Lucy felt like she was having a nightmare, but she knew she wasn’t. This was real life. She was sitting in the living room of the Crush house, clutching Toni’s and Iza’s hands while an LAPD detective asked them questions.
“It looks like a break-in,” Detective Hernandez said. “The house is in pretty bad shape and there was cash scattered around the patio. We found the gun in this, in the canyon below the house.” He held up a red canvas bag.
“Tomas!” Toni gasped.
“You recognize it?” Detective Hernandez asked.
“There was a drug dealer named Tomas Angerman who gate-crashed a party here at the house about a week ago,” Iza told him. “He got arrested. That bag is his.”
“I think … I think Harper had taken his stash, hoping that he wouldn’t be charged and keeping Crush from being involved …” Lucy said. “She must have hidden it here.”
“Check if he’s still in custody,” Detective Hernandez ordered the police officer writing it all down. “He may have come back for the stash. And if she interrupted him …”
“He killed her,” Toni finished, eyes filling with tears again.
“I wish we had video evidence to back that up,” Jason said, striding into the living room. He must have broken a dozen traffic laws, getting there so fast, Lucy thought. Less than twenty minutes had passed since Toni had called him.
“What do you mean?” Toni demanded. “Those bloody cameras are everywhere.”
“And they were off last night,” Jason said, dragging a hand through his hair. “Someone disconnected them from the wireless network at 9:14 p.m. After that we’ve got nothing.”
“Tomas wouldn’t have known how to do that,” Lucy said. “Robyn might have shown him the blind spots, but he wouldn’t have been able to turn off the cameras.”
“We don’t know how to turn off the cameras,” Iza pointed out.
A flash of the look on Harper’s face that afternoon when she’d rushed into the ER filled Lucy’s mind. She’d been distraught. That had been clear. And she’d just got out of a car with Rafe.
A horrible thought shoved its way into Lucy’s brain.
“I wonder if Rafe knows how,” Lucy said.
Toni’s jaw dropped a little.
Iza shook her head hard. “No way,” she said. “Rafe is a jerk, but he wouldn’t hurt Harper.”
“Rafe?” Detective Hernandez asked.
“Rafe Jackson,” Lucy said. “He and Harper … they used to date. They were … Well, something happened between them yesterday. Something that upset them both. She wouldn’t tell me what.”
“Rafe Jackson, as in son of Sir Peter Hanswell, lead singer of Winding Road and head of Catch-22?” Detective Hernandez asked, looking up at Jason for confirmation.
“That’s him,” Jason said grimly. “I don’t know if Rafe would have been able to turn off the cameras, but it’s possible. He and his girlfriend, Skye Owen, have been interning for me this summer. They know a lot about the mechanics of the show.”
“Rafe and Harper had a …” Lucy hesitated. She needed the detectives to know the truth but it still felt wrong, sharing Harper’s secrets. “Harper was still in love with him. They were together before he left for college. She wanted him back. I think he may have still loved her as well. They were alone together driving to the hospital this afternoon, and afterward Harper seemed shaken.”
“Interesting.” Detective Hernandez kept his expression carefully neutral, but his partner was scribbling notes furiously. “If you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to make some calls.”
Jason nodded as the detectives crossed out of the living room.
Lucy dragged in a shaky breath. Iza and Toni and Lucy hadn’t let go of each other since their SUV had rolled up to the house in the dawn hours to the spinning red stain of police lights that painted the whole neighborhood.
“I’ve got to call my grandmother again,” Toni said. “She made me promise to check in every hour.”
Toni didn’t even pretend to complain about her grandmother’s fussing. Lucy knew why. She could do with a bit of fussing herself, at the moment, but oddly, somehow, she also knew that she would be okay without it.
“Lucy!”
Alexander was striding into the house.
And her parents were right behind him.
“Mum?” she said, half wondering if she was hallucinating. “What are you doing here?”
“Alexander called us,” Mum said, cautiously. As though she was afraid the wrong word would cause Lucy to crumble.
“How? I mean, we didn’t know Harper was …” Lucy just couldn’t say it.
“He called us days ago, long before any of this happened, sweetheart,” Dad said, taking a step toward Lucy. “He called us when he discovered that we hadn’t come to the finale. He told us that he’d have plane tickets waiting for us at Heathrow, and we’d regret it more than we knew if we didn’t use them.”
“Of course, neither of us knew how much. If we hadn’t come … if you’d been dealing with this alone, half a world away …” Mum shook her head. “I’d never have forgiven myself.”
She stepped closer, coming almost close enough to touch Lucy, and then hesitating, as though she was afraid Lucy would push her away. “We should have … We shouldn’t have let you go this long on your own. And your beautiful letter. We should have rung you then. We should have come to the show. We watched it, you know. Well, Emily turned it up so loud we didn’t have much choice, but oh, Lucy … You were brilliant.”
Mum was afraid, Lucy realized. And Dad was doing that same fidgeting thing that her brother, John, always did when he was nervous. They were afraid that Lucy wouldn’t forgive them. Just as afraid as Lucy had been that they’d never forgive her.
She felt like she’d never seen her parents before. They were suddenly so … not parent-like. She didn’t know why she was surprised. They were human beings, too, after all. It only made sense that they would be pretty much like all the other people she knew.
“Mum is right, Lucy,” Dad said. “I still think we were right to want you to focus on your studies, but we should have listened to you when you tried so hard to tell us how much you wanted to do this. We should have talked about it, instead of just making a decision.” He reached out and took Lucy’s hand. “Most of all, we should have watched you play. You’re spectacular, sweetheart. You really are.”
“I’m so sorry, my darling,” Mum said. “I’m so sorry it turned out this way. But we are so proud of you.”
Then she threw her arms around Lucy and pulled her close.
Lucy let her head rest on her mum’s shoulder. They were exactly the same height now. It was disconcerting, leaning down to her mother’s shoulder, instead of being pulled upward into her mother’s embrace as she had been when she was small. But realizing that she wasn’t that little girl anymore felt okay, like it was the real proof that she was the person she felt like she’d become this summer.
Wasn’t that odd?
Harper would get it, Lucy thought. Harper would understand exactly what Lucy meant when she told her that it was only now, while getting a hug from her mum, that Lucy finally knew she’d grown up.
But Harper wouldn’t understand, because Lucy would never be able to tell her — because Harper was dead.
That was when Lucy finally began to cry.