“Tristan’s not the only one with a mind of his own, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know. I guess I was hoping you could tell me.”
Indigo taped the box top, breathing out. “Look. In the off-season, I work with Marilyn most mornings. Earn a little extra. I’ve been in all their houses—Spencers, Malhotras, Garrisons. I’ve seen enough to know that Tristan doesn’t control everything.”
“Were you there this December?” She nodded. “Was something weird going on?”
She laughed shortly. “No. Pretty typical. Screwing and lying.”
“You mean Sloane and David?”
“I mean at the Spencers’.” She crossed her arms, meeting Pearl’s gaze. “We were cleaning the cottages. Nobody was supposed to be in the last one. No flags out front, right? But I thought I saw—I looked in the window.” She stopped. “Cassidy was in there. Not with Akil.” She glanced down. “If you want more than that, ask Bridges yourself. I’m done with them. I’m not getting in the middle.”
“Bridges was in town at Christmastime?” Indigo stared back. A tingling numbness spread through Pearl, as if from a loss of circulation. “But—” But now the clues were there, standing out in red as the rest of the summer faded to sepia tone. Bridges, defending Cassidy for using Akil. Lots of guys would’ve traded places. How he’d described her that morning on Little Nicatou. She needed somebody to look out for her.
Pearl stepped back, the numbness now a stinging sensation, as if she’d been scrubbed raw and splashed with salt spray. She had to get out of here, hide her stupid stunned face. Indigo was still watching her, arms at her sides, and now, with her own vulnerability showing, Pearl could almost hear herself saying it—those guys . . . they said everybody knows you from the parties—asking the question that might finally let her see the truth in Indigo’s eyes: if she was the nameless townie who’d been passed around the party and then the web, who’d become just another broken link once somebody finally had the decency to take her down. Even as the words formed themselves, Pearl knew she’d never ask them. Because the idea of having leverage over Indigo was an illusion. If she was the girl from the video, chances were, Reese already knew about it.
“Tell him I stopped by, okay?” Pearl turned away.
Indigo’s voice stopped her at the door. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, you know.” Pearl looked back, saw her sitting on the bed, hair hanging over one shoulder, her gaze cool again. “You and Reese. Nothing’s going to change.” A slight shrug. “You’re his best friend.”
Twenty-Two
THE WIND WAS high the next day, the sky pale blue, full of fast-moving clouds.
Pearl drove to the Spencer compound. She went down the road to the cottages, parking at the last one, the flags whipping and snapping on the pole. She didn’t wait for a response to her knock before letting herself in.
Bridges was making breakfast. Granola and a pitcher of milk sat on the island; some housekeeper or other minion had delivered a fresh carafe of coffee. Most of him was hidden by the fridge door, and he straightened up, surprised. “Whoa. Is it ten thirty already?”
It was barely nine. After a night of fractured anxiety dreams, and a restless morning of watching the clock after Dad left for work, she couldn’t wait anymore. She wanted the words out of her, the weight of them gone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in town when the Garrisons were killed?”
He straightened slowly, his arm still resting across the top of the fridge door. He wore a white undershirt, blue plaid boxers. He set a little sterling silver pot of cream down beside the carafe. “What?”
“You were here. On the night before Christmas Eve.”
Bridges didn’t move. “Who told you that?”
“So you admit it.”
He laughed, a strained sound, shoving his hair back from his face as he added cream to his mug, wiping a drop off the counter. “Well, it’s not like it’s a secret. I didn’t lie to you.”
She shut her eyes for a moment. “How could you not say anything?”
“Because. I didn’t think it was important, I guess. My family visits Gramps for the holidays every other year. I talked to the cops when they interviewed everybody else on Cove Road. It’s not like I’m a witness or something.”
Pearl bit her lip. “Were you in love with her?” His gaze moved slowly, resting on her. “Or maybe she was in love with you and you let her be, because it got you what you wanted.”
“What—”
“No, be quiet a second, I’m trying to figure this out. You’re the reason they came back to Tenney’s Harbor for Christmas, right? You got Cassidy to ask her parents, so the two of you could hook up.”
His lips parted soundlessly; he cleared his throat, tried again. “That’s not how it was.”
“You were cheating on Hadley and Cassidy was cheating on Akil last summer. You’re the reason Cassidy ended it with him.”
Bridges rested one palm on the counter edge, the other on the island, studying the floor. “Do I get to say something now?” When she stayed silent, he looked up. “You’re making it sound like this terrible thing. We didn’t plan any of it.”
“That makes it okay?”
“We figured out how we felt about each other last summer. She was around more because of Akil, and—it just happened, all right?” He exhaled heavily. “We used to meet at Little Nicatou. She told me she’d liked me for a long time, and I thought she was . . . amazing. But she was always practicing and performing, and I always had a girlfriend. Until last summer.”
“You’re calling Hadley a friend with benefits? Because I think she’d be surprised to hear that.”
“I didn’t like doing that to Had, okay? She’s a nice girl. And I broke it off with her eventually. It’s not like I kept leading her on. Cassidy was all wrong for Akil, anyway, everybody knew it. We did what we were supposed to do at the end of the summer.”
“Except tell the truth. Because that would’ve been too messy, right?”
“Well . . . yeah.” His expression was pained, indignant. “Akil was wrecked after she dumped him. If he’d known it was because of me, it would’ve ruined everything. This place, the summer. I mean, we were going to tell people about us when we all came back together in June. But until then, it seemed better to . . .” At once, his eyes were damp, and he turned away from her, looking down.
Pearl stood there, hands clenched, uncertain how to push forward. “Did you know about all the stuff she was dealing with? The panic attacks?”
He nodded, his voice slightly hoarse when he spoke next. “I was the only person she told. She was embarrassed. She didn’t want everybody knowing about the pills. Some of it was performance pressure, but mostly it was her family. She said nobody knew how bad it was. I tried to get her to talk about it, but she didn’t want to.” He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “God. When Gramps got the call, saying there’d been a fire at their house . . .” He paused, then spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. “We were supposed to meet the next day.”
Empathy flooded in, the last thing she wanted to be feeling right now. “And you never told anybody.”
Bridges went to the table and sat, hands dangling between his knees. “The cops know. They found some of our texts and stuff when they went through Cassidy’s accounts. But that’s as far as it went. Nobody else knows. Not even Tristan.” He didn’t move for a long time. “She said I made her feel safe.”
Pearl couldn’t look at him for a moment after that, her righteous anger spent in an instant after a glimpse of his pallid, still face. She sat down across from him, speaking quietly. “Was that what this was all about? You and me? Why you came after me so hard. Because I’m the opposite of Cassidy Garrison, and you were trying to forget.”