Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

  But the bigger change had come in the form of the Bell girls.

  From the beginning of June until the end of August, the Bell family took up residence in the mansion on the north cliffs, which they let stand empty the rest of the year. During that time, they hosted an artist colony, and St. Lucy’s was flooded with dozens of hippies who had perpetual paint smears on their hands, flowers in their hair, and a loose grasp of appropriate public behavior.

  Mia, Asher, and Cash had never paid them much attention while growing up. They existed as part of the landscape, to be ridiculed, yes, but mostly to be ignored.

  That year, though, the Bells had brought their two teenage daughters with them. Lacey and Monroe.

  The girls had shown up, all glossy black hair and blue eyes and curves in the places that they were supposed to be. The older one, Monroe, had caught Asher’s eye, and so, more often than not, the sisters would tag along, and their trio expanded to five.

  They’d spent their days at the lighthouse, sunning on the black rocks at its base, and their nights passing joints and bottles, and once, just once, some heavier drugs the girls had swiped out of one of the artist’s rooms.

  They weren’t inseparable. Sometimes it would just be Mia and Cash who’d crept out past curfew, and on those nights they’d bring blankets and curl up in the lookout tower, their limbs tangling, lips seeking each other’s—unpracticed, yet eager.

  But most of the time it had been all of them, killing days that had felt like they’d last forever. Seconds, minutes, hours, they’d moved differently then, when all she’d been able to think about was getting off the island that too often seemed like a cage.

  In the picture on Mama’s wall, Asher was laughing just as Mia and Cash were, but he wasn’t looking at the person behind the camera, and he wasn’t looking at the two of them, either.

  Instead, his gaze was somewhat off to the left. Mia didn’t remember the actual day the photo was taken; it was more a snapshot of a moment in time than an actual memory. But she guessed Asher must have been looking at Monroe, with Lacey behind the lens.

  Izzy sniffed, overloud in the quiet house, and Mia was no longer in that rose gold–tinted summer before everything went to hell. Instead, she was frozen in the hallway, her pulse thrumming far too fast for just standing still, with her partner watching her, concern cutting a deep line between her eyebrows.

  “Sorry.” Mia cleared her throat, making sure not to look back at the photo.

  “Your friends?” Izzy asked as they started walking again, their socks muffling their footsteps against the hardwood.

  “Used to be,” Mia said right before they stepped into the kitchen.

  It was tiny, like the rest of the house. Outdated, like the rest of the island.

  Mama stood in front of an old, baby blue gas-top stove that had been the main feature of the room before Mia’s birth. A radio on the counter by the porcelain sink played some country song, and Mama sang along softly, pretending not to hear them come in.

  Mia exhaled. “Mama. We’re here.”

  It took another few tries before Edie Hart spun, her hand clutching at her apron, manufactured surprise on her face.

  “You actually came,” Mama said, her voice flat, before she switched off the stove and slid the cast-iron pan to the back burner.

  “I told you I was,” Mia said, and before they could devolve into bickering, she gestured toward Izzy. “Mama, this is Detective Izzy Santiago. Izzy, this is Edie Hart.”

  Mama’s gaze slipped over Izzy’s lean and lanky frame, taking in the pink undercut, the nose stud, the row of earrings, her light brown skin, and the ink that disappeared up along her forearm underneath the pushed-up arms of her flannel shirt. “Are you a lesbian?”

  “Mama.” Mia sighed.

  But Izzy just laughed. “Why, yes I am.”

  Edie nodded once and then turned back to the stove. “You’ll be in the den. There’s blankets and pillows out there already. Mia, same goes for your room.”

  For a second, Mia wished she and her mother were the type to reach out, hug, kiss cheeks. It had been at least seven months since Mama had been to the mainland for one of her rare visits. But that kind of affection had never been a part of their lives.

  So instead of pressing the issue, Mia turned and led the way toward the room across from the study, where Izzy would sleep.

  “Will we still be able to talk to the pilot today?” Izzy asked.

