Not Quite Gone (A Lowcountry Mystery) (29 page)

“Gracie. What on earth? Why are you all filthy? Are you okay?”

I push past him into the foyer, streaking for the kitchen and a glass of water without answering. He follows, his bare feet issuing padded footsteps against the hardwood floors. The water is cold going down my throat. It eases the burning.

“Gracie. Please tell me what’s going on.”
Concern draws his eyebrows together. Tries to reach out and comfort me like always.

“Brick killed her. Nanette Robbins.”

My boyfriend, the one who tells me with such passion that we shouldn’t keep secrets from one another, sits down at one of his barstools. His gaze holds mine, steady but unsure, and the truth slams into my chest.

“
You knew
?”

“I think
killed her
is a bit of a strong interpretation
of what happened, but yes. I knew.” He blinks a couple of times, as though still waking up. It is only five in the morning. “How do you know? He told you?”

“No. She did.” I fill the water glass again. “Or showed me, I guess.”

“You went out there alone? Again?”

“I couldn’t sleep. My father came over in the middle of the night and my mind was going a mile a minute.”

“I wish you would have just
come over here.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I guess the question is, what are you thinking of doing with this new information?”

The nonchalance of the question takes me aback. As though there’s more than one choice—he
killed
her, even if they’d had some kind of pact and he thought he was helping her go through with it. “I saw the whole thing. Felt what she felt. Nan changed her mind. She
was about to tell Brick she wasn’t going through with it when he
pushed her
and she
died
. What do you
think
I’m going to do?”

I’ve never hyperventilated before, but if there were a brown paper bag nearby, I’d grab it. The way it is, I put my hands on my knees and take a couple of deep breaths.

“I think that if you really consider what you saw and the ramifications of telling the authorities,
you’ll decide to let your ghost rest in peace.”

Stunned disbelief numbs my reaction. “You think I should keep my mouth shut? How very
Drayton
of you.”

“That is not fair. If you saw what happened that night, then you know that Nan and my brother had a suicide pact. There are a million notes between the two of them that discuss it—my brother kept them all. She might have changed her mind but he
had no way of knowing that. More than that, he had no way of knowing he’d survive.” Beau swallows hard, avoiding my accusing gaze. “He shot himself and missed. There’s proof of that, too. A recovered bullet.”

“It’s not in the police reports.”

“The police weren’t the first people on the scene. My sister found Brick and called my mother.”

“You covered it up. All of you.” My knees are giving out
but I’m not going to sit next to this man who’s like a stranger right now. I sit on the floor, pressing my legs into the cool tile and my back against the humming, stainless fridge. It feels nice. Sturdy. “And you want me to be a part of it now.”

“I
don’t
want you to be a part of it. If you’ll recall,
I’m
the one who never wanted you out at Drayton Hall at all!” He runs both hands through his
sandy hair, leaving it mussed in a way that sucker punches my feelings. “I wasn’t involved in the decision to cover up Brick’s presence that night, obviously. I was in England, at school, and didn’t even hear about his suicide attempt until I came home the following Christmas. Almost a year later. It sounds wrong, but my brother…he was troubled, Gracie. That was the second time he tried to kill himself,
and it wasn’t the last. He didn’t get right until after high school.”

“What about Nan? You don’t care about her?”

“She’s
dead
, Gracie. She was dead when I first learned she existed, and the evidence that she wanted to be that way is pretty convincing.”

I want to argue that she didn’t want to die, that his brother and mother could have made it all up, but while the former is true, the latter
is not. She
had
gone there to meet Brick that night intending to kill herself. It’s hard to fit that piece into the puzzle of what to do next.

“It doesn’t mean that people like her sister don’t deserve to know the truth.”

“Her sister took a half million dollars a year to shut up. That’s how much she cared about Nan.”

“What?” The room tilts to the side, starts to slip under my legs. “Y’all bribed
Reynolds to stop saying she didn’t believe Nan would kill herself?” Things make sense now. Her guilt when she heard what Nan told me… “Why would she do that?”

