I shake my head, not that she expects an answer.
“Back in his mansion in Sydney,” she says.
“Sterling Northcutt didn’t even get ten years,” Brittany says, her chin trembling. “The guy who killed my family. Amma’s boyfriend. No prior record, good family, Florida’s fucked-up sense of justice. He got five, and he’ll be out in three. That’s fucking next year, Lux. And where is he going to go? Back to his mansion in Connecticut. Back to Amma. Or he would have, if she wasn’t…”
She trails off, and I see her throat move, but I can’t tell if she’s upset that Amma’s dead, or just angry. I remember now: the fight on the boat last night, Brittany yelling at Amma about her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, who wasn’t dead after all.
“She lied to me,” Brittany goes on. “She got close to me for whatever sick reasons she had.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, trying to make sense of it all, suddenly realizing that I never really understood any of these people, never knew the dark currents floating beneath their playful, shining surfaces.
Eliza looks at me then. “And do you know where Nico would’ve gone when he got tired of playing sailor boy? Back to the bosom of his family in his—you guessed it—mansion.” She shakes her head. “And how the fuck is any of that fair?”
Brittany jumps in. “So, Chloe came up with a plan. She said she was going to sail to this deserted island with some rich asshole she knew from back home. And I should meet her here with Amma.”
She gives me that sweet smile I’d found so warm and welcoming the night we met in Maui.
“So what, you brought her here to kill her?”
“Don’t say it like that,” Brittany insists. “Like it was murder we were planning. Like we just wanted to kill people for fun. Amma did something cruel. Something twisted. Jake’s family ruined Eliza’s life. When we killed them, it wasn’t going to be murder.”
“Accidents happen so easily out here,” Eliza adds. “A million different ways to die in one day. Drink too much and you might drown. You eat the wrong thing, you get poisoned; you take the wrong path in the jungle—well, who knows what mess you might find yourself in. What a shame, what a terrible tragedy, losing the two of them out here, but hey, shit happens.”
“And then you’d have the boat,” I say, thinking it over. “Jake’s boat. Jake’s money. The two of you.”
She nods, and I can see it, the way it all makes a kind of terrible, horrific sense. Except …
“Why bring me and Nico?”
“Brittany needed a way to get out here with Amma,” Eliza says, shrugging. “Simple as that. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a witness backing up our version of events. Brittany wanted to hire some crusty sea dog type, but—”
“But Amma wanted Nico,” Brittany says. “And he wouldn’t go without you.”
I’m not prepared for how much that hurts.
I know Nico was not the guy for me. I know he was fickle and selfish and that he was always going to break my heart. But I had loved him, and he had loved me, enough to want me with him on this adventure.
“And then when I met you,” Brittany goes on, “I knew. Knew that it was fate, and that you were coming with us for a reason. That all of us were coming to Meroe for justice.”
Her gaze never wavers from me. “We deserved that. And so did you.”
The world feels like it’s tilting, and I blink, the sun bright, the sand hot underneath my feet and then my knees as I sink down.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you get it?” she says softly. “You’re like us. You’ve lost so much, and you kept going, kept trying to make something new, something beautiful. Nico was never going to give it to you. Eliza’s right, he would’ve gotten tired of this scene eventually. I mean, look how fast he hooked up with Amma. Because they were from the same world. He was always going to pick someone like her over someone like you. I saw it that first night.”
She steps forward, between me and Eliza now. “It’s why I wanted you to come with us. Eliza and I lost our families. You lost yours. But we can make a new family. Together. Eliza free of Jake, me free of Amma, you free of Nico.”
Her eyes go briefly to the machete, still loosely clutched in my hand, and when I look up at her, I see that something in Brittany has fractured and broken, maybe long before Meroe, but whatever it is that has her in its grip, it’s not sane. Not even remotely.