Edgewater (28 page)

I shook my head. “But he said things, Charlie. He knows where she is, and I don't.”

“I don't know anything,” the senator insisted. “Make her leave, Charlie!” The senator's face registered the distress of a child's. I had to look away from him.

“Charlie, I—”

But he cut me off. “It's just a misunderstanding,” Charlie told me, practically pushing me toward the door. “Do me a favor, okay? Don't say anything to anyone. About this.”

Before I could say another word, the door shut behind me. I left the Compound with more questions than I'd had when I'd arrived.

21

WIDE AWAKE

IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT WHEN MY CELL PHONE
started to vibrate against my bedside table. I startled awake and saw the illuminated screen, Lennox's name flashing. If she was calling to explain things, to yell at me, to forgive me, it certainly wouldn't be at this hour. I grabbed the phone and clicked to answer. “What's wrong?”

“Something's happened,” she said. “I'm on Break Run, and I'm coming over.”

I could've sworn there were sirens going off behind her words, and my body tightened in fear. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” she said. “It's not.”

I WAITED FOR LENNOX OUTSIDE. THE PORCH LIGHT
had long since burned out, and the night's darkness muted the decay of the house—thank God for small favors. She pulled up
in front. I watched as she reached over to grab her bag from the passenger seat and got out of the car.

Never before in our entire friendship had I not known how to act around Lennox. But right then, I needed a cue from her, so I didn't make a move closer to her. I waited until she'd climbed the porch steps and reached me. And when she did, I was holding my body still and rigid, as if I were afraid she was about to hit me. Instead, she threw her arms around me, and I sank into her. Her body was shaking. Something awful had happened. Someone had died. I just knew it. I rubbed her back in circles, the way Naomi had rubbed mine, imagining all the possible scenarios, each one unthinkable, each one worse than the one before: One of the moms? Both of them? Harper?

God forbid.

“I'm so sorry, Len. I really am. And I swear, whatever is going on right now, I'm going to be there for you. Because you've always been there for me.”

Lennox pulled away. She'd been the one to initiate the hug, but now, looking at her face, I couldn't tell whether or not she was angry. She gathered her breath to speak, and I braced myself. “There's been an accident. I think Charlie might be dead.”

“What?” I took a step back in shock and hit the wrong plank on the porch. It splintered under my weight. I fell back and cried out.

“Are you all right?”

I bent to rub my ankle, where a piece of broken wood had sprung up and scraped it. “He can't be dead,” I said. “It's just not possible.”

“I saw it online.”

“You know you can't believe anything you read online,” I told her. “Especially about the Copelands.” But even as I said it, I could feel my heart in my throat. “What exactly did you see?”

“I got a Copeland Google Alert a little while ago. There was an unconfirmed report that a car matching the description of the senator's Porsche was in an accident on Break Run.” She paused to take a breath, and when she started again, there was an apologetic tone to her voice. “I know this is going to sound bad, but I had to go see for myself. I didn't even tell the moms I was leaving. I just got into my car and drove. When I got there, there were all these flashing lights, and the guardrail by the Point was gone. He must've smashed right into it.”

“Lots of people have Porsches around here,” I said softly. “It could've been anyone.”

“I saw the car,” she said. “It was dredged up from the ocean by a crane, and it barely looked like a car anymore. But still, I could tell—it was that old Porsche Charlie's been driving all summer. A collector's item. Not the kind of car that lots of people have.”

“I just saw him,” I said. My heart was in full gallop. I could feel my whole body pulsing with the beats. “Maybe someone else was driving. The Copelands have so many people working for them, plus Julia's campaign staff.”

I was saying these words, but the voice in my head was saying:
You never know when you're saying good-bye for the last time. You never know when someone is going to leave your life.

“I doubt they would have let someone working for them take that car.”

“Someone could have stolen it,” I said. “When I was at the Compound today, the gates just opened when I drove up—that's gotta be a security risk. If someone else got onto the property that way, he could've taken the car for a joy ride.”

Lennox nodded, trying to believe me. “You're right. A car thief probably would've taken the curve around the Point too fast—trying to get away.”

“That's just the way Charlie drives,” I said. I felt myself slipping down, and I clutched Lennox. “Oh God, Len. What if it
was
Charlie?”

She shook her head.

“I really wanted to be with him. It was the first time I felt like that, you know?”

“I know,” she said.

“I don't have his number,” I said, shaking my head. Why had I said what I'd said that afternoon in the barn? Why hadn't I taken his number? “Can you call him?”

“I did,” she said. “Before I even drove out. I called his phone, and he didn't answer.”

We were both crying. “Call him again,” I said. Lennox pulled her phone from her bag. I watched her hit the button for recent contacts and press to dial Charlie. She held it to her ear, and I pressed my head against hers. We heard his voice mail pick up together.

“I don't want to be alone right now,” I told Lennox.

“Me, either.”

“Come in?” I said.

WHEN WE WERE KIDS, LENNOX AND I USED TO TRADE
off playdates at each other's houses. But things at my house were always a bit strange, and we ended up at her house most of the time, until we ended up at her house all the time. I wondered what it felt like for her now, to be back in this place for the first time in years. I'd worked so hard to clean it, but looking at it fresh, the way Lennox was, it seemed I'd barely made a dent. It seemed worse than ever before. We sat at the kitchen table, which was piled high with the usual dirty plates and glasses and unopened mail. I pushed aside a dried-up bowl of water mixed with flour, plus strips of newspaper, deflating balloons, and pipe cleaners. “What's all that for?” Lennox asked.

