THE NEXT DAY was humid, hot, sunlight flashing through trees as Pearl navigated the road into Winter Harbor. Reese sat beside her, texting, finally putting his phone down to look out the windshield. “Okay. Got directions. Indigo told her grandma that we’re coming.”
“So she’ll definitely talk to us?”
“I don’t know. But Indy told her we’re on our way.”
Pearl nodded, tapping her fingertips on the steering wheel, trying to keep her nervousness under wraps. It stung to need Indigo’s help, but in this case, there didn’t seem to be any way around it; Pearl trusted Reese not to tell the other girl any more than the bare minimum about why they were asking for this favor. That in itself—Indigo helping him out at the first word, without needing details—implied a closeness that Pearl didn’t like to think about.
A couple of minutes later, as they approached a street sign reading Gull Reach, he said, “Turn here. It’s a blue trailer on the left.”
The trailer sat on a neat square of lawn with a mailbox that read Whitley in hand-painted script, the property yards away from a spit of sandy earth that fed into the bay, bordered by wild rosebushes. Pearl parked beside a gray sedan, wishing her mouth wasn’t so dry.
Reese followed her, hands in his pockets, whistling faintly, tunelessly; it would’ve been maddening if she didn’t know him so well, that he was holding silence, his natural enemy, at bay. She led the way up the steps and knocked. Through the glass panes in the door, she could see sunlight gleaming on bare countertops, the chrome of a sink. She shifted, knocked again.
Pearl didn’t hear so much as sense the woman off to her right, watching them from the stretch of town between the trailer and a small storage shed. Marilyn Whitley looked much the way Pearl remembered from the few times she’d seen her, barely five feet tall, her graying hair chopped bluntly to her chin. She wore a faded blue gingham shirt and jeans and held a fitted bedsheet balled in her arms. Her gaze was sharp, and she wasn’t smiling.
“Hi.” Reese rocked back on his heels.
Pearl waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat and walked down a few steps. “I’m Pearl Haskins. I think you know my dad, Win?” The woman continued to watch her. “Indigo said she called you about us coming.”
Marilyn’s gaze shifted over Pearl’s shoulder to Reese. “You I know. Indy brought you by back in the spring.” It didn’t necessarily sound like a vote of approval. She glanced back at their car. “She’s not with you?”
“Not today.”
The woman worked her lips over her dentures, then gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “I’m hanging laundry.” She went back around the trailer. Pearl and Reese glanced at each other, then followed.
Marilyn pulled clothespins out of the bag suspended from the line, keeping her back to them. “You were wondering about the Garrisons. Is that right?” Snap, she shook out the sheet. “That don’t really make you special. I’ve gotten enough phone calls about that since December. Haven’t had anything to say yet.”
Pearl swallowed, watching as the woman’s hands continued in their task. “So you did clean for them?” No response. “I guess you know my dad worked for them, too. I just wondered . . . what you thought of them. How they seemed to you.”
“Seemed?” She put the last pin on the sheet and bent to grab pillowcases.
“I mean, were you surprised when they were killed?” The chapped hands continued moving, but there was a listening quality to her movements now, a deliberateness. Pearl took a step closer. “I’m asking because I’m scared for my dad. He did everything he could to help them that night. He still lost all his caretaking clients. Nobody trusts him now.”
A silence. “Wasn’t his fault what happened.” Marilyn tsked faintly. “What’s he supposed to do against somebody with a gun, for chrissake?” When she spoke again, the gruffness was back. “I’m sorry to hear about your troubles.”
Pearl pressed her lips together. She wasn’t going to get anywhere with this woman by hedging. “I’m trying to find out who did it. If there’s anything you can tell me, I’d appreciate it. So would my dad.”
“Ain’t that what the cops are for? Finding killers? I already answered all their questions.”
“I haven’t heard anything about them making an arrest, have you?” Pearl waited. “I know Tristan, a little bit.”
Marilyn finished pinning a T-shirt, then smoothed her hand over the damp cotton slowly, letting her arm fall to her side. When she turned, her eyes had changed, gone distant. “If you’re smart, you’ll keep it at that. A little bit.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
Glancing over at the neighbor’s house, Marilyn wiped her palms on her jeans, released a short burst of breath. “Better come inside.”
The kitchen was spotless, silent except for the humming of the fridge. Lace curtains sucked and gusted with the breeze, and Marilyn watched them move. The three of them sat at the table, each with a glass of iced tea in front of them.
“I’m not trying to get into your business. I got no interest in that. But I raised girls of my own . . . and Win’s a decent kind of guy.” Marilyn watched her. “Does he know you’re spending time with Tristan?”
Only a few minutes into their acquaintance, there was no lying to this woman: Pearl shook her head. Marilyn leaned back, folding her skinny, freckled arms. “I worked for them for three years. Gave the house a light turn twice a month in the off-season, and cleaned regular for them all summer.” She turned her glass on the tabletop. “Not because it was a place I liked to be.”
“I’ve heard things.”
“Whatever you heard ain’t likely to be the truth. I don’t think anybody left alive knows the truth, except that boy.” She glanced over at the wall, where gold-tone picture frames held photographs of a little blond girl who Pearl recognized after a moment as Indigo. Elementary school pictures, her hair in braids or cut painfully short, face full of tender openness, the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want just anybody seeing. “I’ve been making my living cleaning for nearly twenty years now.” She flicked her hand at Pearl. “You know how it is with summer people. After a while, most of them stop seeing you, don’t even notice when you run the vacuum through the room. I’ve seen some things maybe I wasn’t meant to.” Her gaze sharpened. “And you don’t get recommendations by running your mouth.”
