“Oh, Andy, what a terrible thing to say,” Megan said, shaking her head.
Laura stood still, staring at me. “I never said I didn’t like Emily. Some of the things she did—the way she treated you—bothered me, but only because I care about you so much, Andy. You’re like a brother to me, always have been. I’m protective of you. I know you’re hurting right now, but that doesn’t mean you should forget who cares about you, who’s always been there.”
“You’re all always nagging me about not settling down. I’m too old to keep dating around apparently, but when I finally find a girl I care about, a girl nice enough to bring us all here, she’s not good enough for any of you. You treated her like crap… Don’t think I didn’t notice. And now, because she’s gone, you want to pretend you were just a saint to her—”
“Name one time I treated Emily badly,” Laura challenged.
“Laura—” Brad interrupted.
“No, I want to hear him do it. I want him to tell me a single thing I ever did to her.” She looked at me again, scarlet patches on her skin. “Because, yes, I may have thought privately that she may not care about you enough, but I never said anything of that nature when she was around. I was nice to her, Andy. I treated her well, tried to make her feel welcome. I cared about her because I care about you.” Tears were in her eyes then, really cementing the shitty feeling in my stomach.
“You should’ve protected her. She went to the spa with you, and she came back upset. You should’ve taken care of her. If someone made her mad, you should’ve fixed it.” Tears blurred my own vision then, and I wiped them away furiously. “I trusted you with her, Laura, trusted my friends to make her feel welcome, and when she came back to me, something was all wrong. And now she’s dead, and I don’t even know why. She wouldn’t have gone in the water, not at night and not alone. So what happened? Hm? What happened when you were at the spa? What happened to Emily?”
“I wish that I knew, Andy.” She took another step toward me, her tone changing. “Honestly, I do. When I saw her last, I thought she was fine. I mean, she kept talking about secrets and…she acted strange, but not like at dinner. And we did everything we could to make her feel welcome.” She looked at Megan, who agreed quickly.
“It’s true. I thought we were all getting along well,” Megan said. “I really did like Emily. She was a sweet girl.”
“Why was she talking about secrets so much?” Brad asked, watching Laura. “Did anyone ever figure that out?”
“I think maybe she was just being coy…” she said, staring at Megan. They both seemed apprehensive.
Megan took a breath before saying, “She kept talking about how there must be a ton of secrets in the group. I think she was joking, but…she did mention it quite a few times.”
“She had to have mentioned something.” I furrowed my brow. What could she have been talking about? I’d spent the whole previous evening thinking about it, questioning everything I’d said or done since we’d arrived on the island, but finding her body had cast all my other thoughts aside.
“I don’t know. She didn’t elaborate, and we told her there weren’t any secrets,” Laura said. “It wasn’t like she talked about it the whole time. She just brought it up once or twice. We were trying to enjoy ourselves, too. Like Megan said, I just assumed she was teasing, I guess. No one pushed her for an explanation.”
“Was she asking about me? About…my past? All the women I’ve dated?”
“Oh, Andy.” Laura took a seat on the bed next to me again, swiping away the tears on her cheeks. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Is that what you think? That we told her something awful about you and that’s what caused this to happen?”
I swallowed, unable to look at her, because until that moment, it was exactly what I thought. But hearing it out loud, I knew her better than that.
“I just want her to come back,” I cried, covering my eyes with my fists. I’d been mad at them for treating me like a child, but that was one hundred percent how I was feeling. I was filled with such rage, such embarrassment, such sorrow.
“I know,” Laura whispered, and I felt her hand on my back, rubbing cautious circles. I was drenched in sweat, but she didn’t seem to care. I both loved and hated her for how much she cared about me in that moment. Why couldn’t she just get mad at me like a normal person? “I know, Andy. I want that, too.”
I turned away from her, unable to say anything else. The room was quiet after that; the only noise was the steady whistle of the breeze through our windows. I listened to it, letting it lull me nearly to sleep.
“Maybe you can give us a minute?” I heard Brad say, and though I didn’t hear the women leave, I knew that was what had happened. I felt the emptying of the room, and I knew we were alone.
After a minute, I wiped my eyes and looked up at him. “I’m such
