Page 148 of The Guilty Ones
The lake breeze intensifies, carrying the scent of damp earth from last night's rain. Chloe shivers, though not from the cold.
She needs to think clearly, carefully. The way her mother taught her.
When faced with a problem, calculate every option. Choose the one with the least risk to you.
Her mother's words echo in her mind with perfect clarity. Her mother is rarely wrong.
Chloe takes one step toward the bluff edge. The soft earth sinks. Her heel catches, and she stumbles a mere foot from the drop-off. Swiftly, she steps back, heart thumping.
Chloe's hands shake. She can't go down there. She can't risk being seen. But her mother never shakes. Never doubts, never blinks.
Chloe straightens her shoulders, decision made. Her mom will know what to do.Always clean up your messes, her mother constantly reminds her.
Well, this mess has grown too large to handle alone.
She turns away from the bluff, her mind already crafting the narrative she'll present, the frantic tears she'll summon on command,the trembling voice with which she'll describe what happened, and how terrified she is now.
Her mother will help her, she always does.
After all, her mother helped resolve the sleeping pills incident that put annoyingly perfect Taylor Everett in the hospital and made Peyton swim captain.
It had gone sideways a bit, but Chloe hadn’t minded. Standing there by the diving board, watching that girl slip under the surface of the water, so still and quiet, the water making barely a ripple. The way her hair had shimmered like a mermaid’s.
Her phone screen reads 12:52 a.m. Chloe calculates quickly. Her mother took an Ambien around ten p.m., so she'll be groggy, possibly incoherent for another hour or two.
And downstairs, Mia has just gone inside. She’ll be awake, moving around, and possibly some of the other girls too. Going to her mother now, with potential witnesses stirring, with her mother barely lucid, would be a mistake.
Judging by all the blood, Leah isn't going anywhere for a while.
Chloe can afford to wait.
She walks back toward the house. Her footsteps are oddly light despite the weight of what has transpired. A curious sense of relief floods through her veins, as if she's shed something cumbersome, something that's been dragging her down.
She'll slip inside, change her dress, wash her hands, then lie down quietly in the basement and wait until everyone is dead asleep. Then she'll climb the stairs to her mother's room, let the tears come, and tell her mother everything. Well, almost everything.
Her mother will save her.
That is, after all, what mothers do.
