Carefully, I tracked the razor up and down, keeping focus, as my mind shuffled the possibilities. Who would possibly want to spy on me? Could Dr. Hugh have sent someone, or maybe he and Connie had decided to—
“Ooooooooh!” Isa’s squeal interrupted my thoughts. I dropped the razor and dashed out to find her hopping up and down at my window. “Dad’s Porsche is parked out front. I wonder who did that?” She smirked at me. “I think it happened earlier, when you were drinking your smoothie and I went to the bathroom. Which means yay, right? Which means we’re going to the beach, right?”
I looked. The lollipop-red sports car was adorable. And Milo, hunkered like a vintage James Dean poster behind the wheel, looked like he was meant for it.
“Your brother doesn’t have his driver’s license,” I said. “What’s he doing? Would he really take out the car?”
Isa shot me a wondering look. “No! He wouldn’t dare.” Then she yanked up the window glass. “Hey, hotshot!”
“Hey, yourself,” Milo called up. “I was hoping you potatoes would roll.”
I was down the stairs and out the front door in a snap. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Before you issue a warrant, all I wanted was to test-drive her down Bush Road.” Milo raised his hands in defense. “Unless you’ll do the honor?”
“Just get out.”
He swung out leisurely and then leaned against the door, as cocky as a car salesman.
“Yes!” squeaked Isa, joining up. “Let’s go!”
“I’m sure your dad doesn’t want me to drive this. It probably costs a million dollars just to change the oil.”
“He let Jessie drive it,” said Isa. Which was exactly what I’d hoped she’d say.
Connie was standing in the door. “If you’re gonna go to the trouble of taking the Porth outta the garage without permithion, the leatht you can do ith drive Itha to the beach,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind thome peath.” And when she went back inside, her slam made its own point.
Isa was already strapping herself into a tiny bucket backseat. Milo sauntered around to the front passenger side and opened the door. “Go west, baby!”
Such a gorgeous machine. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to drive it. The key slid into the ignition like a Cinderella slipper. Ah, what the hell.
As Skylark receded from my rear view, I kept grip on the wheel. Hunched so close I could have licked it. Milo found an indie radio station that I’d have picked myself, and then it was hard not to accelerate as the ocean breeze livened my senses.
“Connie didn’t even yell at your brother for sneaking out the car,” I shouted to Isa, with a sidelong glance at Milo, who was tipped back in the sun, all haughty profile and closed eyes. “What’s his secret?” Connie hadn’t challenged Milo on anything, come to think of it. Not on getting kicked out of camp. Or on his bad table manners, or making fun of her lisp. Nothing.
“My secret,” said Milo, “is I’m a badass.”
“Milo’s secret,” added Isa, “is that Connie’s scared of him.”
“Because I’m a badass,” said Milo, brushing his hand across my knee as he adjusted the volume.
“Shoo.” I swatted him off. And while I didn’t believe that Connie was scared of Milo, I could see that she kept a wary distance from non-housekeeperly issues. She made the meals, cleaned up, arranged flowers, tended her kitchen garden and stayed in her tidy world. And that was fine by me.
Soon we were flying. The speedometer trembled to forty, fifty, sixty. I turned up the volume. “I love this song.”
“Who doesn’t?” But I knew Milo was impressed I’d kicked it up a notch, and the conflict twisted in me. Don’t be a show-off, Jamie. Whatever. No doubt everyone showed off for Milo. He was that kind of kid. It didn’t mean anything. So if it means nothing, then stop.
“Jessie drove crazy fast, too.” Isa’s hair was whipping like long black ribbons in the wind. “She was fun just like you.”
Instantly I let the speedometer fall and set my hands at three and nine. “Sit back, Isa,” I reprimanded.
Green Hill Beach Club looked the way it sounded, whitewashed and trying too hard to be unpretentious. An American flag plus a yellow and blue G.H.B.C. one flapped in kinship from a single flagpole. Past the gates, the club was overstaffed with tanned kids breezing through their summer jobs. Slack-jawed parking valet, cell-phone-texting card swiper, iPod-bopping cabana attendant.
A kick-back bunch, Miles McRae had attested. I didn’t see it.
They weren’t unfriendly, but something was off. It wasn’t just me. I got a lingering glance from the iPod kid. As we passed the pools, a straw-hatted woman leaned up from her chaise and whispered to her friend. Who flapjacked over and watched us. Next was the goggle-eyed fry cook at the Mud Hut.
“Why are people checking us out like we might be visiting space aliens?” I whispered as we took off down the boardwalk that hugged the dunes to an oceanfront dotted with beach umbrellas in club colors of yellow and blue.
Milo pulled his baseball cap lower over his face.
“Jessie,” answered Isa.
“Jessie, your babysitter who died in a car crash Jessie?”
“Plane crash,” she corrected. “It hasn’t even been a year. It’s still on people’s minds, I guess. It happened right off the coast. They showed the wreckage on CNN. Peter died, too. Seemed like the whole island went to the funerals.” She took a breath.
“Peter was her boyfriend?”
Isa nodded. “I hate talking about it. I miss them. Are you sad, Miley? Is it lame to hold hands?” When he didn’t answer, she stuck up her chin, and I could tell he’d wounded her. “Fine, be that way. Mr. Badass.”
So I let my own hand drop and rest a moment on the back of Isa’s neck, as much to get my own bearings as to offer her comfort. Two deaths, not one. The fact of it overwhelmed me. Would I have come here if I’d known it beforehand? At least I should’ve had a choice in the matter. Miles McRae might have warned me—at least in a footnote or a P.S. No matter how checked out McRae might be from his kids’ lives—according to Connie, the guy wasn’t even planning to come back from Hong Kong until Labor Day—he owed telling me.
Finding out this way was not normal. I couldn’t help but think it was a deliberately kept secret.