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Normally Rose would have laughed. Instead she kept staring at her dad and Lina. Rose watched Lina’s black-rimmed eyes wander, heard all the words that weren’t being said. And even though she’d done the same thing, had spoken the same lie aloud, watching one of Willa’s best friends slowly shake her head back and forth made her hate Lina Winthrop even more than she already did.

  Mari blew a cloud of smoke through puckered lips.

  Rose could feel her eyes. She wanted her to talk, to say something.

  “I’m so sick of this shit, I really am. James Gregory goes off and kills the Club princess, and the best Gramps can do is offer up five Gs?” Mari paused. “I’m over it. I’m sick of taking bribes that barely cover the cost of books.”

  Rose couldn’t bring herself to look at Mari. She wasn’t in the mood for one of their epic discussions about the caste system of the Club. Not now.

  “You think Lina’s parents are here?”

  Mari scanned the crowd lazily, but Rose knew the answer to her own question. The Winthrops wouldn’t be there waiting to comfort Lina after the traumatic questioning was over. They were probably off on another one of their lavish vacations.

  Harsh stripes of mascara stained Lina’s cheeks as she turned around and gestured to Sloane Liu. Sloane wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and walked forward, wisps of her hair lifted by the breeze off the lake. She wore a pale-pink, silky dress, the hem fluttering. If the circumstances weren’t quite so tragic, she might have looked beautiful.

  As soon as she began speaking, she broke down, her head in her hands.

  “Wow, she really knows how to turn on the waterworks.” Mari ground her cigarette into the asphalt of the parking lot and shook her head slowly.

  Rose felt a rush of jealousy. Sloane’s parents enveloped their tiny daughter in an effort to protect her from the big bad detective, who stood there looking like he might start crying himself. It must be nice to be so loved. After a few awkward minutes spent shuffling around and looking at his watch, Detective McCaan tried questioning Sloane again, but her parents shook their heads, silent understanding passing from parent to parent.

  Rose had to look away while her dad dug business cards out of his wallet and handed them to Lina and Sloane. She had heard him say the words so many times in the past that she was able to recite them out loud for Mari’s benefit.

  “Call me if you think of anything that might help the investigation. Or even if you just feel like talking about what happened tonight. Part of my job is to be here for the community.” She even managed a passable imitation of her dad’s honest, sympathetic, guileless smile—the one that always flickered across his face while he let yet another crime go unpunished.

  “You’ve got it down, my friend. Maybe you should apply for deputy.” Mari laughed. It sounded more to Rose like she was choking.

  Rose stood up and brushed the sand off the backs of her thighs. Her dad would probably be here all morning tying up loose ends. For him there was no crime scene to worry about, just a tragic accident that would be handled with the utmost discretion.

  Her mom was watching impatiently from the driver’s seat. As much as Rose hated the thought of getting back into the car with her, at least she got to go home. Now that the police were wrapping up on the boat, crowds of people began to pull away. A sliver of bright orange appeared along the horizon, the sky surrounding pink with the promise of a new day. Everything looked different in the rising light; dresses appeared out of place, heavily made-up faces seemed completely inappropriate. She tugged at the silky fabric that seemed too short to be a dress in the light of day. Motors turned over, car doors opened and shut; people pulled away to begin the process of forgetting.

  “See you tomorrow, I guess.” Rose started walking toward her mom’s car when she heard Mari’s voice call out to her.

  “I didn’t take it.”

  She froze mid-step, blood pulsing in her skull. No, no, no. Mari couldn’t have turned down the Gregorys’ money. No one turned down the Gregorys.

  “But … your job, your apartment, what are you going to do?” Rose asked, turning.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.” Mari flashed a crooked smile. “Not that it matters to you. I saw what you were up to last night.”

  “But it’s the Gregorys,” Rose continued, ignoring the way her stomach clenched. Mari always had an angle, a way out of any situation. But she was out of her league with the Gregorys, and they both knew it.