  “Probably not.” The light in the room had lost any golden hue. The days were no shorter here than they were on the mainland, but somehow it seemed like they were. The island had a funny way of distorting time like that.

  “Well,” Izzy drawled. “Then you have plenty of time to tell me about that little bomb you dropped back at the doc’s.”

  Mia swallowed. The suicide note. The lighthouse.

  She hadn’t been back since that night. But she wouldn’t be able to keep the story secret from Izzy for long. Shouldn’t.

  Might as well rip the Band-Aid off. “All right. Grab your coat.”

  The lighthouse came into view at the same time the sea did.

  It was a simple building, a one-story house and then a phallic thrust of stone into air. Painted white, it stood as a reclusive lookout against the nothingness of the world that was beyond the slick black rocks below it.

  When Mia had been young, very young, it had conjured up images of explorers setting off to untamed lands, not knowing if death or untold fortune would be their reward.

  As she got older, it became a space that protected her rebellion, held it carefully within its walls, and never let it slip out to be devoured by town gossips.

  She’d had sex for the first time in the tower, on a Bishop family quilt, her skin sticky from the salt that had dried after their swim earlier in the day.

  She’d stood at the railing and touched flasks with Asher, who had lost his virginity three days before her.

  She’d watched the sun set and the sun rise and the storms roll in through the glass panes that had been warped and distorted with age.

  She’d cut her wrist in the living room of that house, the razor stinging against skin that gave way beneath blade far too easily. She didn’t remember anything else about that day, but she did remember the slice of metal against flesh. How simple it had been. Too simple.

  The lighthouse.

  Her cheeks were wet, and she swiped at them with her gloves, only then realizing she’d come to a stop. Izzy didn’t say anything, just let her be.

  “We came out here all the time,” Mia said as the wind howled and tried to steal her words, tried to inhale them for itself, greedy and selfish as it was. “That night was no different.”

  What would she even be able to say? Mia didn’t know, so she started forward once more. There was an open expanse—a meadow in the summertime but a desolate plain in winter—between where they stood at the line of the trees and the small structure on the very edge of the land.

  Her head down, Mia pressed forward against the gusts off the ocean. The wind cut through the layers of clothing, biting at her skin despite her efforts to protect it. There would be no more talking until they escaped the weather.

  The door was locked, but she knew where the key was hidden. The third rock in the space that was meant to house a garden. She would have broken the window if she had to. But thankfully, like everything else, the hiding space hadn’t changed.

  The silence of the room was stark after the roar of the wind.

  The place was small, with a dust-coated green sofa facing a fireplace that must not have been used in years. There were maps on the wall, tinted a tea color and framed like they were actually worth something.

  They’d huddled there, they must have. She and Monroe and Asher. What had they talked about? What had those last words been?

  Whenever she tried too hard to reach for them, she was met with a thick, impenetrable fog.

  Mia’s stomach clenched and heaved, and she was thankful sh
e hadn’t eaten anything that day, because bile she could swallow down. Her ulcer throbbed beneath her breastbone, but the pain was almost welcome as she stared at the floor where her friends had dragged razor blades across their wrists. Where their blood had slid from their bodies only to be absorbed by the hungry wood of the floor.

  The stains were still there, copper and clinging to the boards. Or was she imagining it? She was probably imagining it.

  Izzy brushed by her, headed toward one of the windows. She was silhouetted by the light pouring through it, her tall, lanky frame a dark shadow that betrayed no reactions.

  The move was purposeful, and Mia was pulled back to the present.

  “The Bell family owns the mansion at the other side of the island,” Mia started, because if nothing else, it was a place to start.

  Izzy whistled low. “That huge one?”

  “Yes.” Mia’s eyes tracked to the window as if she could see it. “The Bells always came in the summer, left by fall. Before winter.”

  “Can’t blame them for that,” Izzy said, an overdramatic shiver unsettling her body, which she’d otherwise been holding unnaturally still.

  Mia huffed a small breath, then continued: “The Bells had never brought their daughters until that summer.”

