Page 46

Chapter Forty-Five

Naomi

March 2023, two months before her death

“You have to understand, we thought we were doing the right thing.” Daisy’s voice is tense, almost pleading as she explains. She sits across from me at a restaurant in Midtown, where we’d agreed to meet. It’s not unusual for us to get lunch, but normally we’d invite Maya. This time, I told Daisy I wanted to talk to her alone.

“Oh, we were so young, you know…and we thought we were invincible.” Daisy fiddles with the edge of a cocktail napkin. I’d shown Daisy the photo we’d found of the five girls and straight-out asked her what the hell happened that weekend.

“If it was an accident, then why didn’t Maya ever talk about it?”

Daisy looks away as if she might recognize someone at the next table, then leans into her elbows. “Okay, look, he’d been seeing Lila and it had gone south for some reason. He got violent with her…It was so bad we had to take her to the emergency room. We all hated Matthew by that point, for various reasons. But we didn’t want to get the police involved, so we came up with this plan to make him confess, thought we could at least get the administration to come down on him. We figured if we could get him kicked out of Greystone, it would be close enough to ruining his life.”

I look at her. “What kind of plan?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

Daisy sighs. “Fine. But you can’t tell anyone I told you, especially not your sister.”