I close my eyes, wondering if she had any idea what she had stumbled across. The enormity of that single domino she inadvertently tipped over, removing it from wherever she found it and keeping it as her own.
“Parker told me not to go,” Lucy says at last, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to tears in her eyes. “He said it was a bad idea, that my dad wouldn’t want me, and that I shouldn’t even be thinking of him as my dad, anyway. That real dads don’t hide from their daughters with hush money. And maybe I should have listened to him”—she shrugs, wiping her nose—“but I was angry, okay? He was telling me hard truths that I didn’t want to hear. After he died, there was nothing else keeping me in Fairfield. I had nothing left to lose.”
I find myself nodding along, all these pieces that have been floating around for the last nine months now pushed together to reveal something whole. It makes sense, all of it, and despite the fact that Lucy has lied about so much, despite the fact that she’s a master of manipulation, of misdirection and deceit, I find myself believing her now. I find myself wanting to somehow still make this work, wanting to simply give in to her web of secrets, so sticky and strong, because it’s easier that way. It’s easier not to fight them but to wrap myself up in them like a blanket, all silky and smooth as she crawls even closer, whispering her little lies in my ear. Because what the four of us had this year was good, real. I know it was, even if it wasn’t entirely honest. There is no way those moments were manufactured: socked feet sliding around Penny Lanes and fits of laughter so intense, so pure, I thought my sides might split like a busted seam. My conscience healing slowly like scar tissue, something thick and hard growing over the spot in my heart that was once so raw. Secrets whispered in the night, bashful truths and audacious dares that wound us all together, so maddeningly tight that sometimes it hurt.
And that’s the problem, I suppose, when so many lives become so intricately entwined: one snag, one single loose thread, and it all threatens to come undone.
“I didn’t kill Levi,” Lucy says now, drawing my attention back. “But that detective thinks I did.”
I look at her, eyebrows bunched.
“He brought me in for more questioning,” she continues. “People are saying they saw me follow him. That they saw us fighting. It’s the same thing all over again.”
“Maybe it really was an accident,” I say, mostly to myself, but Lucy is already shaking her head.
“His neck,” she says. “Those bruises.”
“Trevor?” I ask, the next logical option. “Maybe they kept fighting and it went too far?”
“I don’t know who it was, but I’m going to find out,” Lucy says. “And I’m going to turn them in. I’m not going down for this.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, but I see Lucy’s eyes widen, some new understanding dawning on her as she starts to back up. The rain outside has slowed to a steady trickle now, a handful of stars peeking out from behind a blanket of clouds, and it makes me think of that night on the roof again, Lucy’s hand in mine as she traced them for me. The constellations so close and clear it felt like I could reach out and grab them like a handful of sand.
“I don’t want to keep running,” she says, almost to herself. She backs up some more, closer to the doors, and I have the strange sensation that they’re hiding from us now, all those stars. Aware of some impending disaster they don’t want to witness. “I’m not going to take the fall.”
“You won’t have to,” I say. “Lucy, we’ll handle it.”
“Margot, I think it was—”
But before she can finish, I watch her expression twist into something haunted, something strange, her mouth wordless and wide before her gaze travels down to her stomach, a bloom of red erupting through her shirt.
CHAPTER 64
AFTER
I trail Detective Frank into the station, whatever he wants to talk to me about apparently important enough to require bringing me in.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to Sloane and Nicole earlier as they watched me ease into the back of his cruiser, their lips set into two twin thin lines. I tried to smile then, tried to exude a sense of calm and control, although the metal partition cutting the car in half made the whole thing feel like a prisoner transport, the skin on my wrist where those handcuffs once hung tingling with the memory. “I’ll meet you at the apartment when I’m finished.”
Frank is unusually quiet now as he leads me down a long beige hallway, the entire building smelling like burnt coffee and body odor. I wipe one palm against the leg of my jeans, the other gripping a cup of coffee I had accepted just so I could hold onto something. There are so many scenarios running through my mind right now; so many reasons for why I could be here.
They haven’t found Lucy, I know that for a fact, but there are the other things they must have found.
“I wanted to give you a heads-up before the news goes public,” Frank says at last. He stops in front of a closed door, putting his hand on the knob before turning to face me. “Some bombshells are about to come out about your friend. I wanted you to be prepared.”
“Bombshells,” I repeat, my heart picking up in my throat. “What kind of bombshells?”
He searches my expression, eyes flicking back and forth for information. Like he still can’t decide what I know and don’t know; what I’m sharing with the police and what I’m keeping for myself.
He sighs when he doesn’t find anything, turning back around and pushing the door open.
“I’d like for you to meet Lucy’s father,” he says. “Although I believe you two are already acquainted.”
My eyes widen at the sight of him, feigning surprise, although it is still strange to see him here: Mr. Jefferson, ripped out of one reality and implanted into the next. I used to imagine him visiting Rutledge during parents’ weekends; helping Eliza and me move into the dorm. Instead, I find him sitting on the far side of an interrogation table, his hands wringing nervously in his lap and his own cup of coffee sitting untouched in front of him.
“Margot,” he says, looking even more ragged than he did in December. That wiry beard flecked with gray; those wrinkles like scars, deep and jagged, the physical proof of his emotional pain. “Margot, honey, I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.”
I walk forward slowly, cautiously, slipping into the seat opposite him. It’s ironic: the two of us sitting at a table like this, cups of coffee between us like Christmas morning, two months ago, right before everything changed.
“I had no idea she would go to this … extreme.”
“Lucy?” I ask, finally finding my voice. I try to sound uncertain, confused, forever meticulous in the way I word my questions. Careful not to reveal something I shouldn’t already know. “Lucy is your—?”
“Yes,” he says, like he can’t bear to hear the word that comes next. “Yes, honey, and it was a mistake. All of it was a terrible mistake.”
I think of his words on the porch again; the torture in his voice as he rocked slowly in the dark. His own quiet admission, that secret he had been living with silently for the last twenty-three years.
“As a parent, you usually get it wrong more often than you get it right.”
“I thought I was doing a good thing,” he says to me now. “I was providing for them, at least. I bought them a house, paid their bills—”
He stops, pushes his hands hard into his eyes, and I realize, for the first time, that he isn’t wearing his wedding ring.
“I barely even knew her mother,” he continues, refusing to look at me. “It happened one time. She was practically a stranger.”