This is WAR (25 page)

The phone buzzed in her hand, and she dropped it to the wood floor in surprise. It continued vibrating along the planks. At the same time, Sloane’s chirped, Lina’s rattled in her purse, and Rose’s jingled. Madge’s eyes widened. It was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.

A text had arrived. Caller Unknown. A link to a webpage. Nothing else. As if in a nightmare, the four girls picked up their phones and clicked on the series of numbers and letters.

Lina went pale first, her finger instinctively deleting the message before she even had time to analyze it. When Madge turned her eyes back on her own phone, she saw why. A photo jumped onto her screen: Lina standing next to a girl Madge recognized as a bartender from the Club, her hand
draped lazily over Lina’s shoulder. Their faces were a whisper apart, the girl’s teeth seemingly biting Lina’s ear.

Coupled with the shocking image were five simple words.

Is she or isn’t she?

Another photo appeared. This time Sloane’s eyes went wide, her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths as though she were about to hyperventilate. On the screen was a picture of a sheet of paper, PSAT test results typed at the top, certain lines highlighted in glaring yellow.

28 Critical Reading

22 Mathematics

33 Writing Skills

10th percentile

I thought all Asians were smart?

The slideshow continued.

Or maybe she’s just street smart
.

The shot was blurry, but clearly showed Sloane handing something to Rory O’Neil, the stoner from Lina’s pictures. Either she was buying drugs or selling them, but as tears slipped down her cheeks and she crouched to the floor shaking, the difference didn’t matter.

Sloane threw her phone to the ground like it was a hand grenade.

Madge held her breath. Rose was next. Not that it offered Madge much comfort.

This photo was of the Captain’s hands beneath a woman’s dress, her hair dark and wild, her skin rich like her daughter’s. If Madge didn’t know better, she’d wonder if it was Rose in the picture, her face lifted to the ceiling in ecstasy.

The detective’s wife has a hobby
.

Madge thought she might be sick. She was next. She wanted to be alone for it, to witness whatever it was in solitude so
she could wrap her head around it, process the destruction by herself. And retaliate.

“What’s happening?” Lina whispered through her hand clamped over her lips. “Sloane, what is this? That’s the guy who supplies the Gregorys with pills …” She held her phone up with the picture of Sloane and the druggie.

Sloane shook her head defensively, crying uncontrollably. She held her own phone out to Lina. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your best friend.”

Scarlet spread across Lina’s face and she deflected Sloane’s question by turning to Rose, her eyes like daggers. “It’s true? This is why you wanted in? To protect your slut of a mother? Because—”

“SHUT UP!” Madge yelled. “Everybody inside.”

Without a word, they followed her into the hall. She slammed the front door behind them. Her hand shook as she looked down at the screen. She felt her stomach drop out from under her as she read the words on the screen. There was no picture on this last slide.

You killed her, Madge. I have proof
.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Lina choked on the words.

“What?”

“You sent out this slideshow. Is this all part of some twisted plan to keep us in the War? Are you blackmailing us into fighting?”

Madge collapsed under the weight of the accusation. “No, God no. How could you …” She couldn’t bring herself to finish her question. How could they think that? How could they not?

“You don’t understand. It wasn’t … I would never … Just look.” Madge held out her phone. “This is a message for
me
. They saved me for last because I started this!”

“But who else could have gotten these?” Sloane shook her head at her phone as though it held answers instead of an unknown number. Her forehead twisted under the weight of everything.

“James?” Lina asked, her voice barely audible.

“Not James. Trip.” Rose spoke with a quiet authority.

“But I thought James was the one who caught you guys last night,” Lina stated.

Madge found she could no longer breathe. She could only watch in horror as her friends, the three people closest to her in the world—yes, even Rose—debated her innocence. For the first time in her life, she truly understood what “powerless” meant.

“No, he was there, too. In the window. He saw everything.” Rose looked to Madge, who nodded. She remembered the movement she’d seen in the upstairs window. She remembered the realization she’d had in that moment. She should have known this was coming. Trip was dangerous, much more dangerous than his brother.

Willa’s death had been ruled an accident. Trip had made sure to make it look like he’d found James all alone on the boat. Madge knew he was lying. Perhaps she’d always known. But she couldn’t say anything without admitting that she’d abandoned her sister out there on the water. She was so mad and so frustrated with Willa that she’d left her there to die.
She
really was a murderer.

Sloane shook her head, as if reading Madge’s thoughts. “It was me. I killed Willa.”

“What are you talking about Sloane? You weren’t even there. I saw … I saw things. I know what happened to my sister, and it had nothing to do with you.”

“But it was me. Those drugs she took? They were my
stupid narcolepsy pills. The ones my parents prescribed after I passed out and missed curfew. I never took them so I gave them away. I didn’t know Rory …” She shook her head again, her silky black hair flying around her face. “I’m so sorry, I can’t believe. I just can’t believe this is all my fault.” Sloane covered her eyes and began to shake with silent sobs.

Madge watched as Lina wrapped her arms around their friend. But then, as if something clicked, she slowly pulled her body away and took a step back. She patted Sloane on the shoulder instead, her fingers avoiding the bare flesh of her friend’s arm. Madge walked over to Sloane and gently pulled her hands away from her face. She took Sloane’s hands into her own. “This isn’t your fault. I saw James drive the boat away. And I trusted Trip. For some messed up reason, I trusted a Gregory.”

Rose twisted the key around her neck. Everyone listened as Madge continued.

