Chapter Fifty-Three Maya

Chapter Fifty-Three

Maya

July 2023, one month later

I’m lying in bed next to Nate, when my phone lights up on the bedside table and I roll over to look at the screen. It’s a message from Daisy: We’re going to miss you this weekend. Still time to change your mind! And with it she’s sent a photo of swimsuits and other vacation items spread out on her bed.

They are going to the British Virgin Islands for Kai’s bachelorette party, and I was supposed to go with them, but I had told her I couldn’t go. I just don’t have the strength right now.

Sighing, I scroll through my email. Messages about the gallery show. Condolences from other moms at Dani’s school. And then one that catches my eye. It’s from someone named Trevor Jones.

Hi Maya,

I’m sorry to reach out like this—I got your email from the alumni directory, I hope that’s okay. Anyway, I heard what happened to your sister…I’m so sorry. No one can understand what you’re going through, but having lost my sister, too, I can imagine some of the pain.

The next sentence makes the blood drain from my face: My sister, Lila, was in Sterling Club with you… Oh god, Trevor, Trevor Jones …Lila’s brother. He must have been a teenager when she died. My heart beats faster, and a wave of dizziness makes the words swim on the screen. When my eyes focus again, I keep reading, more hurriedly now.

Anyway, I feel really weird emailing you like this, especially with everything you’re going through, but…I just thought you should know, Naomi got in touch with me the week before she died. She wanted to talk about Lila…

My stomach drops. Had Naomi found out what happened to Lila? How much did she know? I’m overcome with guilt. How had she gotten tangled up in this mess? Was it the reason she died?

I hope this doesn’t make things harder. But she asked me if I had ever spoken to the Sterling Club housekeeper, Marta Koval? I told her I had…and Marta didn’t know anything, but Naomi seemed convinced she had some sort of evidence. Do you know anything about that?

Sorry to bother you. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss. If you ever want to talk, I’m around. You can reach me at 609-555-2639.

Kind regards,

Trevor

Do I call Detective Simmons? Marta? No. Marta has worked for Sterling Club for decades. She never came forward about anything after the ski trip either, so I’d always thought I’d misunderstood her intentions all those years ago when I thought she was trying to help Lila.

Daisy. Daisy would know what to do. And I had to see her in person.

—

“I’m so glad you decided to come,” Kai says. She’s sprawled on a towel on the sundeck of the boat wearing a white bikini, her bronze skin shimmering with sunscreen.

I smile at her, trying to hide the anxiety eating away at my insides. “Me too.” Trevor’s email had shaken me to my core. I needed to find out what evidence Marta had, and if any of my friends knew aboutit.

“It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”

We boarded Xanadu this morning—Cecily and Theodore’s seventy-foot yacht that they keep docked in the British Virgin Islands. They inherited it from Theodore’s father but hardly used it. Theodore was always busy meeting with clients all over the world, and Cecily seemed to be perfectly content with the freedom to do whatever she pleased.

We’re sailing from Baughers Bay, on the south side of Tortola, to Virgin Gorda Island. I should feel relaxed, surrounded by the pristine turquoise sea, but I don’t.

With a sigh, I gaze out at the water, the sea breeze blowing my hair from my face. I wish Naomi could have seen this place. She’d have dived right off the side of the boat.

“I’m going to get some more champagne,” Kai says, and goes inside the main cabin, leaving Daisy and me alone on the deck. This is my chance.

“I want to show you something. Come here.” I pull Daisy around the corner and show her the email Trevor sent me.

Daisy frowns as she reads it, and then she looks up at me. “Naomi talked to Marta?”

“Yeah, I guess she was in contact with her, and with Trevor, right before she died. I think she was trying to investigate what happened to Lila.”

Daisy frowns. “We should talk to Marta too, then.”

I shake my head. “No way. Marta’s worked for Greystone for decades. She’d go straight to Matthew.”

I hear Kai and Cecily emerge from the cabin. They’re laughing and have turned up the music. They’re out of earshot, and the wind is loud, but they’re just around the corner from where Daisy and I are standing. Daisy lowers her voice. “Look at what he said. Naomi was convinced. She must have found something. I’m going to reach out to Marta.”

Kai calls out Daisy’s name, and she turns to go back. I grab her arm. “We can’t.”

“What’s going on here?” Kai asks, appearing behind Daisy with two glasses of champagne. She eyes my phone suspiciously, and I turn off the screen.

