Chapter 51

N OW

Claire Parker sips a mai tai on the patio of a beachside bar. She's wearing a navy sarong, sandals, large sunglasses, her short, jet-black hair ruffled by a gentle sea breeze. The drink is refreshing, the shade from the palm tree she sits under cool after her day spent in the hot sun, painting pictures for tourists on vacation.

She's gazing across the bar at a TV behind the counter. There's an international news show on. The yellow ticker tape at the bottom reads: Missing Harper Family: Found at Last?

Claire's heart begins beating hard and steady. She gathers her things and slips inside, closer to the TV. The scene shows the Harpers' house, winter snow piled high on the roof. Police tape surrounds it, flapping in the breeze.

The story is just breaking. A helicopter thuds overhead. The scene shifts to an aerial shot. Christmas lights are strung around the neighborhood, sparkling snowmen and flashing reindeer decorating the lawns. Police uniforms and vehicles with flashing lights line the road, barricades blocking the street.

Claire recognizes Detective Jessica Lambert leaning on her cane in the front yard of the house the police are focused on. She stares at her phone, her expression tense. She has a coffee in one hand, a slouchy black beanie on her head, her long, dark hair trailing down her back.

There's a flicker at the edge of the camera. It's Alice Harper, cycling up the road. She throws her bike onto the snowy grass and sprints across the yard, her gaze fixed on the detective's face. Detective Lambert gives a short nod, and Alice's face crumples. Her body follows, and she collapses to the ground.

Detective Lambert's coffee arcs through the air as she drops it, rushing to Alice. The camera captures her wrapping her arms around the girl, whispering something in her ear.

The news reporters are speculating on what she told Alice, but Claire already knows.

We found them.

But has she told Alice everything?

Because Claire knows there are only two bodies hidden in the Harpers' shed.

Laura's isn't there. It never was.

Claire's cell phone rings from her purse. She drags it out. An unidentified number.

"You should've told me the truth last year," Mrs. McCormack says on the other line. "Laura."

"It's Claire now," she hisses, glancing to either side of her. But nobody is listening. There's only one other person at the bar right now, and the bartender is busy flirting with her.

"You let me think your husband did it."

"Would you have helped me if I didn't?"

Mrs. McCormack doesn't answer. Maybe there isn't an answer. Claire let her think the rumors about Pete were true because she knew then Mrs. McCormack wouldn't go to the cops. After all, her daughter's husband had been a cop when he'd killed her.

Now she knows everything. Almost.

"Are you watching the news?" Mrs. McCormack asks.

"Yeah," Claire says. "Have you been watching Alice like I asked?"

She's been worried for a long time about Alice living with Melanie.

"Yes. Fortunately, the code you gave me for the O'Briens' front gate still works. And so does the key." She chuckles. "Although I think Alice nearly caught me following her a few times. The girl is too perceptive for her own good."

"How is she?"

"She's . . . struggling."

"I wish ..." Claire stops. Wishes are granted only in fairy tales, after all.

Neither speaks for a moment, watching the news from their respective locations. But Claire's mind has wheeled back to that night, to the person she used to be.

After the accident, Laura woke slowly, her shocked brain not quite able to process what had happened. She'd pulled herself out of the upturned car, her head swimming. Snow turned her vision to static. Her arm was covered in blood, a ragged wound near her wrist. Her mouth was filled with blood. She spat, crimson splattering the snow. She was so dizzy, everything whirling. She fell to her knees in the snow as blackness swept over her.

When she woke again, she heard Mel's voice.

"None of this would have happened if you hadn't told Laura to turn herself in!"

A pause. Pete shouting. And then a gunshot split the night.

Laura staggered to her feet, blinking to clear her vision. She lurched around the side of the car just in time to see Mel disappear into the forest.

On the ground, Pete was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head. Underneath him was Ella. They were both dead.

Laura had looked around wildly for Alice. There was no sign of her.

A slow, hot panic filled her, like boiling water in a teapot. Mel would come back soon. Her best friend who'd killed her family to stop Laura from going to the police.

Mel would kill her, too.

And so she ran.

But she had a plan in mind. She ran into Killer's Grove, dripping blood from the wound in her arm into the snow, a trail leading to a chasm that cut deep into the forest. And then she wrapped her arm tightly in her coat and hid in a hollowed-out tree, where she waited until Mel crashed through the snow, following the drops of blood to the chasm. Minutes later, she turned around, returning to the car.

Laura's plan had worked.

After that, she slipped through the trees, veering toward the clearing, their little suburban neighborhood, all the way to Mrs. McCormack's house.

Mrs. McCormack had cleaned up her wounds, tucked her into bed like the daughter she lost so many years ago. The next day, she told Laura Alice was in the hospital. She was safe. Mrs. McCormack went to visit, but she wasn't allowed in Alice's room. Laura's mother told her that Alice would live with her in Florida.

And so Laura had fled. She had money, enough to live off for a while. With it, she bought herself a new identity. Claire Parker. A woman who paints for tourists and spends her evenings quietly drinking at a beach bar.

