Before We Were Innocent, page 9
Joni reaches a hand around the door and pulls me inside. I follow her into a sprawling open-plan room with 180 degrees of floor-to-ceiling windows revealing only the ocean, and a ceiling that follows the curved structure of the roof above. The overall effect is that we’re in a gaping spaceship, hovering somewhere above the rest of the world. While Joni’s place is flanked by other (less remarkable) beach houses on the same prestigious street, it has been constructed in such a way that the only other houses visible from the window must be ten, twenty miles down the coast. As I lean against the doorframe, I have the uncomfortable realization that it would be easy to lose perspective here.
Joni doesn’t seem as tense as I might have expected, straight-backed and poised as ever in a cream cashmere loungewear set, with sharply manicured taupe nails. When I look at her, I can almost convince myself that this is a good idea, that I needed to get out of the desert anyway, with its thick and cloying heat and the flying ants that lodge themselves so snugly in my hair that I only find them once they’re circling the drain of my shower.
“Was anyone out there?” Joni asks, and I shake my head. I’d seen a neighbor walking a Doberman with a thick string of drool hanging from his gums, but no other cars in the road, and no camera lenses peeping out from behind the many succulents lining the affluent street.
Joni nods, perhaps remembering how adept I’d once been at spotting a camera or stalker a mile away, and we look at each other for a moment, both unsure of where to start.
“I feel like I can’t catch my breath,” she says. “Let’s go outside.”
I follow her out the back of the house, trying not to notice that there isn’t a single photo of Willa on the walls.
* * *
—
“Why did you involve me in this?” I ask, once we’re out on the deck—a glowing white haven with a frosted glass balustrade and a metal stepladder leading straight down to the beach below. I lean against the warm glass with my back to the sunset, arms folded across my chest.
“I didn’t know this would happen,” Joni says. “I swear.”
“But you knew I had to say yes,” I say.
“No,” Joni says slowly. “I didn’t know that.”
I stare at her, and, for once, she is the first to look away.
“I had no idea she would take it this far, Bess.”
“What time did you leave here for Zoey’s?” I ask.
Joni narrows her eyes at me in response, as if I’m the one ruining everything.
“This neighbor,” I say, “who saw Willa on the deck when, according to my lie, you would have already left for my house. Did you know he’d seen her?”
“I saw them talking before I left,” Joni says levelly.
“And how do you know he didn’t see you?”
“He was in the water,” Joni says. “Willa called down to him to ask about the surf, because we planned to go out together.”
I feel a chill at her words.
“You went paddleboarding?” I ask.
“We didn’t, no,” Joni says. “Because then Willa found the photo of Zoey on my phone, and I left.”
Zoey, I think. The faceless woman who started everything, lurking just off-screen.
“And you’re still not worried about Willa.”
“I know her, Bess,” Joni says. “I know how her mind works.”
“Why didn’t you mention the paddleboarding to me at the time?” I ask, and Joni bites her bottom lip.
“Because I didn’t think I needed to justify myself to you, of all people.”
“It isn’t going to take long for them to make the connection to Greece,” I say quietly.
“I know,” Joni says then. “I know that.”
We stare at each other for a moment, the waves crashing below us the only sound, and I know that the more I think about it, the more sense it could all make, if I just choose to believe her. Joni’s entire alibi may hinge on me confirming she was at my house three hours before she actually turned up, but we both know firsthand how little difference there is between lies and the truth, how either can be distorted at any point to fit someone else’s agenda. The only question that actually matters is whether or not I trust Joni.
“I’ve had to cancel my publicity tour for the book,” she says after a moment. “They’re talking about delaying the release until she comes back. Apparently the optics aren’t great. Missing fiancée, dead best friend, et cetera.”
“Joni, surely even you can understand how strange it would look to promote your book while Willa’s missing, regardless of how seriously you want to take it.”
“You still care about how things look,” Joni says, her eyes drilling into mine. “Above anything.”
