Chapter Eight
The rain starts on a Friday morning, and unlike our usual summer storms, it doesn’t peter out after half an hour or so.
It begins early, before I’ve even left my trailer.
Not the hard pounding of an afternoon thunderstorm, but a steady drip-drip-drip, off the eaves of the inn, pattering on the ocean waves, dimpling the sand and soaking the baskets of begonias on the front porch.
It sounds soothing, and a different woman would take it as an invitation to stay in bed, settle in with a good book and mugs of tea until the skies cleared.
Unfortunately, I’m not that kind of woman.
By lunch, the whole first floor of the inn smells like the ocean, and not in a pleasant, sea-breeze kind of way. It’s a dank, rotted scent that brings to mind slimy seaweed and dead fish tangled in plastic.
There are only three other groups staying at the inn besides Lo and August: a family of four from Tennessee who spend the afternoon arguing over a game of Monopoly in the lobby, an older couple on their honeymoon who stay in their room, and a pair of girls in their twenties who, as I see when I glance out the big windows, are filming TikTok dances on the beach, rain be damned.
“They shouldn’t be out there,” Edie says, coming to stand next to me, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her fingernails are painted turquoise, and they’re bright against her black shirt but ragged and a little raw, like she’s been biting them.
“Unless getting struck by lightning is some new internet challenge.”
“It’s not even thundering,” I tell her, only to be made a liar literally two seconds later when a boom rattles the windows and makes the girls on the beach shriek.
“Okay, so yeah, they probably should come in,” I amend, turning away. “But I’m not their mom, and they’re adults, so—”
“GIRLS!”
I flinch as Edie’s voice booms out the back door; she has one hand cupped around her mouth. “LIGHTNING!” she shouts, and they wave, gathering up their soaked towels and clear plastic beach bags.
“Whoooo, I forgot the set of lungs you have on you!” Lo says, coming down the stairs.
She and Edie have still barely interacted, but I guess she’s decided there’s no sense in pretending they don’t know each other now that I’ve been filled in.
I can tell by the way Edie’s shoulders tense up that she would’ve been perfectly fine ignoring Lo and their history forever, but she turns to face Lo now, scowling.
“Yeah, I get loud when people are putting themselves in danger. Learned the hard way on that one.”
Now Lo is the one who flinches. Barely, almost imperceptibly, but I see it. Then her customary ain’t we havin’ fun expression reappears, and she continues down the stairs, a pair of leather mules flapping on her heels.
“Maybe if this book doesn’t work out, I can do whatever it is those young ladies were doing. Dancing for the internet?”
“When has anything ever not worked out for you?” Edie mutters under her breath, and Lo’s head snaps around quickly.
Her smile never wavers, but there’s venom in every word as she says, “Oh, I don’t know, Frieda.
Maybe when I sat in a jail cell for over a year waiting to go to trial for something I didn’t do?
Ooh, or maybe it was when I got to that trial and saw the same girl I’d once called a blood sister telling a bunch of fucking lies about me that could’ve gotten me the electric chair.
I feel like that’s probably a time that things didn’t really work out for me. ”
The girls are up on the porch now, giggling and talking over each other, but in the lobby, all the air seems to have been sucked out of the room, the three of us frozen in place as Edie and Lo stare each other down.
“Everything good?”
August appears at the top of the stairs, and even though he’s holding himself loosely, one ankle crossed in front of the other, a casual hand on the banister, I see him taking it all in and wonder how much of Lo’s outburst he overheard.
“Peachy keen!” Lo singsongs back, and Edie takes a sharp inhale before saying something about checking the weather and vanishing into the office.
“Sorry about that,” Lo says as soon as she’s gone. “Guess I’d been holding that in for a while.”
I’m still too shocked to respond, but luckily, August changes the subject, nodding out the windows.
“Any idea when that’s clearing up?”
“Apparently not until this evening, at the earliest,” I say. I’d checked the weather report just an hour ago myself. “But that’s not unusual for this time of year. And it’s supposed to be pretty tomorrow.”
“This is how it was back in eighty-four,” Lo says, moving closer to the window. “I thought it would never stop raining that July. But then, of course, it turned out that July was just the appetizer. The real rain was biding its time way, way out in the ocean, building itself up into Marie.”
I follow her gaze out toward the water and think about how even now, miles and miles away, there’s a storm churning out in the Caribbean, gathering speed, getting hotter.
I saw that in the weather report, too, and I know it’s the same system that Edie’s been keeping her eye on.
It could fizzle away to nothing, or it could build itself into a monster.
Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Except wait.
THE FAMILY OF four check out later that afternoon, and since the girls went to see what fun could be had in town and the honeymooners seem perfectly content locked away on the second floor, I decide to take the evening to visit Mom.
She looks the same as always. Sometimes I feel like time has stopped at Hope House because nothing there ever seems to change, except the seasonal decorations at the front desk and down the hallways.
Same nurses, same faded bulletin boards, same blank expression on Mom’s face.
Even her outfits blend together, some version of a top, pants, and a sweater, slip-on Keds on her feet.
I stay longer than usual, watching an old episode of Dateline with Mom—or at least while I sit next to her, I guess.
“I know, I know,” I say, her hand cool and limp in mine.
