This is WAR (3 page)

So Rose said nothing to her friend. Instead she climbed into her mom’s car and focused on the sun rising up over the lake. A slender, dark-haired girl stood by the edge of the water. The rising sun bounced off her porcelain skin like a spotlight, announcing Madge Ames-Rowan, the star of the tragic show. It seemed odd for her to be there instead of at the hospital with her family. Madge was Willa’s stepsister. Their parents had married when they were in kindergarten, and they’d been best friends ever since. Together they bookended the teen social scene at the Club. Rose was almost scared to look at her, afraid that the grief would be too raw, that it would burn and leave a scar.

But there were no tears on Madge’s face.

Rose saw only fury and a steely determination. Madge’s fingers were at her neck, twisting the small key she always wore, her green eyes trained on the Gregorys’ yacht that bobbed and swayed in its slip. When Rose followed Madge’s gaze, she met their target. The Gregorys. James was sprawled out in one of the lounge chairs on the deck. Trip sat next to him, cradling his mop of red curls in his hands. If the twins were crowned princes of the Club, their grandfather, Charles “the Captain” Gregory, was king. The Captain ruled with a platinum fist, and now he paced the perimeter of the deck, his back ramrod straight, chin tilted toward the lightening sky. Another battle won.

Willa had only been dead for a few hours and her killer was passed out in a lounge chair. His grandfather had begun the process of paying for his innocence. Rose knew
right then that Willa’s stepsister wasn’t mourning. She was plotting.

Madge and the Captain knew what everybody else at that party knew: Willa hadn’t fallen off the yacht in a drunken stupor. She’d gotten into a motorboat with James Gregory. An hour later he’d returned alone, his blond hair dark with lake water. And they had all lied about what they saw that night when the police finally pulled Willa’s body out of the lake.

Of course they had. That was the rule. That was the thing about Hawthorne Lake.

The most important rule wasn’t a part of the ridiculous bylaws the Captain wrote in the new member orientation packet. Sure, members got a slap on the wrist if they were caught wearing pink on the tennis courts or if they allowed a woman in the gentlemen-only quarters. But there was only one unbreakable rule at the Club. No one dared even say it out loud. It was the kind of rule that could be communicated in harsh glances, quiet resignations, and abrupt disappearances. It was the kind of rule that meant when you saw one of the Gregory twins take a girl out on the lake and return alone, you kept your mouth shut. (And if that didn’t work, it meant you suddenly started talking about how many martinis the girl drank and how rough the water was that night.) It was the kind of rule that meant that if you turned down the Gregorys’ hush money, you better get the hell out of Hawthorne Lake. Because if you were handsome enough and if you were rich enough, it was the kind of rule that let you get away with murder.

Chapter 3

“Rose! Come on! We’re going to be late!”

Rose made her way to the garage, her eyes bloodshot and burning after another sleepless night.

It had been three weeks since Willa Ames-Rowan’s ashes had been scattered into the lake. Three weeks of staff gossip, socialite whispers, and the intense mourning limited to Willa’s inner circle. Three weeks since Mari had stopped returning any of Rose’s texts, claiming that she needed to focus on work if she were going to keep her job. But Rose knew the truth. Rose had chosen her side when she’d lied to her dad; Mari had chosen hers when she turned down the Gregorys’ money.

Esteemed members of the Hawthorne Lake Country Club handled the tragedy much like they handled rare bone cancers and childhood diseases with no cure: they threw money at it. Within days of Willa’s death, a scholarship fund was established and was rumored to have enough money in it to send an entire class of inner city kids to an Ivy League college.
Donations were encouraged in lieu of flowers. Members quickly latched onto the opportunity to absolve themselves of whatever guilt they felt. Rose imagined them carefully writing checks, lifting the corner of one of the ornate rugs in the game room and sweeping the entire mess underneath it. The truth was, aside from a noticeable quiet, not much had changed. Except, of course, that she had nobody now, with Mari dead to her and Willa … dead to everyone.

