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Why did I find Logan’s ring next to Lucy’s dead body?
8
CASS
Once we’re home, after Logan escorts me to the front door like I’m a patient recovering from surgery, we sit on the couch. He pulls my feet up onto his lap, gently massaging them. From the outside, it would look like any other night when Logan wasn’t working. The two of us cuddled up on the couch, a Netflix documentary playing on the TV. But there’s no documentary playing now, and this is no normal night, as the anxiety swirling around in my stomach keeps reminding me.
“I can’t believe you had to go through that, that you had to—to find her like that,” he says, his face twisted in concern. “I just wish it had been me.”
I place my hand on his arm, unsure what to say.
“I mean, it’s crazy, isn’t it?” Logan continues. “That woman who fell from Khrum Yai and now this.”
I flinch when he references her. The ring sits like a stone in my pocket, weighing me down so that I feel as though I may sink into the couch. I look at Logan, his face so earnest as he seems to be trying to piece together what’s happened.
I should tell him that I found it. Our ring,hisring. The one he had made as a pair.The exact same size as mine, as he vowed to only ever wear it on a chain around his neck. I know it’s his. I knew it as soon as I plucked it from the sand. I keep replaying this morning in my head, my decision to leave my ring at home, nestled in the red box in the drawer of my bedside table where it still sits. I figured it would be safer there; I didn’t want to run the risk of losing it in the water. The irony hits me like a cold slap to the face.
I should just ask him. I think of Brooke, how direct she is. She wouldn’t hesitate to confront him. She certainly wouldn’t be avoiding the conversation, drumming up unrealistic explanations in her head like I have been.Maybe he went for a swim early this morning and it fell off his chain. Maybe it belongs to someone else who just happens to have the same ring with the exact same engraving.No, Brooke would come right out, point-blank.Logan, why did I find your ring next to a dead girl’s body?
But I’m not Brooke. The idea of confronting Logan ignites a wave of nausea in my stomach. Because I don’t want to hear the truth. Not if it changes what we have. I’ve worked so hard for this—for him. And here we are, finally engaged. If I lose him, I don’t know what I would do. He’s the only thing that’s gotten me through these last few years after I lost everything. My mother to breast cancer when I was thirteen, and then Robin and my father to that hotel room. I had nothing when I arrived on Koh Sang: no family, no friends, no future. Logan changed all that.
I never knew what it was that first attracted him to me when we met two years ago, all wild limbs and awkward bones jutting every which way, barely able to string together a logical sentence.The year of grief and solitude had animalized me, and I was only just coming out of hibernation.
After everything that happened in that hotel room, no one knew what to do with me, especially after what they thought I’d done. And the police didn’t help things. Letting me go for lack of evidence but never clarifying to the public what really happened. My grandmother was the only option. So I lived with her, each of us mostly avoiding the other in that old house upstate. Although I’m not sure you could technically classify what I was doing as living. Curled up on my bed, constantly thinking of Robin, periodically looking through the gap in my curtains at the reporters camped out at the end of the driveway, each trying to outlast the others for a peek at America’s newest villain. They stayed for months, but eventually they lost interest, just as I hoped. So I pulled the curtains slightly wider and kept looking out into the world, thinking of everything Robin had wanted to see but hadn’t had the chance to. Because of me.
My mind kept going to one place in particular: Southeast Asia. Robin’s dream destination ever since we watchedThe Beachwith our babysitter, long before we were old enough to. I didn’t have any particular feelings toward the place, but Robin’s excitement was always contagious.
So when my grandmother finally died, almost a year to the day after her son’s death, and her inheritance—a hefty sum when combined with the estate my father had left behind—transferred to my bank account, the first thing I did was book the ticket. One way to Phuket, followed by an eight-hour ferry to a place I remembered Robin mentioning once as she pored over glossy websites about the Gulf of Thailand: Koh Sang.
Even as the ferry approached the island, as exhausted as I was from the multiday trip, I couldn’t take my tired eyes off the sight of it. The mountains, basking in a pinkish glow, rising serenely over the water. An island of colors so vivid they burned my eyes. It was like staring directly at the sun after spending a year in winter grays.
