Killer Summer by Lynda Curnyn (e book reading free .txt) 📗

You’re not responsible.”

“I feel responsible, that’s for sure. I just can’t figure it out though. Who would kill that poor innocent kid?”

A lump thickened in my throat, but I swallowed it down, along with the rest of my drink. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I want to pin it on Donnie—he might have seen me talking to Chad, but what does Donnie have to hide if Donnie wasn’t even here the night Maggie died?”

“Why not pin it on Vince?” I said, feeling fresh anger flare through me.

She lowered her gaze. “I…I already checked on Vince. He wasn’t on Fire Island that night, either.”

“Well, la-di-da.”

“Sage, this is serious.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I replied, folding my arms beneath my chest to keep me from striking out. Not at Zoe. But at the world. It was too fucked up to even contemplate.

But contemplate it, Zoe did. “I just can’t see who else would have a motive. Unless Chad was a witness to what happened that night on the beach. But Chad was with you the night Maggie was murdered.”

I looked up at her, saw something move through her eyes. And though it was only a brief flash, I knew exactly what it was. Blame. I stiffened. “You don’t think that I—”

“No, Sage, no,” she protested, her eyes going wide. “I would never think that.”

But I knew she was lying. I had practically seen the thought cross her mind.

And that was enough for me.

I did the only thing I could do. I ran. Out the door, then over the cracked concrete and sandy paths of Kismet. The strange thing was, it wasn’t the thought of Chad that haunted me, but the memory of Hope.

I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t…_

The words rang through me, over and over, like the mantra they had been to me these past fifteen years. But they didn’t soothe me.

They never really did. Never really erased the accusation I saw in the eyes of everyone the day they pulled Hope from the river.

Now that day came back to me with full force. My mother pleading with me that morning to pick up Hope after school, though baby-sitting my sister was the last thing I wanted to do. Walking in the rain to get her, because I did give in to my mother—I always gave in. Splashing through the stream with Hope on the way back. Once the rain let up, we had turned the fact that we were both soaked to the skin into a game, stepping into the swollen stream and leaping from rock to rock as we made our way home.

I remembered Hope’s scream as she slipped from the rock, her body sliding effortlessly into the water, which was rushing more than usual due to the heavy rainfall. Remembered diving in after her, frantically following her listless body until she disappeared completely under water.

When I got to the end of the stream, some fifty feet down, and saw the way the sewer pipe sucked the water through, it was all I could do to stop myself from being pulled from that dark place I was certain had taken my sister.

They said I never shed a tear, but I cried long and hard into my pillow many nights when I was sure no one could hear.

Almost as hard as I was crying now.

Swiping at my tears, I came to a stop in front of Vince’s house. And as I caught my breath, I realized that Zoe was right about one thing at least. I shouldn’t be alone right now.

But when I looked up and saw the quiet darkness of the house, the front door shut against the night, I came to my senses.

I couldn’t possibly barge in there like this, an emotional wreck. I didn’t know Vince well enough for that. I certainly couldn’t call him a boyfriend yet. I wasn’t even sure if I could call him a friend.

That thought made me feel lonely.

Lonelier than I’ve ever been.

Chapter Forty-two

Zoe

Dog Day Afternoon

“Zoe, it’s Adelaide. Adelaide Gibson?“

The minute I heard Adelaide’s raspy chirp, I was sorry I had picked up the phone. 1 had been hoping for Sage, who I had called so many times this week, at home, at the office, I was really starting to feel like a stalker again. But what else could I do? She never picked up. And she never called back, no matter what kind of message I left—and I left plenty.

“Hi, Adelaide,” I said, bracing myself to hear about the latest changes she wanted on the film.

“You’re never going to believe what’s happened, Zoe.”

You’d be surprised, Adelaide. “What’s up?”

“Fifi is home. My Fifi—she’s come back to me.”

I sat up on the sofa, where I’d been slouching. “How?”

“Well, I’ve been showing our little film all over town. At my garden club. My book club. I even had a viewing at the Jefferson Market Library.”

Huh. Invisible People, notwithstanding, this might be one of my biggest distributions yet. “And somebody found Fifi?”

“You guessed it! Two days ago I received a phone call from Beatrice Simpson—she’s in my book club. I think you met her in the park that day.“

I was thinking Beatrice was part of the dog club, but whatever. “Go on.”

“As it turns out, Beatrice had gotten a call from another friend of hers, who had a woman in her building with a King Charles spaniel that looked just like my Fifi!”

I frowned. “How could she tell? Don’t they all look alike?”

Adelaide sucked in a breath, clearly offended. “Of course not. My Fifi had an unusual brown marking on her left ear. And a pink freckle on her nose.”

I was going to have to take her word on that.

“Oh, Zoe, it’s a good thing we kept that extra home footage of Fifi in, otherwise, how would this woman have spotted her?”

I decided to let that comment slide. “So what happened?”

Then she explained how the woman had received the dog as a gift from her