“Do what? Beau, what happened?” I look him over again, taking in the smear of dirt on his shorts and the black eye blooming above his cheek. His shirt is wet, too, and there’s a thin layer of maroon on his hands all the way up to his elbows. “What happened to your eye? Why are you wet?”
“It was raining. I fell asleep on the couch, and I thought I heard something. When I came outside, it was windy and pouring, and the body was already in the pool.” His eyes are wild, pupils dilated. I’ve never seen him like this. “I tried to get him out. But there was—there’s blood, Este. I couldn’t—the eye is—more complicated. It’s—”
Him?
He’s in shock, too. His hands tremble a little as he gestures.
“Who is it?” I ask, looking back at the pool. The water is murky, and the predawn light is muted. “Do you know?”
Tears well in his eyes. He wipes at his face, and his hands are covered in dirt.
Jesus. This isn’t bad. Bad would be such a treat compared to this. This is fucking doomsday.
There’s a commotion coming from the front of the house. We turn to see two police officers stalking through the side yard, looking alert with guns drawn.
I turn back to the figure in the pool. The sun is starting to rise, warming the air a little and casting fresh light, and I see what look like designer slacks—stained with blood—on the body floating on the surface of the water. My hands fly to mymouth to muffle a scream, and my eyes dart back and forth from the pool to Beau in rapid succession now. “Is that Simon?”
“Este,” Beau says in desperation.
Did Beau kill Simon? Because I told him Simon was going to frame him for Gemma’s murder? Because Simon was never going to let the Redwood hack go?
“Oh my God,” I whisper, pain and panic squeezing my throat.
“It’s not how it looks,” Beau insists. “I came outside, and he was here. I didn’t do this.”
Didn’t he? Didn’t he light the match that burned Simon’s company down? Didn’t he hide it all from me for years? Didn’t Gemma tell him Simon would never let this die?
“What happened to your eye?” I ask, and my voice sounds dazed.
“I tried to pull him out, but the body’s too heavy—waterlogged or something. His elbow hit my eye, I fell back and—” As if he’s remembering something, Beau crosses to the Buffalo Nickel on the ground. “This fell off.”
The officers draw closer, and I look back at Beau, noticing the beads of sweat in the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. Near that crinkle of his eye that I’ve always loved.
Fuck. What has he done?
“Here,” he says, voice cracking as he presses the Buffalo Nickel into my palm. “Hold on to this for me.”
“What?” My gaze drops to the coin and then lifts back to him. “You say it like you’re going to war or something, Beau. What happened to ‘We’ll figure this out’?”
“Look at me, Este.” He uses his hands to make a show of how spectacularly suspicious he looks right now. “They’re going to arrest me. And they might lie to you to get you to say something that will help them.”
Would they be lying?
“Keep the coin for me,” he implores, his face taut with worry.
My mind jumps to the Buffalo Nickel Clause. When I told him about Simon, the coin absolved me. He gave me acceptance. And he’s never asked for anything in return. But now, he’s calling it in.
“Did you do this?” I plead with him, already fearing I know the answer. “If they’re arresting you, don’t you think—”
“No,” he promises again. “I didn’t kill Simon.”
But it’s not the same as not being behind it.
The way he skirted the truth of the hack when I confronted him flies up like a roadblock.
I don’t know if I can believe him.
And if I tell him that? It will mean the end of us. Maybe not today or next week. But no matter how long the timeline, we’d always be able to trace the collapse of us back to this moment. This hairline crack of doubt, slowly widening until everything gives out.
