Page 18 of The Debutantes
“‘Check the darkroom,’” he repeats, a line creasing his eyebrows. “Any idea what Lily meant by that?”
April swallows. “I’m… not sure. I figure she means at Beaumont. Um. In the photo lab.”
Marty softens, giving her a small smile. “You don’t have to be shy, now. Y’all aren’t in trouble.” When April doesn’t say anything else, he sighs. “I know this has been a stressful morning for y’all, but trust me, we’re doing everything we can to bring her home safe. Cases like these, we usually have ’em back where they belong by nightfall.”
“What do you mean, ‘cases like these’?” It comes out more sharply than I meant it to, but I can’t stop myself. Already, I can hear what he’s implying, the story he’s about to spin: pretty rich white girl runs away for attention, realizes she can’t hack it away from Mommy and Daddy, and makes it home in time for dinner. And maybe that’s better than the alternative, but something deep in my bones knows that isn’t what this is. Because if there’s one thing Lily has never been, it’s reckless.
“Well,” Marty starts carefully. “If Lily’s sending an email, it’s a good sign she’s not in danger. Her car is missing, too, right?”
“Yes,” Mrs. LeBlanc says. “It wasn’t here this morning.”
Her car? That’s new. If Lily took her car, then maybe she really did just run away. But that doesn’t explain the email, her necklace on the ground.
“Another good sign,” Marty continues. “If Lily took her phone and her car with her, then it’s likely she just ran off. Maybe it was stress from the ball or her boyfriend. He drove her home, didn’t he?” He looks to Lily’s parents, who nod. “Maybe they got into a tiff on the way home. Trust me, girls, we see this stuff all the time.”
Piper stiffens slightly, and I wonder if she knows something I don’t. Were Lily and Wyatt fighting? The way Lily tensed up when Wyatt touched her last night, that weird anonymous text… God, it seems so obvious now. Something was going on, and Lily didn’t tell me.
“But what if she didn’t send that email?” Piper asks. “Someone could have easily gotten into her account. Or the email could have been prescheduled. She could still be in danger.” She hesitates. “I respect your professional expertise, Detective Rutherford, but Idothink we should consider the alternative.”
Despite the light undertone of kiss-assery, Piper has a point. And I’m glad someone else is backing me up here.
Marty, on the other hand, is obviously trying to hide how quickly he’s running out of patience.
“Of course,” he says, “we’ll be considering all possibilities. And I know, given the mention of Margot Landry and last year’s tragedy, that this is all a little… worrisome.” For a second, he looks uncertain, but then he’s back to detective mode. “But like I said, I’m confident that we’ll bring Lily home in no time. She’s a good girl, and we’re going to find her.”
A good girl.Meaning, Lily isn’t Margot. And he’s got a point: Lily follows her parents’ rules, even when they’re overly strict. She’s polite and nice, at least when she’s supposed to be, and she’d never do anything as dangerous as what Margot used to do. She’s the perfect debutante. She doesn’t gomissing.
And somehow, it doesn’t help at all.
It comes out of nowhere: my head swimming, like I’m running too hard on an empty stomach.
The blood on Lily’s dress. Margot’s face floating over it like a ghost. Last night starts to warp into last year, those same pictures of Margot on the news, people whispering about her all over town. Lily isn’t Margot, I know, but a new fear digs its claws in so tight that I know it won’t let me go: Lily could be in danger, and the last thing we ever did was lie to each other.
I stand up, little starbursts in my vision.
“I’m sorry, I just—I think I need some air.”
I rush out of the cold room and out of their cold house, stopping on the front porch. It’s cool out here, too, but somehow not as bad. I sit on the marble porch steps, listening to the gurgle of the fountain on the patio, the rumble of the streetcar out on St. Charles. I try to breathe the way I do after a game, shedding the adrenaline, grounding myself.
Marty’s probably right. Lily isn’tmissing.But even as I try to convince myself, it feels less like the truth and more like a fairy tale. One of the cheap ones, the kind Lily used to roll her eyes at.
I slide my hands into my hoodie pocket, pulling out my phone to reread the text Lily sent me last night.
Meet me at the Krewe of Deus Den tomorrow at noon. We need to talk about what you did.
Piper and April both said that Lily wanted to talk about Margot, so I went along with it. I didn’t tell them my text was different for the same reason I didn’t tell Marty.
Because he was right. It doesn’t make sense that Lily would want to talk about Margot Landry, a girl I barely even knew. There’s another reason Lily texted me, why she’s been pulling away from me, maybe even why she disappeared, and I’m afraid I know exactly what it is.
7APRIL
DECEMBER 30, 1:30P.M.
After the LeBlancs’, all I want to do is go home, curl up with Mouse, and try to dissociate until Presidents’ Day. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m planning to do as I walk down the marble porch steps, aiming straight for my car, when I hear Piper behind me.
“Where are you going?”
I stop, turning to look at her there on the porch. Vivian’s behind her, still as pale as she’s been since she came back inside to finish answering Marty’s questions.