“Gigi's latest project,” I said. “She wants to make decoupage favors for her forty-second birthday party.”

“She's having a party?”

“In her imagination she is.”

“Where is she now?”

“Upstairs. Asleep.”

“Susannah, too?”

“Yup. With Brian.”

Lennox nodded and pulled out her phone. “I'm gonna try Charlie again.” A few seconds later she shook her head. “Straight to voice mail.”

“Text him, too,” I said.

“I did. I'll do it again.” Her thumbs clicked over the keys. “I guess I should call the moms. If they wake up and I'm not there, they'll freak. Even worse than they'd freak to know I snuck out past curfew.”

“What's it like?” I asked her.

“What?”

“To have parents who care about you that much?”

“Gigi cares about you in her own way.”

“She'd never even think to set a curfew for me, or to worry if I broke it.”

“Maybe because she knows you wouldn't listen to her,” Lennox said.

“Because the things she says don't make any sense.”

“If you want a system to change, you should change it,” Lennox suggested.

I shrugged. “It doesn't matter right now.”

Lennox made the call to her moms. Listening to her end, I could tell they weren't thrilled with her, but she didn't seem to be in major trouble, either. “Yes, fine. Fine, I promise,” she said. I pulled open the freezer, which was no longer a cryobank for dead birds. After the power outage, Susannah had buried them in the pet cemetery beside Wren. In their place were new tubs of ice cream. I wasn't hungry, but I took them out anyway and put them on the kitchen table in front of Lennox. “Here,” I said, handing her a spoon. “Fresh ice cream from a working freezer. Courtesy of the Beth-Ann Bracelee Scholarship Fund.”

“She's the one who bought Orion?”

I nodded.

“Your roommate from Woodscape?”

I nodded again.

“That bitch.”

“No, she did me a favor. I couldn't have a horse anymore. I have a different kind of life now.”

“Oh, Lorrie.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I mean, it's not okay. I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean.”

“But can I tell you something really strange?”

“Of course.”

“It feels weird to talk about all this now, with Charlie . . .” Reflexively, Lennox looked down at her phone. “Anything?” I asked.

“No,” she said. She paused. “Say what you were going to say,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Right after Orion got picked up, Naomi came out and said his board had been paid for the rest of the summer. And you know who'd paid it? Underhill Enterprises.”

“As in Victor Underhill?”

“I think so. I mean, I don't know any other Underhills. And I told you how he basically interrogated me when he caught Charlie and me on the beach.” Lennox nodded. “I also saw him at the hospital when Susannah had to spend the night.”

“Hold up. Susannah was in the hospital?”

“She got burned.”

Lennox sucked in her breath.

“She's okay now,” I said quickly. A few thousand dollars later, she was nearly as good as new.

“Thank God. I feel awful that I didn't know about it.”

“Don't,” I said. “It was my fault for not telling you.”

“But I know you—I should've known something was really wrong.”

“I don't think knowing someone is anyone else's responsibility. I'm not even sure I think it's possible to really know anyone anymore.”

“Even a best friend?”

I shook my head. “I just felt like I wasn't good for anyone to be around—you, Charlie.”

I winced when I said his name, and Lennox's face was a mirror—the same pain, the same grimace.

I went on. “My life is so crazy, so unreliable. You and Charlie, you have so much more in common with each other than with me.”

I paused and dipped into the pint of vanilla bean. But my stomach was in knots. I left the bite uneaten on the spoon.

“I was jealous,” I said. “And it made me feel so bad—what kind of friend was I, being angry that things came easily to you? It made me feel like you were better off without me. Charlie, too.”

“Oh, Lorrie,” Lennox said.

“But I don't want to lose you,” I said.

We were both quiet for a few seconds. Something was nipping at my ankle, and I reached down for the kitten—one of Wren's siblings, probably—and pulled her into my lap.

“You're not losing me,” Lennox said finally.

“I'm sorry, Len. I'm sorry for the things I said, and for what I didn't say.”

“You know, this is the first time you actually owe me an apology.”

“Do you accept?”

“Of course I do,” she said.

“I just—” I began, but my voice cracked. Lennox put her hand on mine. “I hope I get to apologize to Charlie, too.”

She nodded. “Now, tell me about Susannah.”

I brought her up to speed as best I could—about the electricity being out, and my sudden need to find my mom, and the darkness, and the candle. “I found my mom's old journal,” I said. “She was having an affair with someone named Junior. That's why my dad left her. He started drinking again and he left. And Susannah—” I cut myself off.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It doesn't matter. The point is, I haven't found her yet.”

Lennox shook her head. “Your mom doesn't deserve you,” she said. “But at least now you can get Orion back.”

“I can't,” I said miserably. Now it was past one o'clock in the morning. At that very moment Orion was spending the night at a rest-stop barn midway between New York and North Carolina. In just a few hours he'd be reloaded into the trailer and driven the last two hundred miles or so to Beth-Ann Bracelee. “Board expenses don't solve all our other bills—I used Beth-Ann's money to pay them. Besides, I can't take anything from Underhill without knowing why I'm getting it in the first place, or if any more is coming. I used to just spend money based on faith that I had a trust and there'd always be more, but that didn't really work out for me.”