  Now that she’d practically spit in the Gregorys’ faces, there was no way she’d last the rest of the summer. Saying “no” to the Gregorys meant her job would be mysteriously downsized; a gas leak or a termite infestation would leave the tiny apartment she’d rented for the summer uninhabitable. Typewritten threats, sent via envelopes with no return address, would ensure that she left town quickly and quietly. Mari knew all of this, but still she’d turned down their money. Rose felt sick as she remembered the bitter taste of the lie she’d told her dad. She was a coward. She hated herself for it. Even worse, she saw that same disgust mirrored in Mari’s flinty eyes.

  So Rose said nothing to her friend. Instead she climbed into her mom’s car and focused on the sun rising up over the lake. A slender, dark-haired girl stood by the edge of the water. The rising sun bounced off her porcelain skin like a spotlight, announcing Madge Ames-Rowan, the star of the tragic show. It seemed odd for her to be there instead of at the hospital with her family. Madge was Willa’s stepsister. Their parents had married when they were in kindergarten, and they’d been best friends ever since. Together they bookended the teen social scene at the Club. Rose was almost scared to look at her, afraid that the grief would be too raw, that it would burn and leave a scar.

  But there were no tears on Madge’s face.

  Rose saw only fury and a steely determination. Madge’s fingers were at her neck, twisting the small key she always wore, her green eyes trained on the Gregorys’ yacht that bobbed and swayed in its slip. When Rose followed Madge’s gaze, she met their target. The Gregorys. James was sprawled out in one of the lounge chairs on the deck. Trip sat next to him, cradling his mop of red curls in his hands. If the twins were crowned princes of the Club, their grandfather, Charles “the Captain” Gregory, was king. The Captain ruled with a platinum fist, and now he paced the perimeter of the deck, his back ramrod straight, chin tilted toward the lightening sky. Another battle won.

  Willa had only been dead for a few hours and her killer was passed out in a lounge chair. His grandfather had begun the process of paying for his innocence. Rose knew right then that Willa’s stepsister wasn’t mourning. She was plotting.

  Madge and the Captain knew what everybody else at that party knew: Willa hadn’t fallen off the yacht in a drunken stupor. She’d gotten into a motorboat with James Gregory. An hour later he’d returned alone, his blond hair dark with lake water. And they had all lied about what they saw that night when the police finally pulled Willa’s body out of the lake.

  Of course they had. That was the rule. That was the thing about Hawthorne Lake.

  The most important rule wasn’t a part of the ridiculous bylaws the Captain wrote in the new member orientation packet. Sure, members got a slap on the wrist if they were caught wearing pink on the tennis courts or if they allowed a woman in the gentlemen-only quarters. But there was only one unbreakable rule at the Club. No one dared even say it out loud. It was the kind of rule that could be communicated in harsh glances, quiet resignations, and abrupt disappearances. It was the kind of rule that meant when you saw one of the Gregory twins take a girl out on the lake and return alone, you kept your mouth shut. (And if that didn’t work, it meant you suddenly started talking about how many martinis the girl drank and how rough the water was that night.) It was the kind of rule that meant that if you turned down the Gregorys’ hush money, you better get the hell out of Hawthorne Lake. Because if you were handsome enough and if you were rich enough, it was the kind of rule that let you get away with murder.

&nb
sp; Chapter 3

  “Rose! Come on! We’re going to be late!”

  Rose made her way to the garage, her eyes bloodshot and burning after another sleepless night.

  It had been three weeks since Willa Ames-Rowan’s ashes had been scattered into the lake. Three weeks of staff gossip, socialite whispers, and the intense mourning limited to Willa’s inner circle. Three weeks since Mari had stopped returning any of Rose’s texts, claiming that she needed to focus on work if she were going to keep her job. But Rose knew the truth. Rose had chosen her side when she’d lied to her dad; Mari had chosen hers when she turned down the Gregorys’ money.

  Esteemed members of the Hawthorne Lake Country Club handled the tragedy much like they handled rare bone cancers and childhood diseases with no cure: they threw money at it. Within days of Willa’s death, a scholarship fund was established and was rumored to have enough money in it to send an entire class of inner city kids to an Ivy League college. Donations were encouraged in lieu of flowers. Members quickly latched onto the opportunity to absolve themselves of whatever guilt they felt. Rose imagined them carefully writing checks, lifting the corner of one of the ornate rugs in the game room and sweeping the entire mess underneath it. The truth was, aside from a noticeable quiet, not much had changed. Except, of course, that she had nobody now, with Mari dead to her and Willa … dead to everyone.

