27 Gemma
Gemma
“Wait, I thought you two were here because Lincoln was thinking about hiring Grant,” Sean said, putting his hands on his hips.
“We are,” Grant said. He looked confused and like he was suddenly unsure of his place in the room. “But we’ve also known Lincoln and Lily forever. Lily was in our wedding.” He tilted his head and looked at Gemma as if to say, Was I not supposed to tell them that?
“Oh, you’re kidding! You’re Gem!” Suzy crowed, putting Wintour down on the floor. She immediately ran over to Vienna, who scooped her up. “Her international friend!”
Gemma found that her knees were quivering. She pressed one hand into the arm on the furniture and held herself up as she faced them. Sweat beaded at her temples and under her arms.
“Guilty as charged,” she said. “We were best friends back in college.”
“How did none of you know this?” Daisy asked, amused. She and Cole had moved over to the dining table and were now both standing there, munching on fruit salad and watching the proceedings like fans from the bleachers.
“I don’t understand. How is it I’ve never met either of you?” Marshall asked. “Lincoln and Lily threw parties like every other week.”
“We live in Atlanta,” Grant explained. “We only ever really saw them when Gemma and her sorority sisters did their annual trip to the BVI.”
“That’s why you made such a point of saying your name had the hard G,” Marley said, narrowing her eyes. “You wanted to throw us off your scent.”
Hugging herself, Gemma began to shiver. “I wouldn’t exactly categorize it that way. But Lily didn’t want you all to know who I was.”
There was a huge gust of wind outside, and something crashed. No one in the room even winced. Gemma’s last words had stunned all of them into a stupor. Vienna handed the dog off to Florence and started filming. Gemma didn’t even have the wherewithal to try to stop her.
“What does that mean, Lily didn’t want us to know who you were?” Hazel demanded, stalking across the room and skirting around the others to get right in Gemma’s face. “What does Lily have to do with anything?”
Up close, Hazel looked older. Gemma could see the tiny lines around her eyes. The sweat caught in the wispy hairs across her upper lip. Her eyes were so bloodshot, Gemma couldn’t have counted the red lines within them if she’d tried. She closed her own eyes, took a breath, and spoke.
“I delivered the notes. Lily wrote them.”
There was a beat of silence as rain pelted the sliders behind Gemma. And then, Suzy’s voice: “What!?”
“It was her idea,” she said again, shaking. “She was pissed off you guys were all coming out here together without her, so she thought . . .”
“She thought she’d mess with us,” Juliet said. “It was a prank. One of her stupid pranks.”
“Classic Lily,” Marley said under her breath.
“Dang, Mom,” Florence said. Gemma couldn’t tell if she was appalled or impressed.
“A prank! Classic Lily!?” Hazel blurted, throwing her arms up as she backed away from Gemma. “This is the person you all worship? She used her friend to manipulate all of you, and it got Lincoln killed!”
“What are you even talking about?” Daisy asked. “What notes?”
“They keep talking about these notes,” Cole muttered through a mouthful of food. “Damned if I know.”
“She was really pissed,” Gemma said. “I didn’t know what any of the notes said, for the record. Not until you guys told me.”
“I can’t believe this,” Hazel said, covering her face with both hands.
“But wait . . . I don’t understand one thing,” Marley said.
“How did Lily know all of this stuff about Lincoln? We only . . . I mean Marshall only talked to me about giving up on adoption a couple nights ago. So you guys must’ve had that conversation recently .
. . ?” She looked at her husband for confirmation, and he nodded. “But they’ve been divorced for months.”
Gemma’s heart pounded in her throat. She wiped her palms on the sides of her still-wet sweater and looked warily at Hazel.
“Didn’t you all hear what I just said? Lincoln and Lily talk, like, all the time,” Daisy said, popping a grape in her mouth. She shot Hazel a look, like, Sorry-not-sorry. “He told her literally everything.”
Hazel just stared. Gemma’s heart went out to the woman.
Before she’d gotten here, Hazel was a standard villain in Gemma’s mind.
The woman who had cheated with her best friend’s husband and stolen everything Lily had.
