But there was nothing like that.
She was about to set her phone down when a text came in from Bruce Derringer. Did you arrive safely?
This time of the morning, he was probably riding the subway to work. She’d broken off their relationship when she left the company, where he held a position in upper management, and hadn’t expected to hear from him.
Should she answer?
She was reluctant to start communicating with him again. It would only make things harder. She’d told him from the very beginning that she wasn’t open to a relationship, but he’d been so unfailingly consistent in pursuing her that over time one thing had led to another until she’d found herself sleeping with him.
But his question was completely innocuous. How could she not answer?
“Why can’t anything be easy?” she muttered and sent him a reply. Safe and sound. Thanks.
Miss you, he wrote back.
That message she decided to ignore. Not because she was hard-hearted. She felt terrible for hurting him. But saying something distant or merely polite, like “thank you,” wouldn’t satisfy him. And telling him she missed him, too, would only raise his hopes. She’d tried to break up with him one other time, but because they worked at the same place and saw each other every day, and he kept trying to get back with her by saying sweet things like what he’d just sent in his text, she’d given in. It was too hard to continue to disappoint him.
How ironic that she’d gotten into a relationship with someone she’d only ever considered a friend and yet maintained such a long friendship with the only man she’d ever really loved. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone that way if Cam had ever shown any romantic interest in her. Instead, for as long as she’d known him, he’d talked about the girls he was attracted to and hoped to date and how things were going in his love life as if she wasn’t a consideration. And she’d never expressed her feelings to him or anyone else—even Ivy, for fear Ivy would tell him or, worse, was hiding the same secret. Why would she risk changing the chemistry of the friendship they’d all shared?
At the very least, she was determined to keep the small part of Cam’s heart he willingly gave her. So it was another irony that she’d tried so hard to distance herself from him as the years went by. No doubt it wasn’t only the angst and turmoil she’d suffered as a result of the night Emily Hutchins went missing. It was also the disappointment that came when he married someone else, knowing after that there’d be no chance of their friendship turning into more.
But now he and Melanie might be splitting up. Ariana wished he hadn’t revealed that little nugget of information. Knowing he might be single again soon only made her hate herself for the flicker of interest that’d suddenly sprung to life.
Stop it, she told herself. Regardless of what happened between Cam and Melanie, she was here to make sure she’d done the right thing twenty years ago—not to fall more deeply in love with a man she didn’t know if she could entirely trust.
After setting her phone aside at last, she rolled over and pulled the covers up. She wanted to go back to sleep so she’d have the fortitude to get through the day. Part of her—the part that could compartmentalize that night when they were juniors—was excited to be home. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed Mariners. Other than possibly Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, there was no place like it, and yet she’d been lucky enough to grow up here.
But she knew what everyone would be talking about. That the body of a twelve-year-old girl had been found after she’d gone missing so long ago was a huge deal, especially for the locals. Most had insisted it had to be a tourist who’d taken Emily. They didn’t want to believe one of their own could do something so atrocious.
They could be right—it’d been the fifth of July, when the tourist season was in full swing. Although there were only about twelve thousand year-round residents, summer saw that number swell to eighty thousand or more.
Sleep. She closed her eyes and struggled to block the noise her grandmother was making. But a few seconds later she could smell bacon. Alice was busy cooking a big breakfast for her. Ariana figured the least she could do, since she’d gotten in after Alice went to bed and hadn’t yet had the chance to see her, was drag her butt out of bed and go down to say hello.
With a yawn, Ariana kicked off the covers, got up and yanked on a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt. It was early June, and they’d had a gorgeous day yesterday, but the weather could be so changeable on Mariners, which was why she pulled her slippers out of her suitcase and shoved her feet inside them before plodding down the creaky old staircase. Her grandmother still lived only a block away from where Hazel had lived when she was alive—where Ivy lived now. But Alice’s home had never been updated the way Hazel’s had been. Except for the basics, like replacing some of the knob and tube wiring and sections of the old plumbing, it looked just as it had when it was built in the early 1900s.
“Hi, Grandma,” Ariana said, but her grandmother was getting hard of hearing, so she had to raise her voice before Alice realized she was in the room.
“Oh! There you are,” she said, putting down the tongs she’d been using to turn the bacon so she could give Ariana a warm hug. “How have you been, honey? Did you have fun with Ivy and Cam last night?”
“I did. Sorry we stayed out so late. I meant to get here before you went to bed, but—”
“I understand,” she broke in, waving Ariana’s apology away. “It’s been so long since you’ve seen them. And Cam probably needed the time. I can’t imagine what he’s going through these days.”
Ariana leaned against the counter as her grandmother went back to frying the bacon. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve heard they found that poor girl’s remains...”
Ariana had purposely not mentioned it when she spoke to her grandmother on the phone. “Yes, but...everyone knows Cam couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to Emily Hutchins. He was with Ivy and me that night.” What she said was technically true. She, Cam and Ivy had been together that Friday. But only until ten. According to what the police had put together so far, Emily hadn’t gone missing from the vacation rental near Cam’s house until ten-thirty.
Did Alice know they’d said he was with them until eleven to protect him?
That was possible. Ariana and Ivy had been staying with Alice that weekend. She’d raised Ariana when she was a preschooler, because her mother wasn’t reliable at that time and her father had been a tourist who’d visited the island for only one month before returning to Scotland. Once her mother met and married Kevin, her stepfather, and she took on his two boys, who were only toddlers at the time, she became more reliable. Then, Ariana had been adopted by her stepfather and lived with them for several years. But she was only a sophomore when her mother and Kevin decided to take the family and leave the island to get a fresh start. Rather than force Ariana to go with them and abandon all her friends and graduate from somewhere else, Bridget had allowed her to move in with Alice again.