by Liz Fenton
She felt her phone vibrate in her purse. She pulled it out and put her hand over her mouth when she saw the text Annie had sent. A jolt of relief filled her chest. She couldn’t wait to get home to her uncomplicated friend.
This guy says he’s forty, lol. Attached was a picture of a bald man wearing small, round eyeglasses and a paisley bow tie.
Omg. Fifty. At least. But he’s cute. I say go for it!
You just want me to get back out there!
Can’t fault a girl for trying, right?
So, how’s my favorite third wheel? Annie texted back.
More like fourth wheel, Lauren typed, glancing at Marco.
Just keep drinking. You get to come home tomorrow, Annie texted.
She walked up to the bar and blew a long stream of air out of her lips, and the bartender sarcastically asked if she wanted another. “Duh,” she said, and pushed her empty glass across the bar.
I’d do just about anything to come home right now, Lauren texted as she waited, tears pricking at the back of her eyes. This trip was supposed to represent many things for her—redemption, renewal, forgiveness. With the year anniversary of Geoff’s death approaching, she’d grasped on to the hope for change like a life raft, and now, without it, she was drowning.
Ashley looked over and caught Lauren’s eye and beckoned her over. Lauren shook her head. Ashley made her way over to Lauren anyway, Natalie in tow.
“What’s up? Having fun?” she asked Lauren.
“Do you care if I am?” Lauren shot back and felt a stab of guilt when Ashley’s face fell.
“Of course I do,” Ashley said, glancing at Natalie. Possibly wondering if she was going to come to her defense? Natalie looked away as if she hadn’t heard. “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it, Lauren.” She waved her hand in the direction of the small, battered stage, her voice shaking. “Want me to grab the mic and tell everyone here that I’m a terrible friend? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Lauren said, and turned her back to Ashley so she couldn’t see the tears forming in her eyes. She hated that she couldn’t just wrap Ashley in a tight hug and tell her that they were okay. But if she let go of the thick ball of anger she held for Ashley, then it would mean she’d have to let go of Geoff too. And she wasn’t ready to do that—they were spun together like a spool of thread. The resentment she held for Ashley had become a fabric of her being. Without it, who would she be? Lauren felt movement behind her and waited a beat before turning back. Ashley was striding back toward Marco, Natalie a few steps behind. Marco put his arms out as she approached and pulled Ashley in, turning away from Lauren and Natalie, who stood awkwardly as they embraced.
Oh, Natalie. Can’t you see that you don’t need her anymore?
Ashley might have no regard for how she was acting, for what her friends might think of this man she’d opted to spend almost every second with on this girls’ trip. She might not even give a shit that she was married. But someone would.
Lauren downed the tequila shot the bartender gave her, then picked up her phone and held it up so Ashley and Marco were in the frame. She pushed the red button to record video just as “Brown Eyed Girl” started playing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE MORNING OF THE NIGHT
ASHLEY
“What were you two fighting about anyway?” Natalie asked, and Ashley’s back stiffened, her jaw tightening. She and Lauren had been silent the entire ride home from Chichén Itzá, the tension in the car as thick as smoke, Ashley breathing short breaths, trying not to cry.
“Geoff.” Ashley sat down on the bed. “I said all the wrong things, of course.” The conversation had been running through her mind on a loop. She knew she’d been wrong not to disclose her own abusive relationship. But she’d been right to insist that Lauren leave Geoff. What kind of friend would she have been had she just let her stay?
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Natalie said, comfort in her voice.
“I did, Nat. I did. And listen, I told her something. Something I thought would help her understand, and it spiraled out of control after that. It’s something you don’t even know.”
The confession rolled off her tongue much easier this time, and she didn’t stop for almost five minutes. She told her about Jason, what he’d said, how he’d pushed her. The names. Natalie stayed silent, cringing at some parts.
“Why did you keep this inside? Not even tell me?” Natalie asked.
Ashley played with the cheap turquoise ring she’d bought at the beach the day before. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I think I was embarrassed! Me”—she pointed to her own chest—“entrepreneur and strong-minded woman, letting her own husband treat her like that? Can you imagine what people would think?”
“No one would have cared, Ash,” Natalie said softly as she picked at her cuticles.
Ashley sensed Natalie was still bothered that she hadn’t told her first about her problems with Jason. “And I thought Lauren would understand because she’d been through it—or something similar. If she hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have told anyone. But she didn’t understand. Not at all. In fact, it made her more upset.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Ashley answered, a little surprised how good it felt to tell Natalie. Up until now, every terrible thought, every doubt she’d had about Jason, she’d had to bottle up inside. Finally she had someone to confide in.
“What’s going on with us? Are we the friends we used to be? Are we even close anymore?” Natalie asked.
Ashley snapped her head back. “That’s your reaction to what I just told you? To make it about you? Not, ‘hey, Ashley, I’m so sorry, are you okay’?” She got up off the bed and stood stiffly, the anger spiking so quickly that she knew she had to leave immediately. Before she blew up.
“Wait, Ash, I’m sorry. I . . .”
