“If it’s that I killed them, I’ve already been filled in on that,” Mia said.

“People just like to talk.” Edie shook her head. “Like the sound of their own voices.”

“But that’s what people were saying?” Mia pressed.

Edie sighed and reached up to grasp the cross on her necklace. “They wondered why you were the only one to make it out. With only one wrist . . .” She nodded toward Mia’s arm.

With only one wrist cut.

What had stopped Mia?

“It looked a lot more believable that you didn’t have anything to do with it since you were injured yourself,” Edie continued. “Just enough to show you attempted to”—she waved her hand—“but not enough to carry through with it.”

“Then I came out, made up some wild suicide-pact story, and got away with murder?” Mia asked. Her face was still relaxed, though she’d gone pale, the flush from the cold long gone.

“People are bored,” Edie said, and all of a sudden she sounded tired, so tired. “Not much to do here other than sit around and tell tall tales.”

“This isn’t a tall tale,” Izzy butted in. Annoyed with her, annoyed with these people. Annoyed with herself for the part that whispered the accusation wasn’t that far-fetched. “They’re calling Mia a killer.”

“Oh, they’d never say it so anyone else could hear,” Edie said.

Mia met Izzy’s eyes across the table, and she knew they had both come to the same conclusion. The reporter.

“But someone did,” Mia murmured.

“So Jimmy Roarke, Henry Jackson, and Earl Bishop were all buddies.” Izzy was leaning back in her chair once more. Edie had gone upstairs a few minutes ago, and Mia was staring off into nothing, her back ramrod straight. “And they all just happen to show up at the lighthouse that night?”

“One of them must have called the others,” Mia said, but she wasn’t quite present, her words dragging, her eyes still on a point near the door. She blinked, a lethargic droop, and then met Izzy’s gaze finally. Her pupils ate up the blue in her eyes. “One of them was there first.”

“Which one?” Izzy asked the obvious question.

Mia sucked on her lip, then released it. “Just because Lacey saw Earl first doesn’t mean that’s what happened.”

“Yeah. She was, what? Fifteen? Probably in shock,” Izzy agreed. “And maybe she did see Earl first. But one of the others could have called him?”

“Could have been any of them,” Mia said. “But if Earl’s suicide was staged, then someone wants us to think it was him.”