“She was pregnant. Poor. No way to support herself and the father had run off.” Beau grimaces, at least having the goodness to display distaste. “My mother is ruthless, Gracie. That’s no secret. You’ve seen for yourself what she’s capable
of if she thinks someone is threatening her family.”

We sit in silence for a long time. My heart beats. My hands press against the floor. My mind tries to reconcile the pain on Nan’s ghostly face, her sadness at Reynolds’s house, and her desperate, last-minute will to live with the fact that I am sure that Brick never intended to murder anyone. He went there to die with his friend.

It just didn’t
work out.

But Nan is still dead.

I get slowly to my feet. Beau slips off the barstool and comes toward me but stops at my outstretched hand. “I need some time.”

“There’s nothing to be gained from pulling this story into the light, Gracie. You might not believe it, but Brick already hates himself enough. He’s the only person who would have grieved Nan, and he’s still doing that.”

Tears fill
my eyes. “Not the only person.”

The thing is, it’s not hard to believe Brick hates himself. The way he acts, how he’s a dick all the time, is a great trick for pushing people away. A guy who thinks he’s not worthy of much—maybe not even of being alive—would be keen on that.

Beau’s arms drop to his sides. His eyes never leave my face but there’s something beaten about his posture. About the air
in the room. As though we know that, no matter who wins this battle, we’re both going to lose.

“This is your call, Gracie. I love you and nothing is going to change that. Not even if you decide to start a war with my mother.” His shoulders droop. “Just think about it first.”

I bite my lip, trying not to cry. Nod. Get the hell out of here before I totally lose my shit.

Instead of going back
to work—either of them—I head home to hide under my quilt and
think about it
. But it’s not Cordelia Drayton and her threats, or making life harder for my wonderful, sweet, thoughtful boyfriend that’s weighing me down like gold bars tied to my wrists and ankles.

It’s Nan Robbins. If she wants justice, if that’s what’s holding her here years after she should have been resting in peace, I’m the
last person who will be in a position to give it to her. If I turn my back, I’m taking that away.

Living with that for the rest of my life is what I think about.

Chapter Twenty

It’s the middle of the night again and my eyes are stuck wide-open. Then again, I did spend most of the day dozing on and off, or pretending to when Amelia came home from work and started asking questions. The accusations of backsliding, of returning to the kind of girl who wasted whole days literally hiding from her problems, didn’t budge me from my bed. It’s only
one day, and besides, old Gracie sure had a lot fewer problems.

Like deciding whether to side with my marginally honest boyfriend or the dead girl who walks around trailing a noose. Jesus H. Christ. How did this become my life?

I’m still wallowing at three a.m., Millie snoring beside me. Brat refused to go to her own room and has been making a racket and changing positions every two minutes
since ten, so sleep would have been a precarious proposition if my brain weren’t running on a constant loop of doom.

I kick off the covers and sit up, taking care not to jostle her side of the bed too hard. She should pay for bugging me all day, but waking her up would just mean more questions. What I
need
is someone to talk to who can be at least a somewhat neutral influence, so Millie’s out.
I love her, but her sense of self-preservation has always been a ruling force in her life.
 

Not only that, but Millie grew up in Beau’s world. Not at the apex, but close enough to understand it. Once she hears the whole story, there’s no doubt that she’ll agree with the Draytons. Not with what they did on the plantation grounds all those years ago but with the reality of now. That there’s nothing
to be gained by reporting what happened, that Brick was a troubled child, too, and most of all, that one dead girl’s peace isn’t worth sacrificing my own happiness. Or hers.

And the thing is, I don’t think she’s wrong. I don’t think Beau’s wrong, but it
feels
wrong. That’s what is keeping me up.

I shove my feet into flip-flops, grab my keys, and leave the house without thinking too hard about
where I’m going. My car more or less pilots itself through the Heron Creek streets, crossing the tracks and pulling into Leo’s gravel driveway. The night is silent. Spooky, even. The feeling of a million eyes tracking my steps follows me up to the door, and I stand on the porch trying to figure out how to get inside without waking up the entire house.

