“Do you think it’s him?” I asked.
She raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I’ve heard things before. Little things. How he breaks up parties and drives some of the students home. It’s the way they talk about it, you know? Just sounds a little too friendly.” She shifted her jaw, and I remembered his date at the July Fourth party—Tate had asked him if she was a student, then given him a cutting look.
“You think someone else who works at the college knows? That they’re leaving him notes about it?” I asked.
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I’m just telling you what I know.”
“I sometimes got the feeling Preston was taking pictures at the pool,” I said. “I thought I was paranoid.”
I heard Ruby’s words echoing back: Something about those Seaver boys, huh? And this unspooling suspicion that she knew something. If only I had pressed her on it. But I hadn’t asked, because I’d wanted to avoid the conversation, wanted to veer away from any reference to Mac.
Tate scrunched up her mouth, shook her head. “I feel so bad for that girlfriend of his. She has no idea.”
I blinked twice, feeling the hot pulse of shame roaring to the surface again. All the things Tate must’ve known and chosen to keep hidden.
“Did you know about Aidan? That he was going to leave?” I asked. The past suddenly right beside us. “You didn’t seem surprised.”
She looked off to the side and shook her head, her high ponytail swishing back and forth. “No, not me. Javi told me right before you showed up. He said Aidan finally decided to leave, to leave you, and then the doorbell rang. I didn’t know how long he’d known, but I swear I had just found out. Just a few minutes before you told me, that’s all.”
“I thought you knew about Aidan all along. I was mortified that you knew and hadn’t said anything.”
“You acted so standoffish after,” she said. “I thought you needed time. But then it seemed like maybe you only wanted to be friends as a pair. That I wasn’t worth it on my own.”
“That’s not what I thought,” I said. “You totally ignored me after.”
She whipped her head in my direction. “I did not ignore you. I was giving you time. I sent you flowers.”
“What?” And then, as it slowly dawned on me, “Did you send the lilies?”
Her eyes widened in a gesture I used to know so well, like Of course I sent the lilies. “Yeah, I left them on the porch. I wrote you a letter. I signed my name to it, Harper. It really wasn’t a mystery.”
But I was shaking my head, wanting to go back in time, to see the simple truth when it counted. “I never got it,” I said. “Ruby told me they were from her.”
Tate’s expression turned sharp, her jaw tensed, and I knew that if Ruby were alive, Tate would’ve made her pay. It was Ruby who had caused that divide between us. Who’d pushed that narrative. Telling me that my friendship with Tate was unhealthy. Letting me believe that she was the one who cared. The only one.
I wanted to ask Tate what the letter had said. What she’d wanted to tell me. I wanted to reach out to her, go back, make different decisions that would land me in a different place. But it felt impossible, too large a gap to bridge—how one small move led to another, until you were too far down a path to undo it all. Wondering how to even begin.
“Well,” she said. Well. Here we were, all the same.
We fell to silence—the hum of the refrigerator, the click of the air-conditioning unit turning on, white noise circulating, keeping our secrets.
“Tate, can I ask you something?” I said, voice low.
“Shoot,” she said in her straightforward way.
“Mr. Monahan said he saw Ruby that night,” I began, easing my way to the question.
“What night?” she said, turning away fast, her ponytail whipping behind her, like she’d just forgotten something. Like she knew what I was going to ask.
“The night the Truetts were killed,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, opening the fridge, taking out the lemonade, pulling two cups from the cabinet. “Do you want some?”
“No, thanks,” I said as she poured, one hand at the base of the pitcher to hold it steady. “He said Ruby was walking up the front of our street on her way home. But then she would’ve been on your camera, too. Right?”
She eased the pitcher down, sipped from her drink, then tipped the cup back further, gulping it down. “God, this doesn’t really do the trick anymore.” She laughed to herself, then stopped.