I feel her words like a tiger bite, and Joni reaches out a hand to touch my arm.
“I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m just trying to work out what happened to you,” she says. “You’ve made yourself so small.”
A knot forms in my chest at her words. How could I not?
“But, Bess? How I am, what I’ve become, it’s not necessarily a good thing,” she says, as if she’s reading my mind. “That’s what I’m starting to realize.”
I think she’s about to say more, but then she just shrugs and picks at a loose thread of cashmere on her top. I half want Joni to unleash her guts and vitriol onto me because then at least I’d have a clue what was happening inside her mind. This prickliness, this clunkiness as she changes tack and adapts, is unfamiliar to me from Joni. Evangeline held parts of herself back because she was naturally shy, and my insecurities sometimes made me cagey, but Joni was never like this. Her intentions were always reassuringly close to the surface—she never could resist the truth, often in the form of a sharply worded insult that you felt deep in your bones. I always thought that Joni had been so unaffected by what happened to us that she had, after all, turned it into something positive—a future, a career for herself—but now I wonder whether she has always been hiding more than I thought.
“Tell me about her,” I say, and Joni frowns at me. “Maybe if you tell me about her, we can figure out where she is, or at the very least, why she’s doing this.”
A wave hits the glass barrier, spray cascading over the top and landing at our feet.
“You should know better than most that not everything can be solved. Sometimes your entire fucking life catches on fire for no reason other than to remind you of how fragile it all is. How little control we have over any of it,” Joni says flatly.
“That isn’t very Joni Le Bon of you,” I say. “Don’t let anyone catch you saying that.”
Joni smiles at me then and it makes me feel sad. “Sorry to disappoint you, Bess.”
* * *
—
Afterward, they combed through every crevice of our lives, both physical and electronic. They found the notes Joni and I had passed under each other’s bedroom doors in the Tinos house. The ones where we called Evangeline the Evangelist, making her out to be some sort of crusading zealot who was so riddled with guilt over her privilege that she had decided to lock us up to teach us the value of abstinence and simplicity. We planned our jailbreak in minute detail to make each other laugh. A particularly incriminating one I had sent to Joni:
You tie her up in the cellar next to that truly spectacular wine collection we’re forbidden to touch, and I’ll block the door. Then we’ll choose a goat each and ride into town, high from that most heady combination of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and true liberté. I’ve heard whispers of a ferry to Mykonos scheduled for 2065, and I’m happy to wait for it if you are. Yours faithfully, Bestiality.
The notes were on notepaper monogrammed with Stavros Aetos’s initials, written in pens paid for by his money. We never thought to burn them, never dreamed they’d one day be printed not only in local Greek papers but also in The Sun in London and the New York Post even closer to home, to be discussed on talk shows across the world as examples of the decaying morals of teenagers today.
A British tabloid hacked into my emails and retrieved a note I’d sent my brother in those first few listless weeks. They couldn’t have known how guilty I felt that I’d left him for the entire summer before I was about to leave him all over again for good when I moved to New York. The email consisted of a few lines I quickly typed out to make him laugh before it was Evangeline’s turn to use the computer:
I think I might be in purgatory. They at least let you drink in hell, right?
One more note from Joni to me, a few weeks before Ev’s death:
Let’s wait until she’s asleep and go midnight swimming. We can plot our escape and howl under the full moon, like the true heathens we are.
We sounded frivolous at best, mercenary at worst, and maybe we were. But show me an eighteen-year-old saint, and I’ll show you a liar.