“Nothing,” I say quickly, forcing a smile. “Just…worrying about the girls.”

Kai tilts her head to one side and studies me. “Okay…” She hands me the second glass.

But as we walk back out to the sundeck, Kai leans in and whispers to me. “I heard you mention your sister…”

I look at her. She looks worried.

“I didn’t know how to tell you, and you had enough to worry about…but it feels wrong not to say something.” She hesitates. “Your sister came to talk to me a couple of months before she died.” Kai looks to the side, then back at me. “She was asking about the ski trip.” Kai hesitates. “I thought I convinced her to drop it, but—I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t.” Her voice trails off.

Cecily appears suddenly behind Kai, holding an empty glass of champagne. “Who else is hungry?”

Feeling lightheaded, I follow Kai and sit down on a towel next to Daisy as Cecily goes back inside. I close my eyes and try to make sense of what Kai’s told me as the noise around me elevates: the dark festival music, the wind, the waves crashing against the side of the boat, the gulls shrieking overhead. Why did Naomi go to Kai? Why didn’t she come to me?

I turn to Kai. “We should tell Detective Simmons.”

Daisy lifts her head. “Tell her what?”

“Refreshments are here!” Cecily emerges from the cabin in a bikini and sarong, holding a plate of prosciutto and melon, and a bottle of champagne.

I turn to Kai, remembering where we are. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this right now. I’ll tell her when we get back.”

Kai nods. “I know you want answers. But you may not get the answer you’re looking for.”

“There he is!” Cecily says as one of the crew members emerges holding a tray of canapés. He’s attractive with deeply tanned skin and hazel eyes like Nate’s.

“Can I interest any of you in some canapés?” And he’s Australian. I glance at his name tag— Jax. He looks like a Jax.

I watch as Cecily flirts with him. This morning before they knew I was awake, I’d overheard Cecily telling Kai how Theo’s been away on business in London for weeks and wondered if their marriage had been suffering.

Kai stands up on the deck, holding on to the thin railing. “I know what we need.” Her face is flushed from the champagne. “Who wants to bring out the Jet Skis?”

—

There are only four jet skis, and there are five of us, including Jax, whom they’ve invited, so naturally, Cecily and Jax share one.

“All right, there’s another boat out that way, so keep clear, but besides that the waves are perfect right now,” Jax says. “Brake’s on the left. But remember, it’s not a motorcycle, give it a good ten meters. And when the waves are big like this, go straight into the crest.”

Cecily rides behind him in her nearly sheer bikini, hands wrapped around his waist. A motor revs behind me and Kai howls and takes off. The others go after her. I press the lever for the gas and the Jet Ski lurches forward. My friends are tiny dots in the distance. How did they get so far ahead? I press down harder, watching the speed dial go from 20 mph to 25 to 30. How fast does this thing go? Knowing Theodore’s love of sports cars, it’s probably custom-designed to go faster than most. I thud over the waves, salt water spraying my face. It’s exhilarating. A rush of adrenaline every time I hit a crest that makes me forget everything else for a moment. At top speed, the bottom of the Jet Ski skids over the water, wind whipping against my bare skin. I scream and hold on tight.

Minutes later, I catch up to them. Kai and Daisy are riding the wake of a speedboat, swerving back and forth in front of me while Jax guns his Jet Ski next to the boat, racing it. He’s standing as Cecily holds on tight. They must be going at least thirty-five miles per hour, drifting precariously closer to it.

I brace myself as my Jet Ski tilts sideways, dropping into the wake of the boat, and glance down at the speedometer—48…49…50, my pulse rising with it. All of a sudden, a scream rips through the air. I look up. Cecily is pointing at something up ahead. A massive black yacht had appeared out of nowhere. And it’s moving fast. They’re going to crash right into it.

“Watch out!” I scream.

The speedboat up ahead must have let off the gas to avoid the yacht because the stern is growing larger. Its massive engine and propellers coming at me. Fast.

Panic rips through me as I yank the handlebars hard and lean into the turn. But I take it too hard. The wake slams up against the bottom of the Jet Ski, throwing me off the saddle. Everything happens fast: the Jet Ski jerks sideways, slipping from under me. I fly into the air, suspended, weightless.

And suddenly I’m plunged into the sea. A low-key roar. Water burns my nose, fills my throat, my ears, tiny bubbles everywhere. I’m disoriented by the water rushing in every direction, but I force my eyes open and find a ray of light flickering overhead. With a surge of adrenaline, I crawl toward it until my head breaches the surface. I gasp.

