And the feelings didn’t. But when we found out she was pregnant, I was ready to propose. I’d bought the ring. I didn’t care that she was still technically in a relationship. I loved her, and I thought she felt the same.
Instead of a proposal, the night I’d taken her out for dinner, she asked me if I would sign over my rights in an adoption. She didn’t want the baby. She said what we’d done had been a mistake. She said I should move out.
It was then I realized that what had felt so real to me was never more than something to pass the time for her until Brad returned. So, I moved out the next month, signed over my rights, and never looked back.
The year that followed, we were the most distant we’d ever been. When she married Brad, she asked that I come. That I serve as her man of honor. Like the dutiful best friend I’d always been, I did as I was told, fighting back heartbreak every step of the way.
I never knew anything about the baby, except that it existed somewhere. Somewhere in an alternate reality where Laura loved me back, I imagined our life from time to time.
But in this time, in this reality, she was just my best friend, and I had to accept that.
“So, you didn’t kill her?”
“Of course not.”
“But…but did you tell her about me?” I looked at Andy. “Did you know?”
Andy shook his head. “I didn’t know any of this until Laura told me who Emily was. I knew you had feelings for Laura, but I never knew you’d had an affair, let alone a child.”
“So,” I blinked, trying to process. “She really was our daughter?”
Laura nodded, and I caught the reflection of the moonlight on a tear as it cascaded down her cheek.
I put a hand over my mouth, anger, confusion, and outright sadness filling me. I had to know the answer, no matter how much it pained me. “But if you didn’t kill her, who did?”
Chapter Forty
Andy
“I saw you two together the night that Emily died. I was walking along the beach, looking for her, and I saw something move in the clump of palm trees not far from our huts. When I got closer, I realized it was you. Both of you.” I spoke the words, letting them wash over Nick. He’d lied to me about his feelings for Laura, about so much, but I wanted him to know I knew the truth. All of it. “When I realized what was happening, I ran away. I was shocked, to say the least. I planned to ask you about it, to confront you. I wanted Brad to know the truth about what his friend was doing, about what his wife had done. But I wanted to talk to you first. I made it down to the shoreline, still trying to process what I’d seen, and that was when I saw him.” I paused, wishing it had been anyone but him. Anyone but my best friend. “I thought I’d seen him in the same cluster of trees where I’d seen you two, but I convinced myself it was just you, Nick. But when I walked away, I saw him again. Up near the huts. Brad was walking back from the same direction I’d been. He had to have seen you; I knew it right away. But it was right at that time I saw Emily’s body. I forgot about everything else.”
“Hang on—Brad?”
“When I got back to the hut, he was in bed. I had no idea he’d been awake,” Laura said. “But then Andy showed me the footage—”
“Footage?” Nick asked.
“After everything had happened, when they brought Emily’s body back here, Manu began looking through footage. They have cameras around the pavilion and in between the clusters of huts, but they can’t see everything. Manu showed me a glimpse, just about a two second shot of Brad walking near where you and Nick were. There’s no way he would’ve missed you. About ten minutes before that, Emily was walking in the opposite direction from down past the huts. It looked like she was coming back home from down the beach. They were the only ones awake and on the beach that night besides the three of us. They must’ve run into each other at some point. But, even knowing all of that, at the time, it didn’t make sense. Brad would have no reason to want to hurt Emily.”
“At least, that was what he thought,” Laura said, and I could hear the pain in her voice.
“When Brad and I went out drinking, I told him about you two. I had to. I asked him if he’d seen it, and he said yes. He was bitter about it, obviously, but he said that he’d suspected for a long time.”
“What?” Nick asked.
“When I asked him why he hadn’t done something about it, he said sometimes you just have to get the timing exactly right. He said he was going to take
