We stay firm, fierce in our commitment to her, our solemn vow, and I can see the slow shift in his face. The gentle softening as suspicion recedes and pity takes over.
We watch as he sighs, sticking the note back on the door for us and walking down the steps before planting himself on the sidewalk again, shaking his head. Eyeing the three of us now, a slow scan down the line before his gaze stops on me and I see him swallow.
“The two of you can go,” he says to Sloane and Nicole, refusing to avert his eyes from mine. “You and I need to have a talk.”
CHAPTER 61
BEFORE
It’s dark by the time Lucy comes home, the scuff of her shoes ascending the porch steps alerting me to her presence.
I’ve been in my room this entire time, all eight hours, my door bolted and my laptop open and dead on my comforter. My thoughts on Lucy, on Eliza, on how the two of them have more in common than I ever could have imagined. I hear the front door slam as she makes her way into the living room, her feet heavy as she stomps through the house.
“Hello?” she calls, her voice echoing through the empty living room. “Where is everyone?”
She can be so quiet when she wants, so catlike and contained, but now, I feel her radiating through the walls, the floor, her very being pumping hard like an organ deprived of oxygen. Something atrophying slowly, a transplant suddenly rejected by its host.
I hear a banging on my door that comes out of nowhere: a hard, closed-fist pounding that makes the bones of the house rattle in place. I eye the knob jiggling back and forth, the door jerking wildly on its hinges.
“What is with the locked doors today?” Lucy yells, slamming her palm against the wood. “Margot, get out here. We need to talk.”
I stay rooted on my bed, frozen with fear, a million different scenarios running through my mind.
“All of us,” she adds, and somehow, I can tell she’s making her way back to the living room, waiting for me to follow.
Knowing that eventually, like always, I will.
After a few more seconds of silent debate, I stand up and walk to the door, twisting the dead bolt and opening it wide. The hallway is empty in front of me, the overhead lights all clicked off, and I creep into the living room, rounding the corner to find Lucy sitting on the couch. Her hair is frizzier than normal, her skin shiny and a little too damp, and I glance out the window, into the inky black night. Noticing, for the first time, that it’s started to rain.
“What’s going on?” I ask, a little tremor in my voice as I try to see through those sparkling eyes. They’re impenetrable, like always, tough as diamonds and just as rare.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she says, glancing to the staircase just as Sloane and Nicole come creeping down. “Everyone, sit.”
Sloane looks at me, eyes wide and unusually afraid, before she and Nicole walk to the second couch and sit down in tandem. I stay standing at the edge of the room and Lucy turns to me next, willing me forward. I can feel the pull of her like a rope around my waist; I can feel the tension, the physical tug, and I let her gaze guide me farther into the room, though I stop short at the coffee table, refusing to get closer.
“There are clearly some things we need to get off our chests,” Lucy says at last, leading us like a meeting, and for the very first time, I see little glimmers of Mr. Jefferson in her face. I see those same faint lines around her eyes I never noticed before; the slight upturn of her mouth, his pointed chin. But it’s the hair, mostly, that charcoal color. As deep and dark as a bottomless hole.
Eliza took after her mother completely, bright-skinned and honey-blond-haired. At least that’s one thing Lucy got for herself.
“Come on,” she says when no one speaks up.
Sloane looks at me again, her lips pursed shut, and I wonder why she’s being so uncharacteristically quiet right now—until I think of that first conversation outside the shed. Me questioning her loyalty to Lucy and her shrinking back, revealing her truth.
“Maybe I’m being harsh,” she had said, suddenly doubting herself. “Or maybe I’m afraid of what would happen if I stopped.”
I glance to Nicole next, so wisp-thin it looks like she might disappear, and the tension in the room is so heavy, so solid, I can feel my insides caving like moist dirt is being heaped on my chest. The mounting pressure of being buried alive.
“I know someone wants to say something,” Lucy continues, crossing her arms. “Everyone’s been weird since the night on the island.”
We stay quiet, bodies paralyzed with the exception of our racing hearts, our darting eyes, though it’s not for a lack of things to say. The problem is I have too many questions, too many fears, all of them buzzing around in my mind like a swarm of insects, making it impossible to grab on to just one.