“I know.” She smiled at him. “But you’re already helping me enough. I think I can handle scrubbing up some sour milk.”
Harper’s father had gone to see the lawyer yesterday to sign the papers. The lawyer had made a special point of meeting Brian on a Saturday since it was hard for him to get off work during the week. The house wasn’t theirs yet, not officially, but it was only a matter of the papers being processed. So Harper thought she’d get a jump start on cleaning the place. She’d asked Daniel to help her, since she needed a boat to get out to the island and they were working on being friends.
The police had released the crime scene a few days before, but there was still yellow tape stuck to the door and around the trees where they’d found the body. Other than that, the place didn’t look like it had been disturbed much since Harper had seen it last, so she wondered how much digging around the police had even done.
If they did any fingerprinting, Daniel and Alex would have to make up a story. Gemma and Harper had plenty of reasons to have fingerprints there, since they’d both been out to Bernie’s many times.
But Harper wasn’t too worried about that. She, Alex, and Daniel had come up with an alibi for that night, which they’d already told the police: they were arguing with Gemma, and then she ran off with Penn, Lexi, and Thea.
Alex and Daniel could easily come up with logical reasons for being at Bernie’s place. Alex had visited with Gemma once, maybe. And Daniel delivered groceries to Bernie.
Both of those excuses would work, and the police would probably go back to pursuing the three unidentified sets of prints in the cabin. Harper seriously doubted the sirens had ever been fingerprinted.
“So are you moving out here, then?” Daniel asked, drawing Harper from her thoughts as she scrubbed milk off the kitchen tiles.
“What?” She glanced back to see him picking up all of Bernie’s books and putting them on the shelves.
“Now that you own the place, I was wondering if you’re going to move out here,” Daniel said. “Is that what we’re cleaning it up for?”
“No, I’m not moving out here.” She’d gotten the milk off the floor, so she stood up and wrung out her washcloth in the sink.
“Why not?” Daniel asked. “It’s a nice place.”
“No, I know. I just…” A strand of hair had come loose from her ponytail, and she tucked it behind her ear. “I’m leaving for college soon. And even if I wasn’t, there’s too many memories here.”
“Too many memories?” Daniel had finished putting all the books back on the shelf, and he moved on to uprighting the coffee table. “Aren’t they mostly good memories?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “But that last night was…”
She grabbed a garbage bag so she wouldn’t have to talk about the last time she’d been here, when she’d seen Bernie’s dead body and the horrible monsters attacking her and her sister.
“So what are you going to do with this place?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know,” Harper replied as she filled the bag with spoiled food and the garbage strewn about the floor. “Sell it, I guess.”
“Sell it?” Daniel scoffed. “Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t your dad just move out here?”
“He can’t,” Harper replied. “I mean, I guess he could, but he can’t sell his house, and he can’t really afford the upkeep on two places, especially on an island like this.”
“Why can’t he sell his house?” Daniel asked.
“He has, like, three mortgages on it,” Harper explained. “Nine years ago my mom and I were in a car accident, and she had a ton of medical bills. It was a drunk driver with no money or insurance, so all the bills fell on my dad.”
“Wow.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are.”
She’d filled the garbage bag, so she stopped to survey the house. They hadn’t even been cleaning that long, and it already looked so much better. It almost looked like when Bernie had lived here.
“It will be so weird to think of somebody else living here,” Harper said, more to herself than to Daniel. “I mean, this is Bernie’s Island.”
“It’ll always be Bernie’s Island,” Daniel assured her. “No matter who lives here, this will always be Bernie’s.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the place as best they could. If Brian did sell it, they would eventually have to get rid of all Bernie’s possessions, but Harper didn’t want to do that right now. She just wanted to get it clean.
The sun was starting to set when Harper flopped on the couch and called it quits.
“I think we did a good job,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” Daniel asked, grinning down at her. “We did an amazing job. You scrubbed a ring out from the bathtub that I’m certain had been there since that tub was installed.”
Harper laughed, but she didn’t argue with him. “Hey, when I do something, I do it right.”