Chapter 25

"I don't understand." I doubleover to catch my breath as we reach the bottom of the hill.

Chase waits for me impatiently. "Look, I don't know how she found out, but the picture on that card is between me and Ryan. If he gave that card to you, he wanted it to get back to me. It's part of the little game he's playing."

I straighten up, wheezing. "Then tell me what it means. What does it have to do with last year?"

He pauses. "It's personal."

"Not if it's about Emily," I say, probably a little more sharply than I need to. But I'm done with secrets.

"He's mad at me for making a phone call." Chase walks briskly toward the house, and I push myself after him, but I'm exhausted.

"A phone call?" I can't keep pace with him.

He whirls around to face me. "Yes, a phone call. So it's not a secret, and it's not a lie, and we can just—" He takes the card out of his pocket and tears it into pieces, tossing them into the road and grinding them into the pavement with his sneakers. "Gone." I stare at him, a little afraid. Chase isn't one to lose his cool.

"I believe you," I say.

"Good." He looks shaken. He turns back to the house and stops short. The front door is wide open. He breaks into a run, shouting for Kennedy and Mila. I walk slowly, terror creeping over me. The house, that giant wooden box full of memories and ghosts, fills me with more dread than the uncertainty of the fog. It looms, mocking, darker than the dark, seeing with shuttered eyes, a stern, unforgiving reminder of my fatal failure as a friend. Maybe I deserve to be haunted. I hear Emily in the attic, begging for help, the pounding on the floorboards. I don't want to go back inside. But when I reach the door, Chase reappears, his face ashen. "Kennedy's gone," he says. He holds a note that reads: Took the boat to find Mila. Meet me out back.

The house is filled with lit candles, flickering and filling the space with an eerie light, giving the odd feeling that everything is moving, even the walls, the ground beneath our feet. I look over Chase's shoulder. The back door is wide open too. I start to follow him out but halt abruptly halfway across the room. Something doesn't seem right. Like one of those drawings in the Highlights magazines you read as a kid in the dentist's office. A missing chair leg here, a stairway leading to a blank wall. I turn in a slow circle until my eyes rest on the walls and zero in on the thermostat, then travel down the thin wire to the dormant metal rectangles lining the walls. The baseboard heaters. The electric baseboard heaters. Ryan's voice echoes in my head: An entire house burned to the ground because of a gas leak. My heart begins to beat faster as I walk in a daze through the kitchen, placing one hand on the cool coils of the electric stove. I walk faster toward the cellar, the dreaded cellar, and force myself down, down into the mold and mildew, past the acrid scent of rotten eggs, the vision of rotting rabbits, to the water heater, where the access panel has already been removed. Someone got here before me. No pilot light. No flame. The water is heated by electricity, not gas. I search the room frantically. There's an electric meter. But no gas one. And on the meter is a worn sticker with a wind turbine logo and the following words in tiny print: Thank you for using clean energy!

There wasn't a gas leak. There's no gas line to this house.

I turn around and rush up the stairs, my heart pounding in my ears.

The cold air hits me like the slap of a wave as I rush back out into the dark, soundless night. There are candles here, too, some put out by the fog, but one flickering in the garden catches my eye, and my heart drops into my stomach. Another tarot card. I pick it up numbly, and my breath is drawn out of my lungs. It's me. My paper twin stands on the dock, mouthless, eyes wide open. She stares out at something in the lake casting an enormous shadow that stretches back to the house. The handwritten caption says: Queen of Cups: beware the girl who sees the truth and speaks none.

I crumple it and throw it on the ground. "Chase!" He turns to me. "Where did you first hear the story about the gas leak?" I meet him halfway down the boardwalk, out of breath.

He looks surprised. "From you."

"It's a lie. The house isn't powered by gas. Ryan told me that story because he knew I didn't know anything. He wanted to control the narrative."

"Why?"

"Kennedy was right. He wanted to turn us against one another. Look for a human spark. Mila's lighter, Kennedy's candles. This house is old. The wiring is old. He won't accept an accident, so he invented a crime and he used me to plant it in our heads."

Chase examines his card. "I knew it."

I feel sick. I should have known. I should have doubted. "I don't even know if I believe Emily made those cards. He could have faked them. And he could have faked Kennedy's handwriting on the invitations. Forgeries can be very effective when they play off your expectations. I expected him to be the good guy. That's his game." And I was just a pawn. A player piece. Pathetic.

"I wanted to say I was sorry," Chase says quietly. "But he doesn't want an apology. He wants revenge. And he's still here. I know it. He could be watching us right now."

We begin down the boardwalk together, but I freeze when I see a shadowy figure ahead. Chase grabs my arm, but I find myself drawn forward. The boat is gone, and Kennedy with it, but the life raft floats just beyond the dock. Not the raft from the boat—the extra one the Hartfords store in the boathouse. Kennedy never found her. Mila stands shivering, gripping an oar to her chest, her bags at her feet.

Chase rushes forward. "Oh, thank god."

