“I don’t care.”
He shrugged. “Your loss. I only hired you to piss off your dad anyway.”
So I’d been right about that. But it didn’t matter. “You should ask why I’m quitting.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why are you quitting?”
I crossed my arms and steadied my voice. “I’m pregnant with your child.”
That got his attention. “Impossible. We didn’t have sex. It must be your townie boyfriend’s.”
I stared daggers into him, rage pumping through my body, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “It’s yours. It couldn’t be anyone else’s. You lied to me.”
He sighed. “To protect you. You threw yourself at me. You begged for it. What was I supposed to do?”
“You drugged me,” I said as evenly as I could muster, “the same way you did Stella, the same way you did all your—sleeping beauties, was it?”
His square jaw tightened. “Fucking Stella,” he muttered under his breath.
“You raped me.”
“You’re accusing me of raping you?” He finally met my gaze, his pale eyes cold.
“Yes.” I laid a shaking hand on my belly. “And I’m carrying the proof right here.”
“Proof we fucked isn’t the same as proof of assault.” He rose to his feet, towering above me. “No one will believe you. With your reputation? All you’ll do is dig your hole deeper.”
I wanted nothing more than to turn and run, but I rooted my feet to the floor, adrenaline coursing through my veins. “I’m sure I’m not the only woman you’ve assaulted over the years.”
“How much?” he spat.
“What?”
“The number. There’s always a number.” He rubbed his fingers together in front of my face, his eyes full of rancor. “How much money do you want to shut the fuck up and go away?”
I shook my head, holding back tears. “All I want is for you to never be able to do this to someone else.”
At this he roughly grabbed my arm. I tried to wrest it away, but he only tightened his grip, bringing his eerily symmetrical face so close I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “I have the best lawyers money can buy. You’ll never get past them. I’ll sue you for libel. You’ll go bankrupt fighting it.”
Again I tried to wrench my arm free, this time using my opposite arm to dig my fingernails into the skin of his wrist. “Let go of me,” I demanded, trying to keep the terror out of my voice. “They’re waiting for me on the ferry.”
The corner of his mouth twisted upward. “Not if I call them and tell them you decided to stay.”
Dread gripped my throat. “Fuck you. Let me go.”
“Afraid I can’t do that.” Without warning, he drove his knee into my belly. Sharp, deep pain. The air went out of me. I tried to gasp, but there was his knee again. The acrid taste of vomit in my throat. His fist flew toward my face, and everything went black.
Felicity
Landfall should still be hours away, but the sky is dark and the wind is violent as I make my way along the deserted cobblestone road that leads to Gen Town. A dead palm frond rips from a tree and crashes to the ground not ten feet in front of me, sending me scuttling backward. Maybe splitting up to search for Mary Elizabeth in the rapidly deteriorating weather wasn’t the best idea. Maybe staying on the island at all wasn’t the best idea. But too late to worry about that now. The ferry is long gone.
“Mimi,” I cry, the wind dampening my voice. “Mary Elizabeth!” I still don’t understand how she could have gotten out while we were at breakfast, but it’s been hours now, and the hope of finding her is quickly dwindling with the worsening weather. “Here, girl!”
The sound of a high-pitched horn close behind me makes me jump, and I spin to see Jackson behind the wheel of a golf cart. I hop in beside him, grateful for the shelter and the company.
“Any luck?” he asks.
“No.” I brush my wet bangs out of my eyes. “You?”
“Nothing.” He checks his watch and frowns. “Time’s running out before landfall, and we need to sandbag all the entrances of the lobby to make sure it doesn’t flood. The staff started to do it, but I noticed when I was up there a minute ago that they didn’t finish before they left.”
“Okay.” I’m despondent that we haven’t found Mary Elizabeth, but he’s right. At some point we have to take the steps to ensure our own safety.
“I figure we check Coco’s since the porch is open, then head back to the restaurant before it gets any worse,” he suggests.
I look up at the heavy clouds and blowing branches as the cart bumps along the uneven road. “It’s pretty bad out already.”
“It’ll get worse, trust me. I’ve been through a few hurricanes. They’re the real deal.”
“I know. I have too.”
He stops the cart in front of Coco’s. “What?”
“Yeah, I lived in Florida with my mom before she died,” I admit.
He turns to me, searching my face. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I haven’t told you anything about that time in my life,” I return. “Because it’s hard—”
“Hard to talk about. I know.” He nods, trying to wrap his head around it. “But I was there too. Isn’t it funny? I’m only a year older than you. We could have known each other. Where did you live?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I spring out of the golf cart and dash through the rain up the wooden steps to Coco’s giant covered porch. All the tables have been removed save an old pool table, pushed against the inside wall and covered with a blue tarp.
Jackson scurries across the empty floor to catch up with me, taking my hand. “Hey.” I turn to face him, and he looks at me with those soulful eyes. “Is it so bad to want to know more about you?”
I sigh, dropping my gaze to our interlaced fingers. I can’t lie to him anymore, but I can’t tell him the truth either. “I’m not the girl you think I am. You should stay away from me.”
