Page 88 of The Summer that Changed Everything

“Exactly.”

“We could wait for Lester Friedman to take care of it once he’s done everything he can from DC,” Ford said. “Or I could go alone. People might be willing to talk to me.”

“I think waiting for the investigator would be best. It’d seem more ‘official,’ make people feel as if they have an obligation to help.”

He kept fiddling with his phone. “That’s probably true.”

Lucy tightened the arm she had around his shoulders. “Something wrong?”

“Not really.”

“Nowdo you regret being involved—with me, with this case?” she asked.

He scowled. “Not at all. I was just thinking about Chet. I used to like him a lot more than I do now.”

“He’s changed?”

“Maybe not. Could be me.” Ford shifted her on his lap. “What doyouthink of him?”

“I quit liking him when he started telling everyone I put my father up to killing Aurora, especially because, once he said it, everyone else piled on, and nothing I said in my own defense made a difference.” She toyed with the hair at the nape of his neck. Those were some of the most terrible memories of her life and part of the reason she’d come back to this place. She wanted to banish the guilt and shame she should never have had to feel in the first place, since she reallyhadn’tdone anythingto cause Aurora’s death. “It felt like the whole town was chanting the same thing.”

Suddenly uneasy, she got off his lap and walked to the window.

“That was a bum deal,” he agreed. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t answer. She was too caught up in the past.

Coming up behind her, he slid his arms around her waist, but he didn’t say anything. He just kissed the top of her head as they both gazed out at the moon hanging like a giant pendant over the ocean.

“This summer’s going to hurt me just like that summer did,” she said, finally breaking the silence that’d settled over them. “Isn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t treat it like one. “This time, I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt me more,” he said.

Chet stared at his own reflection in the window. While he was on the phone with Ford, he’d pretended Kenzie was in the room with him. But that hadn’t been the case. Kira had taken her down the hall to put her to bed while he was supposed to be cleaning his brushes. He’d needed his wife to be gone when he talked to Ford, was afraid that if anyone could see through him—sense the mental gymnastics he had to go through to navigate the call he’d just placed—it’d be her.

Fortunately, he’d had the time alone since she was busy with their daughter. But did Ford believe him? Had he said enough but not too much? Acted confident and untroubled? Completelyconvincing?

“Ihadto admit I returned it,” he said aloud. Once he’d learned that Stephanie had gone to the cottage, no doubt looking for Lucy, he’d felt as if he had to reveal that much. After all, he’d hung out with both Stephanie and Aurora that night, at least until Stephanie left the party, so she’d heard a drunken Aurora ask him to take her out on the river—several times—andshe’d also heard him say he would. And someone else might’ve seen him with the boat later on, loading it into his truck and driving it back. He’d been up the entire night messing with it.

Telling Ford he’d returned the boat was the best move he could’ve made, he reassured himself. But he was sweating so profusely when Kira poked her head in to see why he hadn’t come out of the studio that she asked if she should turn down the air-conditioning.

25

Lucy woke up before dawn when the room was still almost pitch-black. Although the bed was more comfortable than any she’d ever slept in, especially with Ford’s body curved protectively around hers, once she reached consciousness her mind wouldn’t shut down again. There was too much going through it. Even while she’d been asleep, she’d had disquieting dreams. In the only one she remembered, Stephanie Beaumont had suddenly turned into a screaming banshee and hurled rocks through the windows of the cottage, yelling, “Itisyour fault Aurora’s dead!” And then her face melted into Aurora’s as it had looked in the upsetting and tragic photographs shown at the trial after her death.

Could it have been Stephanie who broke in? That was hard to believe after checking out her Instagram account. But it could’ve been her, or one of several other people. Lucy hadn’t expected to be embraced by the North Hampton Beach community. It was the fact that she was getting involved with Ford again that worried her. She’d lowered her defenses, thinking she should simply let go and enjoy him while she hadhim—especially since she wasn’t likely to ever see him again once she returned to Vegas. But she was falling in love with him for the second time, and it was happening so fast. She couldn’t maintain any greater emotional distance as an adult than she could as a young woman, and she hadn’t expected that, not after getting her heart broken so badly the first time. How was it that she’d been able to hold every other man at arm’s length?

She had no answer. Ford was just different. So... should she cut off their relationship? Go back to the Smoot cottage before she could want him even more? Or was it already too late?

“You okay?” Ford whispered, his breath moving a wisp of hair at her ear.

She hadn’t meant to wake him. Hoping he’d float back to sleep if she didn’t respond, she tried to slip out of bed so she wouldn’t continue to disturb him. But he tightened his arm to stop her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding more alert.

“I’m just... worried about everything,” she murmured.

“Your father?”

“It would be good to finally reach the truth, to know if he’s really the kind of man who could do what was done to the Matteos, for a lot of reasons, but one of them is so I’ll know whether I’m the one who let him down or he’s the one who let me down.” Somehow, that had come to mean more than the rest of it. She didn’t want to feel as though she’d blamed her own father for something he didn’t do. If anyone believed in him, it should’ve been her.

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