Page 59 of This Stays Between Us
This ignites something in me. What would Adrien know? The only time she spent around Phoebe was when she was trying to draw Kyan’s attention away from her. “She was a good friend if you treated her like she was an actual person. If you hadn’t—”
“Shut. Up.” Adrien growls. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me!” My voice arches.
“She ruined my life.” Adrien’s tone is calm now, measured, rendering my sudden outburst all the more hysterical. I flinch, realizing how I must look. “And she ruined Kyan’s life.”
“Oh come on,” I say. “She tried to give you a laxative, not ruin your life.”
Adrien shakes her head, her voice poisonous. “You were always so blind. So goddamn naïve. It was right under your nose.”
I think of the rage I saw in her and Kyan in the video I’d watched of them earlier this afternoon. Phoebe had done something awful to them, beyond her ridiculous prank in Cairns and shoving Adrien in the bathroom in the Whitsundays. Was it awful enough to push Adrien over the edge?
“Where were you the morning we realized Phoebe was gone?”
“Where was I?” Adrien’s forehead crinkles as if I’m asking something completely ridiculous, but I notice a flash in her eye. “At the Inn, I guess. I don’t remember. It was ten years ago.”
“You weren’t. You weren’t there that morning. Neither was Kyan. You didn’t get there until the afternoon.”
I remember that morning vividly. I didn’t sleep once I got backto the Inn the night before. Shock and desperation flooded through my veins. And more than anything: shame.
I could still feel that knife in my hand, the anger boiling just under my skin. I could feel my fingers grasped around Phoebe’s hair. I lay there, in our two-person room that was now too big for one, and I thought through how I’d ruined everything. How nothing would ever be the same again. I lay there until the sun poked through my window, illuminating the empty bed across from me, where Phoebe should have been.
I kept waiting for a knock on the door, for someone to shout accusations at me, for the police to swarm in and collect me.
They never came.
Eventually, I forced myself up, made my way downstairs, bracing for the pandemonium I was about to encounter.
But everything was normal. Everyone just assumed Phoebe was still asleep in our room.
The dichotomy was unbelievable. I had just done the worst thing I’d ever done in my life, and the rest of the world didn’t even notice.
It wasn’t until later, once I reported to Nick Gould that Phoebe hadn’t come home the previous night, that anything seemed to change.
We started a search. Casual at first. Just me, Nick, Ellery, Declan, Hari, and Josh. More like a walkabout through the Inn’s sprawling grounds. We didn’t find anything of course.
It wasn’t until we got back to the Inn that afternoon, after Nick called the Jagged Rock Police to report a missing person, that Kyan and Adrien returned to the Inn.
I remember spotting them from the window of the lobby, strolling hand in hand up the walkway, as if they had no concern whatsoever for Phoebe, and of course they didn’t. But more than anything, I remember the smile on Adrien’s face. It wasn’t her typical smile. It carried a hint of something that I’m just now identifying. Victory.
She fumbles now. “Wewerethere. You must be misremembering.”
I’m about to retort, but Josh beats me to it.
“Actually, Claire is right. Youweren’tthere that morning,” he says slowly, as if it just dawned on him. “You both didn’t get back until after we’d already gone out looking for Phoebe.”
A flush appears along Adrien’s refined cheekbones, and I can’t tell whether it’s from frustration or embarrassment at being caught in her lie.
“I mean, like I said, it was ten years ago. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t keep a diary of exactly where I was on every day in every decade. We were probably out for a walk or out to breakfast or something. We certainly weren’t killing Phoebe if that’s what you’re implying.”
She grabs the key from Ellery. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a way that we can get to the hospital. At least one of us is interested in making sure Kyan survives.” She doesn’t stick around for a response, storming up the stairs that jut off the lobby.
“Well, that was something,” Josh says, apparently trying to lighten the mood.
No one responds. Instead, Ellery jogs up the stairs after Adrien.
“Come on,” Luke says, “I’ll show you all where your rooms are.” He steals a glance back at the bar. “Unless you’d prefer to grab a drinkfirst. Feel free to help yourselves. God knows you could probably use it.”
