“Sorry, Max,” she said, a throaty purr turned even raspier from the smoke. “Another merlot?”

The tension in Lacey’s shoulders seemed to validate Ellen’s overheard conversation between Jimmy and Cash—that not only had Charles Bell been contacting Lacey but that it was contentious enough for Cash to go behind her back to try to find him.

“Why did your parents bring you out that summer?” Izzy asked, while Max reached for the open bottle. “You’d never come with them before, right?”

Max also topped Izzy off before leaving them alone once more. Lacey waited until he was at the other side of the bar.

“Monroe was going to be a senior in high school that next year,” Lacey said, her eyes on the sketch. “Mom wanted her to work on her painting, and Dad wanted her to have something to write about for her college essay.”

“And then you met the locals,” Izzy said, trying to imagine what that would have been like for a fifteen-year-old girl. Even as a grown woman, Izzy found everyone on the island intimidating.

Lacey met her eyes in the mirror that ran along the back of the bar. It was an odd sensation, a distorted connection that was tempered by aging glass.

“Monroe thought it was funny,” Lacey said. “To play with them. Asher, Mia, Cash. She treated them like dolls. I thought it was funny at first, too. You know how teenagers are.”

Her fingers were back to tapping, scratching, pulling at the hem of her sweater, sliding along the stem of her glass. Izzy almost wanted to light a cigarette herself just watching the fussing.

“What happened?” Izzy asked, not really knowing what she was expecting. The question was so broad, so sweeping, it could mean anything. What happened that made it not funny? What happened to Monroe? What happened that night? Izzy would take any of the above.

“Monroe wasn’t mean,” Lacey said.

Dot’s bitter voice echoed in Izzy’s memory. That . . . that Bell girl.

“Okay.”

Lacey shifted on the stool, bringing one leg up beneath her. “She wasn’t. It was just . . .”

Izzy didn’t fill the silence. There was no quicker way to shut someone up than by doing just that.

“She got bored quickly,” Lacey finally said. “Asher was so easy for her, too. Didn’t even pretend not to be. I thought maybe Mia and them had some weird triangle thing going on.”

They both laughed, nervous, because Izzy didn’t know if there was any truth to that, and Lacey probably didn’t, either.

“But Mia was always moony eyed over Cash.” Lacey smiled, and it wasn’t possessive. Her gaze was on the bar, but Izzy wondered if she was somewhere else. There was a softness to her voice that betrayed her as lost in a memory.

Izzy finally decided to poke a little. “And that made you the fifth wheel?”