Darcy is Not Dead

1: The social repercussions of being related to a(n alleged) murder

Alice's grandfather was tried for murder long before she ever spent the summers with him on the secluded coast of Maine. She never knew people thought he was capable of such atrocities until her sister's ex-boyfriend told her so.

They all spent the summers a short, windy drive away from the kitschy shops and bars around Bar Harbor. It wasn't on purpose that the Olveras scheduled their holidays around the same time the Lovett family did, but it couldn't exactly be considered a coincidence when they both stuck around there for the three summer months before the school year started up again. The Olveras were academics, after all—their schedules tended to resonate with the school year.

The Lovetts, from what Alice understood, rotated positions. On the weekends, Julius' father drove up from Boston. Sometimes, Alice saw him on the back deck taking phone calls on Friday afternoons and Monday mornings.

For the most part, though, she saw his mother. Mrs. Lovett was gone during those times to visit her parents. They weren't well enough to make the trip to Maine anymore, and Alice never questioned why Mr. and Mrs. Lovett were never seen in the same room together until her sister, Darcy, went missing in her first year of college.

"Missing" was a bit of an overstatement. Alice still waited for the holiday video calls and the occasional phone call asking Alice to put their mom on the line to explain this-or-that about finances. Adult stuff. Darcy never visited or came home again, let alone to Maine.

Darcy was why Alice was so fond of Maine's memories. Bar Harbor was ghostly without her, and Alice's alleged social life in the summers ended when Darcy stopped coming home. Alice's rose-tinted glasses came off without her sister there to pretend like the dock wasn't decaying, or that the cobwebs in the rooms rooms were actually charming. She used to smile when swatting empty pillowcases around the corners of her cabin bedroom to dash the cobwebs away.

At least with Darcy, she could scare a scream or two out of them both by play-fighting with the pillowcases matted with cobwebs like cotton candy. There wasn't much of a point to flinging the webbed pillowcase around on her own, and she doubted Grandpa Olvera would take too kindly to having a bunch of cobwebs thrown in his face the same way Darcy would.

The cobwebs aside, the past three years of having a cabin room to herself gave her some space to breathe and get angry. Darcy leaving to have a life of her own—intentionally barring Alice from her life, too—also meant leaving Alice friendless in the summers.

Not that she had many friends back home to begin with.

The solitude was nice, but she was becoming a little too familiar with it. She missed Darcy's snark. Her flippant remarks. The way she always knew just what to say to Julius when they inevitably crossed paths on the way into town.

Alice never knew what to say, in any capacity, ever.

"Well if it isn't the convict's granddaughter," he'd say, a cherry red lollypop at the corner of his mouth. The white stick shot up with his grin as he passed her from behind, hands in his pockets. He always came with friends or cousins. The Lovetts invited more people up than the Olveras ever did, which often meant explaining the comment to newcomers.

"Really?" Julius' friend said, stalling between them.

Julius kept walking, hands in his pockets, and didn't spare her a glance as he asked, "I take it you're off to your family's alma mater for Orientation?"

Alice would have paled if she wasn't already sunburnt. In high school, she remembered seeing Julius' name lumped together with Darcy's on the board of everyone's accepted colleges. Darcy had stared at it in silence for a time before one of Julius' friends chucked a football in their direction. Alice vaguely recalled screaming and ducking behind Darcy for cover, but couldn't recall whether or not Darcy had caught it.