My pondering is cut short when the door swings
open, a tired-looking Lindsay with a frizzy bun on top of her head glaring at me from behind the screen. “What in tarnation are you doing here at this hour? Booty calls are so high school.”

“They were more college, for me, but that’s beside the point. I have a boyfriend, which you know.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the way this story goes.” She crosses her arms. “I’m assuming you didn’t come here
to see me or my daughter.”

“No. I need to talk to Leo.”

“And you didn’t stop to wonder whether
he’d
like to talk to
you
in the dead of night?” Lindsay shakes her head, strands of hair slipping free and sticking to one corner of her mouth. She doesn’t look as though she was sleeping, and despite her attitude—which I cannot figure out—a kinship stirs in my gut as she pushes open the door as if
in invitation.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask.

“What, can you read living minds now, too?” she snaps. “I’ll get Leo. You can wait on the porch. Goddamn careless women, I swear to God.” Lindsay mutters the last sentence, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as she stalks off down the hall.

The dismissal is clear and ends my weak attempt at establishing a friendly relationship with her. Lindsay Boone
just doesn’t like me, and I guess part of growing up is realizing that not everyone is going to like you and that’s got to be okay.

The screened-in porch greets me like a pleasant old friend. Leo and I hunkered down here more than a few nights as children, sorting out the intricacies of the ongoing treaties and wars between our two groups of friends and, when we’re done with that, drinking cokes
and munching on pizza rolls. Now, I know his freezer was full of things like that because their family had no money and a slew of kids, but to ten-year-old me, they were like magical treats. Unicorns in the freezer.

“Hey.”

My breath catches at the sight of Leo in a loose pair of pajama pants and nothing else. Boyfriend or not, there’s no way to be a woman with blood in her veins and not appreciate
the hard lines of Leo Boone—all tan pecs and abs, rippling muscles in his arms as he lowers himself into the nearest chair and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He’s a curious mix of sexy man and drowsy child, inspiring a strange reaction of both attraction and mothering instinct.

I shake my head. This is Leo. Recognizing he’s attractive isn’t the same thing as being attracted to him, and anyway,
that’s not why I’m here.

“Hey. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“S’okay. What’s going on?”

“I found out what happened to Nan today. I’m going to tell you because I need advice, but you can’t do anything about it.”

“Gracie, if it’s something you saw that no one else can see and there’s no other proof, there’s nothing anyone could do about it even if they want to. Spill.”

His quick observation takes
me aback. He’s right. Even if I
wanted
to tell the cops what really happened, how Brick was involved in Nan’s death, who would believe me? Especially if the Draytons claimed it wasn’t true.

“I think you might have just answered the question I’ve been stewing about literally all day without even hearing it.”

“Damn, I’m good.”

I came all the way over, though, and it’s so peaceful out here surrounded
by the past and the present all smushed together. So I keep talking. “Brick Drayton and Nan Robbins were a couple of depressed kids who found each other and made a suicide pact. They met at the tree that night to kill themselves together—her with rope and him with a gun. He tied the noose for her, which is why the coroner thought she didn’t do it herself, but she asked him to.”

“So, she
did
kill
herself and the little ghost lied?”

“No. She changed her mind at the last minute, but when she tried to tell Brick, he thought she was just chickening out and needed help. So he pushed her.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Leo flinches, wide eyes saying he’s fully awake now.

“He tried to shoot himself a second later but jerked, missed, and fell off the tree. He didn’t wake up until after she was dead, and instead
of finishing the job, he called his sister.”

“And the all-powerful Draytons took it from there,” Leo muses. For the first time, he doesn’t sound all that judgmental, just resigned. “It’s hard to blame them.”

“What?” I sit forward in my chair. I did not expect to hear this from Leo. “How can you say that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t actually have a kid, but the past several years, Marcella has been
like my daughter. I’d do anything for her, Gracie, and if she were going through the kind of time it sounds like Brick was going through, and this happened but he magically survived, I would do anything to make sure he could get his life back on track. You know?”