“I’m going for a walk on the beach.” She turned back, gripping her hand on the handle of the sliding glass door, watching Natalie scramble to get up, to try to take back what she’d just said. “And you wonder why I don’t tell you anything anymore.”
She walked out, not bothering to close the slider, wondering when Natalie had stopped caring what happened to her.
When Ashley came back, Natalie attempted to apologize, but she had waved her off. But if she hadn’t been sharing a room with her, she might not have returned. She would have taken the night to cool off. But she didn’t have that luxury. She needed space and even thought about going to Lauren’s room. But she didn’t want to have to explain—to admit she’d had another fight with someone. She avoided Natalie’s eyes as she pattered around the room getting ready for bed, telling Natalie she was too tired to talk about it anymore.
The next morning, Natalie got up early, returning with two ceramic mugs of steaming coffee. She sat cross-legged on the bed and tried to open the conversation once more, wanting, no, almost seeming to need Ashley to understand that despite their current problems, despite that she found it almost impossible to reconcile the Jason she knew with the one that Ashley had described, she was still there for her.
“It’s all good, Nat,” she said, blowing on the hot coffee, grabbing for her phone. “Let’s just forget it ever happened, okay?” She hadn’t been sure what Natalie’s initial reaction would be, but she certainly hadn’t been expecting that she’d question their closeness. No matter what she said now, it would be tainted by her earlier pettiness. Ashley had no desire to hear it. If she’d learned anything, it had been that her impulse to spill her inner secrets to Lauren and Natalie had been a mistake.
“How do we do that?” Natalie had asked, perplexed.
Ashley smiled and snapped her fingers. “Just like that!” And then she headed for the shower, feeling Natalie’s eyes on her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE DAY AFTER
LAUREN
“So your friends get in a taxi with Marco, and you stay behind? Why?” Officer Ga
rcia opened his notepad and scanned the first few pages.
Were all of those notes from Natalie? Lauren wondered what she had told them—was he checking to see if their stories matched up? She pictured Marco’s hand resting on Ashley’s lower back as he guided her out to the cab, Natalie trailing behind. Lauren still breathing hard from her exchange with Marco and then with Ashley. “I didn’t want to go with them. Ashley asked me to, but I said no. It had been a long night, a long five days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things between all of us weren’t great,” Lauren admitted.
Officer Garcia found what he was looking for in his notes. “Natalie said tense.”
“Really?” Even though it was the truth, Lauren wondered how Natalie had portrayed her. How she’d characterized Ashley. Herself.
“Yes. Why was it so tense?”
Lauren hesitated. Should she tell them about her argument with Ashley at Chichén Itzá, or would it incriminate her in some way? “We had some pretty major unresolved issues,” she finally said.
“Tell us about them.” Officer Lopez folded his hands in his lap, as if he had all day.
Lauren tried to calculate how much Natalie might have revealed. What if she’d told them everything? That Lauren had blamed Ashley for Geoff’s death? How full of rage she’d been at the funeral?
“We’ve been friends a long time. Twenty years. Things build up.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.” Officer Lopez narrowed his eyes at her.
She couldn’t tell them about Chichén Itzá. They weren’t supposed to have been there. She had no idea what the consequences would be for trespassing after hours, but she did not want to find out. “We had an argument about my late husband.”
“Was this at Chichén Itzá?”
Lauren swallowed hard. So Natalie had told them. Lauren ran her fingers through her hair. Were they going to accuse her of doing something to Ashley?
Officer Lopez tilted his chin, clearly wanting more.
“Yes. We argued at Chichén Itzá. About a year ago, Ashley insisted I stand up to my husband because he was abusive.” She looked down, unable to meet the officers’ eyes. The word was still so hard to say. The story still so hard to admit. “And I listened to her. He had a massive heart attack and died while I was telling him our marriage was over.” Tears welled in her eyes. It was depressing how her grief still snuck up on her.
“And you blamed yourself?” Officer Garcia asked.
“No, I blamed her!” Lauren said, then instantly regretted it. “I mean, yes and no. It’s complicated.” She felt a chill as she tapped into the memory of how angry she’d been with Ashley at the top of El Castillo. When she’d heard Jason was abusive too. And when they’d climbed down, Natalie’s confused expression, her peppering them with questions on the way home about what had happened up there and whether they were okay. Lauren had refused to speak—afraid to reopen the fight and for her feelings to be exposed again like raw skin. Ashley had probably told Natalie some skewed version of the story at some point, and that’s why she’d mentioned it to the officers.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Officer Garcia said.
“Thank you.”
“So why were you fighting about this issue a year later?”
“Because we didn’t talk most of last year after it happened.”
“But you’re on vacation in Mexico together.”
“Right—it was Ashley’s idea to come here and work on our friendship—try to get close again,” she said, realizing how absurd that must sound. “Or at least that’s what I had thought.”
Lauren remembered the way she’d acted that first day. How she just couldn’t let Ashley have what she wanted—an easy and relaxed reintroduction to each other. It was almost as if Lauren had wanted to punish her. That hadn’t been her intention when she’d accepted the invitation, but that familiar tension had taken over once they were sitting in front of each other.