Rose had seen a single calla lily left by the dock early one morning, but by the time she returned for lunch, it was gone. No doubt, any other small tributes were all promptly removed by a well-trained employee.

A week after Willa died, Rose had cut out the front-page article in the
Hawthorne Times
and tucked it between the pages of her journal. She hadn’t been able to write about what happened that night. The picture of Willa with her blue eyes, blonde hair, and the long list of lies detailing her final hours would serve as a reminder. Rose wasn’t trying to forget. She was punishing herself by remembering. She’d tucked the journal in her underwear drawer beside the Virgin Mary figurine her grandmother had given her when she had turned thirteen. Fitting.

“Rose! Let’s go!” Her mom waited impatiently by the door in a suit that was two inches too short to be considered classy. She reached over and tucked one of Rose’s curls behind her ear. “I’m doing this for you, you know. You might not realize it yet, but surrounding yourself with people of this caliber … it’s a gift.”

“More like a curse.” Rose jerked out of her mom’s reach. She wanted to scream out all of the secrets that she had so carefully buried. But they died one by one before they even reached her tongue.

“Careful, Rose.” Her mom’s eyes flashed. “You can spend the day at the bar with Mari if you want. Just get in the car.”

It was ironic; if Mari had been angry with her before everything changed, Rose probably would have sought out Willa. Not that she’d been a friend. Not really. But she had talked to her occasionally. Treated her like an actual person instead of a piece of furniture you had to step around to get to the pool. The kind of person who could make someone’s day better just by smiling. She always had a smile for everyone at the Club, but when she smiled at
you
, it felt different, personal. Like she was genuinely happy to see you.

Rose would never forget her first day at the Club. The sea of slit eyes following the small, light brown-skinned girl from the pool to the lake: ignored by all of the members, forgotten by her mother, avoided by the staff. She hid behind her romance novels and pretended not to care. But that same morning, Willa returned from summer camp. She caught Rose hiding behind the boathouse and tried to convince her to come hang out with the other girls—Madge, Lina, and Sloane—gathered on a blanket on the beach. Rose was so flustered she could barely force herself to shake her head no in response. It would have been social suicide. She would have been the laughingstock of the Club. And Willa must have known because the next morning there was a new book by her favorite author waiting for her behind the boathouse. It was an offer of friendship Rose never quite mustered up the courage to acknowledge.

And now … well, now Rose was able to see Hawthorne Lake for what it was. And she hated it.

She couldn’t blame Mari for shutting her out. Mari had worked at the Club for the past two summers—and somewhere between dodging stoner busboy Rory O’Neil’s
advances and modeling designer sunglasses rescued from the lost and found, they’d become friends. Rose had begged her mom to let her waitress with Mari, but there was no way Pilar McCaan was going to let her only daughter walk around the Club in a uniform. Her mom insisted that Rose take full advantage of the privileges afforded her and use them to network.

Rose had different ideas. She preferred to lurk on the outskirts of the Club’s employee social scene, eavesdropping on college-aged servers who spent most of their time bitching and moaning about the very same people Rose was supposed to be infiltrating. When Mari was around, they had almost accepted her.

Now she was back in no man’s land. Not a member. Not an employee. A nobody.

Rose didn’t even bother
saying goodbye to her mom before she headed to the sunroom with her bag of library books. The sunroom was one of Rose’s favorite places at the Club. Huge glass windows overlooked the pool, the golf course, and the grounds beyond. Light filtered in through panes of glass in long stripes, illuminating the dust in the air with a sort of timeworn sparkle. It was the perfect place for people watching, an art Rose had perfected long ago. She wasn’t allowed to sit at the tables along the perimeter that were reserved for actual members, but she spent hours sitting at the bar, a book in her lap like an alibi. Rose was still hopeful that if she hung around long enough, Mari would eventually decide to start talking to her again. She tried not to let her disappointment show when Hannah’s head popped up from under the long expanse of mahogany.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Hannah hissed.