The words sound silly, made no less so by the fact that I don’t seem to be able to release his hand. He draws closer, his eyes never leaving my face. “Whoever else you are, you are most definitely the girl I think you are.”
His gaze travels down to my mouth. I should pull away. I should leave. But I don’t. He tilts my chin up toward him and rubs his thumb across my lips. I can’t help myself. I part my lips and take his thumb into my mouth. He replaces his thumb with his tongue, and I wrap my arms around his neck. The wall of ice within me thaws beneath his touch, the surrender almost unbearably sweet.
Without coming up for air, he lifts me and carries me to the pool table. Our hands are suddenly all over each other, tugging off shirts, our breath hot and fast, as every moment of tension from the past few weeks, every repressed fantasy explodes between us. I unbutton his pants while he fumbles in his wallet for a condom and wriggle out of my shorts as we tumble onto the pool table, impatient to have him inside me. I know it’s wrong, but the movie’s over now, and I might as well enjoy one good fuck before I never see him again.
He pushes into me, and I know with immediate clarity that this is not a parting fuck. It’s not a fuck at all. It’s something else entirely. Something I’ve never experienced before. My brain stops; my identity stops. We move in unison like the ocean I hear crashing against the shore, like the thunder that rolls overhead, the rain that drums the thatched roof outside. It’s completely natural, like our bodies are puzzle pieces made to fit together, and it leaves me only wanting more.
Afterward, we lie entangled in each other’s arms atop the pool table, panting as the wind cools our heated skin. I bury my face in the crook between his shoulder and his neck, dreading what comes next. I should have told him before I let this happen, but it’s too late for that. I have to come clean now, before this goes any further. “I have to tell you something,” I murmur into his neck.
He pulls back to look me in the eye, pushing my hair out of my face. “Yeah?”
The m
oment of truth. I take a deep breath and steel my nerves. “My name isn’t Felicity; it’s Phoenix.” His eyes search mine, his face unreadable. I plow on. “Your father dated my mother, Iris, a long time ago. We met by your pool the night she died.”
He goes completely still. My heart plummets. It’s just how I’d thought it would be; he’ll never forgive me for the lies. But that’s how it has to be. It’s right. It’s what I deserve. I avert my gaze, terrified of the revulsion I’ll see in his face.
He lifts my chin lightly with his fingers, studying my features. “You were blond then.”
“And chubby,” I confirm, “with blue eyes and a big nose.”
I can tell he’s comparing my current face to his memory of me as he scans my features. “I would never have recognized you.”
“My eyes are still blue under these contacts, and the nose I had changed to lessen the chances of being recognized. But it’s still me. I promise.”
“I believe you.” The noise of the storm subsides; time slows. He traces his finger over my nose, my cheeks. His voice is soft when he speaks again. “I’ve thought of you every single day since that terrible night. Wondered what happened to you. I wanted to look you up, but I didn’t know your name.”
“Phoenix,” I choke. “Phoenix Pendley.”
He wraps his arms around me, and I melt into his warm chest, so overcome I can hardly breathe. My shoulders shake as all the fear and exhaustion pours out of me. When I finally get ahold of myself, I look up at him. “I sent you an email a few months ago.”
He nods. “That email is the reason we’re here. It made me finally work up the courage to ask Cole the truth about the night your mom died, what it was I’d really seen.”
“What did he say?”
“The same BS he’d said years ago—that she’d overdosed and he’d taken her to the hospital, but not in time to save her life. That we’d had to lie to the cops about her being in our home to protect his and Stella’s careers. But this time we both knew I didn’t believe a word of it. Then he offered to produce this film for me and star in it, as my film school graduation present. I knew he thought he was bribing me, but I took his money regardless, because fuck him. I figured I’d have a better chance of getting the truth out of him if I spent some time with him anyway. But that hasn’t exactly worked out.”
So the email had done its job; at least a part of my plan had succeeded. “What do you remember about that night?” I ask.
He searches my face, concerned. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
I nod. “I’ve come a long way to hear it.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, remembering. “When I went upstairs after I left you, I found Cole standing over your mom. She was unconscious, her arm tied off with a needle sticking out of it. The glass coffee table was broken, and there was blood on it. He said she’d taken drugs and he was trying to help her, then sent me to my room with a warning to keep my mouth shut. I was so afraid, I did what he said.”
This fit with what Stella had told me about Iris being unconscious when she arrived. “And later,” I prompt, “you lied to the police about having seen her.”
He nods. “He told me I had to lie or they’d take his money and send him to jail and he wouldn’t be able to take care of me and my mom anymore. So I lied. And every day since I’ve hated myself for it.”
I have no words. I know I should be glad he hates himself, but I’m not. I want to despise him for lying, for letting her die, for continuing to have a relationship with his father afterward…but I can’t. He was just a scared little boy. I feel the tenderness of his hand on my back; I hear the honesty in his voice, and I recognize with brilliant lucidity that improbably, he is the only person in the world I trust.
“It’s the reason I went to India,” he continues. “It’s the reason I try so hard in the rest of my life to be a good person. But I know I can’t ever make up for it, no matter what I do. I am so, so sorry.”
