It was an accident, the police finally said. She must have tripped and fallen. But Fiona wasn’t clumsy.
I didn’t believe the police’s verdict. I’m not sure how many other people did, either. Someone saw Fiona and me arguing at the parade. Details from the investigation surfaced somehow: The only sign of another person near her that night was a strand of my hair on her tank top. Her journal had gone missing.
None of that proves anything, of course. My hair could have gotten there anytime. And I don’t know what happened to her journal. I didn’t take it.
It took me a little while to see past the murmurs of I’m so sorry for your loss, the Cs on tests I should have failed. But the more time went on, the more things shifted. Once I told Jeremy what Seth and I were doing the night Fiona died and he broke up with me for good, I stopped talking to everyone except my own family. People started avoiding me, looking away when they saw me coming. Without Fiona, without Jeremy, without any of the Montgomerys here anymore—it was like the membrane that had protected me was gone. I became a hermit crab, coating myself in hardness.
That’s who I am now. Who I need to be.
What I don’t need is to hear whatever Seth Montgomery has to say about last summer. About that night or the morning after. I don’t need the drama, I don’t need his questions, and I definitely don’t need him looking at me in that way he does.
It’s only been a year since Fiona’s death. Too soon for anything more to happen. Far too soon.
2
Dinner conversation is stilted. I brace myself, waiting for Davy to bring up Marion. But he just stands there at the kitchen counter, shoveling pizza into his mouth like an automaton. So I stop trying to talk to him and let my eyes wander around the kitchen of our old farmhouse: yellow tile, linoleum countertops, wooden cabinets from the seventies. We moved here from the city when I was too little to remember. My grandma had already passed away; my grandpa lived here with us until I was ten, when he died, too. We should be grateful, Dad’s always said. We’d never be able to afford a house this size without them. Never mind that it’s dated and drafty in the winter and has no AC.
After dinner, Davy wants to take Sadie—our part golden retriever, part who-knows-what—for her walk. He never takes Sadie for her walk. I’d bet the value of the Montgomery mansion he’ll end up walking her right up to their door.
“No, I’ll take her,” I say. “Can you clean up?”
He frowns but apparently decides it’s not worth the argument and starts loading the dishwasher. I watch him a long moment, debating what to say. I really don’t want him chasing after Marion Montgomery again. When Davy was a little kid, after our mom left, he had no problem listening to me when I told him what to do and what not to do. But in the past year, things have shifted.
I take Sadie out, turn in the opposite direction from Bier’s End. The sky is pink, the sun already gone below the trees, the crickets chirping, the lightning bugs just starting to emerge. I can’t stop thinking about Thatcher. Just on the other side of the woods.
I tried telling the police about the argument I saw between Fiona and Thatcher Montgomery last summer. The rage in his eyes.
They didn’t listen. So I tried telling the world. Or at least the world that was true crime enthusiasts on the internet. Anonymously, of course. I was afraid no one would believe me if I posted my Thatcher theories as myself, since me-as-the-murderer was another theory on Citizen Sleuths, the biggest true crime message board.
Some people listened to me. But not enough.
I’d hoped that keeping Fiona’s case alive on the forums might mean it would make it onto one of those true crime podcasts, with someone dissecting it episode by episode. That it would garner enough public attention—rich white guy literally gets away with murder—that the police would be forced to reopen the investigation.
But that didn’t happen. Nothing came from the hours I spent posting my theories except that I saw so many comments speculating about me that even I started to question why the cops hadn’t interrogated me more thoroughly about that night.
My sister is dead, and someone needs to be held accountable.
And that someone is Thatcher.
All I need now is to get him to confess. He has to. The boy I knew wasn’t a cold-blooded killer; I don’t know what happened between them that night, but I do know he has to be regretting it. Maybe he even wants to confess, and it’s his family who’s holding him back.
Just one confrontation, and I can get Thatcher Montgomery behind bars, where he belongs. Then all of this will be over. Davy and I will go on to have a boring summer, and I’ll actually get to leave for Rutgers next month like a regular person with a regular life.
When I get back home from walking the dog, my brother is waiting for me. As I suspected he would be.
“I’m going to go talk to Marion,” Davy starts. “Even though she didn’t answer all last year, I should at least say I’m sorry for her loss. Or I should, like, bring her flowers. And a card. That’s what you do when someone dies—”
“Davy, no,” I cut in.
His head lifts, a stubborn tilt to his chin. “Addie, she’s probably upset. She might want to talk to me now.”
To me, Marion Montgomery has always been an afterthought. Short and skinny, the same big brown eyes and chestnut hair as her siblings, never speaking when we were very little, later only in whispers and only ever to Davy. Last summer, Marion and Davy were fifteen, and suddenly they were missing at the same time, holding hands at the park, DMing each other late into the night.
I was worried, of course. A Montgomery was never going to end up with one of us, and Davy fell for her in the Davy-est of ways, wholly and without reservation or safety net. I figured it was only a matter of when, not if, she broke his heart.
I was right.
“If she wanted to talk to you, she would have called you back,” I point out.
My brother flinches, and a stab of guilt goes through me. Davy doesn’t just look all wide-eyed and innocent. That’s his personality, too. He literally wouldn’t harm a fly. When he finds one inside, he opens the window to let it out.
“I’m sorry, Davy. I really think we need to stay away from them.” But even as I say that, my eyes stray to the window. I’m not about to tell him that I’m planning on heading over there the moment I figure out the best way to confront Thatcher.
“How can we do that, now that they’re back in town?”
“They’re probably not here for that long.” But even as I say it, I know it’s not true. They’re not only here for the funeral. They’re here to fight over the will. Like rich people do.
Davy pushes his hands into his hair. “Addie—I can’t stay away. I was still dealing with losing Fiona, and Marion just stopped talking to me and—I want to know why. If it was because of me or because—”
He looks at me, and again I feel the guilt rise up.
One of Davy’s theories is that Marion stopped talking to him because of me. I admittedly didn’t give any thought to Marion and how she’d react when I started spreading my Thatcher-as-murderer theory, or how that might put a strain on Davy and Marion’s relationship. It wasn’t until my brother came to me and burst out that I had to stop talking about Thatcher all the time that I realized what I was doing was affecting him, too.
So I stopped. Publicly, at least. Davy doesn’t know about Citizen Sleuths.
I can still see Seth’s face in my mind.
I need to talk to you.
