“I don’t know that he’s cruel,” Clare says. She sees the look Charlotte gives her. Clare must redirect. “The other day you called Malcolm a murderer, Charlotte. Do you remember that?”
Charlotte nods.
“But you don’t think he killed Zoe. So—”
“I think he killed my father.”
“I don’t understand,” Clare says.
“My father told Malcolm. About the cancer. The one guy he thought he could trust. And a week later, Grayson walked into a restaurant and shot my father in the head.” Charlotte releases a sob. “It’s almost like Malcolm killed two birds with one stone, right? My father gets his blaze of glory ending, and Grayson is out of the picture.”
No, Clare thinks. What kind of person would plan their own murder in lieu of a natural death? Clare must bite her tongue to stop herself from challenging Charlotte’s account, an account where Malcolm is the killer.
“Did you send me the video?” Clare asks again.
“No,” Charlotte says. “I don’t have the video. I never did.”
“What do you mean you never did?” Clare asks. “You were the one who filmed it.”
“Remember the other night at The Cabin? When I asked you if you ever felt like someone else was telling your story for you?”
“I do. You told me that Zoe was the one to tell yours.”
“Yeah.” Charlotte lifts a hand to her mouth, her shoulders heaving. “On our way to the police detachment, right after we’d watched our father take a bullet to his skull, Zoe took my phone. ‘We’re deleting the video,’ she said to me. ‘It never existed.’ It was Grayson, for fuck sake. He walked into a bar and shot my father right in front of my eyes. So yeah, I let her delete it. I thought she was protecting Malcolm. Maybe she knew his plan.”
Clare feels sickened by her own skepticism, how hard her brain is working to keep Malcolm in the clear.
“Did you ever ask Malcolm outright?”
Charlotte laughs. “Once, I did. After the fact. He played dumb. Of course he did.”
“But you think Zoe knew?”
“I let Zoe do all the talking in the police interview. I just sat there like a little coward, because I didn’t know what else to do. But fuck, of course she sent a copy of the video to herself before she deleted it. Of course she did. That’s Zoe for you. Always thinking ahead. She has to control everything. She needed it to use against me, or maybe against Malcolm. She gets whatever she wants.” Charlotte looks directly at Clare, her eyes wild. “And she’ll kill anyone who stands in her way.”
This open-air fish shack is on the water at the outskirts of Lune Bay. The only patrons are two men nursing beers at opposite ends of the tiki bar. Malcolm sits alone on the patio, the dark ocean behind him, the moon propped high in the sky. When he sees Clare, he stands and tips back the baseball cap he wears, as if she wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t.
Clare knows that her fatal flaw is her recklessness. To not feel trepidation where others might. Maybe you’re exactly where he wants you, Somers warned her. Perhaps she should not have come, but Clare knows that was never an option. All she wants now are answers, resolutions. Endings. In the hours since Malcolm summoned her to the beach, Clare has stumbled her way through a bewildering mix of anger, longing, conviction. She stops short at the patio’s edge.
“Sit,” Malcolm says, nudging the chair across from him away from the table with his foot.
“You’re not exactly incognito,” Clare says.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he says. “Like you said earlier, Clare. This needs to end.”
“Is that whiskey?” she asks.
“It is.”
“I’ll have one too, then.”
Malcolm gives her a look.
“I can handle it,” she says.
Malcolm gestures a peace sign to the bartender—make it two more. They watch in silence as the bartender pours. Malcolm stands to collect the tumblers from the end of the bar and sets one in front of Clare. Her lips tingle as she tips the glass. She focuses on the scar that runs the length of his arm. The scar she’s studied so many times but has never touched. She points to it.
“You never told me how you got that scar.”
“Charlotte,” he says. “We were in her kitchen. It was a while after Jack Westman died. She was angry with me. She reacted in a heated moment. Life was hard for Charlotte after her father died. It was an accident. She didn’t mean to nick me.”
“That doesn’t look like an accident,” Clare says. “Or a nick. What happened?”
“It’s hard to remember. She was angry about everything back then.”
He is skirting the truth. Malcolm takes off the baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair to shake it out. Despite herself, Clare feels a clench deep in her gut. She shifts to face the ocean. Clouds are moving in overhead.
“You look good,” Malcolm says. “Really good.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it. You look healthy. You didn’t give me the chance to tell you that earlier.”
“Because you ambushed me.”
Malcolm will not take the bait.
