Seth Montgomery.
My heart flips over in my chest.
Seth looks shocked. I don’t know why; we’re the ones who live here all year. But then he pulls himself together.
“Addie.” He says my name like an accusation.
I swallow. “Seth.” I say his name the same way, put my foot on my pedal, ready to ride off, even though my helmet’s not on and Davy hasn’t strapped the pizza to his bike. “If you’ll excuse us—”
“I need to talk to you.”
I steel myself. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
His brows come together. “Well, I have shit to say to you.”
“That’s too bad. Now, can you please—”
“Addie—” Seth’s eyes dart up and down the sidewalk, but the only person within earshot is Davy, staring at us wide-eyed. Seth drops his voice. “Can we talk? It’s important.”
“Is Marion here?” Davy blurts out then. Marion is Seth’s cousin.
Seth turns briefly. “Yeah. She’s at the house.”
Davy’s head whips around, even though their house is miles from here.
“What about Thatcher?” I ask. Marion’s brother, another of Seth’s cousins. The one Montgomery I do want to talk to.
Seth holds my gaze for a long moment before answering. “We’re all here. Our grandma passed away.”
I’m temporarily speechless. I haven’t seen Mrs. Montgomery in forever. All our time running around in their backyard, we barely went inside the mansion, and in the past few years, Mrs. Montgomery stopped coming outside altogether. I should feel sad; that’s how you’re supposed to feel when people die. But I never knew her all that well.
And my mind is more caught on the fact that Thatcher Montgomery is here, on Bier’s End, for the first time since last summer.
I need to think this through carefully. I can’t just hop on my bike, pedal up to the Montgomerys’ front door, demand to see Thatcher, and ask him, face-to-face, if he pushed Fiona.
But I do need him to see me. Maybe after a whole year of stewing in his guilt, it’s eating away at him. Maybe all he needs is someone to come along and drag a confession out of him. I could bring my phone, secretly record him, take it to the cops—they’d have to listen to me then, wouldn’t they?
Straight-up confronting the boy I suspect killed my sister isn’t the smartest plan, I know. But I’ve exhausted every other option. I told the police what I thought. Over and over. And they didn’t do a thing about it. Thatcher went back to school in England, his family name and his money protecting him. No one was ever arrested. They called Fiona’s death an accident. That, or suicide.
No one would listen to me, no matter how loud I was.
“I’m sorry about your grandma,” I say to Seth. “But you and I have nothing to talk about.” I jerk my head at Davy. “Strap the pizza on and let’s go.”
But Davy doesn’t budge. “Is Marion okay?”
“It’s been a hard year for everyone.” Seth looks at me again.
“Davy. We need to go.”
I don’t like the look on Davy’s face—like he’s already calculating how he’s going to run into Marion—but thankfully, he does as I say.
I’m half-afraid Seth will try to physically stop me from riding away. Block my path, demand to know why I never returned any of his texts or DMs. But he doesn’t move. Just watches as I fasten my helmet, despite my shaking hands, and start down the sidewalk—nearly toppling over as I do.
On the ride home, Davy and I don’t speak. We glide past small suburban houses and maples with their leaves drooping in the heat. To the west, the sun is sinking into the tree line. Somewhere, someone is mowing a lawn, the steady buzz of it like the drone of an insect.
I barely see any of it. All I can see is Seth’s face, that expression: surprise, anger, determination.
Desperation.
I need to talk to you.
On Bier’s End there are summers when nothing happens, and summers when everything does.
I touch the gold ballerina at my throat.
When we were little, Fiona and I lived for summer. Running through the tangle of woods that separates our house from the Montgomerys’, meeting the Montgomerys for the first time. Thatcher was two years older than Fiona; his sister Kendall and their cousin, Seth, were both Fiona’s age. When Davy and Marion got old enough, they’d tag along, too. And summers became synonymous with the Montgomerys: manhunt in the woods between our houses, cannonballing into their giant pool. Daring one another to hop the old stone wall to the abandoned Bier mansion next door and screaming when the ivy brushed our ankles.
Searching for treasure. Legend has it the last Bier took what was left of the family fortune and buried it somewhere on their acres of land.
Sometimes, in my wilder moments, I think maybe that was what Fiona was doing on the Bier property the night she died. Searching for buried treasure.
Because I can’t come up with any other explanation.
She must have been drunk, some people said, wandered off from the Founders’ Day parade and fallen down the ravine. But Fiona didn’t drink.
She must have been meeting up with a boyfriend, others said, and something went wrong between them. But Fiona didn’t date.
She must have done it on purpose, more people whispered. But Fiona wasn’t suicidal. She was leaving for the American Ballet Academy in a week. Her life’s greatest dream realized.
