We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(70)

“Should we try to move him?” I whisper.

“I don’t think so,” says Brock. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.” Then he adds, his voice so low it’s almost inaudible: “She gave him a sedative.”

“What? When?”

“What kind?” asks Tatum.

Suddenly June is standing over us, still dripping water. “Don’t talk about me,” she snaps at Brock. “Don’t talk about it.”

“We all love Kingsley,” says Brock. “They need to know what happened so we can figure out what to do next.”

“We should call the police,” I say again.

“I said, don’t,” says June, authoritative. “You in particular, Matilda.” She wipes a strand of hair back from her face. She’s lit by a single dim light that shines on the pool deck. “Don’t call anyone. Do not. None of you.”

“Okay,” says Brock.

“I’m thinking,” says June. “I’m going to decide how we handle this. There are a lot of options, and I am considering them. I don’t want to hear anything from you, because this is my partner here. Kingsley Cello, the artist. Everything else and everyone else is secondary.”

We are silent.

The sight of Kingsley in the water is almost unbearable.

I reach for Meer’s hand as we stand around the pool in a semicircle. He is trembling.

June doesn’t say anything for a long time, so we don’t say anything. We are waiting for her decision.





63


Half an hour later, Brock, Tatum, and I meet back in the kitchen, all in dry clothes. Meer stayed outside with his mom, who remained at the edge of the pool.

Tatum is rooting around in the fridge. He brings out some packets to mix with chamomile tea and honey.

Brock shakes his head at me. “It’s not a crisis now,” he says. “I like this about you, Matilda, but you always want to act. You want to crash through with weapons, solve puzzles, get to another level, whatever.”

“I don’t see why we’re waiting for June to decide how to handle this,” I say. “We’re always doing things her way. It’s time to stop waiting.”

“It’s terrible,” puts in Tatum, reaching out to touch my hand. “But Brock is right. This whole summer has been a sustained, massive crisis. Tonight is actually the end of it. We can take time to think.”

“Okay,” I say, my fingers interlacing with Tatum’s.

“Don’t tell me you two are a thing now, in the middle of this horror show,” says Brock, his eyes on our hands.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Yes,” says Tatum, firmly.

“Okay, fine. Yay. Took you long enough. I love you both. But let me explain the thing I didn’t want to say in front of June. She didn’t go with Meer to the garage,” explains Brock as he puts the kettle on the stove. “While I was searching by the vegetable garden and you two were at the beach, she went back through the house and found Kingsley in Oyster Office. He had the keys, so he went there to look for his phone to take with him. But of course he couldn’t find it.”

“It’s not there,” Tatum explains to me. “June confiscated his phone back in the spring, even though we told her we didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“We thought Kingsley should have his phone if he got out,” says Brock, “because then we could track him. But June thought he was less likely to leave if he couldn’t take a phone with him. Anyway, she was right that he got stalled, taking apart the office looking for it. When she found him in there, though, he got violent with her. He pushed her up against the wall, apparently, and was yelling at her and calling her a witch, but she managed to inject him with this—well, you’ve had it,” Brock says to me.

“The sedative.”

Brock pours boiling water into three mugs. Tatum squeezes tinctures from eyedroppers into each cup, then adds a squeeze of lemon and a big spoonful of honey. “So then what?” asks Tatum.

“The drug works pretty fast—it could like, tranquilize a horse, I think—but as soon as June jabbed him, Kingsley pushed her to the floor and ran out the front door,” says Brock. “June thought he’d gone down the driveway, but he actually doubled back toward the pool house. I don’t know why. Maybe he was thinking he wouldn’t be found in there. Or maybe he was going to go past it into the woods.”

“He asked me about the poultry,” I say. “He’s the one who opened the door and let them out. So maybe he was going back to check.”

“In any case, the sedative hit him and he passed out as he stumbled into the pool. We think.”

“We have to call the police,” I repeat. “We should have done it already.”

“June doesn’t want us to,” says Tatum.

“She’s never wanted anyone involved,” adds Brock.

“June hasn’t been thinking right for a long time,” I argue. “She shouldn’t be stabbing nonconsenting people with sedatives or keeping Kingsley locked in a tower or keeping the three of you here to help her, even.”

“We’ve been choosing to stay,” says Tatum, gently.

I pull out my phone and call the police.