The miniature club was waiting inside the club when they arrived, sitting on a drop-leaf table in the lobby. It sat open on its hinges with the lights on, every tiny replica room flawless and still. The dining room was complete with tables and chairs, white linens, place settings, oil paintings, and potted plants. A miniature piano sat on the stage, the bench pulled out expectantly.
Reese stopped, leaning down to look in. “This is it, huh? Think anybody knows who made it yet?”
“Probably not.” Pearl shook her head. “What’s it still doing here? Somebody won it in the auction on Friday.”
“Maybe they figured out it’s haunted and gave it back. Could you sleep with that thing in your house?” Reese bumped her shoulder, his uniform stuffed under his arm as he walked toward the staff restrooms. “See you in there.”
“Yeah.” She lingered a moment, considering the dollhouse, all the places Cassidy’s and Joseph’s hands had touched. The tiny wall sconces flickered then, ever so slightly, and she stepped away as if touched by a spark.
Dinner shifts were highly coveted; higher prices on meals and more courses meant, in theory, bigger tips, and management tended to schedule the older servers for the dinner hours, giving the teens and college students breakfast and lunch. A few of those usual servers had requested some days off, so this was the first dinner shift Pearl had been given since May; she’d almost forgotten the more formal air, and how to make lugging a fifteen-pound serving tray look effortless.
It was a busy night, multiple families dining together, most everyone discussing the ball, who’d worn it best, who’d had too much champagne. Pearl told herself she wasn’t looking for him, but in her moments of downtime between delivering salmon Florentine or lemon sorbet, her thoughts were on Tristan. Tristan, an outcast among even his family. Being hit, being made to feel small. It was such a stark contrast to his role among the boys that she almost felt like she had to see him, try to imagine a mark on his face, for it to seem real.
Quinn’s and Hadley’s families came in together, their mothers chatting as the girls hung back, scanning the crowd much the way Pearl had done all night, searching for the boys. Even after they joined their parents at a table, Quinn’s gaze was hot, seeking Pearl across the room and fixing there, accusatory.
While Pearl was filling her tray with drinks, Reese came up beside her. “Hey. Got the skinny on the freaky little house. I guess Mimi bid on it Friday night and then donated it back. Lucky clubsters.”
“Oh God. She must’ve thought she was doing this nice thing.”
Reese snorted, heading off in the opposite direction with a stack of menus. Things were like they were supposed to be again, the two of them having each other’s backs all shift, checking in with a joke or an eye roll, and her relief was so huge that when she turned from the Stewarts’ table to put in their order, she almost missed the person standing close to her, waiting.
Hadley stood in the corridor that led to the patio doors, her face somber, watchful. “Hi.” Her voice was barely audible over the din of dining room and kitchen. “Can I talk to you?”
Pearl hesitated. “Just a sec.” She pushed through the kitchen doors, put in the order, then stepped into the corridor with her. The question, “How are you feeling?” sounded inadequate after Friday night’s ordeal, but it was the best she could come up with.
“Okay. I was pretty much over it by the time Bridges brought me home.” Hadley smiled weakly, shrugged. “Once I figured out that I wasn’t going to drown in there in the dark and all.”
Pearl remembered Hadley’s white, stricken face in the flashlight beam, blood streaming from her bare knee, and felt a fresh chill. Saturday morning, she’d had to hide her own sandals in the trash can so Dad wouldn’t see them, the pink silk spotted and streaked with water damage and muck. “So, are you never going to speak to them again? Because they deserve it.”
“I don’t know. Bridges and I already talked a little online.” She gave a soft, awkward laugh. “Quinn’s the only person I’ve told. She’s really mad.” She rubbed her elbow slowly. “I’m sorry for tweaking out on you. I should’ve stayed put.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t know what to do, either. It was really scary.”
“I don’t like small spaces. Bridges knows that. He’s known it since we used to go out. We went to the fair together last summer, and there was this fun house. I got scared.” She held Pearl’s gaze. “That’s why I came over. Quinn thinks I’m being stupid, but . . . you should be careful. Bridges would never do something like that to me if Tristan didn’t put him up to it. Sometimes I think that’s why Tristan chose him as a friend in the first place.”
“Because he could control him?”
“Yeah. At least some little part of him.”
“Double that for Akil.”
“Akil’s a jerk. I guess I just wanted Bridges to . . . remember I was around. Stupid, I know. You don’t have to tell me.” She leaned against the wall so a server could squeeze by. “What I’m trying to say is—I’ve seen Tristan choose people before. It’s like he handpicks them, you know? I think that was what Friday night was really about. You, Pearl. He wants you.” From a nearby hidden speaker, Dean Martin began crooning “Memories Are Made of This.” “I’m not saying it’s a sex thing, because I don’t really know. But he looks right through most people. He doesn’t look through you.” Hadley shrugged, then turned to leave, saying softly, “Watch out for yourself,” as she went.
Eighteen
THE CAT WAS gone when Pearl pulled into the driveway that night. Nothing left but a patch of dead grass where it had sat since spring.
Dad wasn’t home. He hadn’t left a light on for her—somehow, she couldn’t believe he’d simply forgotten—and the house was black, a dead cell, making her think of Tristan’s home on Narragansett Way.
She slid her hand over the wall until she found the switch, not stepping over the threshold until the familiar glow of the overhead lamp came on. It changed the game, Bridges knowing where she lived. That meant the other boys knew. The three of them might as well share a mind. He wants you, Pearl. She thought of Tristan’s jacket lying in a black pool on her floor, covering her ruined pink silk.
TV was no comfort, and she lay on the couch, checking her social media accounts, almost wishing a private message would pop up from Mom. Not tonight. Bridges seemed to be giving her space, and Reese was off-line, didn’t respond to the Hey text she sent him. Which meant his phone was probably sitting on someone else’s nightstand, ignored.
She went to bed, her body programmed to wake to the sounds of Dad coming home in three or four hours, as always.
She awoke a little after seven a.m. The house was silent. Dad’s bed hadn’t been slept in.
She drove to the Tavern first, which slumped gray and silent in morning fog. She’d thrown on some clothes, hadn’t washed her face—she’d been too busy envisioning Dad’s truck pinned against a tree, steam rising from the cleaved radiator—and now she sat rigidly in the driver’s seat, gaze cutting from side to side, searching.
He wasn’t parked in the Tavern lot. Yancey’s house was two streets over, and she went there, bracing herself to knock on the door, then pry Dad off the couch in Yancey’s house, which smelled of dog and cigar smoke. But the only vehicles in the driveway belonged to Yancey, his wife, and their son Evan, who’d moved back in with them after living in the Midwest for a few years. As she slowed down, she saw Evan sitting in a lawn chair by the side of the house, smoking and staring off, his biceps dark with tattoos.
No sign of Dad. Fear trickled in then, running drop by frozen drop down her spine until she was driving much too fast, going up and down every street, praying Dad was on his way home right now and they’d pass each other any moment.