  Rose had seen a single calla lily left by the dock early one morning, but by the time she returned for lunch, it was gone. No doubt, any other small tributes were all promptly removed by a well-trained employee.

  A week after Willa died, Rose had cut out the front-page article in the Hawthorne Times and tucked it between the pages of her journal. She hadn’t been able to write about what happened that night. The picture of Willa with her blue eyes, blonde hair, and the long list of lies detailing her final hours would serve as a reminder. Rose wasn’t trying to forget. She was punishing herself by remembering. She’d tucked the journal in her underwear drawer beside the Virgin Mary figurine her grandmother had given her when she had turned thirteen. Fitting.

  “Rose! Let’s go!” Her mom waited impatiently by the door in a suit that was two inches too short to be considered classy. She reached over and tucked one of Rose’s curls behind her ear. “I’m doing this for you, you know. You might not realize it yet, but surrounding yourself with people of this caliber … it’s a gift.”

  “More like a curse.” Rose jerked out of her mom’s reach. She wanted to scream out all of the secrets that she had so carefully buried. But they died one by one before they even reached her tongue.

  “Careful, Rose.” Her mom’s eyes flashed. “You can spend the day at the bar with Mari if you want. Just get in the car.”

  It was ironic; if Mari had been angry with her before everything changed, Rose probably would have sought out Willa. Not that she’d been a friend. Not really. But she had talked to her occasionally. Treated her like an actual person instead of a piece of furniture you had to step around to get to the pool. The kind of person who could make someone’s day better just by smiling. She always had a smile for everyone at the Club, but when she smiled at you, it felt different, personal. Like she was genuinely happy to see you.

  Rose would never forget her first day at the Club. The sea of slit eyes following the small, light brown-skinned girl from the pool to the lake: ignored by all of the members, forgotten by her mother, avoided by the staff. She hid behind her romance novels and pretended not to care. But that same morning, Willa returned from summer camp. She caught Rose hiding behind the boathouse and tried to convince her to come hang out with the other girls—Madge, Lina, and Sloane—gathered on a blanket on the beach. Rose was so flustered she could barely force herself to shake her head no in response. It would have been social suicide. She would have been the laughingstock of the Club. And Willa must have known because the next morning there was a new book by her favorite author waiting for her behind the boathouse. It was an offer of friendship Rose never quite mustered up the courage to acknowledge.

  And now … well, now Rose was able to see Hawthorne Lake for what it was. And she hated it.

  She couldn’t blame Mari for shutting her out. Mari had worked at the Club for the past two summers—and somewhere between dodging stoner busboy Rory O’Neil’s advances and modeling designer sunglasses rescued from the lost and found, they’d become friends. Rose had begged her mom to let her waitress with Mari, but there was no way Pilar McCaan was going to let her only daughter walk around the Club in a uniform. Her mom insisted that Rose take full advantage of the privileges afforded her and use them to network.

  Rose had different ideas. She preferred to lurk on the outskirts of the Club’s employee social scene, eavesdropping on college-aged servers who spent most of their time bitching and moaning about the very same people Rose was supposed to be infiltrating. When Mari was around, they had almost accepted her.

  Now she was back in no man’s land. Not a member. Not an employee. A nobody.

  Rose didn’t even bother saying goodbye to her mom before she headed to the sunroom with her bag of library books. The sunroom was one of Rose’s favorite places at the Club. Huge glass windows overlooked the pool, the golf course, and the grounds beyond. Light filtered in through panes of glass in long stripes, illuminating the dust in the air with a sort of timeworn sparkle. It was the perfect place for people watching, an art Rose had perfected long ago. She wasn’t allowed to sit at the tables along the perimeter that were reserved for actual members, but she spent hours sitting at the bar, a book in her lap like an alibi. Rose was still hopeful that if she hung around long enough, Mari would eventually decide to start talking to her again. She tried not to let her disappointment show when Hannah’s head popped up from under the long expanse of mahogany.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Hannah hissed.

