14 Marley
Marley
“Will you guys come upstairs with me?” Juliet asked Marley and Suzy. She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from fidgeting. “Maybe he’s still asleep.”
Was she nervous because Josh wasn’t here, or was she nervous to see him?
They had never gotten to the bottom of what had happened between Josh and Juliet the evening prior.
Conversation about the notes had distracted them.
Now there was a frisson of dread in the air that Marley couldn’t ignore.
If Josh had hurt Juliet . . . Her own hands clenched into fists at the thought.
“Sure. Of course we’ll come,” Marley said. She paused next to Marshall and put her hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll be fine. You go.”
Marley had about a million questions for Juliet, and she didn’t want to ask them in front of the group—certainly not in front of Gemma, who did not belong here, as far as Marley was concerned.
Lincoln was dead, and that was bad enough.
But to have an outsider here while they dealt with it .
. . it just made an already very wrong situation feel even worse.
At least Grant and their daughters were still over at the guesthouse.
The last thing they needed was his goofy energy and their camera lenses.
Hopefully he’d drunk enough of that Shizzy’s crap to sleep for a week.
“I have to change out of these clothes anyway,” Suzy said, shuddering.
Marley got up on shaky legs, and the three of them walked to the stairs.
They passed by all the guest rooms on the second floor and took the stairs up to Juliet and Josh’s third-floor hideaway.
There were only a few rooms on that floor, including a smaller guest room, a large bathroom, and the former theater room that Hazel had turned into the nursery and play area.
As they walked, Marley recalled thinking yesterday about the privacy this room afforded Juliet and Josh and now wondered if there was another, less romantic reason the two of them craved privacy. The thought made her blood curdle.
“Have you not seen him this morning?” Marley asked, holding tight to the handrailing as they ascended to the top floor.
Lincoln is dead. Lincoln is dead. Every time the words crossed her mind, her knees jellified.
“I didn’t sleep in our room last night,” Juliet said, barely glancing over her shoulder at them.
She seemed unusually tense, Marley thought.
But then again, they all were. “I was up here for a while, but I couldn’t sleep, and I thought a change of scenery might help, so I crashed in one of the other guest rooms downstairs. ”
Marley and Suzy exchanged a look. Was this true, or did Juliet maybe not want to deal with Josh, so she’d gone off somewhere to hide?
Clearly this whole Lincoln-Beckham-paternity thing was not something that was going to go away any time soon.
Marley could still hear the rage in Josh’s voice as he attacked Lincoln the night before.
I’m going to end you!
Her entire core filled with anxiety. He couldn’t have meant it, could he? He wouldn’t actually kill Lincoln. Suddenly she thought she might understand Juliet’s heightened tension. She was afraid of what they might find in the room she shared with her husband. Josh could be hurt somewhere. Or worse.
All the way down the carpeted hall, Marley held her breath. Juliet walked to her door and very quietly turned the knob. She pushed open the door, and they all peeked inside. The bed was perfectly made. Not a pillow was out of place. There was no sign of Josh.
Juliet pushed into the room and strode over to the bathroom. The lights were off, and all was quiet save for the rain battering the windows. Marley thought she could hear the waves crashing in the distance, but that wasn’t possible, was it? They were blocks from the ocean.
“He’s not here.” She opened the closet. “But all his stuff is.”
“Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house, then,” Marley said. She thought about the many rooms and floors and nooks and crannies of this place and felt exhausted all over again. If he’d passed out somewhere else like Juliet had, it could take hours to find him.
“Should we try calling him?” Suzy asked, clearly thinking the same.
Marley was the only one with her phone on her. Juliet and Suzy both watched as she called, Juliet gnawing on the side of her thumb. After three rings it went to voice mail. Marley hung up and texted him.
Where are you? call Me or Juliet. Theres a 911 situation.
Juliet let out a sigh and turned back to the closet, pulling out a pair of cashmere sweatpants and yanking them on.
She discarded her wet T-shirt on the floor of the bathroom, exposing her bare breasts while she searched the closet, eventually choosing a cozy-looking Wisconsin sweatshirt that had to belong to Josh.
Marley stared at the school’s logo for a second, then said, “Juliet, when Gemma found you and Josh fighting yesterday . . . Had he . . . Does he . . . ever hit you?”
