Charlotte looks up to the darkening sky. “Some people are evil. They’ll do anything to keep what they have. To get more. I grew up around a lot of people like that on account of my father. But when they’re close to you, it’s harder to spot. My father was like that. He had two sides to him. One side was a doting family man, and the other was pretty much heartless. He loved his granddaughter, that’s for certain. But he crossed a lot of people, and not just in business. I think he took pleasure in it. Lune Bay seems like this paradise, right? But there was money flowing in from everywhere. And my dad was at the coffers. He was king of this place. My mother was a dutiful wife, she stood by him. But she used to yell at him at the dinner table that he was going to get us all killed. She’d ask him, right in front of Zoe and me, how he’d feel if some henchman showed up at our school and shot us in the head.”
“Jesus,” Clare says.
“I get where she was coming from, though,” Charlotte says. “She’d say those things because she wanted Zoe and me to be scared too. To be vigilant. To keep our eyes open, because anything could happen at any time. I don’t know if my mother knew the extent of it, but she knew enough to be scared for us.”
“That’s not a great way to grow up.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Mist from the ocean coats Clare’s skin. Since they arrived here, there’s been a change in the air, a sharp cooling. Charlotte bites a hangnail from her thumb and spits it to the ground, her face twisted anxiously.
“But Zoe loved it,” Charlotte continues. “We’d be walking home from school and some guy would watch us a little too long from across the road, or another guy would drive his Cadillac past us and she’d grab my arm and tuck herself behind me. ‘Do you think he’s here to get us?’ she’d say. But she always had a smile on her face as she said it. Like the idea of being kidnapped for ransom was romantic to her. The idea of our dad going on a killing spree to avenge us. We were tight, Zoe and me. I think she loved me. I know she loved my daughter. But she was hollow. She was drawn to evil. Always looking for something to fill her up. She was like my dad in that way.”
In her case file, the stories about Zoe had painted a different picture from the one Charlotte offers now, profiles outlining her successes as a high school student, national wins at debating events, track and field. And in the family photographs printed in news stories, Zoe was always at the center of the frame, her father’s hands on her shoulders, Charlotte to the side, often gazing up at her taller sister, her expression mimicking. Clare knows how this feels, her brother, Christopher, a straight-A student and lettered athlete in high school, so that by the time Clare arrived a few years after him, the stage was already set for her to seem the lowly disappointment in comparison.
“You say Zoe was reckless. After your father was killed, was she engaging in the same criminal activities as he was?”
Charlotte throws her head back in laughter. “Engaging? You make it sound so quaint. I have no fucking idea what Zoe was doing after my dad died. Kavita has theories, but I was on a spiral of my own. I lost custody of my kid. I was too distracted to watch her drive the family business over a cliff. She came to me a few days before she disappeared and claimed that Malcolm was going crazy. That she was scared of him, scared of what he might do. But she was giddy when she was telling me. Like she was delivering a speech, planting a seed or something. But hey, your sister tells you something like that, you shouldn’t just ignore it. But I did. I didn’t act because I’m a terrible person, I guess. And I was busy losing my kid.”
Clare cannot bring herself to express sympathy. It was almost exactly a year ago that Clare’s pregnancy ended in stillbirth after Jason pushed her down the stairs. Almost a year since Clare lay in that hospital bed after the delivery and began to formulate her plan to leave, to escape Jason. She too has lost a child, the circumstances different from Charlotte’s, even if the grief is similar. But Clare will not empathize with this woman whose life has deteriorated in parallel ways to her own. She allows the moment to pass.
“You asked me to meet you here, Charlotte. But I’m not totally sure why.”
“Neither am I. I guess I just want this all to end. I want some kind of resolution. And I have no idea how to go about it.”
A plane circles overhead, angling its wings to align for descent. Clare looks at her phone. 8:10 p.m. The light is fading fast.
“Kavita and I are going to The Cabin later,” Charlotte says. “I hear you’ve been.”
“I was there last night with Austin Lantz,” Clare says. “He says you’re staying at his place.”
“Yeah. I’ve had a rough month. He’s been good to me, actually.” Charlotte shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “You could come. Tonight, I mean. To The Cabin. If you want.”
Clare closes her eyes to absorb the wave of exhaustion that rolls in at this prospect. The bar, the drinks. The effort to control herself. But she must go.
“I’d like that.” Clare looks side to side, searching up and down the beach. “Are we close to Malcolm and Zoe’s house? I can’t orient myself.”
“If you follow the coast about a mile south.” Zoe points. “You’ll see it hanging over the edge.”
The waves have