I imagine my mother taking her last breaths with Cole standing over her, swearing to take her to the hospital while knowing he never will. But how did she end up there? Why was a deadly syringe in her arm when ten minutes earlier she’d been happily cooking dinner in anticipation of a night in with Stella? I comb over the details, my mind catching on one in particular. “You said her arm was tied off with a tourniquet,” I say. He nods. “Do you remember what it was? A piece of rubber, a belt?”
“It was a belt,” he says. “I remember thinking how big it looked on her little arm.”
“So, a man’s belt?” I ask.
He nods. “Probably.”
“Your father’s belt,” I clarify.
“Most likely.”
As much as I want it to, the simple fact of Cole’s belt being around her arm doesn’t prove anything. She was in Cole’s room; she could easily have grabbed one of his belts; yet I know as clear as day that’s not what happened. “He killed her,” I say. “I don’t know why or how, and I can’t prove it; but I know it was him. I thought it was Stella at first, but I was wrong. She and Stella were in love.”
A look of understanding washes over his face. “That makes so much sense. I knew Stella and your mother were close,” he admits, “but I didn’t understand what that meant at the time. My mom wasn’t a fan of Stella and would send me over to Cole’s for her to look after me when he wasn’t home, as a sort of punishment for marrying him. But Stella didn’t mind, and neither did I. We had fun together. She treated me like I was a grown-up—probably because she didn’t have any experience with children—but I liked it. I met your mom a few times too. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen; I had a mad crush on her.” He laughs. “She told me about you. She thought we’d make great friends.”
He tilts my chin up again, and this time I’m not afraid of what I’ll see in his eyes. There’s no need anymore to force myself to look away, to keep my emotions hidden behind the ramparts. A hint of a smile lifts the corners of his mouth as he leans in and again presses his lips to mine.
The constant pressure in my chest is suddenly gone, and in its place is a lightness, a vulnerability. For the first time in my adult life, I am known. Accepted. And it’s a freedom unlike anything I’ve felt before.
Part VI:
Landfall
Stella
I lay sobbing on an espresso leather couch in the deserted lobby, my wails all but drowned out by the growing squall outside. I’d searched high and low for Mary Elizabeth, but she was nowhere to be found, and this storm was going to get a lot worse before it got better. My last hope was that Jackson or Felicity had located her, but the fact they hadn’t shown up yet didn’t bode well.
Through my tears I could make out thunderheads seething beyond the skylights in the vaulted-beam ceiling overhead. All the other windows were boarded up, making it nearly pitch black when the lights flickered, which they did with increasing frequency. I needed to get back to the bungalow and gather my things before sheltering in the wine cellar to ride out the storm. My pills, namely. I needed my pills. I’d only had one little A-pill this morning and hadn’t touched a drop of liquor all day, not to mention thrown out my smokes. I was going crazy with worry; I needed something to steady my nerves.
Heavy footsteps on the tiles echoed in the cavernous room. I sat up and wiped my face on my shirt, hoping Jackson had returned with good news. But when I turned, I saw it was Cole who stalked across the lobby toward me, his face dark.
“You haven’t seen Mary Elizabeth, have you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He tossed a lumpy envelope emblazoned with the name of the resort into my lap. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Open it.”
The flap wasn’t sealed. I extracted a dime bag of bluish pills. “What are these?”
“Fentanyl.”
I stared at him. Even in my darkest days, I’d never tried that one. “Why do you have fentanyl?”
“There’s so
mething else in there.”
I scraped my nails along the inside of the envelope, extracting a photo, cut to wallet-size. I turned it faceup. My heart stopped. It was a picture of Iris. She was smiling before a birthday cake with lit candles, a chubby little blond girl I recognized as her daughter in her lap.
“What is this?” I managed.
“It’s Felicity’s.”
I squinted at him, confused. “What?”
“She’s—” He sat heavily on the couch next to me. “I had nothing to do with this. She didn’t tell me until after she did it—”
I was beginning to panic. “Nothing to do with what? What are we talking about?”
He ran his fingers through his wet hair. “Last night when we were all at the bar, Madison swam over to your bungalow and entered through the deck. She’s the one who sent the text from my phone, so you’d leave your room and she could break in.”
A tremendous clap of thunder crashed overhead. “Madison broke into our bungalow? Why?”
“She’d overheard both you and Taylor trying to get me to replace her with Felicity, and she had this idea Felicity wasn’t who she said she was. Something about being in acting class with a girl that looked exactly like her—anyway, she went over there and rooted around in Felicity’s things, trying to prove it. Found the picture and the drugs zippered in her wallet.”
My brain strained to run in a million different directions. I pressed the palms of my hands into my eye sockets until I saw stars, listening to the wind whistling around the boarded-up windows. The only reason Felicity would have a picture of Iris in her wallet…It couldn’t be. It would mean she’d been lying to me from day one. I opened my eyes and scrutinized the picture. The little girl was seven or eight, and if you imagined what her round cheeks might look like slimmed down, it was true she bore a resemblance to Felicity, aside from the nose and the fact that she had blond hair and blue eyes. But eye color and hair color could be changed, as could a nose. And the fentanyl…“What are you saying?” I asked.
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