Marley held her breath. There had been a part of her that had suspected, for a very long time, that Josh might be that kind of guy.
The kind of guy who took his frustrations out on his wife.
Who turned something small into something big just so that he could justify snapping.
Certainly learning that his wife had had sex with one of his best friends and his son might not be his son was something that didn’t need to be inflated.
Was that what Gemma had walked in on? Had Josh snapped?
Juliet walked over to the bedside table, picked up a random glass knickknack, then placed it down again. “I don’t want to talk about this with you two,” she said.
Marley could feel the tension coming off her from six feet away.
“What do you mean, with us? We’re your best friends,” Suzy said, incredulous.
“Yeah, right. Like you don’t judge me every chance you get,” Juliet snapped. “You with your perfect marriages and perfect little monogamous, wholesome lives. You two couldn’t even begin to understand what my relationship with Josh is about.”
“Juliet!” Suzy said with a gasp.
“So tell us,” Marley said flatly. “Explain to us what it’s about.”
“It’s about passion, all right? It’s about excitement and spontaneity and yeah, maybe a little bit of fear, but what’s wrong with that?
It’s exhilarating. I love an adrenaline rush.
It keeps things interesting. I’d die if I had to live in the suburbs and only sleep with one person the rest of my life. ”
Oooookay, Marley thought. Who’s judging who here?
“Fine. No one said you have to live like us,” she said. “But if he’s hurting you—”
“Just drop it, all right?” Juliet said shortly. She huffed a sigh and stuffed her hands under her arms. “Lincoln is dead, and Josh is missing. I feel like there are other things to focus on right now.”
For a long moment, the three of them stood there, listening to the rain pelting the windowpanes, the wind rattling the eaves.
“Fine. I’m going to go get dressed. I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” Suzy told them.
“I’ll get my phone from the other room. In case Josh calls.
” Juliet didn’t seem too confident, but she went.
Left alone, Marley took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart.
If Juliet didn’t want to talk to them right now, fine.
She wasn’t wrong. There were other things to focus on.
But Marley would get her to open up eventually.
Clearly there was something going on, and she didn’t want anything to happen to Juliet.
Especially when she might be able to prevent it.
Marley could tell the storm had gotten worse.
She went to the windows and couldn’t even see the trees that surrounded the grounds, there was so much fog and rain.
But she could hear them creaking and cracking, sometimes almost moaning.
The wind rattled the house, and she wondered what had become of the tents.
Had the catering company taken them down?
If not, they were likely somewhere halfway across the Atlantic.
Where the hell was Josh? He had to be in the house somewhere. Because if he was out there . . .
Suddenly, an odd, prescient chill shivered down Marley’s spine, and her shoulders curled up toward her ears.
It was that odd feeling again, like there was someone in the room with her.
She glanced around, but of course she was alone.
Even so, she felt embarrassed. There was no one skulking around the house, spying on her. She had to get ahold of herself.
“Mrs. Foster?”
“Holy—” Marley’s hand flew to her throat, her heart beating frantically. Candice hovered in the doorway, where she hadn’t been half a second ago. Her shoulders were hunched, and she was chewing on her bottom lip.
“Omigod! I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” Candice’s voice was teary, her face blotchy and red. “I just wanted to see, you know, if you need anything.”
“Candice, are you okay?” Marley asked.
The girl shook her head and started crying. Marley went over and hugged her. She’d only ever seen Candice a few times in her life, but she’d been employed by Lily and Lincoln for at least six years. Of course she was losing it just like the rest of them.
“Why don’t you go back to your apartment?” Marley suggested. “You don’t have to wait on us. This whole thing is a shock to everyone, including you.”
“Yeah, I know. But, like, I need to have something to do, you know?” Candice said, shaking her hands in front of her like they were wet, though they weren’t. “Otherwise I won’t be able to stop thinking about . . . about . . .”
On the terrace, the chairs scraped slowly past the sliders, making a creepy whining noise.
“I get it.” Marley squeezed the woman’s upper arm. “Here, you want something to do? Help me get the furniture inside.”
Candice actually seemed excited by the idea of diving into the hurricane. She really was desperate.