“Me and my ‘murder shows.’ You always hated this kind of thing, but this TV has like three channels, so it’s this, sports, or home shopping. ”
Once again, I find myself waiting for a reply that isn’t going to come, and I sigh, laying my head on her shoulder.
“I wish I could talk to you,” I tell her softly.
“I wish you could tell me what Lo was like, and Edie, too. Frieda. I wish you could tell me why you kept all those articles about Lo, and if you really thought she killed Landon Fitzroy, and—”
Her hand spasms against mine, and I jerk my head up, looking at her face. “Mom?” I ask softly, and she doesn’t look at me, but her hand keeps moving, weakly flapping against my palm, and as I watch, a tear spills from the corner of her eye.
“Mom?” I say again, wiping the tear away with my thumb, but in the end, she only sighs once, then twice, and finally her hand goes still again, her expression distant as ever.
It gnaws at me the whole drive home, that shaking hand, that one tear. She’s had little reactions to other things before—a tapping finger when I played her a song she used to love, a soft smile once when I kissed her cheek before leaving. But those were all at least a couple of years ago.
I’m still thinking about it as I pull back into the tiny staff parking lot just off the inn’s main lot. The rain hasn’t stopped—if anything, it’s coming down a little heavier now—and I tug the hood of my rain jacket up before opening the car door.
Only to stop short when I see Edie’s truck is still in the lot.
I check the time on the dash. It’s past eight, and Edie never stays later than six, even if I’m not here. We have a night desk manager, Louisa, who comes in then and handles things until Edie returns at 6 AM, and of course I’m always on call throughout the night just in case.
Louisa’s little red Mazda is in its usual spot, and as I jog through the puddle-filled parking lot, I wonder if it’s the rain that made Edie stay late. She hates driving in it, but she hates not being home by dark even more. It would surprise me if it was enough to keep her here.
The lobby is empty, the inn quiet. Louisa sits behind the desk, playing on her phone, and doesn’t even bother looking guilty when I come in. “Been dead,” she says, not raising her eyes from the screen.
“Yeah, hardly any guests here right now,” I say, then glance around. “Have you seen Edie?”
“Nope,” she replies. “Figured she’d already left. I didn’t see her when I got here.”
“Her truck is still in the lot,” I say, but Louisa only shrugs and flips her strawberry-blond braid over her shoulder.
“Didn’t see her,” she reiterates, and for the first time, something like worry starts tickling the back of my brain.
Louisa’s been here since six. That’s two hours, and if something had gone wrong, something that required Edie staying so long past quitting time, she would have either texted me to let me know or mentioned it to Louisa.
There are no messages on my phone, though, and when I glance over at the walkie-talkies lined up behind the front desk, Edie’s is firmly in its cradle. That’s always the last thing she does before leaving, putting her radio back.
I shoot her a quick text, and as I wait for a reply, I check the back office, the staff kitchen, even the laundry room despite Edie frequently telling me, “I’ll do a lot around here, Geneva, but I ain’t doing laundry.”
No sign of her.
No reply to my text, either.
Moving back into the lobby, I dial her number. It starts ringing, but after five rings, it goes to voicemail, Edie gruffly saying she’ll get back to me while sounding like that’s the last thing in the world she intends to do.
I’ve teased her about that message before, but now it makes my skin feel hot and cold at the same time, because something is wrong. Edie’s truck is here, and Edie’s radio is here, but Edie doesn’t seem to be, and I move to the back door, trying her number again as I pace up and down.
“Maybe she’s asleep in one of the rooms,” Louisa suggests as Edie’s cell starts ringing again. I’m about to tell her that Edie would never do that, that once you’ve spent as much time in these rooms as we both have, they’re the last place you can think of relaxing, but then I hear a noise.
Edie’s phone is still droning in my ear, but there’s another, tinnier sound somewhere nearby. It’s distant and hard to hear over the rain, but then my brain makes sense of the sound, twisting it into something familiar.
“Free Bird.”
Edie’s ringtone.
My heart leaps, and I end the call, then immediately dial again, opening the back door and stepping out onto the porch.
The song is still faint, but it’s louder out here, and I pull my cell phone away from my ear, calling out, “Edie?” over the rain and waves.
There’s no answer, and I start moving toward the corner of the porch where the ringtone seems to be coming from.
It gets louder as I turn the corner onto the side porch, narrower and darker than the main one facing the beach, nearly hidden by a row of overgrown azaleas my grandparents planted in the ’60s.
“Edie!” I yell out, stepping forward into the darkness only to feel my feet slip out from under me.
I land hard on my hip, my teeth catching my tongue sharply enough to make me gasp, rainwater cold on my bare legs beneath my shorts.
My phone has fallen out of my hand; I reach for it, fingers closing around it as I distantly hear Edie’s voicemail message start up again, and I look down at the screen, wanting to turn on the flashlight.
But something’s wrong with it, the light dimmer now, the words blurred, and for a second, I think maybe I dropped it too hard, maybe water got in it and that’s what’s making it look like there’s something smeared across the screen.
But then I realize that it’s blood—on the screen, on my legs—not rainwater. At first, I think it’s my blood, that I cut myself as I fell, cut myself so deep that I can’t even feel it.
It’s only when the phone’s flashlight beam lands on a pale hand with raggedy turquoise nails that I start to scream.