Pearl was on her feet immediately, crossing the room to head him off. Reese wore baggy board shorts and a David Bowie T-shirt, and he smiled, surprised. “Hey. You missed a classic this morning. Mrs. Rosenthal lost an earring in her brunch strata and had me dig around for it so she wouldn’t ruin her manicure. It was awesome. Ten bucks it went down her shirt, but I wasn’t ready to go, like, spelunking. You eating by yourself? Grab your stuff and come out back. I downloaded The House on Sorority Row.”
“I can’t.” She couldn’t pretend to be normal, couldn’t relax the tension written all over her face. “I want to, but . . . I can’t right now.”
“Um, okay. Why?” His gaze traveled to the table she’d come from, the empty chair with her bag hanging over it. Bridges was watching them with interest. “You’re sitting with them?”
She opened her mouth, closed it. Time hung suspended, tension deepening with each second.
“They asked you to sit with them?” Flatly disbelieving.
Unexpectedly, some part of her bristled at that. “I came with them.”
Reese stared at her for a long moment, then forced a laugh. “What is this, Be Kind to Second-Class Citizens Day? Why’d they ask you?” Another laugh, harsher, before she could speak. “Let me guess. Tristan Garrison’s gone all Howard Hughes and hired you to be his handler. No, wait—this is some social experiment and you’re their Eliza Doolittle. Who gets to stick the marbles in your mouth?”
“Will you stop? Can I say one thing before you talk over me?”
“Nope. I’m good.” Reese stepped away as if to leave, and she reached for him.
“It’s not—”
He turned, holding his finger in her face. “You’ve got no idea about those kind of guys, Pearl. You’ve got no idea what they really want.” His intensity silenced her. “You think you’re the first townie they let hang out with them? You going to party with them? Get wasted?” He made a disgusted sound. “Wake the hell up.”
Heat rose in her face. “Don’t tell me what I know about. And don’t talk to me like I’m stupid—”
“Whatever.” He put his hands up, turning away. “Enjoy your rich pricks.” He pushed past a tourist family and went out the rear door, letting it bang shut behind him.
Pearl took a step to follow, but she was mad, too—furious—so she lifted her chin and turned away. Jovia had been watching with a pained expression, but now she looked back to the cappuccino machine, saying nothing.
The chaos of the shop had a dreamlike quality as Pearl returned to the table, everything seeming distant and muted compared to the hammering of her heart. “Everything okay?” Bridges glanced back at where Reese had made his exit.
“What’s this?” There was a sandwich waiting on a plate for her, grilled cheese with tomato on rye, one of her favorites.
“I figured you must be hungry.” He slid some napkins her way. “Come on. Everybody’s eating.” And then he was back in the conversation, laughing at some story from Akil’s private school days that had even Tristan wearing a slight smile, his gaze sliding once to Pearl, then onward. She wondered who had first mentioned that she wasn’t eating, whose idea it really was to order for her.
As the conversation flowed around her, her pulse slowed, her breathing evened out. The sandwich smelled good. Tasted even better.
Ten
PEARL TOOK THE front steps two at a time and then threw the chain lock home, something she and Dad never did. This moment called for extra security, extra privacy—she felt like she’d been caught in a whirl of people all day, when all she wanted was her bedroom, her tablet, and two minutes of peace to see what was on the memory card.
It was a little past five p.m. She’d told Bridges that her dad was expecting her, maybe holding supper. In truth, Dad wasn’t even here. Maybe at the Tavern, maybe at Yancey’s house shooting the shit, who knew. She slid a pair of his boots out of her path, then heard the telltale click of the oven, which meant that he’d heated up leftovers for his meal and forgotten to shut the oven off again.
By the time Pearl reached her room, her fingers were clumsy with nerves. She dug the memory card out of her pocket and slid it into the slot in her tablet, Quinn’s words about last summer’s viral video fresh in her mind, about random townies not even worth remembering.
There were seven video files on the card. It wasn’t necessary to expand the thumbnail stills to recognize Cassidy Garrison’s smiling face held close to the screen. Pearl even recognized a few of the dresses she was wearing. These were some of the entries for Cassidy’s video journal, the ones she’d uploaded to her website. The two most recent files were unfamiliar, the thumbnails of nothing Pearl could identify; she clicked on the first one, dated almost exactly a year ago today.
A glimpse of what must be Cassidy’s stockinged feet as she walked soundlessly through a doorway into a spacious room with a cream-colored settee. Joseph sat with his back to her, propped up on a throw pillow, engrossed in some handheld game. The camera shook as Cassidy pounced, seizing his shoulder, making him yelp and whirl.
“Hey!” Joseph made a grab for the camera. In some ways, he was a younger version of Tristan, except for the ease of expression, the playful light in his eyes.
Cassidy backed away, laughing. “Mom says you can’t use it unless I say so—” End of video.
The final video on the card was dated August 16 of last year. It began with a rushing sound, like fabric or a hand rubbing across the mic. When the camera steadied, Pearl recognized the teak paneling of the Islander’s head, the gleam of the towel rack; this was the angle from the far corner of the room by the shower stall.
The camera held shakily on the closed door. The mic was full of breathing—presumably Cassidy’s—hard and raspy, like she’d been sprinting.
Wham. Something slammed against the other side of the door.
Wham. Cassidy made a keening noise in her throat and backed up—a rattle of shower curtain rings across the rod as she brushed by them.
Another wham. Then whoever was on the other side of the door went into a frenzy, hammering, slamming their full weight against it, the force threatening to explode the flimsy catch.
Cassidy cried out, fumbling the camera down. A kaleidoscopic whirl of paneling and floor tiles—then the video cut off.
Pearl stared. She clicked play again and again, pressing one fist to her lips as she watched.
Cassidy might’ve been moving to hide the memory card at the end—too scared to keep filming, to risk whoever was after her bursting through the door and finding her with the camera in her hand. Maybe separating the card and camera was the only way she could think of to save the video, to ensure that somebody, at some point, might find out that she’d been attacked. It was the act of a girl who wasn’t sure if she was going to survive.
But Cassidy had survived—another four months. And she’d never gone back for the memory card. The Garrisons probably flew home to Connecticut a matter of days after this video was shot—summer families left Tenney’s Harbor by mid-August at the latest to get home in time for the start of the school semester—and they hadn’t returned to Maine until that unexpected visit during the week of Christmas. It was possible that Cassidy simply hadn’t had a chance to get back onto the Islander before then; by December, the yacht would’ve been winterized and stored in a boatyard somewhere. But what the hell had happened after she stopped filming that day?
Pearl played the video again, her skin tingling. Palpable rage was on the other side of that door; she could taste Cassidy’s terror in the back of her own throat, bitter, acidic. Pearl’s fingers flew, opening a browser window, Googling the Tenney’s Harbor police department phone number. Then she sat, motionless.
Not yet. This wasn’t enough. She didn’t have a face, didn’t have a name. And she didn’t have a fix on Tristan Garrison, not even close.
She sat, hugging her bent knee, listening to the wind chimes outside the window. She played the video again. She didn’t want to leave that terrified girl on the screen alone, trapped in that moment, recording whatever was about to come through that door. Cassidy Garrison had reached across four long seasons, and found her, Pearl, waiting on the other side.