“You will, though, and I’ll be no one. I’ll take more pills, and then I’ll take the wrong pill and I won’t be able to stop, and one day I’ll take enough of them that I’ll never wake up again. Because no one is coming to save us, Beth. We aren’t little girls anymore, and it’s time to face the fact that no one is coming to figure things out for us and make them better. We have to decide for ourselves or disappear into nothingness. Sometimes I think the only way to be someone is to do something bad.”
Her fingers were still touching Beth’s hair. Beth’s hands were numb inside her gloves, and she didn’t want the wine anymore. In this moment—despite the absurdity of it, despite the fact that there was no evidence and no reason—she could see Lily pushing David off that edge. In this mood, Lily was capable of anything. When she’d been home last year, when David disappeared, Lily had been seething with anger. And this year was worse. “Lily, you’re scaring me.”
“Women don’t even get to do that, do we?” Lily said. “The really bad things. We get to be the girlfriend.” Her voice rose, shrill. “？‘Oh, he seemed so nice. He seemed so charming. I never believed he could hurt anyone.’ Why don’t you ever hear of a woman in a clock tower?”
Beth was confused now. “Why would you want to go into a clock tower?”
The fingers stopped their stroking, and Lily put her hand back into her glove. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’d have no reason. Why don’t we go home now? I think you’re tired.”
Beth was tired. And after Lily was gone yet again, that entire night, that strange conversation, seemed like a dream. Lily was a teenage girl, not a—whatever Beth had thought she was. It was ridiculous, really. No one would believe a pretty blond teenage girl was capable of truly bad things.
No one would believe that at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
December 1970
BETH
The Christmas Beth was sixteen, Lily didn’t visit. Mariana said that Lily was “busy,” but Beth knew the truth: Lily wasn’t invited. This year, Julian and Mariana took Beth to a Christmas party instead.
Mariana bought Beth a dress to wear. It was high-necked, sleeveless, dark green, belted at the waist, the hem falling to the floor. When Beth put it on, she looked like what she was: the daughter of Claire Lake’s richest and most prestigious couple, a debutante with all the money in the world. She felt like a fraud, and she snuck a bottle of schnapps from her father’s liquor cabinet and drank as much of it as she could before they left for the party.
She was worried sick about Lily. Lily had turned eighteen—a legal adult who didn’t live with foster parents anymore. Had she moved out already? Where was she living? Beth would sneak Lily money if she knew where she was, how to reach her. But in the periods between Christmases, the girls had never had any contact. Part of this was Julian’s rule, because he hated Lily and didn’t want Beth to talk to her. But part of it was Lily herself. “You don’t want anything to do with those people,” she’d say about whatever foster family she was living with. “I don’t want them talking to you on the phone or reading my letters. It’s better for me that way.”
Beth had respected that, even though she longed to talk to Lily sometimes. But now Lily was gone, and no one knew where. She hadn’t even left a forwarding address. It hurt.
Julian drove to the party. He was wearing a tuxedo, his longish hair neatly combed, his face freshly shaved. Beth’s father was handsome, but the creases around his eyes and the soft sag beginning in his jaw hinted at the truth: Life wasn’t always easy on him. He spent more and more time at work, or golfing in summer, or “meeting with clients.” Beth was old enough to wonder now if he had a girlfriend, or more than one. She was old enough to wonder where he went when he’d “visited friends” every Christmas of her childhood. She was old enough to wonder where her mother went, too, since she had no family to stay with, only “bridge friends,” who didn’t seem very friendly. She was also old enough to know that neither of them would ever tell her. Silence was a great talent of the Greer family.