  “Where’s Mari?” For one panicked second, Rose was sure that she’d been fired … or worse.

  “Don’t worry about her, she’s just fine.” Hannah never smiled unless someone was doing something they shouldn’t. But Rose didn’t bother asking her for details. Hannah, like most of the staff at Hawthorne, didn’t give a shit about Pilar’s careful instructions to avoid socializing with her daughter. She just resented Rose for being able to laze around Hawthorne Lake all day while she served drunk golfers and anorexic housewives. But Rose had found that sometimes if she sat at the bar long enough, Hannah’s boredom would eventually win out, and she’d start talking.

  “I can’t believe they’re out there working on their tan after everything that happened,” Rose offered.

  Hannah followed Rose’s gaze. Lina, Sloane, and Madge sat along the pool edge, their legs dangling into the water. The group looked off balance without Willa, an odd instead of an even. Madge’s green eyes were blank. The gold key around her neck hung limply in the sunlight. Sloane had folded her tiny body in half and looked seconds away from bursting into tears. Lina hunched over, fidgeting with the strap of her string bikini, a bandage on the inside of her wrist. Probably a fresh tattoo. “Willa was always the nice one,” Hannah said. She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off the girls.

  Rose didn’t bother reminding Hannah that she used to refer to Willa as “Queen Bitch” because she always insisted on ordering her salad dressing on the side. Death has a knack for photoshopping memories. She thought back to the beginning of the summer. Had her own memories been photoshopped too? She remembered the time she’d been hiding out under her favorite tree on the grounds, tearing through another trashy romance novel. The second she saw Willa approach she packed up her book and stood to leave. Willa’s obvious crush on the Club’s heir apparent was no secret and rumor had it James Gregory was finally starting to warm up. So she tucked her head into her chest and barreled toward the clubhouse.

  But Willa stopped her and grabbed the paperback out of her hand. “McNaught, huh? Have you read any Garwood? She’s got the best manhood euphemisms.”

 
Rose could only blink heavily in response. If blinking out phrases in Morse code were a socially acceptable form of conversation, she would have been Homecoming Queen. She wasn’t sure what shocked her more, the fact that Willa truly did love trashy romance as much as she did or that Willa had correctly used an SAT word in a sentence.

  “Judith Krantz is actually my favorite?” Rose had that terrible habit of transforming statements into questions when she was nervous.

  “Ah, Scruples! I’ve been trying to get Madge to read that, but she can’t get past all the nasty eighties hair.”

  They’d spent the next half hour rating romance novels based on overall sexiness and bad fashion decisions. Rose figured it would be the highlight of her summer. Little did she know …

  “You hear the latest about James?” Hannah asked, jerking Rose from her memories.

  Rose’s stomach dropped. Instead of waiting for a response, Hannah sighed heavily and pushed out from behind the bar. She set the salads down carefully in front of a table of women still in tennis whites. Not one of them acknowledged her presence. Hawthorne Lake’s menu was heavy on steak and almost completely devoid of what Rose’s mom always referred to as “chick food.” Thankfully most of the women at the Club didn’t eat in public, so it didn’t really matter if they had to order the same wilted side salad every single day. Lunch went as ignored as the staff.

  Once Hannah had again settled behind the bar, she raised her eyebrows. “So? James? Anything?”

  “Yeah …” The napkin Rose had been twisting in her lap tore in half, and she looked up into Hannah’s light, watery eyes. “I heard that the Captain sent him away. Some military school or whatever?”

  “You heard wrong,” she whispered. “James and the Captain are back to their weekly golf game. Apparently enough time has passed for that to start again.”

  Rose blinked. Ever since James could walk he’d been playing golf each week with his grandfather, so it made sense. Besides, the Captain was his legal guardian. She always had to remind herself that James and Trip had no real parents: a tragic car accident had left them—the Captain’s daughter and her husband—dead. But she still had to resist the temptation to shiver, gag, or worse. It was too soon, too soon …