One of Us Is Back (ONE OF US IS LYING)

Addy

Wednesday, July 8

I’ve made the trip to Jake’s house in Ramona dozens of times, but never like this: with Nate losing his mind beside me and Maeve leaning over the center console from the back seat, staring intently at my speedometer.

“Sixty-five miles per hour is a baseline, Addy,” she says. “They expect you to go faster.”

“I’m almost at eighty.”

“Are you sure? Because it feels like we’re going backward.”

“I don’t want to get pulled over,” I say, glancing into my rearview mirror as I change lanes. “I mean, under different circumstances a police escort might be helpful, but…”

“But all they’d say is Oh, she’s only been missing for two hours,” Maeve snorts. “And then something super useful like, What are you planning to do? Break and enter?”

“Yes,” Nate growls. It’s the first thing he’s said in almost half an hour that’s not just a guttural sound of rage, so: progress.

“We’re almost there,” I say, tapping my brakes as I exit the highway. It’s strange to be on this road again; the last time I went with Jake to Ramona was a couple of weeks after I’d hooked up with TJ Forrester. I was so tense during the ride, afraid that I’d let something slip and ruin everything. I had no concept, back then, what “ruin” could look like.

I hate everything, now, about my time with Jake, but at least it gave me this address. At least we’re doing something, instead of sitting around waiting and worrying. It’s much better for my mental health to be on the move, although my heart doesn’t fully agree with my head; my pulse spiked as soon as I spotted the sign for the exit, and it’s been pounding ever since. This trip feels like half wild-goose chase and half suicide mission. What, exactly, are we going to do if Jake really is here with Bronwyn? Maybe we should’ve rounded up the entire Murder Club, but I could barely get Nate to wait until Maeve and I showed up. He would’ve spontaneously combusted if I’d so much as mentioned making a few extra stops.

“Do you have any weapons in this car?” Maeve asks suddenly, as though her mind is running along the exact same track.

“Weapons?” I repeat. “What exactly do you think I do in my spare time?”

“No, I mean…like a baseball bat or something. Maybe Cooper left one behind?”

“Cooper doesn’t walk around with bats, Maeve.”

“Sure he does. It’s practically his job,” Maeve says, sitting back in her seat. “Or do you have, like, a snow scraper? Under your seat, maybe?” she adds, her voice muffled.

“Okay, first of all, why would I have a snow scraper when we live in Southern California, and second of all, since when is that considered a weapon?”

“Isn’t it pointy?” Maeve asks. “To stab the snow?”

“You think snow needs to be stabbed?”

“I mean…you know what I mean. Break the ice or whatever.”

“Never move to New England, Maeve,” I mutter as I stop at a red light. “You wouldn’t last a single winter.”

She reemerges over the center console with a sigh. “It was just an idea.”

Before I can respond, Nate’s phone erupts into “MMMBop” from where it’s clutched in his hands like a drowning man’s life preserver. Even Maeve can’t bring herself to snicker as she asks, “Is it Bronwyn?”

“It’s…I don’t recognize the number,” Nate says, holding up his phone to show us the screen.

Maeve’s scream is so loud that I jump, taking my foot off the brake, and we lurch forward. Thank God there’s no one in front of me, or I’d have smashed right into their bumper. “It’s my home phone! Pick up, pick up—”

Nate’s already on it. “Hello?” he asks, setting his phone to speaker.

“Nate, I am so sorry!” Bronwyn’s voice fills the car, and then it’s chaos—Maeve starts screaming again, I’m half crying and half hysterically laughing, and Nate repeats Bronwyn’s name over and over, like it’s the only word he can remember. By the time we settle down, the light’s been green for a while and the cars behind me are honking furiously.

“Let me pull over,” I say.

“Bronwyn,” Nate says again, his voice cracking with emotion. “Jesus. We thought…”

“Where have you been?” Maeve yells. “We were worried sick!”

“Maeve? Are you…who’s there?” Bronwyn asks as I pull into a near-deserted gas station and shift into Park.

“Me, Nate, and Addy,” Maeve says. “Bronwyn, what happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mostly. It’s just…everything went wrong,” Bronwyn says. “I wanted to have raspberries and cream for dessert, but I couldn’t find any good ones, so I thought I’d pick some near Marshall’s Peak. You know that giant bush near the rocks? But when I got there, nothing was ripe. So I thought I’d look around for any other bushes that might be farther along, and I wandered too far and ended up by a river that I’d never seen before. I took out my phone to look at Google Maps, and then—I dropped it. Right into the river. I tried to go after it, but I slipped on a rock and twisted my ankle, and when I tried to stand up I fell even harder. By the time I managed to get back on my feet and out of the water, my phone was gone.”

“Oh my God,” Maeve says, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I want to make fun of you, you absolute klutz, but I can’t because we were terrified!”

“I was afraid of that,” Bronwyn says. “I know the timing couldn’t be worse to go dark, after what happened to Phoebe. But it took me forever to find the way back to my car, especially because I was limping the whole time. I was getting a little afraid, honestly, that I’d be one of those people who gets lost for days when they’re barely a half mile from where they started.”

“Legitimate concern,” Maeve says, wiping her eyes.

“I figured it out eventually, but then I got stuck in rush-hour traffic,” Bronwyn continues. “I kept thinking about pulling over and asking to borrow somebody’s phone, but the thing is, I don’t know any of your numbers off the top of my head. That’s a lesson learned, by the way. All of us should memorize at least one phone number, it doesn’t even matter which one—”

“We’ll all memorize yours,” Maeve says. “Obviously.”

“Whatever works. Anyway, I kept driving until I got home and could look them up, and now…” Bronwyn exhales a long breath. “Here I am, calling as soon as I could. I’m so unbelievably sorry I missed dinner, Nate.”

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he asks roughly.

“I do,” she says, her voice softening. “I love you too.”

“Maeve and I also love you,” I chime in, slumping against the window. My entire body’s gone limp with relief, because for once, the worst-case scenario didn’t happen.

“Back at you,” Bronwyn says. “Where are you guys?”

“Oh, well, that’s a fun story,” Maeve says. “We’re in Ramona.”

“What?” Bronwyn asks. Even though we’re not on FaceTime, I can picture the exact confused expression she’s making. “Why?”

“Because we thought Jake drugged you, kidnapped you, and stashed you in the same vine-wallpapered room that Phoebe thinks she remembers,” Maeve says. “In retrospect that was clearly an overreaction, but it made sense at the time.”

“Oh my God,” Bronwyn gasps. “You must have been in a panic!”

“No, we were totally calm,” Maeve says. “Nate definitely wasn’t planning to murder Jake or anything like that.”

“I still might,” Nate says tersely. “As a preventive measure.” He stares longingly at the phone, like he wishes it was a genie’s lamp he could rub to make Bronwyn appear. “We’re coming home. I need to see you.”

“I need to see you too—”

“Hold on,” I break in. “Sorry to interrupt this adorable virtual reunion and delay the in-person one, but…we’re less than two miles from Jake’s place. Now that we don’t have to rescue a hostage, we can switch gears and do something else.”

Maeve arches her eyebrows. “Like what?”

I hold up my phone. “Take a picture of the sunroom wallpaper so Phoebe can tell us if that’s what she saw Saturday night.”