But she was also just a human being. And she’d not only lost her husband but was being dragged through the wringer over and over again.
Gemma cleared her throat. “She said he kept calling her, and she couldn’t say no.” She shot Hazel an apologetic look. “I guess old habits . . .”
“Unreal,” Suzy said under her breath. “You’re right, Daisy. No wonder Lily can’t get herself sober.”
Hazel’s shoulders were slumped. She looked at Gemma. “So then I guess it’s true?”
“Like I said, I don’t know what was in the notes,” Gemma told her. “But it seems like all of the others were, so . . .”
“Wait, what are you two talking about?” Suzy asked, wagging her finger between the two of them.
Gemma shrugged. Yes, she had been aware all along that Hazel had lied when she said she didn’t get a note, but who the hell knew what Lily had said to her?
When Lily had asked her to deliver the notes, Gemma could tell from her friend’s conspiratorial tone that the contents weren’t going to be happy, optimistic words of welcome.
But she had never imagined they’d contain such damning information.
She’d thought maybe they’d be admonishments.
Confessions of how they had all made Lily feel to put a bit of a damper on their week—punishment for coming here without her.
That seemed like something Lily might do.
But these secrets? They were beyond the pale.
“I got a note too,” Hazel said finally. Ignoring Suzy’s gasp of shock, she continued, “It said that Lincoln never changed the will and Lily would get everything.”
“Bingo,” Daisy said.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Marley asked.
“Why should I?” Hazel asked tiredly. She looked like a shell of her former self. “It’s not like any of you would sympathize. You’re Lily’s friends. And my husband just died. I didn’t exactly feel like focusing on some stupid prank.”
It wasn’t until that moment that Gemma understood how lonely and isolated Hazel must feel.
Not only had she lost her person, but she was surrounded by people who saw her as an outsider and interloper in her own home.
A home that now wasn’t even hers anymore, if Lily was telling the truth.
It was kind of a miracle she was standing.
“Yeah, but it gives you a motive. Just like the rest of us!” Juliet accused.
“Actually, it does the exact opposite,” Hazel said quietly. “If he left me with nothing, why would I want him dead?”
Outside, lightning flashed, the loud rumble of thunder coming half a second later.
Juliet, for the first time since Gemma had met her, looked chagrined.
Without another word, Hazel turned on her heels and walked toward the hallway where her room and the kids’ room were, disappearing around the corner.
“So you really had no idea what she’d written?” Marley said slowly. Her arms were crossed over her stomach, and she stared at the floor as she spoke, but she angled her body toward Gemma. “All those awful secrets about us. About Lincoln.”
“I really need to see these notes,” Daisy said.
“No. She just told me where to place each one. That’s it,” Gemma said, surprised by how desperate she was for these people to believe her.
“Wow, you are a really good actor, Gemma,” Suzy said, walking over to stand right next to Marley as they faced off. “We had that whole conversation about those notes right in front of you, and you acted like you knew nothing.”
Gemma’s fight-or-flight instinct was heavily leaning toward flight, but there was nowhere to go.
“Hey! Back off my mom!” Vienna said, walking over to get between them. “She just told you she didn’t know anything.”
“But she knew who wrote them,” Juliet said. “All this time.”
“So what?” Florence demanded, joining the fray, the little dog cuddled in her arms. “You’re the ones who sucked her into your bizarre disfunction. It’s not her fault you’re a bunch of backstabbing assholes.”
“Florence!” Gemma scolded. Though she did feel secretly proud and pleased that they were sticking up for her.
“She’s not wrong,” Sean said flatly.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Gemma said then. “I . . .”
Her stomach turned. She felt oddly hollowed out inside, like someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop to her innards.
Did they really believe she would have delivered those notes if she had one inkling of where it would lead?
Did they think she’d bring her children into this house if she in any way imagined murder might be on the table?
“I didn’t think—” Her voice cracked, and she started again. “I didn’t think this would happen.”
There was a flash of lightning so bright it was blinding, and a simultaneous boom that shook the entire house. And then, the power went out.