But she holds up a hand and he halts. Her long hair falls over her face in a dark, tangled curtain, her head bowed, shoulders hunched. For a second I think she's crying, but when she raises her head, her eyes are dry. "We were wrong about everything. Everything we thought. Everything we've done." Her voice is slow, and she looks dazed, almost drugged. "And we are going to pay for it."

A chill runs down my spine. "What do you mean, ‘everything we've done'?"

Chase looks at her nervously. "Mila. We can talk about this later." He jerks his head toward me. Like he's warning her not to say something, not to show something.

Mila laughs. "More secrets. How could that possibly backfire?" Her voice takes on a bitter tone. "But we can't upset Chelsea. She's delicate."

I glare at Chase. It's another one of those words people use. It sounds pretty, but it's unbearably cruel. And it isn't true. "Secrets? What is she talking about?"

"Nothing," Chase says sharply, uncharacteristic of him. He tries to pull Mila away from the edge of the water, but she slumps back like a stubborn toddler refusing to leave a toy store.

She grins at me and hands me the slick, mildew-covered oar. "Dead things, Chelsea. Dead things." Then she looks Chase square in the eye. "And if we survive the night, I'm telling."

The tension in the air is as heavy as the fog. "Mila, Ryan's the one behind all of this," I say. "He made up the story about the gas leak. This is all his revenge."

But she barely reacts. "Great job, Chelsea. Now tell me. Revenge for what? Have you cracked the case yet? Who kissed the killer?"

I falter. None of that was real. Right? "What happened to you out there?"

"Nothing worth telling, apparently." Mila pulls her lighter out of her pocket absently, ignites it, and stares at the little dancing flame. "It doesn't matter what we do now anyway," she says. "We're fucked."

"Mila," Chase says again. "Enough."

Mila flicks her lighter shut. "Delicate."

I'm three seconds away from exploding, and that can't happen now. Not when Mila is so close to giving in. I use the old trick, picturing a glass jar, the kind Mr. Hartford builds tiny ships in, a hurricane swirling inside. Imagine striking a match, holding the flame to a ring of wax, sealing the jar airtight. Pressure within, silence without. But the words Shut up escape.

She shakes her head. "Have any of you ever really faced consequences in your lives?"

"Mila, please." There's pleading in Chase's voice now.

"No. No more coddling. Not for any of you. You all ran off and left me to take the fall. I was the one dealing with reporters, detectives, private investigators. No one, not a single person, believed our story."

I feel like I've been smashed into pieces. Our story. "It wasn't a story," I say numbly.

"People are going to remember me as a murderer for the rest of my life. And you thank me by lying to me. To all of us."

"You're wrong," Chase says. "I haven't been lying. Maybe I forced myself to suppress a few things as a defense mechanism or something. But none of us is a murderer. You know that." Chase's eyes are fixed on me.

The word delicate vibrates through my bones at an alarming pitch. "If that's true, why is she calling it a story?"

"You're really living in a total state of denial, aren't you?" Mila says in disbelief. "Even now, surrounded by memories."

"Don't be a hypocrite," Chase says quietly. "All of us are guilty of turning a head to certain unpleasant truths."

I stare at him, my sense of horror growing. What truths? "I was completely isolated from the outside world last year. Maybe I didn't dig for the truth, but it's not like it was at my fingertips."

"What about the Summer of Swallows?" Mila says. "The year before the fire."

"How is that even relevant? Every year is the same," I say impatiently.

Chase gives me the look I hate the most. Pity. "Not exactly the same."

Mila stands and heaves her suitcase up. "It's Kennedy's fault we're in this mess. I'm not waiting for her. Chase, you can get your stuff or I can walk to town without you."

"We're leaving together," Chase says firmly. He shivers. "It's probably not a bad idea to grab our things, though. And maybe wait at the end of the driveway."

"Kennedy said to wait here," I say with a rush of panic. "Have you seen her? She took the boat to find you."

Mila casts Chase a long look. "Yeah, I saw her out on the boat. And I sure as hell didn't stop to say hello."

I stare at her, taken aback. "Why? We have to find her."

She looks exhausted. "You still believe everything Kennedy tells you, Chelsea?"

A chill runs through me. "I have to believe it."

"The only thing I have to do is go home." She turns away wearily.

I suddenly feel an even deeper aversion to the house. I grab Chase's hand as Mila walks ahead. "Tell me the truth," I whisper. "What did you see in the tarot card? It scared you. And Mila saw something on the water. She wasn't accusing you of hiding things before. Or blaming Kennedy."

He avoids my eyes. "It brought up a bad memory, that's all. It doesn't change anything. It was still an accident. It wasn't Kennedy's fault. Or Mila's, or mine, or yours. Sometimes people just need someone to blame."

"What about Ryan?" I add anxiously.

He sighs, and I think I can detect a hint of bitterness in it. Even in a moment like this, the tension between them is palpable. "No one ever suspected Ryan."

A chill runs down my spine. "Should they?"

He doesn't answer. But as he disappears into the house after Mila, I see a flash of movement in the corner of my eye and whirl around to find myself face-to-face with Ryan. His hair and clothes are disheveled, his expression stony, and he looms over me like a shadow.

"You tell me, Chelsea," he says darkly. "Should you?"