Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

I don’t come out of my room the next day. I tell Chess I’m not feeling well, and she seems willing to accept that.

But my body feels fine. It’s my soul that is suddenly a little ragged. I don’t know if it’s from reading what Chess wrote about me, or from her lies, or if I’m still reeling from Mari’s last chapter, but I don’t feel capable of sitting across from Chess and pretending everything is normal.

So, I lay in bed instead, listening to Aestas on my phone and rereading Mari’s confession over and over again.

It was stupid, not thinking about the album like I had the novel. Maybe I just felt more drawn to Mari because I’m a writer, too, or maybe, when I’d briefly googled Lara, there was something about her that felt a little off-putting.

Something in that bright smile of hers that made me think of Chess.

But that’s not fair to Lara. Or to Mari. They came to the villa that summer as muses at best, hangers-on at worst, because that’s how the men in their lives saw them. The only way they could see them.

And look at what they’d become.

So Aestas—and Lara—are just as important to this story, and that means I need to read, and listen. I’m hungry for further clues, any hint of the truth of that summer in Lara’s lyrics.

It’s harder with music, the language more metaphorical and flowery, the links not quite as clear, but I find—or think I find—a few.

There’s the opening track, “Golden Chain,” that’s clearly about Pierce, Mari, and Lara’s twisted relationship, and it seems obvious “Night Owl” is about Mari herself. Chess already identified that “Sunset” is about Noel or Pierce or both.

But I want more than that. In Lilith Rising, there’s the horror, the blood, Victoria with Colin’s literal heart in her hand, and now, it all makes so much sense to me. Mari couldn’t tell the truth about what happened to Pierce, what she did, so she had Victoria do it for her.

Did Lara do the same in her songs? Or would she have? All I have is Mari’s story, how Mari saw it. Stories change depending on who’s telling them.

Look at how Chess saw me. I didn’t recognize that version of me in her manuscript, but that didn’t make it wrong in the end, did it? It was just Chess’s side of the story. Didn’t she look different through my eyes than she did to the rest of the world?

When the album ends, I start it over, then eventually hit the Repeat All button on my music app to keep Aestas playing on a constant loop.

I think there might be something in “Last at the Party,” a line that goes, I watch you drift out the door/the music soloud, but your eyes so sad/and do you ever miss me, too?/Do the ghosts we knew come looking for you?

As I scratch that lyric down on a notepad, I flex the fingers of my free hand, my pulse jumpy. I want to tell someone about this, I realize. I want to compare notes, I want to share what I found in Mari’s papers, explain how the story of the murder at Villa Rosato is so much bigger than anyone ever knew.

And the fucked-up thing is, I don’t just want to tell someone.

I want to tell a particular person.

I want to tell Chess.

Even after everything.

She’s the only one who will get this, who will get why it’s so significant. And she’ll make these other connections, find different ways of looking at the story.

She’ll take it,another part of my brain reminds me. This is yours. With these papers, if you can get them verified, you don’t just have a measly $10,000 payment for a cozy mystery, you get a chunk of a seven-figure advance. You pay your lawyer. You get even better, scarier lawyers, and you keep every dime of your money, forever.

So I shove down that stupid, childish impulse, that desire to run to my best friend, to confide all my secrets. Instead, I keep listening to Aestas, keep making notes, and later, I sleep and I dream, but all my dreams are of bloodshed and screams, and Chess is there—she’s always there, somehow.

I can’t avoid her forever and, after hiding Mari’s pages even better than I did before, I make my way downstairs the next morning.

I’ll confront her, I’ve decided. Tell her what I found, what I read. She can’t be mad given that she did the same damn thing to me, and her betrayal is now a lot fucking bigger than mine.

Chess is on the phone when I get downstairs, standing in the kitchen, and I’m just about to interrupt her when something makes me pull up short.

It’s the way she’s standing.

The late morning light is making a halo around her, and Chess could be sixteen again. She has one foot crossed in front of the other, her head tilted down as she talks into her cell phone, and her free hand is playing with the neckline of her shirt.

“Well, if you didn’t miss me, I’d be worried,” she says, and whatever the person on the other end says makes her laugh.

“Baby, you know this stuff takes time,” she all but purrs, her voice rich with promise, and I back out of the kitchen before she’s seen me.

Chess isn’t dating anyone as far as I know, but it’s not totally unthinkable that there might be a guy she just hadn’t mentioned. Chess hasn’t been serious about anyone in a long time, but there are always men around. This must just be one of them.

But she was almost whispering, keeping her voice low. Like she was hiding from me.

Why?