I forced myself to take the dive course. I was never interested in scuba, but Robin was. And this trip was for her. So I went, barely talking to anyone, avoiding eye contact with the other people in my group and my dive instructor, a charming redheaded Brit named Neil, who every female student—myself included—couldn’t help but have a schoolgirl crush on. But as soon as I took that first breath under the water, it was as if something opened in me. Something I had kept closed since the day I lost Robin. There was a sort of freedom to being underwater. Who you were, what you’d done no longer mattered below the surface. All that did was the tempo with which you dragged in each breath, the second that passed before you released it.
By the end of that first dive, I was addicted.
As soon as I finished the beginner course, I signed up for another and another, making a small dent in my inheritance. I spent my days training underwater, my nights in my closet-sized Terrace room, studying the textbook Neil had given me. At the end of that first week, Neil persuaded me to go with him to a bar his friend had just opened, and a few hours later, I was clinging to him on the back of his motorbike as he led me down palm-filled roads to a bar that was nothing more than a bit of open ground and a palapa situated next to the jungle.
“This is Frangipani,” Neil said after he parked near the chain-link fence surrounding the lot. “My mate Logan just opened it. It’s the main expat hangout here.”
My underarms were damp and my mouth sandy as we entered, and a group of heads turned in our direction. A tall blond Scandinavian-looking woman, a grungy surfer guy with hair so tangled it was halfway to becoming dreadlocks, a pale, dark-haired, severe woman who was the only one not to break into a smile, and Logan.
Their voices greeted me all at once, a mixture of accents and dialects hitting my ears simultaneously, none of the words comprehensible.
It was the most excitement I had received in response to my presence in years, and I felt a warmth grow deep in my stomach as I took in their eager faces. I realized instantly there was something special, something tight-knit about this group. And for a moment, I felt like I was back in college, surrounded by people who accepted me. My roommate, her boyfriend, Eric, and their friends. People who made me feel like I was something more. Like I was special.
In response, I managed a feeble, “Hi, I’m Cass.”
The name felt foreign in my mouth. I’d only said it a few times since I wrote it on my hotel registration, thankful that the women at reception didn’t insist on checking it against my passport. A new heat broke out through my chest as I swallowed down the panic of being found out. I prepared for my lie to spark a flurry of accusations, of knowing eyes quick to label me a liar. Or worse.
But instead, all I heard was Logan’s deep Scottish brogue.
“Well, it is certainly a pleasure to meet you, Cass.” Hearing my name in his mouth was intoxicating, and when his dark blue eyes rested on me, I felt my temperature skyrocket. Bits of my vision turned to black, like a television screen on the blink. And as soon as I saw him, I knew. This was not just a place I would visit. Koh Sang was a place I would stay.
And stay I did. In the following months, Logan and I spent virtually all our free time together. He integrated me into his life, into the family he’d formed on this island. After I passed my divemaster training, Frederic took me on in the dive shop. I spent every night sitting at the bar at Frangipani as the female customers smiled at Logan coyly, watching their cheeks grow red as he’d lean in to kiss me across the counter. Knowing that he’d chosen me.
Frangipani struggled for that first year or so, being such a hike from the flurry of Pho Tau beach. Logan had spent pretty much all his savings buying it, so I helped him out for a few months when he couldn’t make his mortgage payments. I didn’t mind; I certainly had enough money to spare. And eventually, Logan found his footing as a manager. With some help from the other Permanents, he worked up a strong enough marketing campaign to convince the resort guests to make the hike out to the bar, even getting Frangipani listed as a permanent fixture on the island’s official pub crawl.
But more business means I’ve seen him less lately. There’s no longer a spot for me at the bar most nights; all the stools are occupied by customers, so I’ve been spending more nights at home or at the resort’s fitness studio, doing a Pilates class with Greta. More time apart meant more distance for things to get between us. So much so that a few weeks back, I thought I’d lost him. But that all changed again with the engagement, our vow to spend the rest of our lives together.
