Aster’s phone rang, a jarring bleep against the soft roll of waves and humming crickets. She sat up and glanced at the screen. “I’ll be back,” she whispered.
The screen door banged, and her footsteps creaked across the wood floor to the front of the house. Corinne stared into the room, which a cleaning crew had scrubbed after the rehearsal dinner. Not a single glass remained on a side table; the floor had been swept and the dining tables and chairs removed and folded up to be reused tomorrow, in the tent outside. The only indication that there would be a wedding the next day was a collection of silver-framed pictures of Corinne and Dixon on the mantel. Tomorrow, those images would greet the guests as they walked to the backyard. Corinne barely recalled the photos she and her cousins had chosen.
She wandered over to look at them, grabbing the whole assortment and carrying the photos back to the sunporch. The biggest one was of her and Dixon in New Haven, their junior year at Yale. She was on Dixon’s back, her legs splayed out playfully. Dixon had just had an interview for Skull and Bones, Corinne recalled, and he’d been thrilled because the guys who’d interviewed him had made it clear he was a front-runner to join the group. They were both beaming. Corinne couldn’t remember being that happy.
Another, in the left-hand corner, was taken at a party in this house’s backyard overlooking the sea. There were shots of the two of them alone—a baby picture of Corinne in a cotton eyelet dress, a shot of Dixon on a horse, Corinne again on the back patio at yet another party, her gaze fixed on something out of view. Corinne squinted at that particular photo, recognizing the floral Lilly Pulitzer dress she was wearing. She’d worn that dress only once: the night she’d discovered she was pregnant.
Corinne was the only person in focus; a swarm of other party guests spun around her in the background. Mason chatted with Penelope. Steven, blurry, tipped his head back and laughed. A blond waitress served him a drink on a tray, her arm outstretched. A couple kissed in the background.
She showed it to Rowan. “Who picked this photo?”
Rowan squinted hard. “Not me. Why?”
“It’s from the night Steven died,” Corinne pointed out.
“Hmm.” Rowan regarded it for a long time. “Well, you certainly look happy.”
Looks can be deceiving, Corinne thought. Especially that night.
Aster’s footsteps pounded back, and then she appeared in the doorway. Her face was flushed, she was breathing hard, and she carried an iPad in her right hand. “I have something to show you guys.”
She burst onto the sun porch and sat down. “So my date, Mitch, was able to access the lobby surveillance video the morning Poppy died. It’s on this, right now.”
Rowan wiped her eyes. “Wait. Foley said the video didn’t yield anything.”
Aster shrugged. “So? Maybe Foley didn’t know what to look for.” She looked up at them. “What if this shows us everything?”
Corinne scuttled forward, her heart suddenly pounding with the possibility. “Open it up!”
“Seriously.” Rowan sat upright.
Aster placed the iPad on the wicker coffee table, then touched an app icon labeled Remote Camera. A QuickTime video appeared. A clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen said that the video feed was from 6:30 a.m. on Friday, May 6—the date of Poppy’s death. The screen split into four separate camera images, each of a different view of the Saybrook’s building. One was a side door that went straight to a back elevator. Another was a side-street entrance for maintenance workers. The third was the main entrance, where employees swiped their IDs through a turnstile or signed in with a guard. The fourth quadrant was a set of emergency stairs that led to the street.
They kept watching, the picture black-and-white and occasionally speckled with static. In a few moments there was Poppy herself, walking through the main entrance. Everyone jumped. Corinne clapped a hand over her mouth. It was like seeing a ghost.
Poppy gave the security guard a distracted wave and walked through the turnstile. Corinne touched Poppy’s face on the screen.
Rowan leaned forward. “She looks . . . good.” Her voice was choked.
“Busy,” Aster agreed. There were tears in her eyes. “But not scared.”
“She doesn’t know she’s going to die,” Corinne whispered.