“What’re you doing, Este?” he asks.
I look up, feeling a pit growing in my stomach.
Now that everyone’s gone, it’s time to ask Beau about what Polly said.
I walk into the kitchen, and he’s sitting at the island, one last drink in hand for a nightcap. He pats the stool next to him. I stop in the doorway.
“I need to ask something, and I need you to be honest with me,” I say.
“Okay…?” He’s holding his drink like it’s another casual evening and we’re about to make small talk about the lamb we had for dinner. But from the concern behind his eyes, I can tell he knows this isn’t that.
“Did you leave the party with Gemma the other night?”
His head pulls back. “What?”
“Yes or no.”
“Este.” His frown deepens. “What are you talking about?”
I close the distance from the doorway to him. “Polly overheard people saying it at a party last night. The rumor is you left with Gemma the night she died.”
He shakes his head, but it’s not a denial. It’s disbelief.
“You cannot be serious.”
And the words feel like a splinter between us.
My hands tremble as I reach for my purse, pull out the pocket square sealed in its bag, and put it on the island between us. The silence after is suffocating. Like I’ve drawn a line across the kitchen floor, and whichever side he chooses will change everything.
“Jesus Christ, Este. Why do you have that?”
“Because it was inyoursuit in the washing machine the morning after the Lemon & Fig party, Beau.”
He looks wounded. Maybe even scared. “You’ve had this sincethen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Seeing the pocket square in front of him makes all of this real in a way that hiding it seemed to have kept at bay. The colors in the room are too bright all of a sudden, like something in a neon nightmare.
“What happened that night, Beau? Whose blood is this? Why did you wash your suit when you came home?”
Beau pushes his stool back and stands up, staring at the pocket square on the counter, rubbing his chin. Like he’s working out how to tell me something. I can feel heat climbing my face.
“Gemma and I talked that night,” he says. “But that’s it.”
“Talked about what?”
“It was almost closing, so she was restocking the garnishes, cutting lemons. She was upset about something—something from a long time ago, and she was distracted. She cut her thumb. I gave her this”—he pushes the square toward me—“so she could go grab a Band-Aid without dripping blood all over the bar. I was a little buzzed—maybe a lot buzzed—when I Ubered home, so I threw the whole thing in the wash, hoping it would treat the stain.”
He puts up his hands, like a man surrendering. Like he has just completed his final act. As if to say:And there you have it.
I want to believe him. Lemons. A cut thumb. A borrowed square of cloth. A story so banal it begs to be true.
But all I can see is the blood, blooming bright against the cornflower blue.
If it was that innocent, why didn’t he tell me five days ago?
That I’d had to put evidence on the counter between us like a weapon to get this information isn’t something a neat explanation can heal.
“You washed your entire suit to clean a pocket square?” I ask, breath catching. “When did all of this happen? How long before she died, Beau?”
