Acknowledgments
About the Author
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For everyone we’ve lost too soon.
And in particular, for Cheryl:
I wish you could have read this.
I think you’d have liked it.
1
The last time I saw my sister alive, I told her I didn’t love her anymore.
I didn’t say it in those exact words. I didn’t say, “Fiona—I don’t love you anymore.” What I actually said, as she was walking away from me, was “You’re no better than Mom.”
But in our family, that means the same thing.
I’m thinking about that again, the parade a blur in the background, Fiona’s blond hair flying around her shoulders as she spun off and headed toward the woods. To the ravine.
In my mind, I go after her. I tell her I’m sorry. I bring her home safely. I don’t wander off to drink my problems away with Seth Montgomery on the star-watching rock. Don’t wake up with Seth’s arms around me and the stale taste of cider on my tongue. Don’t stumble home in the early morning to collapse into bed, only to be woken up a few hours later by the police letting me know my world would never be the same.
In my mind, I’m always a better person than I actually am.
A whistle sounds, startling me back to the present. I’m at the edge of the park with my bike, in the shade of a maple tree, waiting for my brother to finish soccer camp. On the far side, next to the woods, a group of teenage boys disperses from the field. Davy is easy to spot: taller than most of them, skinny, blond hair sticking straight up at the back of his head. He shot up this past year, so he can actually pass for sixteen now, even though he still has that round baby face.
I wave to get Davy’s attention. When he sees me, he jogs over, frowning slightly.
“You didn’t have to pick me up,” he says. “I can ride my bike home on my own.”
“I don’t mind. Besides, Dad’s working late again. He asked me to pick up pizza. Come with?”
He’s about to respond when his head whips to the side. I turn to see a girl on a bike riding into view—a white girl with brown hair.
“It’s not Marion,” I tell Davy for what feels like the hundredth time. I try to sound patient; he’s not the only one seeing last summer’s ghosts. “They’re not coming back.”
Davy doesn’t answer me, just looks pissed, the way he always does when his ex-girlfriend gets brought up. He hops on his own bike and takes off.
We pedal down a few residential streets, and soon we’re on the outskirts of downtown. Bier’s End, in the northwest corner of New Jersey, was once a retreat for wealthy Manhattanites, with lavish mansions on huge pieces of property spread out along the edge of the woods. Now most of those mansions have been knocked down, their giant plots of land divided up, turned into the stretches of middle-class blocks like the one my family lives on. Pieces of downtown remain from that bygone era: the old theater with its velvet seats that plays vintage movies, the one nice restaurant that used to be a country club. But those are now interspersed with the deli, the dollar store, Fiona’s old dance studio. Middle-class things for middle-class people. The pizza place is next to a Wawa.
I stop my bike just outside the pizza place’s big window, behind Davy. My throat tightens as I peer through the glass, trying to make out who might be in there.
“I’ll get it,” Davy says.
I clutch the gold ballerina necklace at my throat, the only piece of jewelry I wear. “Thanks.”
He leans his bike against the wall and disappears through the glass doors.
I stay there in the shade of the building. The hair under my helmet feels sweaty, so after making sure no one’s looking at me, I take it off. I drum my fingers against my handlebars, recite prime numbers in my head. Two, three, five, seven.
Davy walks out, pizza box in his arms.
And then he stops and stares at something over my shoulder.
I turn, expecting another Marion look-alike.
But what I see makes my heart stop.
Parked five spots away is a black BMW X3. License plate BONES05.
Seth Montgomery’s car.
They’re back.
The Montgomerys live in the city during the year, but they’ve been spending their summers in Bier’s End for as long as I can remember, all of them up at their grandmother’s big old mansion on the dead-end street that gives the town its name. But when June rolled into July and there was no sign of them, I thought they were actually skipping this summer. Not that they’ve ever done that before. But then, I’ve never accused any of them of murdering my sister before, either.
The sweat on the back of my neck has turned cold, and at the same time, I’m mad at myself. I should have been able to feel it. There should have been a ripple in the air, a thunderstorm, something to warn me. So I could prepare.
Seth isn’t even the one I want to talk to. In fact, he’s the last Montgomery I want to talk to. But if he’s here, it means they all are.
I can’t see Seth right now. “Let’s get out of here.” I swing a leg over my bike—just as the door to the Wawa opens.
And there he is.
Tall, broad-shouldered, shock of black curls. Stubble thicker than I’ve ever seen it. White collared shirt with little blue stripes, untucked. Khaki shorts. Loafers, no socks.