This Is W.A.R. Part 1

This is W.A.R.

by Lisa and Laura Roecker.

To Michael Roecker for teaching us that girls can do anything and everything that boys can do. Usually better.

July 4th, 11:32 P.M.

Willa Ames-Rowan never thought she would die. She firmly believed white should be worn before Labor Day, champagne was best enjoyed on an empty stomach, and sleep was for the weak. If it weren't for the inky black water tugging at her limbs, clawing its way into her mouth, she might have welcomed the dark solitude of Hawthorne Lake. She might have floated on her back, counting stars, dreaming about what it would be like to wake up next to her future husband. What it might be like to marry James Gregory.

But not tonight.

Tonight, Willa Ames-Rowan was drowning.

As luck would have it, she'd just read an article recounting a tsunami survivor's near-death experience in a tattered copy of Reader's Digest while waiting for her acupuncture appointment earlier in the week. Willa took comfort in the survivor's story because just before he pa.s.sed out from lack of oxygen, he felt a moment of peace. He gave himself to the water, accepted his fate.

So Willa knew she couldn't be dying because there was nothing peaceful about her struggle to determine which way was up, down, left, or right. The moment she went under, she'd decided to decline death's invitation-with the socially acceptable level of regret, of course. She knew enough to remain calm, tread water, back float until someone noticed she was missing. Contrary to her sister's judgy texts, Willa was a fighter. She would never let her life slip away in a Hallmark movie moment of blissful surrender.

She'd only had a couple of drinks, but her head was cloudy and her limbs sluggish and heavy. She'd been raised on the water-boating trips, beach vacations, the Club pool-she should have been above the surface, not under it. Earlier in the afternoon, Willa had taken a dip in this very same water while the girls lounged on the beach. Madge had yelled at her not to swim out too far, brown hair swirling around her face in the wind, her fair skin shielded by layers of sunscreen and a long, gauzy cover-up. Next to her, Lina was burying her nose in a magazine, all b.o.o.bs and legs, doing her best impression of not giving a s.h.i.t. And then there was Sloane with her pin-straight hair and black almond eyes, looking like a tiny beacon in her bright pink bikini. She stood next to Madge, shielding the sun with her hand. Even from the distance, Willa could see the smile tugging at her lips. If Sloane weren't so self-conscious, she might have been cheering.

And so it was her friend's silent encouragement that pushed Willa on as brief bursts of light shone in the dark sky overhead, fireworks guiding her toward the surface. She scissored her legs toward the red, white, and blue explosions. Her lungs burned, the muscles of her arms wept for a break. But still, she fought.

Images of the Gregory brothers bubbled to the surface of her consciousness. She couldn't think of them now. She couldn't think of the look on Rose McCaan's face when Rose saw her kissing James Gregory.

Willa knew Rose had a thing for James Gregory.

She knew but she didn't care, and now she couldn't help but wonder if that kiss had somehow landed her here in this water. Willa would take it back if she could. She'd take a lot of things back. And for a moment she thought she might actually have the chance. She finally broke free of the lake's slippery grip. Her head bobbed into the cool night air. But she opened her mouth too early and choked on the stagnant water. Hacking and sputtering, she was able to keep her head up long enough to drink in gasps of oxygen between coughs. The agony in her lungs slowly faded, and for the briefest of moments, she thought she was going to live to write a much more accurate drowning survival story, preferably for Teen Vogue.

Willa never saw the hands that pushed her head back under.

She never felt the water fill her lungs.

And she was completely unaware of the champion-sized trout grazing her lifeless arm.

Willa Ames-Rowan never gave up and welcomed death.

Willa Ames-Rowan simply died.

Chapter 1.

