Page 47 of The Note

“Just promise me he’s not the reason you suddenly decided to go back to East Hampton?”

“I swear.” At least that part really was true.

“Are you guys having fun? No more FOMO?”

“No more FOMO,” she said, trying to mask the sadness from her voice. Keeping so many secrets made her feel so distant from him.

She hit the button to refresh the comments on Dave Smith’s most recent Instagram post, a selfie in which he was holding up a margarita, captioned “beach week, bitches.” She had been monitoring the replies posted as news of his disappearance must have spread among his friends.

The muscles in her jaw tensed as she stared at the two most recent comments. “Josh, I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Are you okay—”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Um, it sounds like they droppedsomething downstairs and are yelling for me.” Yet another lie. “I’ve got to go.”

Before shutting her laptop, she cleared the browser history to be safe, then slid open the back door.

“We’re not quite done here,” the detective said.

“I think you are,” she said.

Kelsey looked at her with a wrinkled brow. “It’s fine, May. Everything’s good.”

“He hasn’t been honest with us, have you, Detective? Out of an abundance of caution, I don’t think any of us should talk to you right now. You’ve obviously come here with some kind of agenda and used deception to get us to speak with you.”

He scratched at the thin layer of stubble on his jaw. “Funny you should mention deception. Your friend here just admitted she wrote that note I asked you about, which means she hasn’t been honest withyou—and I for one would like to know why.”

She felt her eyes begin to water as she locked her gaze with Kelsey’s. Kelsey pressed her lips together and gave her the slightest nod.

She could see immediately what Kelsey had done. When Lauren suggested they could just tell the detective about the note, May had been the one to point out that she had already lied to the police and could be disbarred for it.

Kelsey must have admitted to writing and leaving the note on her own. And she hadn’t toldthem she was planning to throw herself under the bus because they would have tried to stop her—or at least she had believed they would. Would they have? May wasn’t so sure. Kelsey was the one who had gotten them into this entire mess. Maybe she was making the right call. It was a stand-up move. But it was also incredibly stupid given what May had just learned.

She swallowed and shifted her focus to Detective Carter. “Kelsey, don’t say another word!”

Carter placed both palms on the table, staring at Kelsey intently. “Make your own decision here, Kelsey. It really doesn’t look good if you can’t answer a few questions about how you happened to guess that a total stranger who stole your parking spot was cheating on his girlfriend. Sounds like you knew him a lot better than you are saying, and now that man has gone missing. Add to that the whole mystery of your husband’s death, and, well, that’s a lot of coincidences with you as the connection.”

“Don’t reply to that, Kelsey.” May reached for Kelsey’s hand. If she had to pull her out of that chair to get her inside and away from this detective, so be it.

“What’s going on down here?” Lauren asked, opening the back slider. “I could hear you all the way upstairs.”

“He’s been lying to us,” May said. “She’s not speaking to you any further, Detective.”

“She can’t mess this up for all of you. Think about your own situations. Your ownreputations.This doesn’t look good.”

Lauren folded her arms. “That sounds like you’re threatening us with retaliation if we exercise our constitutional rights, which is why I definitely won’t be exchanging further words with you.”

Carter addressed Kelsey as he rose from his seat. “It would help to get your side of the story—”

“I’m going to listen to my lawyer friend for now,” she said quietly, her gaze glued to her lap. “I can’t believe you brought up Luke.”

They were a united front.

The detective paused as he reached the door and turned to face them, clicking his tongue twice. “The three of you just got a lot more interesting to me.”

After they heard the sound of his car engine, Lauren spoke first. “What the fuck was that?”

“I told him I wrote the note,” Kelsey blurted. “Because of the parking spot. That I wrote it myself and left it there after you guys went to the bookstore and that you didn’t know anything about it.”

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