One of Us Is Back (ONE OF US IS LYING)
One of Us Is Back: Part 2 – Chapter 26

Nate

Saturday, July 18

My mother’s apartment is so neat, it looks like some kind of showroom. Bronwyn is perfectly at home here, eating breakfast and chatting with Mom about Yale, but I’m constantly distracted by how different everything looks from our old house.

“Why do you have so many limes?” I ask, staring at the ceramic, citrus-filled bowl in the middle of the kitchen table.

“Well, they’re pretty, aren’t they?” Mom asks. “And they taste good in drinks.” I must look up too sharply at that, because she adds, “Like seltzer.”

“I love them,” Bronwyn says, giving me a look that says, Relax.

I’m trying. But I can’t shake the feeling that my mother invited us here for some particular reason, and historically speaking, my parents’ reasons for anything are never good. “So, what have you been up to lately, Mom?” I ask, a little too abruptly. We’ve both been working so much that it’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen her in person.

“Trying to keep up at the office, mostly. We’re so busy,” Mom says, taking a sip of orange juice. She’s still working for a medical transcription company, but she’s a manager now. “I was sorry to miss Reggie’s funeral. I heard it was a lovely ceremony.”

“I guess, yeah. As good as it can be,” I say.

While I sat in a pew at St. Anthony’s Church between Bronwyn and Addy yesterday, I couldn’t help remembering Simon’s funeral. I went to that with my parole officer and got pulled aside by the police for questioning as soon as it ended. I had no idea, back then, that my entire life was about to change. A lot of it has been for the better, and yet—yesterday was the third funeral I’ve attended for a Bayview High student in less than two years.

Last night, Crystal told all the roommates that Reggie hadn’t been wearing his signature leather-cord necklace when he died, and his parents had asked about it. I guess it was a gift from his mom, so we tore the damn house apart looking for that thing. No luck, though. I felt like shit afterward, because it was the first time I’d considered Reggie as anything other than a giant pain in the ass. A guy who wore a necklace from his mom every day might be someone who could’ve grown out of being a dick if he’d managed to make it out of Bayview alive.

Mom seems to be thinking along the same lines as she shoots me a rueful smile. “Sometimes, I wonder what life would have been like if I’d actually taken you to Oregon all those years ago,” she says.

“It would have been terrible,” Bronwyn says instantly. Both my mother and I turn her way, and her cheeks get red. “For me, I mean.”

I shake off my gloom about Reggie and tease, “What are you talking about? You’d be living your best life, dating some Yale legacy, while I—”

“Pined away over your fifth-grade crush,” Bronwyn says, her lips curving up.

It doesn’t matter how many times she smiles at me like that; I still forget how to breathe for at least a few seconds. “Accurate,” I manage to say.

“It all worked out for the best, then.” Mom sounds like she means it, even though she got the short end of that stick.

“You must get tired of living here, though,” I say. “What with all the…” I was going to say murders, but stop when Bronwyn shakes her head. “Yuppies,” I finish.

“It’s where you live,” Mom says, like that settles the matter. Plus, she probably doesn’t mind the yuppies. She’s started doing yoga with a few of them from her office, and it’s been great for her. She looks healthier than she has for a long time.

“Yeah, but…” But I’m an adult now. I have my own place. My life is on track. I can’t say any of that, though, because what it’ll really sound like is I don’t need you. And that’s not true, even though I suck at showing it. “But you must miss your old friends.”

“We talk all the time,” Mom says. “They’re not going anywhere.”

Are you? I think.

Old habits die hard, even with both my parents being weirdly functional. My mother doesn’t deserve my doubt, though—she’s been here for a year and a half, working and taking her meds, going to yoga, and she just made us waffles, for crying out loud. Whole wheat, because she knows Bronwyn likes them. She’s not the same person she was ten years ago, or even one year ago, so maybe I can finally stop waiting for that other shoe to drop. I shift my focus and ask, “You think Dad’s going to get fired over the keys?”

Him, I can still worry about.

“No,” Mom says. “He was careless, yes, but if it weren’t for him—plus you two—poor Reggie might not have been found for a long time. But even if that job doesn’t work out, it might not be the worst thing in the world….” She searches my face then, like she’s looking for some kind of signal. “Have you and your father talked recently?”

“Yesterday,” I say, finishing the last of my waffle.

“About anything in particular?” she asks.

That pings my emergency parent radar. “What’s he up to?” I ask, pushing my plate away.

Mom sighs. “Oh, Nate. He’s not up to anything.”

“Then why—”

Bronwyn’s phone chimes and she announces, “Cooper’s here,” then turns to my mother and asks, “Can we help you clean up before we leave?”

“No, no, go ahead. Enjoy the beach,” Mom says with a shooing motion. She looks wistful as she adds, “You kids could use the break.”

We’re out the door before I realize I never finished my question.

—

It should’ve taken less than fifteen minutes to get to the beach, but with Cooper at the wheel, it was almost twice that.

