danger of this moment. A name tag was clipped to the front of her dress. The secretary, then.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Avery?” Luce’s voice faded away as the door swung shut behind me. I moved fast, practically running down the hall. I pushed through the closest exit, into the crisp morning end-of-summer air, sucking in a deep breath.
Goddamn Connor. He knew. The girl he was arguing with in the shadows—the one who’d swung a pillar at Parker. I saw them through the cracks in the window, near the edge of the yard—her face just out of frame. He saw it happen, and he lied. Choosing his allegiance, then and now.
I could see her perfectly, that girl in the shadows. Knuckles white. I pictured the look in her eyes as she stumbled backward. Could see it clearly, in a way I never could before. Fear, yes, but anger, too.
Faith. It had been Faith.
CHAPTER 24
I sat in the car outside the hospital, my hands shaking. Pulling out that sheet of paper with our names, unfolding it again. Adding one more name to the end of the list:
Faith—9 p.m.
She’d been there. Sometime after Parker arrived but before the window was broken.
I could barely focus on the drive home, feeling nothing but a white-hot rage surging through my bones.
If the case was reopened, like I believed, the police were looking at a person who had been at the party. They were looking at that list of names again.
But there was one more name. A name the police didn’t even know about. Someone who wasn’t even supposed to be there.
* * *
CONNOR KEPT CALLING WITH a frequency that I found alarming. I had watched each call come through, listened to each ring until it went to voicemail. But then it would start up again a few moments later, and I began to worry that something had happened. Sadie’s dedication was the next day. I wondered if the investigation had changed anything. The next time the phone started up, I answered on speaker. “Hello?”
“Where are you,” he said by way of greeting.
“On my way back. Is everything okay?” The coastal highway was much emptier heading north on a Monday, so much different from the Sunday commute out of town.
“I was worried. You said you would call, and you didn’t.”
“Sorry. I started driving straight after talking to Luce.”
A pause. “What did she tell you? What did you find out?”
No longer curiosity but a test, and I couldn’t tell where his allegiance remained. “Oh, I’m sure you already know.”
A stretch of silence, everything unraveling between us in the gap. “No.”
“You didn’t know Faith was the girl who broke the window?” I came up fast on the car ahead of me, veered around it without pausing. I had to slow down, calm down, but my fingers tightened on the wheel. “You didn’t know she was fighting with Parker Loman and took a swing at him?”
“No. No. I mean, I saw her there. I knew she was upset. I knew she was there to confront Parker, but I told her to leave. I sent her home. Jesus, she was furious with me, probably still is. Accused me of being a traitor. She didn’t know why I was there.”
“Well, you missed it. The fight. She was pissed and took a stone pillar to his head. She missed Parker and hit the window instead.”
“Listen, Faith wouldn’t hurt someone . . .”
His words trailed off, and in the gap of silence, I laughed. “But I would, isn’t that what you mean?”
He didn’t answer.
“She swung it at his head.”
“The window wasn’t even broken, right? She probably didn’t swing it that hard. Maybe she just wanted to scare him. Let him know she was upset.”
“Give me a break, Connor.” As if that were the narrative he wanted to believe about both Faith and himself. That he had not latched himself on to two girls from his youth, each of whom had the power to harm, to rage. Because what did it mean for him that he saw something in the both of us that he liked—that he loved?
“You don’t know her anymore, she’s . . .”
“She’s what?”
“Smaller, somehow. Like she surrendered and gave up.”
“That doesn’t sound like Faith.” Not the girl I used to know, sneaking in houses with me, speaking her mind, fearing nothing—the perpetual bounce in her step. But I remembered how she looked when I saw her at the B&B the week before, quiet and reserved. The clipped words, the fake