Page 62 of The Family Plot
“And you!” I fling my gaze up at him. “Andy wanted to talk to you that night, to youandTate. He wanted to ask you what it was like toget out of this place. But the two of you were off with each other like always, and maybe if you’d been there, he wouldn’t have been alone outside and someone wouldn’t… wouldn’t have…”
My head falls into my hands, my tears instantly wetting my palms. My body burns with pain, like fireworks bursting, scorching me from the inside out. I know I’m barely making sense, braiding together a rope of blame that isn’t tied to Andy’s murder, but I’m heaving and hurting and I’m sick, so sick, of Andy being gone.
When my sobs finally subside, I look at Tate and Charlie and Mom. They’re gawking at me, like they have no idea what to do with me. And it’s fine. I don’t mind. I don’t know what to do with them, either.
“Let’s go,” Tate says after a moment, tugging on Charlie’s sleeve.
“But—” Mom starts.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Tate snaps.
She closes the door behind them, leaving me with Mom in this dim, constricting space.
“What can I—” she tries.
I shoot a hand up to cut her off.
“Not right now,” I say, “please,” and I glare at the floor until, moments later, I hear her leave.
Alone in the passageway, I put my elbows on my knees, let my head fall back into my palms. Even with my eyes closed, I see the sketches on the wall—Andy bleeding, Andy dead, Andy never coming back. I look at the tears on my fingertips, watching them glisten like glass shards. And all the while, my chest vibrates with a rhythmic, persistent thud I barely even recognize as the thump of my own heart.
sixteen
“Ihave some news.”
The phone is pressed between my pillow and ear, and even as Greta speaks, I feel myself tugged toward sleep. Since Mom’s confession yesterday, I’ve been incurably drowsy, as if a sedative swirls in my bloodstream, too potent to resist. And I don’t want to resist it, because if I do, I’ll have to be awake in this unnerving truth: for all our lives, our mother lied to us as effortlessly as dreaming.
I hear the floorboards creak in Andy’s room. It’s quick, just a splinter of sound, but as soon as it happens, my stomach sours. It’s not the creak itself, achingly familiar, reaching me through the wall we shared; it’s that I don’t imagine, even for a second, that it might be him. Already I’m growing used to Andy’s absence, my heart settling like a house around the empty space he’s left.
“Dahlia? Are you there?”
“Mmm,” I mumble.
“I found some info on Lyle.”
I sit up in bed, blankets pooling around my waist, cool air rushing in to replace their warmth. “What is it?”
“Well,” Greta starts, “it’s a couple things. First, you know me: I wentdown some rabbit holes—but I ended up getting my hands on his high school yearbook. Apparently, he grew up here, not on the island.”
“Okay?” That isn’t particularly newsworthy. Many of the islanders grew up on the mainland before settling here as adults.
“Anyway, there’s a picture of him,” Greta continues. “With your groundskeeper.”
Surprise twangs against my ribs. “With Fritz?”
“Here, I’m texting it to you.”
In a moment, the picture comes through. I zoom in with my fingers, first on the caption—John Fritz and Lyle Decker, cocaptains of the boys’ lacrosse team—and then on the image itself: two skinny teenagers, each with an arm slung over the other. At first, I don’t see the men I know in those faces; they’re too smooth, too slender, too smiling. But as I squint closer, I recognize Fritz’s eyes, mirthful but mild.
“They were friends?” I say.
It’s difficult to imagine. Back when we were kids, we knew Lyle Decker as the cranky man across the woods, the man who offered us little more than a growl of acknowledgment on the rare occasions we saw him. Fritz, on the other hand, has always been playful and polite.
“I’ve never seen them together,” I add.
“Yeah, well, Fritz was always working when you saw him, right?”
“Still. He was friends with our neighbor, and that never came up? I guess they could have drifted apart…”
