But then my father went to prison, and the tarnish on the Hale name was enough to release her from her obligation. We were both relieved. Our future together would have been an empty, fabricated marriage where we’d likely have grown to resent each other.
Hawkins tilted his head. “What makes you think something’s happened to her?”
“Because you could easily ask her these questions and not me . . . unless there’s a reason you can’t ask her.”
Once again, the cops exchanged a look. They seemed to come to an agreement, and Lewis’s shoulders shifted, giving up the tough act. His face softened. “Ms. Lambert took her father’s boat out on Friday afternoon without permission and—”
“Which one?”
My interruption threw him. “What?”
“Which boat?” Like us, the Lamberts had several in the marina.
“The Trident.”
I smirked. “Wayne Lambert got bent out of shape over her borrowing The Trident? She’s better at captaining it than he is.”
Crewing one of her father’s elite keelboats in the Constitution Regatta had brought Jillian and me together, and what sustained our friendship after the relationship ended.
“She didn’t have permission when she left port,” Hawkins’s tone was ominous, “or anyone else with her.”
My heart thudded to a stop. Single-handing The Trident was possible, but sailing alone was always dangerous. A boat that size would be a lot of work, and a beast if the weather were anything less than perfect. Oh, shit. Hadn’t there been a storm Friday evening?
I tried to convince myself as much as I did them. “She’s an accomplished sailor.”
The air in the room turned heavy as neither man said anything. The painful silence dragged on, winding tension tighter inside me.
For the first time ever, I’d forgotten my father’s presence, so it jarred me back to life when he spoke, even when his voice was quiet and somber. “What happened?”
“A fishing vessel found The Trident adrift this morning,” Lewis said. “Ms. Lambert wasn’t aboard.”
For a moment, I couldn’t process what that meant. She’d gotten off her boat while it was at sea?
I blinked slowly as cold realization moved in.
“No.” My mind refused to accept it. Jillian was too smart to make a mistake and go overboard. “There was a storm on Friday. She must have been forced to abandon ship.”
The sadness in the cop’s eyes was hard to take, and his gentle voice was worse. “There doesn’t appear to be any damage to The Trident, and the life raft was still onboard,” he hesitated, “along with her wallet and cell phone.”
No.
There weren’t many good people in Cape Hill. Jillian was one of the few, and my only real friend. She couldn’t be . . . gone.
“We’re still waiting on the phone records,” the cop added, “but it appears you were the last person to speak with her before she boarded that boat. So, I ask you again, Mr. Hale—what exactly did you talk about?”
TWO
VANCE
Sleep would not come, and I sighed when I checked the screen of my phone and discovered it was nearly two in the morning. My father suffered from insomnia. Was I developing it, too? Fuck, I didn’t want to be like him any more than I already was. It was already too much.
I lay in my darkened bedroom, staring at the chandelier suspended from the vaulted ceiling, and did what I’d done for the last two days—I spent it replaying the conversation I’d had with Jillian.
She’d sounded normal. Maybe even happy for once. I’d escaped my familial pressure, but hers had only intensified since, and the last year had been incredibly rough for her. We ran into each other often at social events, and like me, her smile was always fabricated. All for show. Inside she was deeply unhappy.
Jillian Lambert was instructed who to date, where she should work, what she could wear. Every aspect of her life was dictated to the point she was told who she was allowed to be.
Bottling up who you were and what you wanted would eventually lead to catastrophe, and all the terrible choices I’d made were the proof of that.
When she’d called, she’d caught me during my lunch break on Friday while I’d been tucked away in a back corner of a restaurant. She’d started off by apologizing for pulling out of the upcoming regatta. Her schedule was too tight, she’d said. And then she’d shifted over to her favorite subject, which was teasing me about how, for the most part, I’d gotten out. I could be with whomever I wanted, and despite this, I was still single.
She brought it up so often, I wondered if she wanted to live vicariously through me.
“I don’t need a relationship,” I said.
“Yeah,” her tone was dry. “Why do that when you can get the sex for free?”
I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see. She wasn’t wrong. “Sex is easy. When you add in all the other stuff? Then it gets complicated, and I’m not interested in that. My life is complicated enough.”