Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“But not to us,” Violet intones. “Those of us who knew and loved her got together with one goal—to make Ronan pay for what he did.”
“Wait,” I say, struggling to keep up. “Let me get this straight. You did all of this to scare Ronan?”
Violet sighs. “It’s not quite like that.”
“It’s exactly like that,” Heather says. “I told you there had to be an easier way.”
“It wasn’t just about fear,” Violet tells me. “We wanted to strip him of his emotional defenses. Get him exhausted and desperate and to a point where he’d say anything to get off this island.”
A laugh bursts out of me. A single disbelieving bark that echoes across the lake. This is, without a doubt, the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.
“Why would you go to all that trouble?”
“To get him to confess,” Julianne says.
“To what?”
This still seems too silly to be real, and I’d be certain they were joking if not for Violet, whose expression is as serious as a tombstone.
“Killing Elise,” she says.
“Not directly,” Julianne adds.
Heather confirms it with a nod. “But it was all his fault.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, overwhelmed to the point of wooziness. It’s so much information. Too much. “You just told me she overdosed.”
Violet steps away from the others, taking center stage. “She did. After learning that one night, without her knowledge or consent, Ronan recorded a video of them having sex.”
“Are you sure he’s the one behind it?” It’s not that I don’t believe it happened.
It just doesn’t seem like something Ronan would do.
The fact that he’s likely a heartless lothario doesn’t mean he’d also film a woman without her permission.
That’s a whole other level of villainy. “Maybe someone filmed them without his knowledge.”
Susie whips out her phone, and I realize she’s had it the entire time. All of them have. It’s just me and Ronan who’ve gone without ours this whole week, a fact that nudges me closer to his side.
But then Susie shoves her phone in my face and I know that would be the wrong choice.
Because flickering across the screen is a video of Ronan.
Despite the grainy quality, its clearly him, naked and looming over a blond woman lying on her stomach.
Although a pillow obscures most of her face, she doesn’t seem to be aware of the camera.
Ronan, though, absolutely is. He looks directly at it, flashing a dirty smile and a wink before entering the woman from behind.
“Yeah,” Susie says, putting the phone away. “We’re fucking sure. And then he sent it to one of his friends, who sent it to others. If I have it on my phone, imagine how many other people have seen it.”
“When Elise found out, she was devastated,” Violet says. “Ronan used and humiliated and exploited her.”
“But she wasn’t the only one,” Heather says. “He’s filmed himself with others.”
Susie folds her arms across her chest. “Five, that we know of.”
For a moment, I think I’m going to be sick. I recall the video Susie secretly took—which, in hindsight, was clearly an attempt to trap Ronan. He’d gotten so mad when she suggested filming them having sex. Most likely because he feared she knew all about those five other women.
“None of them are willing to go public,” Violet says with a judgmental sniff that I find unwarranted.
Yes, it’s disappointing, but I can’t blame them.
I think about how I’d react to such a thing happening to me.
Horror. Revulsion. Enough shame to scar me for life.
I’d be reluctant to come forward, too. I know how these things go.
The woman always pays a price, even if she’s the victim.
“If we went to the press, no one would believe us,” Susie adds.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Violet says. “Until a year ago, when Ronan introduced himself at a party. Imagine the trauma of that moment. There I was, face-to-face with the man who’d destroyed Elise’s life. Only he didn’t know that I knew.”
She tells me how Ronan tried to draw her in with the same easygoing charm he used on me. Saying that Violet was his idol. That he would do anything to work with her. On any project she wanted.
At that moment, she came up with a way to expose his misdeeds.
Get her producer sister to pitch him a movie he wouldn’t be able to resist. One based on a story they’d been obsessed with while growing up in Vermont.
One that allowed plenty of opportunities to blur the lines between the real and the supernatural.
Violet would, of course, star, and to sweeten the deal, they also offered to let Ronan write the screenplay.
Once it was finished, they enlisted three other actresses who had known and loved Elise—and were eager to make Ronan pay for what he’d done.
After that, Loretta started floating the idea to Ronan that spending a week on the real island of New Avalon would help the cast develop their characters and lend authenticity to the movie.
