Page 44

Claire

Now

Before Declan can explain further, a sharp knock sounds at the door.

His eyes shoot to me, and I force myself to breathe, to go to the door and open it like nothing’s wrong.

“Hey. Luke made us all dinner. It’s ready downstairs.” Ellery seems relaxed, her voice almost inappropriately chipper for the occasion.

“Thanks,” Declan says from behind me, saving me from my struggle to form words. “We’ll be down in a minute. Need to change my clothes right quick.”

But Ellery doesn’t move. “Oh, don’t bother; it’s not fancy. Plus, Luke’s already put the food out on the table. You don’t want it to get cold.”

Declan and I exchange a look. Whatever information he was about to share is going to have to wait.

***

“Luke, this is divine.” Ellery pops a piece of penne in her mouth and rolls her eyes up into her head. I know she means it as a compliment, but now, with my suspicions at full force, it looks terrifying.

“It’s delicious. So kind of you to do all of this for us,” Josh says, spearing a floret of broccoli on his fork.

“It’s the least I could do after everything you all have been through,” Luke says.

I nod along silently. The pasta primavera Luke has made is delicious, but I can’t bring myself to eat.

Every time I try to swallow, the food seems to crumble into dust between my molars, one image seared behind my eyelids: Ellery standing over Phoebe, bringing her room key crashing down on Phoebe’s skull.

I watch her now from across the table. Her lips are moving, saying something to Luke, apparently, but the noise doesn’t reach my ears.

Ellery and Tomas were close, extremely so.

Instantaneous best friends. So it would make sense if Ellery blamed Phoebe for his death and wanted to get revenge.

But what doesn’t click is that after Tomas’s death, Ellery never seemed particularly angry with Phoebe.

Unlike Adrien, I never once heard Ellery blame Phoebe for what happened.

In fact, she even seemed to defend her during that last dinner.

So, what could have sparked in always patient, calm Ellery that would have caused her to lose control?

I can’t help but remember the few times I’d catch Ellery shooting a glance at Phoebe across the bus or the dinner table at the Inn when she thought no one would notice. An expression was painted on her face, naked and vulnerable. I was never able to identify it back then.

Was it hatred?

“Claire?”

The sound of my name breaks through the cloud of jumbled thoughts, and when I look around, I find the entire table’s attention on me. It’s clear this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked the question.

“I was asking if the food’s okay,” Luke says, wearing a generous smile. “You’ve barely touched your pasta.”

I look down at my plate, where Luke has rested his eyes to find a mess of shredded pasta and vegetables.

“Of course, it’s delicious,” I force myself to say.

I aim for a kind tone, but my voice comes out flat and faraway.

“I’m just not feeling that well. It must be everything catching up with me.

” I know I’ve overused that excuse the last few days, but I push my chair away from the table before anyone can protest. “I think I’m actually going to lie down. ”

I move to clear my plate from the table amid a round of empathetic murmurs, but Luke reaches out a hand from where he sits several seats away, as if to stop me. “Leave it, honey. I’ll handle the dishes. You just get some rest.”

I give him a small smile and stand. As I walk past Declan, he reaches out behind the chair so that his hand brushes mine.

Walking up the staircase that leads to the rooms, I steal a glance back at the table. Adrien’s shoulders are hunched over her plate, her eyes glassy and faraway, and Ellery, Luke, Josh, and Declan seem to have pushed their efforts into overdrive to keep the conversation going.

Just as I’m about to look away, Ellery looks up at me. Her face is blank, but her eyebrow is slightly raised. After the briefest of moments, she seems to catch herself, replacing her expression with her standard soft smile.

I don’t return it.

When I get to the top of the stairs, I make a beeline for Ellery and Adrien’s room.

I can’t waste this opportunity with all of them downstairs. Hope blooms in my chest again, dangerous and deceptive. There’s still a chance I can avoid what I once thought was my inevitable arrest tomorrow. I just need to find something. Some evidence I can show to Villanueva.

I twist the handle and push forward, breathing a sigh of relief when the door shifts beneath my hand. Like at the Inn, the doors are not self-locking—that level of technology hasn’t yet made it to Jagged Rock—and Adrien and Ellery hadn’t bothered to lock theirs.

The room is similar to mine, equally worn down, but a tad more subdued. The walls are covered in chipped navy paint, and a chandelier with several burnt-out lights hangs over the double bed.

I ignore the quilted YSL handbag strewn across the bed, the one Adrien has had delicately looped across her body since we arrived, and head for the canvas tote that sits on a threadbare velvet recliner in the corner of the room.