And it’s more than that. It’s completely crazy, but there’s something about the furtive way she was talking that reminds me of those times I’d walk in on Matt, speaking in that low voice to whoever was on the other end of the line. An illicit intimacy that I wasn’t part of.

It’s not a comfortable comparison, but it lodges there in my brain and I can’t stop touching it, like a sore tooth.

I’m settled by the pool when Chess finally comes out of the house. I’m pretending to read Lilith Rising again even though, at this point, I practically have it memorized.

“There you are!” she says brightly. “I’ve missed you!”

I look at her smiling face and think, You lying bitch.

But I smile back. “Same. But I’m feeling better now, so I’m trying to soak up these last few days.”

“Ugh, I know. Can you believe we only have a week left?”

“Fastest summer of my life.”

“That’s what happens when you spend it with your bestie,” she says, and I grit my teeth and nod.

“Yup. So, who was on the phone?”

Chess had been turning to go back inside, but she pauses now, facing me. “What?”

“Earlier I came down, and you were on the phone.”

Tell me it was some guy you’re seeing. Tell me it was some guy who’dlike to be seeing you. Just don’t lie to me. If you lie to me, I’ll have to ask myself why.

“Oh.” She waves that off. “Just my mom. You know Nanci, doesn’t want a thing from me until suddenly she wants everything from me. I guess Beau is late on condo payments, so it’s Chess to the rescue again!”

I watch as she walks back inside, the pages of Lilith Rising squeezed tight in my hand.

---

WE’RE IN THE drawing room that night, the room I’ve started thinking of as our room, sitting on the sofas opposite each other. Music is playing again, Aestas, of course, but Chess is typing away on her laptop while I’m flipping through my phone. We’ve got wine on the table, but neither of us is really drinking it, and I keep stealing glances at her.

Rose’s email came in this afternoon. Just a short couple of lines, telling me she hasn’t heard anything from Matt’s lawyers, so no, of course she hadn’t mentioned the new book idea to them.

I read it three times before deleting it.

It can’t be Chess. It can’t be Chess and Matt. That doesn’t make any fucking sense. The guy she dated before Nigel had been a hedge-fund guy who drove a McLaren and owned a yacht. Matt got seasick on a cruise to Cabo San Lucas.

It’s Mari’s pages, getting in my head, that mess with her and Pierce and Lara. That’s what’s making me suspect Chess.

Or maybe I’m just looking for another reason to be angry at Chess. Something solid and valid, something that feels a little less petty than, You were mean about me in your book!

But this is the last thing I should want, because I’m not sure I could survive it. Matt’s betrayal hurt, but Chess doing that to me …

That would be fatal.

It’s stormy tonight, the first really proper storm we’ve had up here, and while we’ve got every lamp in the room on, we’ve also lit the candles again. It should feel cozy, tucked away in here while the rain falls outside, but it’s anything but.

I sit up now, putting my phone down. “Can I ask you something?”

Chess closes her laptop, eyebrows raised. “Anything, Em.”

“If you make ‘Don’t Be an Emma’ shirts, do I get a cut?”

To Chess’s credit, she doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about, or deflect it with some witty banter.

She just sighs and crosses her arms, her bangle bracelets clacking together under a cardigan that appears to be made of scarves.

“Was this an evening the score kind of thing? I read yours, so you read mine?”

“Kind of,” I admit, and one corner of her mouth kicks up.

“For what it’s worth, I wrote that the night after we had that fight. When you told me you didn’t want to write with me. My feelings were hurt, and I was feeling cunty, so I wrote that. I was going to delete it.”

“But do you think it?” I press, and Chess tips her head back, sucking a breath in through her nose.

“Sometimes?” she admits. “Yeah, Em, sometimes I do think you let yourself give up too easily. So what if Matt left? So what if you don’t like writing about murder at the fucking cakewalk or whatever anymore? It shouldn’t derail your whole life. Your sense of self.”

“It’s about a lot more—” I start, but then Chess shifts on the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table, and the light catches that anklet I’d noticed the other night.

Then, the lights had been dim, and I’d just caught the barest glimpse of it. Now, the chandelier is on, the hem of Chess’s pants is looser, and I can see the jewelry clearly.

But then again, I’ve seen it before.

A delicate gold chain, a tiny charm, a curling M, not unlike the M carved in the glass upstairs, but not M for Mari this time.

Mfor Matt.

Chess sees the moment I understand and stands up. “Emmy,” she says, and now I know what people mean when they say they see red because it’s like there’s nothing in my vision but bright, bright crimson, and my heart is in my ears, my throat, my stomach.

I don’t think.

I lunge at her.