“He said he saw her, he said he saw my sister get on that boat.” Her voice broke a little when she imagined Willa lying there, blonde hair pooled and sparkling in the moonlight. “But when he came back, she was gone. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but they did this. Don’t you dare blame yourself.”

Then she turned to Lina. “And
you
. I love you. Even if your taste in women is awful.” Lina’s eyes filled with tears and she looked down at her hands. “And you know I hate huggers, but for you, I’ll make an exception.” She wrapped her arms around her friend tightly and kissed her on the cheek.

“And Rose, your mom is awful. She and my stepmother would get along famously, and that is
so
not a compliment.” Madge grabbed Rose’s hand and squeezed. “You’re one of us now, whether you …”

A sharp pounding on the front door cut her off. Madge’s shaky smile melted. Her words dripped away. This was it. The end. It was all happening exactly the way it did on TV. The police were here to arrest her for her sister’s death, and she had no evidence of what really happened. No proof of her innocence. It was just her word against Trip Gregory’s and at the Club, what he said would always trump what she said. She swung open the door to find a courier in a neatly pressed uniform with a small box.

“Ms. Ames-Rowan?”

Madge could only nod.

“Please sign here.”

She moved the stylus across the machine without even trying to sign her name. “There’s no return address,” she said nodding toward the mysterious package.

“The sender wishes to remain anonymous.” He handed her the box and winked.

It was such a simple gesture, might have even seemed friendly under different circumstances, but the wink made her want to be sick. There was something bad in that box. Something evil. Maybe even deadly. She reluctantly hurried to the living room and placed it on the coffee table. The girls followed.

“Well?” Rose cocked an eyebrow.

“I can’t open it.” Madge shook her head. “I can’t do it.”

“Once you open it, you can’t close it,” Sloane said.

Madge thought for a second how true that really was. How now that they’d started the War none of this could be closed again. Not the way it used to be.

“Enough of this already.” Lina grabbed the package and tore it open. When she pulled out a small velvet jewelry box, Madge gasped out loud. She recognized the powder blue. She
and Willa had each gotten one the day her dad married Carol. It had contained a tiny gold necklace with a knot that was supposed to symbolize their new family ties or some bullshit like that. Madge had told her father that he should have made them golden nooses. He was not amused. But Willa had loved hers. She’d sighed over the pristine corners of the blue box with its white block lettering, and she’d let out a little squeal when she saw the dainty necklace. “I’ll never take it off,” she’d whispered. And as far as Madge knew, she’d stayed true to her word.

Lina slowly pulled the necklace out of the box. There was a small card attached like a tag.

“Is that …” Sloane couldn’t bring herself to finish.

Madge reached for the slip of paper.

You have twenty-four hours to surrender before I tell the police that I saw you kill Willa. I have the evidence to put you in jail. I saved this for you. Something to remember her by
.

Lina examined the clasp. “You guys, this is broken, like someone …” she took a breath as her eyes filled with tears. “Like someone ripped it off her neck.”

Madge turned on her heel and walked upstairs to her room.

“What the hell? Where are you going?” Lina yelled up after her.

“I’m getting dressed. We’re going to the bank.” She threw on a sundress and twisted her hair into a ponytail. She was done with all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. The time for the final battle had arrived. If it had to be public, then it would be. There was nothing left to lose, so there was nothing left to hide.

Chapter 28

Previous trips to the bank had been carefully orchestrated to avoid calling attention to the fact that four teenage girls were accessing a safety deposit box. But today there wasn’t time for theatrics. One girl after the next, they filed into the expansive hall, gathering looks and whispers and skepticism with each step.

Madge slapped the key on the counter in front of the teller.

Eyes followed the girls as the bank manager guided them down the stairs, through the vault and into a private booth. The stark steel box he presented didn’t look like much sitting on the laminate counter, but with or without the cash, it was pretty much the most valuable thing Madge owned.

Madge’s entire world had come crashing down when her mother was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Like most seven-year-olds, she was a tiny moon who faithfully orbited her mother every day and every night. But suddenly her world was a hospital bed, attached to so many tubes and needles that Madge couldn’t recall the
before
without looking at the pictures that lined the side table like a previous life. And just as suddenly there wasn’t even a hospital bed to orbit. Madge was at sea in the vast universe with no one to tether her to reality. The goodbye she’d always imagined evaporated with her mother’s wish to be remembered alive and not dead. At seven, Madge had been forced to find her closure in a casket. She whispered goodbye as she knelt in front of it but had no real understanding of what her life would look like now that her mother was inside that box.

After the funeral, Madge spent hours in her mother’s closet, digging through jewelry boxes and clothes, desperate to find something that she might have left behind for her only daughter. But there was nothing. Just stuff that vaguely smelled like the woman who was already shifting and fading out of focus. Madge’s biggest fear was not knowing if she remembered her mom for who she truly was or if she was reconstructing her from those bedside pictures and home videos. She hated her mother for leaving her, she hated her mother for never saying goodbye, she hated her mother for not being stronger. And then, on her thirteenth birthday, her father placed a small, carefully wrapped package on her bed.

It had taken Madge almost a week to work up the courage to open the present. Truth be told, when she finally did, she was underwhelmed. A tiny safety deposit box key lay tucked in a white velvet box. A note written in her mother’s careful script explained that the key would open up safety deposit box number 732 at Hawthorne Lake Savings and Trust. The box had been handed down from mother to daughter in her mother’s family for nearly three generations. It was a place for a woman to hide her secrets. A place where she could keep her most valuable thoughts
and possessions safe from fathers and husbands. It was the moment Madge was finally able to forgive her mother for abandoning her. Because in a way, she never had.