Everything is quiet for a moment and I hear the deep thud of my heart. But then a loud ringing. Louder and louder.

Disoriented, I look around for Cecily. The yacht is speeding over the spot where she’d been. Oh god. I twist my body around and spot their Jet Ski on its side, being tossed around by the waves like a broken toy boat.

—

My heart is racing as I climb back onto my jet ski and surge in their direction. The first thing I see is a woman crying hysterically on the boat that hit them. Her hand is over her mouth and she’s pointing a shaky finger at her husband, yelling at him in French. “Mon dieu! Regardes ce qui s’est passé. You shouldn’t have been drinking!”

There’s no sign of Daisy, Cecily, or Kai.

I cut the engine, sick with adrenaline. “Where are they? Where are my friends?”

But the couple isn’t listening to me. Instead, the man stares at the damage with a look of horror, running his hands through his hair. “Putain. C’est ta faute.” This is your fault.

I take in the damaged Jet Ski and dread sweeps over me.

The couple stops arguing. They look at me. “Your friends,” the woman says in English, out of breath. “There.” She points to the back of the boat.

Daisy emerges from behind them. “Maya. Everyone’s okay.” The tension flushes from my body. Thank god.

When I see Cecily seated in the cockpit, shivering as Daisy cleans a bloody cut above Jax’s eye, I can’t help but wonder if this really was an accident. There seem to be too many of those these days.

—

That evening, everyone is too shaken up to eat. we’re huddled at the table as the dying sun casts a golden glow through the cabin. Cecily stares blankly at the horizon as Daisy texts her husband and daughter.

“He said something was wrong with it,” Kai says when she returns from talking to Jax. He’d offered to take a look at the broken Jet Ski. “The throttle was stuck.” She takes a seat next to Cecily.

“Do you think someone wanted that to happen?” I ask.

Daisy and I exchange a nervous glance. I know Theodore and Matthew did business together. He’d likely hosted him on this boat earlier this summer, like he did every year. Could Matthew have gotten access to the Jet Skis?

Or am I being paranoid?

Everyone falls silent, and suddenly the air feels tense, the movement of the boat nauseating.

“What makes you say that?” Daisy asks, looking at me.

I shake my head. “I’m overthinking it.”

Kai lifts her head. “You think it was tampered with?”

“It’s weird,” I say, after a moment. “I can’t help but think someone meant for that to happen.”

They go still. For a moment, no one says a word. Then Daisy speaks. “But…they would have tampered with all of them, not just the one, right?” she says. “It would have been impossible to know which of us would get it.”

I look at her. “Right.” But as I see Jax in the distance, obviously listening in, I can’t rid myself of the feeling.

—

That night when I’m getting ready for bed, there’s a knock at the door. The space is small, low ceilings and half-sized doors, so I have to close the bathroom door in order to open the one that leads to the main cabin.

I find Cecily on the other side. She looks pale. “Can I talk to you?”

I nod and step back to let her in. “Of course.”

The cabin is so small that I have to sit on the edge of the bed. I’d planned on reading, so the only light in the room is the one directed at the pillow.

“I don’t think you were being paranoid.” Cecily hesitates, bites her lip. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to your sister, and there’s something that happened the week before she died that you should probably know about.”

“The week before…wasn’t that the Legacy Foundation event?” I’d missed that event because Dani was sick. I remember Cecily, Kai, and Daisy had gotten a table together.

Cecily nods. “You remember Sara, Matthew’s fiancée? She was there…and she was drinking more than usual. I mean, we all were, but she was noticeably tipsy…and not in a good way.”

I picture Matthew’s fiancée tipping back glass after glass at the party. Those events tended to go all night and have an open bar…the looser the guests, the more generous they’re willing to be with their donations.

“Well, sometime after dinner, I went out to the balcony to get some air and I saw them in the corner, arguing. I wanted to listen, so I got closer, and it sounded like Sara was saying something about an affair with a student. How he’d lost his temper and done something awful. And you know those kinds of rumors have followed Matthew around even back when we were at school. And you said yourself Naomi was acting strangely those last few months…”

She goes quiet, and her words hang in the air between us. I can feel my heart thudding behind my ribs. The only window is no bigger than the size of my palm, and I’m suddenly aware of the lack of oxygen.

The way Cecily is looking at me, I can tell we’re thinking the same thing: Could it have been Naomi?