“This car is wasted on you,” I tell him as he finally inches into an empty spot in the parking lot. Luis talked Cooper into buying a black Subaru WRX—a slick, sporty little sedan that didn’t cost a fortune. It probably goes a lot faster than thirty miles per hour, too, but we wouldn’t know that thanks to Cooper’s obsession with the speed limit.

“I’ve never had a new car before,” Cooper says, adjusting his sunglasses and pulling a baseball cap from the glove compartment.

“Should we be taking it to the beach, then?” Bronwyn asks nervously. “We’re going to be covered in sand when we get back in.”

“It’s okay; I have a vacuum cleaner,” Cooper says earnestly. Kris, who’s halfway out the passenger door, swallows a grin as he passes me on the way to the trunk. He opens it and carefully pulls a blanket, chairs, and an umbrella from the small space, looking so much like a dad that even Bronwyn, who’s usually the organized one, can’t help but laugh.

“Don’t forget the cooler full of juice boxes,” she teases.

“It’s full of water bottles, but yes,” Kris says, handing everything except the umbrella off to Cooper. “Could you grab it, Nate?”

I do without being a smart-ass, because this might be our last beach day for a while. Addy and Maeve are leaving for Peru on the last day of July. Cooper’s summer league wraps up in early August, so he and Kris are visiting Kris’s family in Germany after that. And way too soon, it’s going to be time for Bronwyn to go back to Yale. So even though it’s a weird time in Bayview, we decided to act like a normal group of friends and spend Saturday together.

Besides, if we waited for it to not be a weird time in Bayview, none of us would ever leave the house.

“Maeve says they’re to the left of the lifeguard tower,” Bronwyn reports, scanning her phone as we cross the parking lot. It’s a perfect summer day, hot and sunny, the sky a bright, cloudless blue. The air smells like a mix of salt, sunscreen, and sugar wafting from the cotton candy machine in the snack shack to our right. “She says to look for her hat.”

“Okay,” I say, although I’m not looking at anything except Bronwyn while she pulls off her T-shirt and stuffs it into her beach bag. My girlfriend in a bikini top and cutoffs is quite possibly the greatest sight on earth.

“Her hat?” Cooper asks as we reach the sand. “There are hundreds of people here. How are we supposed to…oh.” He trails off, and I follow his gaze until I spot a striped straw hat the size of a small planet. “She always replaces new levels to covering up, doesn’t she?”

“You know how Maeve feels about sun exposure,” Bronwyn says.

Or the beach in general. When we reach her, Maeve is sitting cross-legged on a chair in the center of a large blanket, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, floaty white pants, and sunglasses that cover almost half her face. There’s a laptop balanced on her knees and a giant bottle of sunscreen beside her chair. “Oh, good,” she calls out as we approach. “Finally, an umbrella.”

“Yeah, thank God,” I say, dropping the cooler at the edge of the blanket. “Looks like one of your wrists is getting sunburned.”

“Really? Which one?” Maeve asks, reaching for the sunscreen.

“Where’s everyone else?” Bronwyn asks, stretching out on the blanket beside Maeve’s chair. I sprawl beside her and pull her close, nuzzling the space between her neck and her shoulder, and she laughs when I hit a ticklish spot.

“Knox and Addy are getting ice cream, and Luis and Phoebe are swimming,” Maeve says, gazing resentfully out to sea. “I tried to tell them how bad the undertow is today, but apparently neither of them cares about water safety.”

“And how have you been enjoying yourself on this glorious day, Maeve?” Kris asks as he finishes setting up the umbrella and opens a folding chair with a flourish.

“Research,” Maeve says, adjusting the hood on her laptop against the glare of the sun. “Alexander Alton’s death is highly sus. His car was found parked near a beach about ten miles from here, like he’d randomly driven there and decided to go swimming without telling anyone. It was pure luck his body washed up at all, but it took over a month. Not a lot left to examine at that point.” She grimaces. “And he left his phone in his office, which—who does that? Maybe it was a mistake, but maybe someone was covering their tracks.”

“What did the family say?” I ask.

“Back then? Nothing,” Maeve says. “Or at least, nothing I could replace. They didn’t give any interviews.” She taps her keyboard. “So of course, I looked them up next. Chase Alton was easy to track down. He’s the ultimate cliché—a wannabe actor waiting tables in Los Angeles, hoping for his big break. That’s what he told Tami Lee, anyway.”

Bronwyn props herself up on one elbow, frowning. “I thought you retired Tami Lee?”

“She’s retired on Toq,” Maeve says as Kris starts handing out bottled water. “Now she’s in Chase’s Instagram DMs, telling him how much she loved his commercial way back when.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Cooper asks, unscrewing the cap from a water and taking a long pull. “If he has anything to do with what’s been happening, that might tip him off that someone’s onto him.”