“Where’s Mari?” For one panicked second, Rose was sure that she’d been fired … or worse.

“Don’t worry about her, she’s just fine.” Hannah never smiled unless someone was doing something they shouldn’t. But Rose didn’t bother asking her for details. Hannah, like most of the staff at Hawthorne, didn’t give a shit about Pilar’s careful instructions to avoid socializing with her daughter. She just resented Rose for being able to laze around Hawthorne Lake all day while she served drunk golfers and anorexic housewives. But Rose had found that sometimes if she sat at the bar long enough, Hannah’s boredom would eventually win out, and she’d start talking.

“I can’t believe they’re out there working on their tan after everything that happened,” Rose offered.

Hannah followed Rose’s gaze. Lina, Sloane, and Madge sat along the pool edge, their legs dangling into the water. The group looked off balance without Willa, an odd instead of an even. Madge’s green eyes were blank. The gold key around her neck hung limply in the sunlight. Sloane had folded her tiny body in half and looked seconds away from bursting into tears. Lina hunched over, fidgeting with the strap of her string bikini, a bandage on the inside of her wrist. Probably a fresh tattoo. “Willa was always the nice one,” Hannah said. She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off the girls.

Rose didn’t bother reminding Hannah that she used to refer to Willa as “Queen Bitch” because she always insisted on ordering her salad dressing on the side. Death has a knack for photoshopping memories. She thought back to the beginning of the summer. Had her own memories been photoshopped too? She remembered the time she’d been hiding out under her favorite tree on the grounds, tearing through another trashy romance novel. The second she saw Willa approach she
packed up her book and stood to leave. Willa’s obvious crush on the Club’s heir apparent was no secret and rumor had it James Gregory was finally starting to warm up. So she tucked her head into her chest and barreled toward the clubhouse.

But Willa stopped her and grabbed the paperback out of her hand. “McNaught, huh? Have you read any Garwood? She’s got the best manhood euphemisms.”

Rose could only blink heavily in response. If blinking out phrases in Morse code were a socially acceptable form of conversation, she would have been Homecoming Queen. She wasn’t sure what shocked her more, the fact that Willa truly did love trashy romance as much as she did or that Willa had correctly used an SAT word in a sentence.

“Judith Krantz is actually my favorite?” Rose had that terrible habit of transforming statements into questions when she was nervous.

“Ah,
Scruples
! I’ve been trying to get Madge to read that, but she can’t get past all the nasty eighties hair.”

They’d spent the next half hour rating romance novels based on overall sexiness and bad fashion decisions. Rose figured it would be the highlight of her summer. Little did she know …

“You hear the latest about James?” Hannah asked, jerking Rose from her memories.

Rose’s stomach dropped. Instead of waiting for a response, Hannah sighed heavily and pushed out from behind the bar. She set the salads down carefully in front of a table of women still in tennis whites. Not one of them acknowledged her presence. Hawthorne Lake’s menu was heavy on steak and almost completely devoid of what Rose’s mom always referred to as “chick food.” Thankfully most of the women at the Club didn’t eat in public, so it didn’t really matter if
they had to order the same wilted side salad every single day. Lunch went as ignored as the staff.

Once Hannah had again settled behind the bar, she raised her eyebrows. “So? James? Anything?”

“Yeah …” The napkin Rose had been twisting in her lap tore in half, and she looked up into Hannah’s light, watery eyes. “I heard that the Captain sent him away. Some military school or whatever?”

“You heard wrong,” she whispered. “James and the Captain are back to their weekly golf game. Apparently enough time has passed for
that
to start again.”

Rose blinked. Ever since James could walk he’d been playing golf each week with his grandfather, so it made sense. Besides, the Captain
was
his legal guardian. She always had to remind herself that James and Trip had no real parents: a tragic car accident had left them—the Captain’s daughter and her husband—dead. But she still had to resist the temptation to shiver, gag, or worse. It was too soon, too soon …