Rose stared at the water and whispered the Hail Mary in Spanish, the way her grandmother had taught her. She wasn't sure if she believed in G.o.d, at least not the one the nuns at St. Agnes ranted and raved about, but Mary was a different story. Every summer she'd spent with her grandmother, she'd been reminded that Mary watched out for good little girls, especially good little girls with the middle name Marie. And something about the way her grandmother clutched the Rosary to her chest, blue beads tinkling against the silver cross, her knuckles white beneath papery skin, had always made Rose want to believe.

The repet.i.tion calmed her. She understood why people prayed in the face of tragedy. Praying provided the illusion of control. And of course, there was the niggling possibility that the prayer might actually work. A miracle like the ones her grandmother had read to her from the back pages of Spanish tabloid magazines.

Rose shivered in spite of the humid air. It looked like every member of Hawthorne Lake Country Club was on the beach. The women stood in tight circles, whispering and crying, while their husbands rushed around trying to look useful. Their movements seemed designed to look important. If they walked with enough authority and spoke in quiet, rea.s.suring tones, they might be able to bring Willa Ames-Rowan back to life.

But it was all a lie. Like everything else at Hawthorne Lake.

Willa was dead. The ambulance had screamed off in a blaze of sirens twenty minutes ago. Even in the darkness, Rose saw the blue of Willa's lips and the way her arm dangled off the side of the stretcher before it was gently placed back at her side. Now there was nothing left to do but pray to her grandmother's Mary.

"Rose! Thank the lord." Her mom wrapped her thin arms around Rose's body and squeezed too hard. "I've been looking for you everywhere." She was dressed like all of the other women on the beach that night, but with her jet-black eyes and cafe au lait skin, she might as well have been wearing a Club worker's uniform. As Hawthorne Lake's event planner, Pilar McCaan was afforded most of the same privileges as members, but she was still considered "staff" by everyone who mattered. Despite her efforts to suppress it, the accent that snuck its way into a handful of her words didn't help.

Rose stiffened in her mom's arms. She wanted to forget everything she'd seen over the course of the night. To un-know all the secrets. But she had watched Willa stumble around the yacht. And she'd seen her mom navigate the party as if social climbing were an extreme sport. The past six hours ran on repeat in her brain like some kind of terrible movie. But there was no director calling scenes or strategically fading to black when images grew too intense. No Oscar award-winning makeup artist had perfected the blue of Willa's lips or added silicone strips to mimic the bloating of her skin.

Every moment was real. And it was all burned in high-definition into Rose's memory.

"Are you okay?" Rose's mom held her at arm's length, her thick-lashed eyes probing her daughter's. "Did you see? I mean, I can't believe she's ... You can't tell him." Her mom was using the voice she reserved for male members when their hands wandered a little too low at one of the Club's famous star-lit parties. Rose always thought of it as her business voice, and it normally stopped her dead in her tracks. But tonight she just shrugged her mom's hands off her shoulders and resumed her vigil, her lips moving, the sound trapped inside.

Dios te salve, Maria, llena eres de gracia ...

"He's going to ask you questions. You have to be prepared to answer them." White shone around the black of her mom's wide eyes. "You know what will happen if you tell him the truth," she whispered.

Rose nodded, her eyes fixed on the black and blue expanse of water in front of her. As the sky lightened on the cusp of morning, the color resembled an angry bruise.

Santa Maria, Madre de Dios ...

Rose had lived the first seventeen years of her life without ever having made a mistake. Well, unless you counted the time she'd let Katelyn Norris copy her English homework on the bus to school and was too afraid to speak up when her teacher questioned the identical paragraphs.

Her mom's short, square nails dug into her Rose's flesh as they wove their way through the small groups of members still scattered across the beach. Rose regretted wearing sandals that pinched her toes, the heels sinking into the sand, slipping with every step. How stupid she'd been standing in front of her closet, pushing her feet into different shoes, yanking shirt after shirt over her head, and leaving the rejects heaped in a corner. She'd never cared before. Tonight she cared too much. Maybe that was her first mistake.

No. She knew better.

