“So Earl was popular, it seems,” Izzy said as they shuffled forward. How there was still space, she didn’t understand. But she wasn’t going to question it.

“Ran the island,” Mia said, like that explained it. Maybe it did. “I wouldn’t call him beloved. But, he was important.”

And sometimes, in these kinds of situations, that mattered more. For turnout, at least.

They listened more than talked as they slowly pushed into the church, the joints of the building straining beneath the weight of the collective—and perhaps performative—grief trying to fit inside.

The men behind them chatted about Earl’s boat. What was going to happen to it, if Cash was planning on selling it?

The woman in front of them was a sniffler. She even had a delicately embroidered hankie. Her makeup stayed in place despite the way she dabbed at the corners of her eyes every so often.

Izzy caught other snippets of conversations, but nothing stood out as important. People wondered about the house. Wondered about him being buried in consecrated ground. Wondered what Lacey and Cash would serve at the wake.

She and Mia finally breached the entryway and found a spot at the back, against one of the milky windows. Izzy couldn’t tell if the glass was warped from age or if it was designed to look like that.

It wasn’t until Cash and Lacey walked in that she realized she’d been looking for them. He had his hand at the small of her back, guiding her through the crowd to the front pew. Lacey’s face was covered by a birdcage veil, but Izzy got a flash of pale white skin before they both ducked into the pew that had been reserved for them.

Izzy glanced out of the side of her eye to find Mia watching the pair, though she supposed everyone was.

But. There were times when Izzy questioned how much distance Mia had really been able to put between herself and whatever attachments she’d had growing up. First loves were hard to forget.

To Izzy, Cash seemed like the perfect suspect. Violent, angry, big, and loud. For all that people wanted to say Mia was the only one that came out alive, that wasn’t true. Looking at the collective dynamics of the group, it couldn’t be ignored that Cash had come out alive as well. Just because he supposedly hadn’t been at the lighthouse that night didn’t mean he hadn’t emerged even more unscathed than Mia.

As people continued to file into the small space, Izzy let the scenario play out. What was Cash’s motive for killing the reporter?

Had he actually been there at the lighthouse? Had Earl Bishop let that slip during his interview with Twist?