  Izzy had gone quiet again. Maybe because she’d heard the tremble in Mia’s voice.

  “Monroe was the older one, my age at the time. Lacey was only a year younger,” Mia continued, tripping only slightly over the names. “Monroe dated one of my best friends. Asher Lowe. They killed themselves here.”

  Hooking the tip of her finger into her glove, Mia then pressed on the scar there. “And I tried to, as well.”

  The shifting light protected Izzy’s reaction, kept it hidden. Just like she’d planned. There was a sharpness to her voice, though, that wasn’t usually there. “You had to watch your friends die?”

  Mia’s gaze slid back to the floor. “I don’t remember it,” she said, an answer that wasn’t really an answer to the question Izzy had asked. “At all. I’m told it’s common for traumatic events.”

  She didn’t bother mentioning that she’d seen the aftermath—Asher and Monroe’s bodies, their limbs at such odd angles.

  “None of it?” Izzy asked as if she could hear a hint of all the things Mia hadn’t told her.

  “Afterward,” Mia said. “But. Everything else is . . .”

  Izzy just waited, and Mia almost wished she wasn’t so patient, so she could be prodded into speaking instead of having to admit it herself. Izzy would find out eventually, anyway.

  “Everything else is gone. That entire day.”

  Silence dropped for a beat.

  “What do you remember?” Izzy asked then, because she was a good cop.

  “Running out of the lighthouse.” Mia tipped her head in the direction of the door. “Lacey found me. That’s the first thing I remember.”

  “Lacey? The younger sister?”

  “Yes,” Mia said. “She was coming to meet up with us, and she found me.” That part was clear—Lacey grabbing onto her arms, her fingers digging in, jagged nails catching flesh that was smeared with blood.

  “We came back in and found them,” Mia continued. She and Lacey had run toward the lighthouse, their thighs bunching, their feet pounding against the uneven ground. Why could she still feel the burn of it, the pull of tendons and ligaments, but couldn’t picture how she and Asher and Monroe had sat on the floorboards?

  “It was too late,” Mia finished, though Izzy would know that from the outcome. Their cuts were too deep.

  Mia stopped in front of the fireplace mantel. There was a jewel-encrusted box that sat on top of an ivory ledge. They’d stored their joints there. Sammy Bowdoin and Asher and Cash.

  She rubbed her fingertip over one of the pearls that lined its seams.

  “Is that all?” Izzy asked.

  Pale bodies caught in moonlight. Dark hair spilling over a blood-drained face. Asher’s slumped form, his eyes closed like he was sleeping.

  Her own skin had been slick, and she’d tried pressing the bottom of her shirt against the wound to stop the flow. Nothing in her had screamed to let it be, to let the life seep out of her, slowly and surely.

  So why had she dragged the razor across her wrist? Why had any of them?

  The fog slinked in, obscuring even the details she knew, she knew she remembered.

  Mia nodded, almost forgetting the question. Is that all? Yes. Yes.

  “I was expecting more.” Izzy shifted, but she was still leaning against the windowsill, her face mostly hidden.

  “They called it a suicide pact.” Mia shrugged, as if nonchalant, as if the night hadn’t ruptured the very fabric of her being despite the fact that she couldn’t remember any of it. She’d talked about this before, with the cops, with therapists, with Mama—though the last one had been filled with uncomfortable arm pats and loaded silences.

  When Izzy didn’t say anything, Mia licked her lips. “I left the morning after it happened. My aunt lives in Portland. I went to stay with her.”

  Izzy’s fingers drummed against her thigh, an uneven beat. “How long did that last?”

  Mia laughed, without humor. She didn’t like to think about that time. Didn’t like to think about any of this. “A week.”

  “You must have still been in shock.”

  That was an understatement. “It was the start of my insomnia,” she said, flushing hot despite the fact that Izzy must know about it. “I was screaming all the time, too, apparently. Just absolutely out of control. Lena—my aunt—tried to help me. But we barely knew each other.”