Now we’re here, engaged in some weird revenge mindfuck. It makes me think about Lindy Garrett, her texts, how she was completely right. I should have never set foot on this island. Because I do indeed regret it.
“Lindy knew what you were planning, didn’t she?” I say.
“A mistake on my part,” Violet says. “She also knew Elise. They’d met a few times at auditions. I thought that connection would be enough to convince her to help. Instead, when she learned what we had planned, she told us she wanted no part of it.”
“So she quit.”
“Loretta fired her before she could,” Violet says. “To show there are no hard feelings, Loretta even decided to give her some money. If she signed an NDA, of course. That’s why Lindy’s here in Vermont. To tie up any loose ends and get her money. Compensation for wasting her time.”
“What about my time?” I say, realizing that they might not have any intention of actually making this movie.
I hate how that’s my main concern after hearing what happened to Elise.
That I might lose my starring role, my SAG card, my hundred grand.
But it is. To deny it would be lying to myself.
“Let’s say your plan works, Ronan confesses, and his career is over.
What then? Are you still going to make this movie? ”
“Of course,” Violet says. “We wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if we weren’t.”
“But there’ll be no director,” I say.
“We’ll get a new one. A woman. Won’t that be nice?”
“And the script?” I say, knowing we can’t use one written by a sex creep.
“We’ll have it rewritten,” Violet says. “Start from scratch. Right now, we just need to finish what we started here. And we need your help.”
I hop to my feet, springing upward in surprise. “My help?”
“Tomorrow night’s séance is the last chance we have at getting Ronan to confess. You have to be a part of it. Ronan will be suspicious if you’re not. Susie, Heather, and Julianne can’t do it because they’re supposed to be missing. It’s just the two of us now, Marin.”
Violet pulls me aside, away from the others, her voice an urgent whisper in my ear.
“I know things like this matter to you. You showed no hesitation in calling out Ronan when you thought Susie was missing. Not a lot of actresses would have done that. Not to someone with Ronan’s power. Not when such a huge role was on the line. But you did, Marin.”
I did. Without even thinking about it. I saw what had seemed like bad behavior and was quick to point it out.
But that doesn’t make me special. At least it shouldn’t.
I was simply being a decent human being.
What they’re asking me to do now is different.
They want me to take part in a deception that, until literally a half hour ago, was also aimed at me.
“What if I hadn’t seen Susie, chased her down, and forced you to tell me everything?” I say. “What was my role supposed to be in all of this? Gullible witness?”
“Objective witness,” Violet says.
“So you admit you were trying to scare me, too,” I say. “Because it increased the odds of Ronan believing something weird was happening if I did as well.”
And that meant exploiting my past trauma.
I’m certain they all saw my audition tape and me talking so openly about Molly, about how I thought she had been haunting me.
That’s the reason I got the job. It wasn’t because of my “period look,” and it sure as hell wasn’t because of my acting skills.
They needed a true believer. Someone who would easily fall for mock séances, fake hauntings, mysterious disappearances that weren’t a mystery at all.
The fact that I eventually did makes me as angry with myself as I am with them.
“You used me,” I say, blood rising in my cheeks. “You used my dead sister.”
“We’re sorry,” Violet says. “It was wrong to do that.”
But they did it anyway. They stood there, watching me cry as I talked about my guilt over Molly’s death. They had Susie come to my window night after night, wet and dripping. They let me fear that they were lost, missing, dead.
“I was worried about you!” I look to Susie, Heather, and Julianne, their guilty stares making me even angrier. “Not to mention terrified that it was going to happen to me.”
“What we did was wrong, and we will all owe you deeply once this is over,” Violet says, trying to placate me. “Now, will you please help us?”
I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’m too angry and confused and overwhelmed to think straight. So, rather than answer, I start to walk away, shaking off Violet when she tries to grab me.
“Where are you going, Marin?” she says, more resigned than concerned.
“Back to my cottage.”
“You’re not going to tell Ronan, are you?”
I keep walking, leaving them waiting for an answer. They’re all still watching me. I can feel the heat of their stares on the back of my neck. All around me, the island’s insects continue to screech, forcing me to raise my voice as I finally respond.
“No fucking comment.”