The bag bears a logo for the charity that Ellery works for, the letters WCDD printed in intertwining font, short for What Children Don’t Deserve . And I find myself questioning all of this. Ellery is a saint; she’s devoted her life to helping children in war zones. Could she really be behind this?

But I shake my head. This isn’t the time for doubts.

I rifle through the tote, disappointed to find its contents are nearly identical to those in my own day bag: a wallet, some ChapStick, a Kindle. I step back, resigned, and as I do, a splash of blue in the corner of the room catches my eye.

I recognize it instantly. The sweatshirt Ellery has been wearing off and on the last few days.

I discard the tote bag and head there directly.

When I lift it up, I know for certain that I’ve hit gold.

It’s much heavier than its thin fabric would suggest, and when I reach into the pocket, my hand brushes cold metal.

I pull out her iPhone, igniting the screen with a push of the side button and illuminating a lock-screen photo of Ellery with her arm wrapped around a woman. The woman’s hand is outstretched, a small diamond glittering on her finger.

Her social media is devoted almost exclusively to her work; the only personal posts she shares are usually of her dog, an old husky named Oscar. This is the first photo I’ve seen of Ellery’s fiancé.

I take in the woman’s pixie cut, the dark curls, the wide eyes, and—

Aside from some very small distinctions—the roundness of her face, the mole sitting just above her lip, brown eyes instead of turquoise—this woman could be Phoebe’s twin.

I try to think what this could mean. Why is Ellery engaged to someone who looks just like Phoebe?

A laugh filters through the floorboards. I don’t have much time. They’ll be finished with dinner soon, and Ellery will come looking for her phone.

I turn my attention back to the next obstacle. The passcode.

Birthday , I think. I know it’s not likely, but it isn’t like I have anything better.

I rack my brain trying to remember Ellery’s birthday, but it comes back to me more easily than I expected.

After spending ten years reliving nearly every single day of that month in Australia, I can pretty much recite the calendar by heart.

And Ellery’s birthday was one of the first nights we went out in Sydney.

December 3.

I plug 1203 into her phone before remembering the Canadian date format and shifting it to 0312 .

Incorrect PIN entered

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath, my palm clutching more tightly around the phone.

Ellery’s passcode could be pretty much anything. There’s so much I don’t know about her. So many things that would signify an important series of numbers.

Then, an idea sparks in the back of my mind. Another date that could be important to Ellery. It’s a long shot, but it’s not like I have any better options.

1912.

December 19. The day Tomas died.

To my complete surprise, as soon as I type the date in, the phone clicks, the screen erupting into a series of different icons. My eyes widen at my luck, but I force myself to continue, promising to dissect the passcode’s significance later.

I start with her gallery, scanning her recent photos. They’re all images of Ellery and the same Phoebe-like woman from her lock screen, of the elderly-looking husky, of Ellery surrounded by families, shaking their hands.

I navigate to the photo album labeled as “Favorites.” I expect it to be more of the same, but as I open it, my muscles freeze in shock.

These are all grainy photos, clearly older than those in her recent gallery, but I recognize them instantly.

Every photo in here is from our time in Australia.

And most of them are photos of Ellery with Tomas or Phoebe.

Why would she keep all of these? Especially given the memories they hold. And why save them as her favorites?

Another sound erupts from downstairs. The creak of a chair sliding against the floor. I’m almost out of time.

Desperately, I shift gears, heading to Ellery’s text messages.

Nothing appears out of the ordinary at first—an ongoing message chain to someone named Grace, who I can only guess is her fiancé, one to Mom—and then my eyes alight on the fifth name in the list. A message chain with a contact marked by only one letter. P.

The sight of it burns my eyes. P? As in Phoebe?

I shrug the idea away. Phoebe’s been dead for years. Ellery hasn’t been talking with her. But still, hope alights like a fire in me, one that demolishes everything in its path.

I think of how I left Phoebe that night. The words she said to me as the tears dripped from my cheeks onto the earth, deepening the redness of the dirt. I’m getting out.

Maybe she did. Maybe Phoebe really did make a new life for herself. Maybe the remains the police found belonged to someone else. Someone no one even thought was missing.

And then I hear the sound I’ve been dreading. The soft fall of footsteps on the staircase.

I need to move, to get out of here before Ellery or Adrien come back, but I’m frozen, my eyes still locked on that one letter hovering above the text chain: P.

My body so consumed with clinging to this string of hope that it can’t engage in any other function.

One thought revolves around my mind like a loop, the words repeating, over and over.

Phoebe could still be alive.