Her first mistake had come long before criticizing her reflection in the mirror. It was the moment she'd accepted James Gregory's invitation to his family's annual Fourth of July party. Or maybe it went even farther back, to the moment he caught her hiding in the boathouse, the night of the Club's Summer Swing.

Rose shook her head slightly, her mouth still moving through the prayer. None of it mattered. Pinpointing the exact moment everything began to fall apart wasn't going to change a thing.

And yet ... maybe it was her last mistake that really counted: the moment her dad had swung her off the yacht, his detective's badge catching the moonlight.

"Rose, what happened? Did you see anything?" His voice had probably sounded calm and professional to the perfectly coiffed couple standing behind her, but Rose could hear the note of panic underlining every word like a silent exclamation mark. Her dad had been around long enough to know that accidents didn't happen at Hawthorne Lake. Rose had started to respond but choked on her words when she saw the paramedics frantically pumping Willa's chest on the beach directly behind her dad. She had watched as they finally gave up and wheeled her slowly toward the truck.

"I have no idea what happened."

Out of all the mistakes she'd made that night, this was the one she regretted the most.

Her mom yanked hard on her arm, pulling her through the crowd of people standing around the parking lot. Rose stared blankly at their old Lexus. It seemed wrong for it to be there. Normal, unchanged after everything that had happened tonight. She finished the prayer in English, the words barely a whisper.

Pray for us sinners, Now and at the hour of our death.

To her surprise, before her mom unlocked the door, she met Rose's dark eyes with her own and whispered, "Amen."

Chapter 2.

It was strange to see Carolina Winthrop cry. Rose had known her since they were little, not that Lina had ever acknowledged her existence. The tears looked out of place on Lina's heavily made-up face, like rain in the desert. Her shoulders hunched over, the deep-V falling along the back of her shirt revealing the requisite Chinese character tattoo. (It probably translated into something like: "poor little rich girl with serious daddy issues.") Her black bra strap fell off her shoulder and hung loosely over her upper arm, also covered in intricate inked designs.

Lina was made up of jagged angles and hard lines, all pointy elbows and razor-sharp cheekbones. Everything about Lina-from her aggressively short, bleached-blonde hair to her infamous eyebrows c.o.c.ked in permanent judgment-screamed b.i.t.c.h.

Rose's mom sighed and shook her head as she watched her husband comfort the girl.

"Unbelievable. She knows, but she'll never tell. It's a good thing your father's a terrible cop." There was grim satisfaction in her mom's voice.

Rose hated herself for feeling the same skepticism that radiated off her mom. On one hand, she wanted, needed Lina to keep Willa's death a secret. Rose had lied to her dad for reasons she couldn't even bring herself to think about. Reasons that were tied up in late nights spent on the beach with James Gregory. Her mind flashed back to his dark blonde hair, the way his lips had felt on hers, the way his fingers left a trail of electricity behind as they slid underneath her shirt. She'd trusted him with her secrets and maybe even a tiny piece of her heart. How could she have been so wrong about him? How could she have given herself so completely to someone who was capable of something so awful?

Rose and Lina and pretty much every single person on the d.a.m.n boat knew who had killed Willa that night. But even with a yacht full of witnesses, her dad would never hear the truth. Not even from his own daughter, not from one of Willa's best friends, and especially not from his wife.

Rose flung open the door and sat on the curb in front of the car. It wasn't much cooler outside, but at least she wouldn't have to be trapped with her mom. Thankfully the gently lapping water made it impossible for her to hear the conversation between Lina and her dad. She didn't trust herself to listen to all the lies. If she heard enough, the truth might just come spilling out.

Mari Jacobs plopped down next to Rose on the curb.

"Five thousand dollars." Her voice was flat.

Rose didn't need to ask Mari what she meant. She knew that was the money she'd been offered by the Gregory family to keep quiet, and she knew Mari had taken it. No one turned down a bribe from the Gregorys, especially not a waitress putting herself through college.