All that time daydreaming about being a different person, and now here she is and she'd give anything to go back to what she had. She closes her eyes, longing desperately for a past she can never get back. Pete, how exciting it felt at the start, the tedious normalcy of their years with young children, their pride as they grew older. The Christmases and camping trips and cups of coffee in bed. The moments of passion and tenderness, of anger and resentment. But mostly, the days that tumbled into months and then into years. How a solid and ordinary life can actually be exactly what you need.

She remembers once, when the girls were small, she and Pete had taken them for a walk in Killer's Grove. They'd come upon a small field covered in a vibrant, radiant carpet of bluebells and had been completely astonished by their transcendent beauty. They'd sat amid those bluebells, their velvet blue petals brushing their thighs, and their fingers had twined together as they watched their children play, and it was its own kind of magic, the kind you only get with someone who knows all of you.

She wishes so much that things had been different. That she could have grown old with Pete, or at least sat next to him when he died, holding his hand and whispering how much she loved him.

Do you remember the bluebells, my love? she'd say as he dropped from consciousness, from life. Meet me there.

But all the things she longs for lie in darkness now.

When she'd learned all those months ago that Alice hadn't gone to live with her grandmother and was instead living with Mel, she freaked out. She'd almost turned herself in. That was the first time she'd called her. She'd wanted to warn her that she wasn't safe, hoping the static from an old radio would distort her voice.

"You're going to leave Detective Lambert the evidence?" Claire asks Mrs. McCormack.

"Yes," she confirms. "The gun Mel used to kill Pete is still in her car, hidden in the tire well, so I'll leave an anonymous note, along with her clothes from that night."

"It was smart of you to get them after I left."

"I'm lucky I had your keys. I've grabbed a few things for you from your house. Should you ever need them."

Claire sips the last of her mai tai, watching Detective Lambert comforting her daughter on the screen.

"You can tell Alice the truth now." Mrs. McCormack's voice on the other end of the phone crackles, static down the line.

"You said the detective found my diary."

"Yes," she admits. "I saw her get it myself. But I still don't understand why you wrote it if it's all bullshit. You could've just told the truth and had Melanie arrested."

Claire drops her eyes to her mai tai. The ice is melting at the bottom of the glass, turning the liquid a soft pinkish orange. She debates ordering another one as she thinks about how to answer Mrs. McCormack.

Yes, she could've told the truth. That Mel was there that night. That she helped cover up Theo Moriarty's murder. That to hide it, Mel had killed her husband and daughter.

But then she would've had to tell the truth about everything leading up to it.

That Alice shot Theo Moriarty.

Alice had woken to the sound of Laura talking to Theo. She hadn't seen Mel and had thought Laura and Theo were having an affair. Alice snuck downstairs, ready to stop them, when she heard Theo tell Laura to get in the car. Alice had climbed into the back of the minivan.

She'd blamed herself for telling Pete about Theo, for the ensuing fights, and had decided this time to take matters into her own hands.

While hidden there in the back of the minivan, Alice found the gun Laura had stolen from Maya, the gun Laura had never put under the front seat. Another fabrication for her diary.

When Laura, Mel, and Theo exited the minivan, Alice had followed. She knew she had to stop Theo. And she had.

For good.

But she had no idea what chain of events she would set in motion. That Detective Jess Lambert was driving home with her daughter right then. That she would hit Theo and crash into the river. That Isla wouldn't survive.

Alice freaked out when they found Isla dead. And then when she'd seen Theo's crumpled body thrown to the side of the road, she'd insisted they had to get rid of it—had tried to pull him into the rushing river before Mel had stopped her.

After that, Laura had written the diary, intending it to be a confessional for the police to find. An alternate ending to what had really happened. To protect Alice.

She watches her daughter embrace Detective Lambert on the TV and wonders if this is her penance. Or maybe it's just plain old karma. She's responsible for everything that led up to Detective Lambert's daughter's death, and now Detective Lambert gets to comfort Alice while she watches from afar.

Karma's a bitch. And sometimes you just can't outrun the past.

Even when she left the diary in the safe-deposit box and gave Alice the key, she knew the truth of that.

Her choice back then was clear: tell the truth and lose Alice forever or take the blame for her. It was only when she woke in Killer's Grove, after Mel had killed her family, that she realized she had a third choice. Take the blame and run. Let them all think she was dead.

She had promised Alice she would protect her no matter what, and in return she made Alice promise she would never admit the truth. So far she'd kept that promise. Hopefully she continued to. There was no statute of limitations on murder.

Claire glances again at the TV, where a photo of Mel is on the screen. The monster who turned her into a ghost. What will the police say when they find only two bodies in that shed? Will Mel tell them Laura fell into that chasm? Will they look for her?

"Your orchid is blooming, you know," Mrs. McCormack says. "The red one. It means good fortune. Maybe it's time to come home. Or, at least, time to tell Alice where you are. She should know she hasn't lost everybody."

Claire sucks down the last watery dregs of her mai tai and stands, tucking her phone under her chin. She throws one last glance at the TV, then walks out into the hot, shining sun.

"Maybe," she says as she heads back to the boardwalk. Back to painting portraits of tourists on their tropical vacation. "One day."