EIGHTEEN
2008
I AVOIDED THEO FOR THE next few days, wanting to prove to myself as much as to Evangeline that she was wrong. The energy level dropped slightly after that first night, but it was still a different universe from the one Ev, Joni, and I had navigated before the boys’ arrival. On the surface, Evangeline was civil with me, laughing at my jokes and even putting sunscreen on my back when I asked, but she also seemed to go out of her way to ensure that we were never alone together, so I couldn’t get a true read on how she was feeling toward me. She seemed to be completely normal with Joni, on the other hand, sitting on her lap for nearly an hour one evening by the pool, staying there even while Joni had some of the spliff Robbie handed her. I hoped she didn’t notice that I had started brushing my hair every morning so that it fell over my shoulders like a glossy cape, and that I was now wearing my black bikini with the uncomfortable underwire, covering up in jean shorts only when goose bumps skated across my thighs.
On Saturday night, Evangeline grilled three red mullets to serve with a mezze platter of freshly made dips. She had woken early and driven to the market to pick up the ingredients, and the colorful spread felt both ostentatious and solicitous to me, since the only appropriate reactions were awe and gratitude. I remember wondering for the first time whether Ev was as insecure and hungry for attention as the rest of us, but where Joni was loud and brash, and I was primed and calculated, Ev just hid it behind acts of servitude and got to disguise it as selflessness.
We all stood around to admire the food as Joni lit the large citronella candles at either end of the table.
“Guys, don’t stand on ceremony,” Evangeline said, pointing to the chairs. “Let’s eat.”
I went to take my usual seat against the ivy that covered one of the walls of the house, but Theo called my name.
“Come sit here,” he said, pointing to the seat next to him at the head of the table. Ev’s seat.
“Theo,” Ev said, frowning. “Don’t be a dick.”
“Ev, come on, it’s ridiculous,” Theo said. “I want to sit next to Bess. This isn’t just your house.”
The rest of us froze, looking anywhere but at either Theo or Ev. I couldn’t even feel thrilled that Theo had made such a public declaration of my specialness—I was too mortified as I waited for Ev to respond. She looked between the two of us, her eyes glowing in the dying light.
“Whatever,” she said. “I just thought it would be fun.”
She moved to sit next to Joni, her fingers clamped tightly around her wineglass.
“It was fun, Ev,” I said quietly, but I don’t think she heard me.
* * *
—
For the three hours we were sitting at the table, I had the full, brilliant Theo Aetos experience. He told me stories about college, about how he’d tried out for the crew team thinking it couldn’t be that hard because he’d been sailing a few times with his dad, but that he’d had to drop his oars after ten minutes to vomit over the side of the boat from exertion. He told me about how his mom had been when they were younger, when his dad was around more, and how she used to sing Fleetwood Mac songs at the top of her lungs when she drove them home from school. He told me that he’d never been in love, but that one day he could see himself settling down with some beautiful overachiever who would ideally outearn and outshine him in every way, and that while he loved drumming, he didn’t want to be in a band, he wanted to be a session musician instead because he’d seen how his dad still traveled the world, and it was cool and everything but he’d rather make a stable home for himself and his future family while still doing the thing he loved. Everything he said was like a master class on how to make someone feel special, like you can trust them, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing. His attention was so unconditional, and he was so open, so self-effacing, that I started to relax a little, started to tell him a couple of stories in return, even when they didn’t paint me in the best light.
“You’re faking it?” he asked at one point, his lips pulling back into a grin.
“Shhh,” I said, kicking him softly underneath the table with my bare foot. “Not faking exactly. It’s just more of a . . . choice than it used to be.”
I was talking about my English accent, how I could feel it slipping away from me recently, softening and distorting, first in inflection and then in the way my mouth moved to create the sounds, so that I felt like I was constantly fighting against something, and even now, speaking to him, I had to make an effort to pronounce things the way I always had, the way my parents had taught me. What I didn’t tell him was that the extra step between thinking and talking made me feel even more like a fraud, an imposter, but not as much as yielding to a new accent altogether might have.
“I like your accent,” Theo said. “But you’d still be hot without it.”
