Those black-hearted, cold-blooded killers.

I could have wrung Nic’s neck. How could he lie so cavalierly like that? He was poison; him and his entire family. No one was safe from their crazed quest for retribution.

I rejoined my mother in the kitchen. She had made eggs to go with the bacon. She was humming to herself, her voice tripping over a melody I didn’t recognize.

I sat down with shaky legs, the after-effects of being sick still stinging in my cheeks. In my mind, I pictured a blank white page.

On the far corner of the table, half-sewn piles of fabric competed for space. A ripped envelope peeked out from under the pile.

My mother set the plates down and sat beside me.

I pulled the letter towards me, scanning it. ‘Our mortgage payment is overdue.’

She plucked the letter from my hand and refolded it inside the envelope. ‘I’m working it out.’

‘Are we out of money?’ I asked, keeping my attention trained on her profile as she crunched on a slice of bacon. ‘Is the diner in trouble?’

‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ she said, chewing through her words slowly and deliberately. ‘Eat your breakfast. Don’t worry about this boring grown-up stuff.’

Boring grown-up stuff. The newspaper was face down where I had left it, but the headline still pulsed against my brain. I blinked the words away, putting up that blank white page again. I forced myself to eat a forkful of eggs.

‘I should go back to work,’ I said.

My mother passed me the salt shaker. She had painted her nails again. Coral: summery and bright. She had forgotten to do her pinkie. ‘Don’t be silly. You should be out in the sun, having fun.’ Her face relaxed in a placid smile. The crow’s feet by her eyes seemed deeper.

‘I should help out with money,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind …’

‘You don’t need to put the weight of the world on your shoulders. I’ve got it under control.’

Have you? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. There was too much fear and anger raging inside me. It was a struggle to keep it in.

She tapped the side of my plate. ‘Your breakfast is getting cold.’

I chewed on a slice of bacon, trying to ignore the restless feeling in my stomach, the thoughts pushing against my brain. I swallowed the headline and the image of Sara Marino’s lifeless body pulled from a lake, and told my mother how spectacular the food was.

We talked about the garden and the new wooden trellis she had erected against the back wall. We talked about me going back to school soon. We didn’t talk about the mortgage letter again, or all the half-finished projects. We didn’t talk about Jack, or about my father. Lately, it felt like our conversations were defined more by what we avoided than what we discussed. That’s the trouble with trauma – you wear it like a cloak, but to acknowledge it only makes it worse.

I ate what I could manage, tasting nothing but ash in my mouth. The coffee was too bitter; the juice was too red. My mother was picking at her plate, dissecting her eggs as I cleared my plate and excused myself.

It was overcast outside, but the humidity was unbearable. Even indoors, I felt stifled by it. It frizzed the ends of my hairs, sticking them to my neck. My T-shirt was warm; it clung too tightly around my arms.

Millie came by in the afternoon.

‘Soph!’ Her face broke, and she surged into me, wrapping her arms around my neck and knocking me backwards into the hallway. ‘I can’t believe they actually did it, I can’t believe they went through with it.’

‘I know.’ The thing is, though, I could.

She looked utterly deflated. I had done this to her. I had pulled her down with me, into a murky, unforgiving world. Now we were like zombie versions of ourselves, trying to climb back out. But it’s hard to forget the things you’ve seen once you’ve seen them, it’s hard not to wonder about the people you’re trying to leave behind, once you’ve gotten to know them. If the blood war had begun, with deaths on both sides already, then who knew who would be next? It’s hard to ignore it, even if they’re liars. Even if they’re assassins.

I ushered Millie into the sitting room, where we sank into the couch. She brought her legs up and curled her feet underneath her. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. We should have done more.’

‘I shouldn’t have believed Nic. He’d already betrayed me by showing up at Eden in the first place.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘I believed him too.’

‘I shouldn’t have let him take that red card from me.’ And that was the awful reality – they wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t slipped up that night in the parking lot.

‘Nic took it from you,’ said Millie.

‘And I let him.’ I thought of our kiss, the dark passion, the cloying sense of wrongness in it. ‘I’ve been an idiot. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for something to happen to me, something to shock me into living. I couldn’t wait to fall for someone, to feel loved. But this is not what I expected. This is not what I wanted. Everything is so messed up.’

Millie was silent for a while, chewing over her words. She leant forward and knitted her hands together. ‘People rarely end up with their first love. It’s, like, this stupid fairy-tale myth that they peddle to you in Disney movies. Did you know Snow White is, like, fourteen? If I ended up marrying my fourteen-year-old crush, I’d be stuck with Tom Peterson and his stupid bobble head. You’re allowed to make mistakes.’