I sit abruptly. “Someone’s in the water. They went overboard.”
She scrambles to her feet and searches the water anxiously, then looks down at me with relief. “You scared the shit out of me.” She sinks back to the deck. “Did you swim out here?” She’s wearing the dress she had on earlier, and there’s a bottle of wine at her feet. Empty.
“Did you hear me? Someone fell overboard and went under.”
“That’s not possible.” She crouches down and attempts to open the shutter to the cabin.
I bend down and yank it open. Beneath, Chase and Mila are snuggled under a fleece blanket. “Where’s Ryan?”
Kennedy assumes an angelic expression, the one she wears when she doesn’t want me to get upset but knows I have a damn good reason to be. “He left.”
I stare at her incredulously. “He just got up in the middle of the night and took off?” It’s not like he was enthusiastic about staying. But he did give me his word.
“I checked the loft before we left and found the sheets folded up along with a note from Ryan thanking me for a lovely weekend.” She frowns. “Sarcastic and rude.”
“You were rude to him.” I look to the boat’s edge. “I’m telling you, I saw someone fall.”
“Then I am tellingyou, you’re seeing things,” she says sharply.
I suck in a gulp of air. That stung. “I know the difference between real and imagined.”
She looks embarrassed. “I know. I just meant I would haveseen if someone else got on the boat. It didn’t happen, I promise.” But I know Kennedy, and she isn’t telling the truth. At least she’s notsureshe is. A sudden breeze skims over the lake and I shiver. I’m still soaking wet.
Kennedy gazes up at the telltale, the little ribbon atop the mast that monitors the wind and indicates how to navigate the boat to take advantage of it. “Now, will you stop trying to freak me out and give me a hand?”
I reluctantly help her with the sail. “Why did you come out here so late? Without me?”
“Mila wanted to see the stars, and Chase wouldn’t take no for an answer. I wasn’t about to let them take the boat out alone. And you were dead to the world. Those pills are no joke.”
I grit my teeth to ratchet the line. “Someone moved me. I woke on the dock, soaking wet.”
She barely flinches. “Don’t those heavy-duty sleeping pills cause sleepwalking? Even sleep driving and sleep murdering and all kinds of messed-up shit?”
“I just sleep.” I love how one sleeping pill makes me an unreliable witness, and their hours of drinking doesn’t factor into the equation.
The sail catches wind, and she jumps behind the steering wheel. “They cause hallucinations, though. Don’t they?” She says it lightly, but the implication is clear. I didn’t see anything from the dock. It was exhaustion, it was a trick of the light, it was mypills.Kennedy will always find a reason not to believe. I study her silhouette, standing at the bow of the boat, hair tossed by the breeze. The resemblance to the tarot card gives me goose bumps.
“You know what? I think it’s your fault Ryan left. He lost his sister and you were horrible to him. And I don’t know how to get through this weekend without him.”
Kennedy’s expression tightens. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It is a loss! He’s the only one who didn’t laugh in my face about hearing Emily.”
“Because he always says whatever you want to hear.”
“No, because he hears her too. And not just whispers. Clues. About what happened to her. Like the cards in that game. Don’t you see it?”
I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. A little bit of pity, but a little bit afraid.
“Don’t look at me like that. Emily left Ryan…” I stop short of telling her about the tarot card warning not to trust her. “You’re proving my point. He believes me, and you’re condescending as fuck.”
She presses her hands against her lips and screams into them silently. “There is no more Emily! I don’t know what Ryan’s going through, and I’m sorry, but it’s no excuse to drag you into it, and turn you against usagain. Against me. He is always getting between us.”
“I can’t believe you’re making this about you.” I wrench my arm away. “It’s about Emily and what really happened last year. Maybe if you were honest with me, I wouldn’t need Ryan.”
“Wow.” She stares at me. “Well, I feel a little better about the fact that you think it’s remotely possible that one of us killed Emily. Because now I know who brainwashed you.”
“I don’t think it. I just… have questions. Don’t you?”