“I’d never gossip about this. I swear. No one will ever know we were here today.”
Marilyn raised her brows at Reese. “What about him?”
Reese held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor. Or something.”
“Still a smart-ass. Glad to see nothing’s changed.” Marilyn exhaled, examined them for a beat. “I guess Indigo wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t trust you two.”
Pearl sat forward in her chair, gripping the edge of the seat.
“The reason I told you that I’ve raised girls is because I think most of us women got a gut instinct to mother. Some of us want to mother our men. You can throw your whole life away taking in strays, trying to fix the damage that some other woman did to him while he was still in diapers. Plain truth is, some men are just broken.”
“Is Tristan broken?”
“I never got a handle on what he is. But there’s a piece missing, all right. He might look like a big success, collecting trophies and degrees, but when it comes down to it, he ain’t nothing but a little boy who didn’t get what he needed from the people who were supposed to give it to him.”
“David and Sloane.”
“You hear about black sheep. That was Tristan. Cassidy and Joe, they acted close. Always sharing secrets, had heads for puzzles, games. I remember Cassidy used to plan these scavenger hunts for Joe, get him roaming all over the property and beach, looking for stuff she’d hidden. Tristan wasn’t home much, but when he was, he was alone. I’d have to put off straightening his room until last because he was usually locked up in there. Them other two kids steered clear of him most of the time.”
More otherness, more separation. “I’ve heard things were bad between him and David.”
Marilyn shifted, glanced at the door, as if someone might be peering in through the panes, eavesdropping. “I can’t say what was between them. But I saw David punch Tristan once.”
Pearl stared at her, a little surprised by her body’s sympathetic reaction: tightening stomach, clenching fists. “God. Really?”
“I was cleaning the third floor, the loft. Looked out the window to see Tristan leaving by the back door, David right behind him, carping on him about something. Tristan wouldn’t stop, so his dad pulled him around by the shoulder, popped him one in the eye.”
Reese spoke up. “What’d Tristan do?”
“Nothing. Took the punch. David sort of braced up, like he thought maybe they were finally going to have it out or something. Tristan was taller than his dad, too, old enough to stand up for himself. But he didn’t. He got back through the partying, I guess. Tearing the place to pieces with them other rich kids whenever his parents went away for the night. I’d show up in the morning and find kids still passed out drunk, sleeping it off. Had to flush them out of the bedrooms sometimes. Sent Cassidy’s boyfriend packing once last summer. Never seen a couple kids so embarrassed.”
Pearl rested her elbows on the table, her gaze landing on another framed picture of Indigo sitting on a shelf. This one was a candid, Indigo wearing a lavender snowsuit and pom-pom hat, smiling beside a snowman with the trailer in the background. Pearl thought of what the boys had said about Indigo, how everybody knew her; did Marilyn know about that? “How did Cassidy act that last summer? Did she seem like she was scared at all? Or nervous?”
“She was nervous as a cat, but that wasn’t anything new. Just how she was wired. High-strung.”
“Did you ever see David hurt her?”
“No. Never saw him lay a hand on the other kids. Cassidy had the pressure on her because of her talent, but David seemed real soft on Joe. Maybe it was because Joe was the baby, but he was the only one allowed to be a regular kid. They’d let him bike all around town on his own, go swimming with his friends. I don’t think Sloane cared much either way, anyhow. That woman was concerned with dolling herself up, running up her credit card bill, and parading Cassidy around.” Marilyn took a small sip from her glass, pushed it away as if bitter. “Who knows what really goes on inside a family? All I know is the little I saw. But if you ask me, the real trouble was between David and Tristan, always had been. When the two of them were in a room together, they didn’t hardly speak, but it was like lightning coming, all the time. You didn’t want to be there.”
Pearl leaned on her elbows. “Did you know they were planning on coming back for Christmas break this year?”
“Nope. Not until two weeks before. Sloane called me, asked if I could get the place spruced up, have somebody deliver a Christmas tree to the parlor.”
“Do you have any idea why they decided to come back to Tenney’s Harbor?”
“They didn’t give me reasons, I didn’t ask. Except when I was cleaning the first Sunday they were there, I got the feeling it was the girl’s idea. David was going on about the fact they’d come all this way, so Cassidy better enjoy it while it lasted, something like that.”
Cassidy’s idea. Pearl turned this over in her mind, glancing up when Reese cleared his throat and said, “Do you think Tristan knows who killed them?”
“Couldn’t say. But what you asked earlier, if I was surprised when I heard?” Marilyn shook her head. “Something was going to happen. Sooner or later. I just never thought it’d be anything so awful as that.” She put her hand to her mouth for a moment, then dropped it. “I never thought anybody’d end up dead. Especially not them kids.”
She walked them out and stood on the front step as they crossed the yard. “Reese.” He looked back. “When you see that granddaughter of mine, tell her to get her butt out here more often. Probably been a month since I’ve seen her.”
“Will do.” He and Pearl sat together in the car when Reese said, “She raised her. Indigo.”
Pearl looked up, watching as Marilyn went back around the trailer to her laundry. “Where were her parents?”
“Her dad was never in the picture. Indy lived here with her mom for a few years, with Marilyn helping them out. I guess her mom decided she couldn’t take it anymore, the whole mothering thing. She split. Marilyn’s been it for Indy ever since.”
Pearl tried to think of something to say to play off her surprise, but nothing came, so she started the engine, gazing out the windshield at a single dandelion that had escaped the blades of the lawn mower. She knew what it was like when a family split apart. She had no idea how it felt when neither of your parents wanted you.
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.