St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
I BLINK MYSELF AWAKE in a room I vaguely recognize through filmy vision and stare up at a ceiling fan doing lazy laps overhead. My head lolls to the side. There’s a crushing sensation behind my temples, nausea rising in my gut. The first thing I see on the nightstands bracketing the bed is a photo of a newlywed couple. Sadie and Andrew, baby-faced and youthful.
Everything comes screaming back. My conversation with Sadie in the kitchen. Her hushed tones through the baby monitor. The wine. I’d drank fast on a totally empty stomach, and combined with Sadie’s version of Josh—a man possibly capable of murder—my brain had short-circuited, like it was trying to protect my own image of Josh at all costs.
My breath hitches sharply as I sit up too quickly. My body is sluggish and doesn’t want to listen. Sadie had whispered to someone—to Andrew?—You need to get here soon, and that must mean he’s on his way. What exactly are they planning?
I force myself off the bed and down the hall, my legs wobbly and uncertain as I descend the stairs. The first thing I see is the back of Sadie’s head. She’s at the kitchen table, tapping something into her phone, my empty wineglass in front of her. She stands up and turns around when she hears me approach, her face full of concern. “June. You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “Just embarrassed. I don’t exactly know what happened. I mean, I drank on an empty stomach, so I guess that explains it.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she says. “After you passed out, you were mumbling something incoherent—I helped you upstairs to lie down. Do you want something to eat? I can make something quickly—”
My mouth is cotton dry, and I’m humiliated with myself for causing such a scene. “No, that’s okay. I’ll grab something with my fiancé when he gets here. I should get going…”
“I hope it wasn’t the wine,” she says. “It was a dry wine. We fermented it longer to lower the sugar content. If I’m being honest, it was a suitcase clone, from a clipping I brought back from a trip to France. This batch was a total experiment, and it’s our first time drinking it. Maybe it’s way too strong.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, nausea threatening to rise up again. “Do you know what time it is?”
Sadie taps awake the screen on her own phone and looks at the clock. “It’s just past nine. You weren’t out for very long. And in case you were wondering, your purse is sitting over there on the sofa.”
I walk over, grab it, and pull my phone out. There are two missed calls from Kyle and a text from fifteen minutes ago. My plane just landed, where are you?
I call him with shaking hands, and he answers on the first ring. “Kyle, I’m at the Backyard. I have a room booked here where we can stay tonight.”
“I’m just waiting for a Lyft. Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I say quickly, aware of Sadie’s eyes on me. “It’s totally fine.”
After we hang up, I turn and face Sadie. “My fiancé is on his way here, so I should go. Thanks for—” I gesture around, looking for an appropriate way to end the night. “For talking to me about Andrew and Josh. I know it’s not easy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I hope you can make peace with what happened to Josh, just like Andrew did.”
Her smile is friendly, but her eyes are sad.
“You said Andrew wasn’t perfect back then either.” I suck in a breath. “What did you mean by that? Were you talking about the whole boarding school situation?”
Sadie narrows her eyes. “No. I know how… guilty Bev feels about that. All I meant was that Andrew and Josh had a very complicated relationship, and I don’t think either of us will ever fully understand it, since we didn’t know them back then.”
I force myself to ask the question. “Is Andrew really on a business trip?”
Her smile fades. “Of course. Where else would he be?’
“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. I’m still really lightheaded.” I back toward the door. “Thanks again for the drink, and I’m sorry I passed out.”
I make a beeline across the property to the parking lot, feeling her gaze on my back. Time seems to pass interminably slowly before I see headlights. My body melts with relief when Kyle exits the back door of the car, his well-worn gray weekender bag slung over his shoulders. I rush toward him and launch myself into him. He gives me a short hug back. Usually, Kyle’s hugs are big and hearty, given with not just his arms but his entire body, and I love nothing more than melting into them. But there is a stiffness in his posture that leaves me unable to do that.
“Kyle,” I say. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I got worried,” he says. “When you didn’t answer, I kept thinking, what if something happened to you…”
“I know. But nothing did.”
“So now what?” Kyle says. “Where is this Andrew guy? If you think he’s dangerous, wouldn’t you want to get far away from his winery?” There’s just a hint of exasperation in his voice, and his eyes are lined with fatigue.
“He’s not here. His wife says he’s on a business trip, but I’m not sure if I believe her.”
“You said he was in the park and in front of your bar,” Kyle says. “Think really hard. Was it actually him? Because it would be totally understandable if you thought you saw Josh, with our wedding coming up so soon…”
“It was Andrew,” I say. “I’m sure of it. Let’s go into the room and talk.”
When we’re in the room, with the door locked and the curtains tightly shut, we sit down on the bed, and I tell him about Rodney Young thinking Josh killed Michelle, and Sadie telling me what Andrew had said about Josh’s pattern with girlfriends. When I get to the part about the baby monitor and passing out in Sadie’s kitchen, Kyle’s knuckles are white, his lips pressed together.
