Page 141 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

I mean, the last time someone had a drink near me, he ended up dead.

Oh! Harper told me not to drink on the boat. Does that mean… No. No.

My sister is not a murderer.181, 182

Right?

I watch her while she peruses the menu, and nothing seems amiss. Not more than it is with all of us. Shek’s death is weighing on us, but maybe not as much as it should.

Does that make us terrible or just human?

The waiter comes to take our orders, and then it’s just the three of us. There’s a nervous pit in the bottom of my stomach that I can’t shake. Is this my last night of freedom? It can’t be. But that’s how everyone must feel in this kind of situation. Like they’re in a movie where someone will run in at the last minute and put a stop to all of this.

That can happen anytime, universe.

“This won’t be your last supper,” Oliver says, tipping his glass of red wine at me.

“How did you read my mind?”

He lifts the corner of his mouth. “Practice.”

I smile at him, but his being nice to me doesn’t help.

I guess we can be pen pals or something while I’m in jail.

Assuming Italian jails let you have pen pals?

“You told me before that Inspector Tucci was a bit of a bozo,” Harper says. “The magistrate must know that.”

“I don’t… Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” Harper smiles at me sympathetically. “Can I ask you something, though?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Connor?”

Oliver nods. “I have the same question.”

I glance toward the door, but there’s no escaping this.

“I was embarrassed.”

“Why?” Harper says.

“Isn’t it obvious? I was an idiot. I knew what Connor was and I wrote about him anyway. I kept him in my life.”

“You were twenty-five.”

“Is that an excuse?”

“It might be,” Oliver says. “We’ve all done stupid things, especially when we were younger.”

But I wasn’t that young when I did the stupidest thing.

“How did you figure it out?” Harper says. “Did Connor tell you?”

“No, I put the clues together… and he played it all down when I confronted him. So a bunch of criminals went to jail, so what? So a bad man got killed by one of his associates… It all sounds so stupid now. But then, I don’t know, I wanted to believe him.”