I smiled and tossed my hair, sneaking a peak at him when he leaned over to move the terra-cotta bowl of olives closer to us. His tanned skin was glowing in the candlelight, and I thought he was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. More beautiful than Ev, even, now that I knew her beauty was hiding her desire to be needed. I looked at her then and found her watching me, her eyes narrowed. I held up my wineglass to her, and she still just stared back.
* * *
—
Later, I carried a pile of dirty dishes from the table into the kitchen. The boys never made any move to clear up after dinner, and even though it was starting to annoy me that it meant it fell to us to do it, as if we were expected to pick up after them just by virtue of the fact of being female, that night I barely noticed. If anything, I was eager to show Theo how domesticated I also was, barefoot and tanned in a tiny white dress with my hair tumbling down my back—how I may not have been the session drummer heir to a billion-dollar oil empire who still planned on marrying up, but that I too contained multitudes.
Ev was washing up some forks for dessert, her hands in bright yellow dishwashing gloves, and I watched in the window reflection as she blew a strand of hair off her sticky forehead. I wasn’t sure if she knew I was there until she spoke, her voice loud and clear even though her back was still to me.
“No,” she said simply.
“Excuse me?” I asked, holding the plates in midair over the table where I had been about to dump them. Ev turned off the tap and slowly took her gloves off before turning around to face me. Her expression was unreadable, her eyes landing on me like a butterfly on a blade of grass.
“If you’re asking my permission to fuck my brother, I’m saying no,” Ev said slowly, and the blow of the word fuck coming out of her mouth stunned me so much that, at first, I didn’t comprehend what she was saying. When I understood, I felt a sickening wave of shame that I disguised instantly with outrage.
“Are you saying I’m not good enough for him?” I asked.
Evangeline studied me for a moment.
“That’s the thing,” she said. “It’s actually irrelevant whether or not I think you’re good enough for Theo, because nothing’s ever going to happen. Not how you think, anyway. And honestly? I could be as shitty a friend as you are and let you chase after him for the rest of the trip, or I could just tell you the truth right now.”
As she spoke, her mouth twisted in a way that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me, that was more an extension of her regular expression than a distortion, and I understood then that this version of Evangeline, this shadow, had possibly been lurking below the surface that entire summer, perhaps our whole friendship, just waiting to be invoked.
“You’re embarrassing yourself, Bess,” Ev said coolly, and then she calmly went back to the washing up while I stood there, swimming in shock. When she didn’t look at me again, I threw the dishes down onto the table and stormed back outside, my hands trembling. Joni raised her eyebrows at me as I sat down, but I was too angry to do anything but shake my head.
Evangeline eventually came out with a platter of broken shards of meringue for dessert, a smile pasted on her face. I refused to eat any, clenching my jaw as I tried not to cry.
“Hey,” Theo said softly to me. “You okay?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Joni called across the table. “Bess, let’s go for a walk.”
My cheeks turned hot, but still I just sat, paralyzed by my fury at having been both seen and dismissed in the exact same moment.
“I feel like a walk,” Theo said then. “I’ll go with Bess.”
Joni glanced quickly at Evangeline, who ignored us as she doled out a spoonful of gloopy strawberries mixed with cream onto Bardo’s suspended plate.
I slipped my feet back into my Keds, then stood up to join Theo, who was now waiting to lead me away from the group. My blind fury was eased only slightly by the prospect of this solo walk, particularly for how much it would be riling Evangeline up, although she’d no doubt disguise it under layers of syrupy naïveté or perhaps even victimhood, now that the boys were around to want to rescue her. How entitled for her to believe she could control everything in her life, including me. How dare she have tried to humiliate me like that, implying I was insane for ever thinking I was good enough for her perfect brother. It just compounded what I’d learned about Evangeline over the past five weeks, how, despite her angelic act, she was as entitled as the worst of them. And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? That was how the rot of that level of wealth really manifested. Somewhere deep inside, Evangeline still believed that everyone in her charmed life could be bought. She still believed that we could be maneuvered and shuffled at whim, because we only ever existed as extensions of herself.
