Page 68 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“Thanks.”

“You seem so calm about it.”

“I don’t find anger productive.”

“I think it’s fueled half my life. According to my therapist, anyway.”

It’s true. That’s what she’d said the one time I went to therapy.

Dr. McGill had come highly recommended, but all she’d done was listen to me vent about Connor for fifty minutes, and then she’d told me that I seemed like a “very angry person” and that I should work on “forgiving and forgetting” if I wanted any chance at happiness.

Honestly? That was the advice I paid $250 for?

I mean, would you forgive someone who’d tricked you into a relationship while he was a married man, and then blackmailed you for ten years?

Is forgiveness even possible?

Ugh, maybe Harper’s right.

I do have the best motive for killing Connor.

“Time for the tour of Pompeii, yes?” Sylvie says, clapping her hands to get our attention. “I hope you enjoyed this delicious pizza.” She rubs her stomach like she’s just had the best meal of her life. “It will be hot, so please take one of the water bottles with you that we will be giving out at the entrance. We don’t want anyone dying on us, no?”84

Once we’ve collected our waters, Sylvie takes us into Pompeii proper, tossing about historical tidbits that are her signature mix of truth and invention.

There are too many names for me to retain—the Villa of Mysteries, the Villa of Diomedes, the Vesuvius Gate, the House of the Faun—and maybe she’s making these names up, or maybe they’re real. I don’t care at this point. I only want to get to the après tour, where I can drown my anxiety in alcohol and try to solve the mystery of my own life.

“This heat is going to kill me,”85 Allison says as we huff our way up a set of stone stairs to get to the city itself. The sun’s high in the clear blue sky, and the air is thick with pine and dust. The mountains in the distance are hazy. The stark pyramid of Mount Vesuvius sticks out, though, and I shiver thinking about what it must’ve been like to live here, so close to its angry plume of ash.

“It’s a killer,”86 I say.

“Death on the mind, is it?”

“Hard not to with what happened this morning.”

“That was a stunt.” She laughs. “Connor just loves attention.”

He’s walking ahead of us, hand in hand with Isabella. Unlike the rest of us, he seems unaffected by the heat. His thick hair is still perfect, and there aren’t any sweat stains on the back of his shirt.

I almost tell her that Connor’s not making it up, then stop myself. She’s a suspect, after all. The less I tell her, the better to ferret out the killer among us.87

“You don’t want him gone?” I ask. “After everything he did to you?”

She stops. “Everything you both did to me, you mean?”

“I deserve that.”

“You do.”

“Do you want me dead?”

“I don’t want anyone dead. Well, maybe a politician or two. But not Connor. That would be bad for me.”

“How so?”

“He’s got five more years of alimony payments.” She laughs again. “Is that crass?”

“I’m sure it’s less than you deserve.”