“You passed out in their house? You need to eat something. Let’s go into town and get some dinner, okay?” He starts to stand up, but I tug on his hands, pulling him back down.
“I’m not hungry,” I say, shaking my head. I’m not ready to explain why. That the other versions of Josh I’ve been introduced to have left me sickened, without an appetite. That I haven’t just been hearing other people’s words but absorbing them, like some kind of poison.
But Kyle knows me well enough that he senses the source of my unease. “It’s a lot to process. You knew Josh as this amazing guy, but maybe he wasn’t exactly who you thought.”
I tamp down my annoyance. It’s one thing for me to question what I’ve been confronted with, but it feels entirely different to have Kyle do the same.
“He was an amazing guy,” I say, still programmed to defend him. Until I have proof otherwise, I need to remain loyal to the man I loved so much.
“Okay,” Kyle says gently. “But it sounds like several people you’ve spoken to didn’t think so. There could be some truth to what they’re saying. I just want you to be prepared for that—you’re saying you came here to find the truth, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like what you hear.”
A silence falls between us. “I do want the truth,” I finally say. “And I think I’m getting closer to it. I know Michelle’s death is tied to Josh’s. Two drownings can’t be a coincidence… can they?”
Kyle interlaces my fingers in his. “Maybe not, but how could you prove anything? You already talked to Josh’s mom, and Michelle’s dad, and Sadie. Who else is left?”
We both know the answer to that question: Andrew. But we can’t get him to talk if we can’t find him.
“There was another girl—Sadie mentioned an ex of Josh’s who came before Michelle, but didn’t know her name. Apparently Andrew got sent away to boarding school over a scandal involving a photo of this girl. If I can find her…”
Kyle blows out a breath. “What difference would it make? All of this was so long ago.”
“I don’t know, but if she knows anything—”
His eyes are full of concern. “June, you’re not going to want to hear this, but we can get on a plane home right now. Head back to New York. Leave all this behind.”
“And if Andrew shows up there again?”
“We’d report him to the police. File a restraining order. But being in his vineyard is just asking for trouble.”
The adrenaline starts to drain out of me, replaced by a combination of dread and bone-deep fatigue. Who knows if Kyle even believes it was Andrew I saw? He thinks I’m chasing a ghost, and if I keep going, I might lose him. We’ve been together for six years, weathering the pandemic and job promotions and apartment changes and the question of my ticking biological clock and, of course, my past. Kyle has been so understanding, but he can’t wait for me forever.
“I can’t go,” I say. “This is where I need to be. Just one more day—it’s late now anyway, and you just got here. If Andrew doesn’t show up by tomorrow, we can go.”
“Okay,” he says. “One more day, and then we need to go home.”
I move my hand up to the nape of Kyle’s neck, threading my fingers through his hair.
“You know this won’t bring him back, right?” Kyle says softly.
“It’s not about bringing him back,” I say. There’s a sadness in his eyes, and maybe that’s part of this: he’s worried I’m still in love with Josh, and that I’ll never get over him.
Suddenly I feel the urge to prove it to Kyle, maybe even to prove it to myself, that I love him as much as I loved Josh. I press him onto the bed, climb on top of him, peel off his flannel shirt, and pull his T-shirt over his head.
I fumble with his belt and pull down his jeans, but when I lower myself between his knees, he stops me, even though he’s hard against my touch. Instead of letting me pleasure him, he lays me down beside him and unwraps me like I’m some kind of exquisite gift, his touch almost painfully gentle. He leaves my shirt on, pulls down my jeans and my underwear along with them. His tongue presses against me, maddeningly soft. I come against his mouth, white-hot with want.
When my eyes are open, it’s Kyle’s face I see, but when I close them, it’s Josh, as much as I wish he would go away. I open them fully, forcing myself to be present with Kyle, the man who loves me in a steady, reliable way. Nobody will love you like I can, Josh had said to me on our wedding night, and he was right, but the way Kyle loves me is the kind of love I need.
By the time he climbs between my legs, the eye contact is too intense, our faces almost touching. I let my eyelids flutter shut, and suddenly it’s Josh’s chest pressed to mine, his heart beating in wild tandem with mine. When he’s inside me, I wrap my legs around his back, writhing underneath him, our bodies bucking wildly on the bed. I lift my hips, wanting him even deeper, wanting to be completely filled up with him. We change positions, and when I’m on top, I grind into him until we both come at the same time, Kyle moaning lightly.
Josh, I almost say.
“Kyle,” I say instead. “I love you.”
Kyle is quiet beneath me, almost like he knows it’s not just us in the bed.
No matter what happens next, we’ll be on our way home tomorrow, and unless Andrew shows up, I’ll be leaving without learning the truth about Josh. But maybe I was never meant to know. Maybe there’s not one truth but everyone’s version of it. Bev’s, where her beloved son went for a swim and got overpowered by the tide. Rodney’s, where karma is real. Sadie’s, where Andrew has no reason to want his brother gone. And mine, where someone else sent me a message from my husband’s phone.
But I have no idea which version is real, and somebody might want to make sure I don’t find out.