Page 73 of Rich Little Liars

The flashlight beam swings left, and suddenly I’m looking at the staircase. Half of it is still standing – blackened steps leading up to nothing, to a landing that no longer exists, to bedrooms that have collapsed into the ground floor.

‘This way.’ Harvey pushes me towards the back of the house. Towards the kitchen. Towards the place where it all ended.

My feet drag against the debris. Every step feels like walking through treacle, my body fighting against what my mind knows is coming. I hesitate to look – don’t want to stand in the exact spot where everything changed. Where I made choices I can never unmake.

But Harvey’s hand remains on my shoulder. Unrelenting.

We reach the kitchen doorway – also just a frame now, the door itself long gone – and I stop. Can’t help it. My legs simply refuse to carry me any further.

Because I’m looking at the exact spot where I stood that night. The exact spot where I watched the flames rise and spread and consume everything in their path. Where I heard Daniel’s voice calling my name through the smoke. Where I⁠—

‘This is where it happened.’ Harvey’s flashlight beam settles on the charred floor, illuminating patterns I wish I couldn’t see. Scorch marks that radiate outward from a central point. The fire burned so hot it left its signature in the concrete beneath the tiles. ‘This is where he died.’

I don’t answer. Don’t trust my voice.

‘I’ve been here before, you know. After the investigation closed. After everyone decided it was just a tragic accident and moved on with their lives.’ He moves closer, his breath warm on the nape of my neck. ‘I walked through every room. Touched every surface. Tried to understand how a man could die in his own kitchen while his wife escaped without a scratch.’

The accusation hangs in the air between us. I should defend myself. Should explain that I tried, that the flames were too high, that there was nothing I could do. But the words won’t come. They’ve been trapped inside me for so long they’ve calcified into something hard.

‘Do you know what the investigation found?’ He’s circling me now, flashlight beam dancing across the ruins. ‘Cooking oil left too close to an open flame. A dishcloth that caught fire. An extinguisher that wouldn’t release from its bracket. Tragic. Accidental. No one to blame.’

The smell of smoke is stronger here, or maybe I’m just imagining it. Maybe my brain is filling in sensory details that don’t exist any more, conjuring the ghost of a fire that burned out months ago.

‘But that’s not the whole story, is it, Kelly?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to tell me the truth.’ His voice drops to something low and dangerous. ‘I want you to stand here, in the place where my brother died, and tell me the truth.’

The word hits me like a speeding train.

Brother.

I spin to face him, nearly losing my balance on the uneven ground. The flashlight beam catches his face from below, throwing shadows that make him look monstrous. But I’m not looking at the shadows. I’m looking at his features – really looking, for the first time – and seeing what I should have seen from the beginning.

The shape of his jaw. The set of his eyes. The way his brows draw together when he’s focused on something. Daniel’s face, aged and hardened and twisted by grief.

‘You’re…’ The word won’t form properly. ‘Daniel never mentioned…’

‘No. He wouldn’t have.’ Harvey takes a step closer. ‘I’m his half-brother – the product of our father’s affair. A dirty secret. Daniel and I hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. A brotherly falling out. The kind of thing that seems important at the time and utterly meaningless once someone’s dead.’

My mind is racing, trying to reconfigure everything I thought I knew. Daniel had never talked about his family much. Distanced from his parents. No siblings. An only child who’d inherited everything and felt vaguely guilty about it. I’d accepted that story without question, the way you accept so many things about a person you think you know.

‘What happened between you?’

‘Does it matter?’ His laugh is bitter, humourless. ‘Money. Property. The usual things that tear families apart. Our father left everything to Daniel – the golden boy, the favourite son – and I got nothing. Not even an acknowledgement in the will.’ He shakes his head slowly. ‘I was twenty-three. Angry. Proud. I told Daniel I never wanted to see him again, and I meant it. Moved away. Changed my name. Built a whole new life where I wasn’t Joseph Reynolds. I was Joseph Harvey, police officer. Self-made. Someone who didn’t need money or approval.’

‘But you kept track of him.’

‘Of course I did. He was still my brother, even if we weren’t speaking. I knew when he got married. Knew when he bought this house.’ His eyes bore into mine. ‘Knew when things started going wrong.’

I want to look away but I can’t. His gaze holds me pinned like a butterfly to cork.

‘I’m a detective, Kelly. Finding information is what I do.’ He gestures at the ruins around us. ‘And when my brother died in a house fire under suspicious circumstances, I made it my personal mission to find out what really happened. Even if the official investigation couldn’t – or wouldn’t – see the truth.’

‘The investigation was thorough. They found nothing.’

‘The investigation was lazy.’ The words crack through the air.