  “What was the breaking point?”

  “I locked myself in the bathroom,” Mia said, her tongue scraping along the roof of her mouth, finding the ridge there, pressing against it to center herself. More than she hated thinking about it, she hated talking about it. The words were rotten and heavy, and she had to force each one out. “I was trying to claw open my wound.”

  She held her wrist up, even though her scar was covered.

  “I was hospitalized after that,” Mia said. That was the word everyone scrambled for. Hospitalized.

  “Where was your mother?” Izzy asked the obvious question.

  Mia shook her head. “She didn’t leave the island in those days. The only reason she does now is to see me, and those visits are few and far between.”

  “Even though you were . . . hospitalized?”

  Pretending not to hear the pause, Mia nodded, knowing Izzy wouldn’t understand. “She was cleaning up my mess anyway.”

  Izzy nodded, but Mia could see the impulse to argue still there in the twist of her mouth. She let it die.

  “People are going to be . . .” Mia struggled to find the words. She actually didn’t know how anyone would react to seeing her again, but she had a good guess. “I’m telling you all this because they might say something. You might hear rumors.”

  She forced herself to meet Izzy’s eyes, her chin up. This was the time for Izzy to bail, if she wanted to.

  In the pause that followed, Mia’s bones ached with the weight of it all—the confession, the judgment, the nasty gossip that was sure to haunt her as long as she was on the island. The chance that Izzy might change her mind now that she knew the truth. All of it.

  Mia had spent so many years keeping these memories at bay, building walls, brick by brick, to prevent the thoughts from digging their claws into fragile skin. The longer she and Izzy were forced to stay on the island, the quicker those defenses would crumble. The darkness that lay beyond those walls terrified her.

  It was why Mia didn’t ever come back, why she’d stopped talking about that night long ago.

  The question of what really had happened that night snuck up on her sometimes—when she was distracted, when she wasn’t actively telling herself not to remember—her brain skittering back away from the thought as soon as it caught up. Because she knew, with certainty, that she was terrified of what that answer
would be.

  Izzy shifted, finally. Cleared her throat. “Yeah, well. Lucky for you, I don’t scare off easily.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IZZY

  Mia had stopped seeming small to Izzy months ago, despite her petite frame. But standing in the middle of the lighthouse, her eyes on the floor, she was nothing if not delicate, fragile, vulnerable.

  That starved, desperate quality that had settled into her body over the past few weeks was more pronounced than Izzy had seen before, even with the heavy layers of winter gear.

  Izzy sighed. She didn’t want to kick someone when they were down, but she needed to clear the air. Mia was already too close, her judgment too compromised, just from having to investigate people she grew up with. Add trauma to that, and it became a knife’s edge, one wrong move toppling them in the wrong direction.

  “All right,” Izzy said. “You should have told me all this days ago when we got the case. We can treat it as spilled milk and water under the bridge and all that jazz. But you can’t keep anything from me like that again.”

  Mia had stilled and was watching her closely. The disorientation of the first few minutes of the lighthouse had faded, and she was once again composed and unreadable, cool, assessing.

  A flipped switch and all the walls had come up.

  “I should have,” Mia agreed finally, more easily than Izzy had expected. “I don’t talk about this ever.” She waved to encompass the room. “As you can imagine.”

  “I get it.” Izzy nodded, because she did. She got it. But she also needed to trust Mia here, and that choice to keep Izzy in the dark hadn’t helped. Mia should have told her back in Rockport, or on the ferry, even. “Going forward, though, if I ask you a question, you need to actually answer it. No evasive maneuvering or anything.”

  There was a second when Izzy thought Mia was going to balk. Or at least shimmy her way out of a direct promise. But then her chin dipped a half inch.

  “I won’t lie to you, Izzy,” Mia finally said.

  “That doesn’t mean you’ll tell the truth.” Izzy was pressing her luck when she’d technically already scored the victory. But she was starting to get it now, starting to understand the way Mia was when it came to all this.