Hovering there, it was almost as if she had moved past her father, past the horrible memories. She was just a kid at a party. Trevor’s lips found hers, and everything else in the world fell away.
“Okay, everyone? Everyone!” Chelsea stomped out on the patio and clapped her hands, the sound sharp in the night. Bex lazily lifted her head from Trevor’s shoulder and tried to straighten up.
Laney followed behind Chelsea, her arms full of white carnations that seemed to mass together in one fluffy head. Bex blinked, trying to focus, but her eyes kept going to the carnations, their powdery smell wafting over the scent of fruit juice and smoke. Something was pulling her out of the softened state of drunkenness. Something about the flowers en masse…
There must have been hundreds of them pushed together to form the limbs of the cross. Beth Anne rolled down the window and sucked in a breath of air heady with the sweet scent of the carnations. She loved everything about them, from the way they smelled to how they formed a soft, cloudlike pile, the arms of the cross reaching outward, embracing. In the center, there were more flowers—exotic and brightly colored among sprays of ferns and baby’s breath.
The arrangement was at least six feet tall; it dwarfed her and looked regal and hopeful propped up on the lawn in front of the iron gates of the cemetery as Beth Anne and her gran drove by. Something was woven right into the flowers, written in sparkly silver letters that glittered in the sun. They were driving too fast for her to read—the names of all the women her father had killed.
Bex sat upright, the brew burning a hole in her stomach, the sharp pain of memory cutting through the fog of alcohol. It didn’t matter if her father was looking for her—he was never far from her mind.
Twenty-One
“Excuse me!”
The kids at the party—about forty that Bex knew or recognized—reluctantly stopped talking and laughing to give Chelsea their attention. Someone even turned down the speakers when she cleared her throat and pinned them with what Bex was beginning to recognize as Chelsea’s patented glare of death.
“As we all know, a very dear friend passed away recently just a few dozen miles from here.”
The sweet warmth and comfort Bex had been feeling dissipated as quickly as mist on the waves. Trevor must have sensed it because he pulled her in to him again, but her entire body was stiff.
“The police haven’t caught Darla’s killer yet, but they have some good leads. They even think they have a suspect.”
Bex’s heart began to thud in her throat.
“The timing, the victimology are right…”
“But we’re not here to talk about her killer, we’re here to celebrate her life. Since Darla touched everyone here, we thought we would send her memory out with the waves. Everyone take a flower and think of your best memory with Darla, and we’ll throw them out into the water.” Chelsea beamed while Laney began handing out the single-stemmed flowers.
There was some grumbling, some muffled laughter, but all Bex could focus on was what Chelsea had said: “…they even think they have a suspect.”
She broke away from Trevor and zigged through the crowd to Chelsea, blindly taking the flower Laney handed her.
“The police have a suspect?” she asked, her stomach in a vice. “Who?”
Chelsea scanned the dunes as though everyone were listening. “There was a witness who saw a car pulled over on the side of the road the…the night just before we found her.”
“What kind of car?”
Laney shifted the few remaining flowers. “Just like an old truck or something, but the witness got a pretty good look at the guy and actually recognized him.”
“You know that weird security guy from the mall?” Chelsea asked. “He was always around us when we were with Darla. Like, always for the last six months. He was totally obsessed with her.”
“Well,” Laney clarified, “Darla did shoplift.”
“Yes.” Chelsea crossed her arms in front of her chest and jutted out one hip. “That could be what drove him over the edge, you know? Like, here’s this perfect little rich girl stealing.”
Relief flooded Bex’s system. “Oh.”
“Anyway, that’s kind of what the police are saying.”
Bex nodded and numbly followed Chelsea and Laney to the edge of the water. It lapped at the tips of her bare feet, the water so frigid it was nearly painful—but feeling something she could actually identify felt good.
There was a lot of murmuring and sniffling as the white flowers were flung through the air and caught on the dark water. Bex held hers, spinning it around and around in her hand until her palms were heady with the carnation’s sweet perfume.
“I didn’t know you, Darla,” she said in her head, “but…” She didn’t know how to finish. If Darla was murdered by the security guard, that meant Bex’s father didn’t do it. He hadn’t come back to taunt her, to hurt her, to murder everyone she loved. She blinked away tears. It also meant that he hadn’t come back for her at all.