For a minute Rose looked into Mari's dark brown eyes, took in her perfect heart-shaped face and coconut-colored skin. It drove Rose's mom insane that she spent so much time talking to "the help" instead of hanging out with kids her own age. Never mind that Mari read actual books and was funny as h.e.l.l. Rose had far more in common with Mari than she did with girls like Lina Winthrop. As the daughter of a cop and Hawthorne Lake's event planner, Rose was treated with the same faux respect reserved for crossing guards and doormen. She looked at her dad, scribbling on a tiny notebook with his favorite chewed up pen, while Lina Winthrop sobbed out lie after lie.

Joe McCaan was of average height, average build, and if Rose was being completely honest, slightly below-average intellect. That's not to say that her dad was dumb; he was just the kind of man who always saw the best in people. A great quality for a dad, not the best quality for a detective.

Her mom was a different story, of course. As one of the highest-ranking employees at the Club, it was Pilar McCaan's job to see everything and know everyone. Club employees were terrified of her while most members ignored her completely. Like the new curtains that hung in the grand foyer: she was too gauche and shiny to match the rest of the Club, but too bothersome to replace. As Pilar's daughter, Rose fit the same bill. There were only three people who seemed to ignore her dubious pedigree. One of them was Mari Jacobs. The other was James Gregory. The last person was dead.

Mari's hand shook a little as she reached into her bag and pulled out a cigarette. "Same price they were offering last summer. You'd think they'd at least adjust for inflation."

Normally Rose would have laughed. Instead she kept staring at her dad and Lina. Rose watched Lina's black-rimmed eyes wander, heard all the words that weren't being said. And even though she'd done the same thing, had spoken the same lie aloud, watching one of Willa's best friends slowly shake her head back and forth made her hate Lina Winthrop even more than she already did.

Mari blew a cloud of smoke through puckered lips.

Rose could feel her eyes. She wanted her to talk, to say something.

"I'm so sick of this s.h.i.t, I really am. James Gregory goes off and kills the Club princess, and the best Gramps can do is offer up five Gs?" Mari paused. "I'm over it. I'm sick of taking bribes that barely cover the cost of books."

Rose couldn't bring herself to look at Mari. She wasn't in the mood for one of their epic discussions about the caste system of the Club. Not now.

"You think Lina's parents are here?"

Mari scanned the crowd lazily, but Rose knew the answer to her own question. The Winthrops wouldn't be there waiting to comfort Lina after the traumatic questioning was over. They were probably off on another one of their lavish vacations.

Harsh stripes of mascara stained Lina's cheeks as she turned around and gestured to Sloane Liu. Sloane wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and walked forward, wisps of her hair lifted by the breeze off the lake. She wore a pale-pink, silky dress, the hem fluttering. If the circ.u.mstances weren't quite so tragic, she might have looked beautiful.

As soon as she began speaking, she broke down, her head in her hands.

"Wow, she really knows how to turn on the waterworks." Mari ground her cigarette into the asphalt of the parking lot and shook her head slowly.

Rose felt a rush of jealousy. Sloane's parents enveloped their tiny daughter in an effort to protect her from the big bad detective, who stood there looking like he might start crying himself. It must be nice to be so loved. After a few awkward minutes spent shuffling around and looking at his watch, Detective McCaan tried questioning Sloane again, but her parents shook their heads, silent understanding pa.s.sing from parent to parent.

Rose had to look away while her dad dug business cards out of his wallet and handed them to Lina and Sloane. She had heard him say the words so many times in the past that she was able to recite them out loud for Mari's benefit.

"Call me if you think of anything that might help the investigation. Or even if you just feel like talking about what happened tonight. Part of my job is to be here for the community." She even managed a pa.s.sable imitation of her dad's honest, sympathetic, guileless smile-the one that always flickered across his face while he let yet another crime go unpunished.

