“We’re not living in the city now.”

Cybill looked at Alice and Charlie, confused. “What does driving have to do with anything?”

Charlie gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, nothing, technically. But the less time Alice spends in a car, the less likely she’ll get in an accident in one.”

“Camilla didn’t get in an accident.”

“I thought she crashed her car?”

“Yeah, exactly. She crashed her car. First she crashed it, then she sank it in the Serenity Point Bay.”

“What?”

“She drove it right off Greeves Bridge. Like, on purpose. Like, really on purpose. She would’ve had to have floored the gas pedal to break through the barriers.”

“It was a suicide,” Charlie said softly.

“That or she was testing to see if her car could fly.” Cybill’s tone was sarcastic, but the sarcasm was a cover. Alice could hear the quaver in her voice, knew the subject was a painful one for her to talk about. “Has your stepdad been telling you it was an accident? I mean maybe that’s what it says on the death certificate, but everyone knows that’s bullshit. He just couldn’t handle the fact that she was so torn up about her mom that she decided to end her own life. Like, no way would his perfect daughter do such a thing. And technically it could’ve been an accident but . . .” She trailed off.

“Greeves Bridge,” Charlie said. “That’s the one that takes you into town, right?”

Cybill nodded. “At first they couldn’t even find her body. The currents around here can be really strong, just brutal. She washed up on the shore of a beach in Old Lyme, which is almost twenty miles away, weeks later. Mr. Flood had to drive down to identify her. She was so beaten and battered they had to have a closed-casket funeral. My mom talked to one of the guys in the coroner’s office. He said”—here Cybill’s voice, already nasally with unshed tears, broke—“she had practically no face left.”

A silence developed, the only sound in it Cybill’s deep shuddery breaths.

Alice had a feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer to the question she was about to ask, but she asked it anyway: “So, Camilla and Tommy, they were a couple?”

Sniffing, Cybill said, “Oh yeah, big time. He was crazy about her. Her death was so, so hard on him. I still don’t think he’s over it. Or her.”