.
We’d pause, then smile, embrace. I’d say I was sorry, and so would she. We’d pledge to start fresh and move forward. To be the friends we might have been, if the circumstances had been different.
We’d forget everything that happened that summer. Everything we became. All the wonderful and wicked ways we were willing to change and bend and break for Steph Bennett.
And the ways we were both still haunted by her, even now.