"You've got it down, my friend. Maybe you should apply for deputy." Mari laughed. It sounded more to Rose like she was choking.

Rose stood up and brushed the sand off the backs of her thighs. Her dad would probably be here all morning tying up loose ends. For him there was no crime scene to worry about, just a tragic accident that would be handled with the utmost discretion.

Her mom was watching impatiently from the driver's seat. As much as Rose hated the thought of getting back into the car with her, at least she got to go home. Now that the police were wrapping up on the boat, crowds of people began to pull away. A sliver of bright orange appeared along the horizon, the sky surrounding pink with the promise of a new day. Everything looked different in the rising light; dresses appeared out of place, heavily made-up faces seemed completely inappropriate. She tugged at the silky fabric that seemed too short to be a dress in the light of day. Motors turned over, car doors opened and shut; people pulled away to begin the process of forgetting.

"See you tomorrow, I guess." Rose started walking toward her mom's car when she heard Mari's voice call out to her.

"I didn't take it."

She froze mid-step, blood pulsing in her skull. No, no, no. Mari couldn't have turned down the Gregorys' money. No one turned down the Gregorys.

"But ... your job, your apartment, what are you going to do?" Rose asked, turning.

"Don't worry. I've got a plan." Mari flashed a crooked smile. "Not that it matters to you. I saw what you were up to last night."

"But it's the Gregorys," Rose continued, ignoring the way her stomach clenched. Mari always had an angle, a way out of any situation. But she was out of her league with the Gregorys, and they both knew it.

Now that she'd practically spit in the Gregorys' faces, there was no way she'd last the rest of the summer. Saying "no" to the Gregorys meant her job would be mysteriously downsized; a gas leak or a termite infestation would leave the tiny apartment she'd rented for the summer uninhabitable. Typewritten threats, sent via envelopes with no return address, would ensure that she left town quickly and quietly. Mari knew all of this, but still she'd turned down their money. Rose felt sick as she remembered the bitter taste of the lie she'd told her dad. She was a coward. She hated herself for it. Even worse, she saw that same disgust mirrored in Mari's flinty eyes.

So Rose said nothing to her friend. Instead she climbed into her mom's car and focused on the sun rising up over the lake. A slender, dark-haired girl stood by the edge of the water. The rising sun bounced off her porcelain skin like a spotlight, announcing Madge Ames-Rowan, the star of the tragic show. It seemed odd for her to be there instead of at the hospital with her family. Madge was Willa's stepsister. Their parents had married when they were in kindergarten, and they'd been best friends ever since. Together they bookended the teen social scene at the Club. Rose was almost scared to look at her, afraid that the grief would be too raw, that it would burn and leave a scar.

But there were no tears on Madge's face.

Rose saw only fury and a steely determination. Madge's fingers were at her neck, twisting the small key she always wore, her green eyes trained on the Gregorys' yacht that bobbed and swayed in its slip. When Rose followed Madge's gaze, she met their target. The Gregorys. James was sprawled out in one of the lounge chairs on the deck. Trip sat next to him, cradling his mop of red curls in his hands. If the twins were crowned princes of the Club, their grandfather, Charles "the Captain" Gregory, was king. The Captain ruled with a platinum fist, and now he paced the perimeter of the deck, his back ramrod straight, chin tilted toward the lightening sky. Another battle won.

Willa had only been dead for a few hours and her killer was pa.s.sed out in a lounge chair. His grandfather had begun the process of paying for his innocence. Rose knew right then that Willa's stepsister wasn't mourning. She was plotting.

Madge and the Captain knew what everybody else at that party knew: Willa hadn't fallen off the yacht in a drunken stupor. She'd gotten into a motorboat with James Gregory. An hour later he'd returned alone, his blond hair dark with lake water. And they had all lied about what they saw that night when the police finally pulled Willa's body out of the lake.

Of course they had. That was the rule. That was the thing about Hawthorne Lake.