Maeve shrugs. “I had no choice. He has zero acting credits beyond that, and I needed an in. He was chatty at first, but he got a little quiet once I started asking about weekend plans. Either Tami Lee is coming on too strong, or that isn’t information he wants to share.” She drums her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I found an obituary for their mom too. Drunk-driving accident last year.”

“Oh no,” Bronwyn says. “Was she—”

“The driver? Yeah,” Maeve says. “You’re seeing the pattern, right?”

Bronwyn and I exchange glances. “Not entirely,” I say.

“It’s Jared Jackson all over again. When Jared’s brother went to jail, their whole family fell apart—the dad’s health got worse and the mom overdosed—so Jared became obsessed with Eli, even though it was hardly Eli’s fault that Jared’s brother was a criminal. But that’s why Jared met Emma, who was fixated on Brandon for accidentally killing her dad. It’s another Bayview family destroyed, and what is Bayview best known for? Revenge.” Maeve adjusts her hat as she gazes out to sea, where Phoebe and Luis are dots in the water. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all the hints flying around town lead back to another ruined family. Two dead parents in the space of a few years is pretty traumatizing. Especially if the first death wasn’t an accident after all.”

“So, what are you saying?” Cooper asks. “This guy Chase is pulling a Jared?”

“Maybe,” Maeve says. “It would help to know what really happened to Alexander Alton back then. I wonder if the woman who was allegedly having an affair with him might know.” She tilts her head my way and taps her chin with one finger. “If only one of us had regular access to the place where Ms. Riordan goes to drink her sorrows away.”

“What? No,” I say, alarmed. “I barely know the woman. I can’t suddenly ask about some maybe-affair from years ago.”

Maeve scowls at me. “Come on, Nate, you work at a bar. If you haven’t figured out how to pull people’s sob stories out of them by now, you’re doing it wrong.”

Cooper tugs his T-shirt over his head and tosses it to one side. “Plus, you’re a new man, Nate,” he says. “Look how you got Vanessa to come around.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say automatically. Although…maybe I did? Inviting Vanessa to the party didn’t go as planned, but it ended better than it started.

Kris leans forward. “Vanessa,” he says thoughtfully. “Now, that’s an idea.”

Cooper blinks. “What’s an idea?”

“She knows Jake’s mother, right? And Vanessa has a certain…listen, I’m not going to say charm, but there’s an aggressive kind of sociability happening with that girl that might be useful.” Kris grabs Maeve’s sunscreen, pops the top, and squirts a bunch into his hand. “She wants to make up for being awful during high school, right?” he adds, spreading sunscreen across Cooper’s shoulders. “Maybe she could start there.”

“Why would Ms. Riordan tell Vanessa something so personal?” I ask.

Kris shrugs. “That’s Vanessa’s problem to solve.”

“What about the younger brother and sister?” Cooper asks. “They’re twins, right? What’s their deal?”

“Christopher and Chelsea Alton,” Maeve says promptly. “I guess they’re one of those families that picks a naming theme and runs with it. Chelsea is studying art history at Oxford, and she has a pretty consistent social media presence.” She hands her laptop over to Bronwyn, who perked up at the word Oxford. It’s one of Bronwyn’s dreams to study there her junior year, which might finally spur me to get a passport.

“Oh my God, she’s at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bronwyn murmurs. I lean over Bronwyn’s shoulder, squinting at the Instagram page of a brown-haired girl posing in the courtyard of an imposing Gothic building. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Christopher, on the other hand, is a total void,” Maeve says. “Zero social media accounts. No word about him since his high school graduation notice.”

“Well, that’s suspicious,” Kris mutters.

Luis comes running up to the blanket then, soaking wet and shaking hair out of his eyes, with Phoebe close behind him. “The volleyball net is free,” Luis reports breathlessly. “Addy and Knox are there, saving it. Come on, let’s play.”

“Yessss,” Cooper says, springing to his feet even though Kris is still massaging his shoulders. “Just like old times.”

“Only for some of us,” Bronwyn says, but she’s already twisting her ponytail into a bun.

“I call Bronwyn’s team,” Kris says, giving her a high five. “I love when you get into attack mode.”

I’m not much of a volleyball guy, but…“Same,” I say.

“This all sounds very sandy,” Maeve says doubtfully.

“Come on, Maeve,” Cooper says. “Stop obsessing about true crime and play some damn volleyball.” He slings an arm around Luis, who clasps his hands together in a praying motion. Phoebe grins, shooting Maeve a look that says, You’re outnumbered.

Maeve heaves a sigh. “Okay, fine, but give me a few minutes. I need to put on another layer of sunscreen first.”

Luis beams. “I’d expect nothing less.”

“Just let me shut down my laptop and—wait,” Maeve says. She pulls off her sunglasses to peer at her screen. “Tami Lee has a new DM from Chase Alton.”

Luis frowns. “From who?”

Cooper punches his arm. “Kid from the commercial. Keep up.”

“The last thing I said to him was If you’re bored this weekend, you should come to San Diego,” Maeve says. Her eyes widen as she adds, “And he said, Maybe I’m already there.”