“Did you?” Officer Garcia asked. “Get close again?”
“That’s also complicated.”
“Try to explain it.” Officer Lopez looked at her.
“We were kind of up and down. And after Chichén Itzá, I’d say we were down,” Lauren said.
“How were you getting along at La Cantina?”
Lauren closed her eyes briefly, then looked at Officer Lopez. “Not great.”
“Is that why you chose not to leave with Ashley?” Lauren sucked in a breath, recollecting the desperate look in Ashley’s eyes. The way she’d grabbed Lauren’s arm for emphasis. Please. Let’s go somewhere and work this out. We’ve been friends too long. I can’t lose you.
Lauren debated whether to tell them how adamant Ashley had been about working things out that night. That if Lauren had accepted the olive branch, none of this would have happened. She decided to be honest. Natalie had probably already told them anyway.
“When I declined to go with them, Ashley offered to leave with me instead. To talk things through,” she said, briefly describing their exchange, avoiding their eyes so they couldn’t see the self-judgment in her own.
“Why wouldn’t you go with her to work things out?” Officer Garcia asked when she was done speaking.
“It just seemed pointless, you know? Like if we hadn’t been able to fix things by then, I doubted we would have suddenly seen the light after several more drinks.”
Officer Garcia nodded, but said nothing.
“But I wish I had,” she offered, hoping they could see the sincerity in her eyes. “And there’s something else,” she added, deciding to tell them about the video she had recorded last night. It might not look good that she had taken it without Ashley’s consent, and it would be hard to explain, but Marco was in it and maybe they could use it to identify him. She hadn’t mentioned it to Natalie because she wasn’t sure she was even going to tell the police. But she knew now that she had to. Anything that could help them find Ashley was more important than trying to protect herself. She knew she had nothing to do with Ashley’s disappearance. But maybe she could help find her. “I recorded her and Marco dancing.”
“Why?”
“I was pissed. Like, where did she get off? Bringing us here to mend, then spending all of her time with him instead of us.” She narrowed her eyes. And then playing grabass with him the whole time. “When he showed up last night, I kind of cracked inside. I’d had it.”
“What were you planning on doing with the video?”
“I had no idea. I was drunk.”
“Blackmail, possibly? Threaten to put it on Facebook, show her husband?”
Lauren shook her head vigorously. “No, none of those things.”
“Then what?”
“Honestly, I hadn’t thought it through.” Lauren immediately regretted telling them, hearing how it sounded out loud. But she quickly realized it didn’t matter, that it was worth it if it helped identify Marco. “I was just mad. I thought if I showed her how ridiculous she looked, she’d see it. That maybe she’d realize she had totally dropped the ball on being here for her friends this week. I was just tired. And mad. It was stupid. Marco had come up to talk to me earlier, and that also set me off.”
“You sound pretty angry,” Officer Lopez said.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying you sound like you were having conflicts with both Marco and Ashley, so maybe you have more to tell us about where they might be.”
“I have no idea!” Lauren slapped her hand on the table. She thought she saw Officer Lopez give her a look of satisfaction.
“Let’s get back on point,” Officer Garcia said. “What did Marco say to you that set you off?”
“Basically that the universe had brought him and Ashley together for a reason.”
“What reason?” Officer Lopez asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“It was just the fact he was there, wi
th us, ruining our night.” Lauren thought about the way Marco had tried to question her about her own life. He’d barely spoken ten words to her, blew her off when she’d tried to flirt with him initially, and now was an expert on her life, because he understood the universe?
“May we see the video?”
Lauren played it for them and bit down on her lower lip when she saw Ashley’s wide smile light up the screen.
“I can’t make out Marco. It’s just the back of him. But text it to me, and I’ll have my men analyze it anyway. Maybe they can get more of a visual on him.” Officer Garcia didn’t sound optimistic.
Officer Lopez gave her a long look. “Where were you between the hours of eleven thirty last night and this morning?”
Lauren’s heart started beating harder. “You think I’m involved? That I did something to her?”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Of course not!”
“Do you have an alibi?” Lopez pressed. Her chest tightened—he didn’t think she did.
“Yes. I took a taxi back to the hotel a few minutes after the others left . . .” She paused, feeling her cheeks redden. “And then I had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar with the bartender there.” José had called her over as she was walking to her room; his shift had just ended. He’d offered to make her a nightcap. “And then he and I went up to my room together.”
Officer Garcia frowned at Officer Lopez.
“Okay, and he can verify this?”
“Yes, but I don’t want him to get in trouble with the hotel.”
“We will be discreet,” Officer Garcia said.
“Okay.” She felt a swirl of embarrassment. What must they be thinking of her? Having sex with a hotel employee while her friend disappeared? After Ashley had practically begged her to stay with her? Guilt worked its way through her. Would Ashley still be here had she taken her up on her offer to talk things out?
“We will need you to be available if we need to talk to you again,” Officer Garcia said.
Lauren started to stand up.
“Just one more thing.” Officer Lopez held up his index finger, and she settled back into her chair. “Natalie told us she can’t remember most of the night.”