Page 122 of We Already Dug the Grave

We pulled into the gas station and parked. Frances opened her door. “You coming in?”

“Go on ahead,” I said. “I need a minute.”

Frances shrugged.

Finally alone, I let tears slide freely down my cheeks. After this week, if I ever cried again it would be too soon.

Inhaling deep breaths, I tried to clear my mind, pushing away images of my great-aunt gasping on the ground. Of Ruth’s fluttering eyelids and Mama’s mangled arm. Of Burt’s body toppling, his mouth open in delight. Of his brains.

I rubbed at my face with my fingers and searched the glove box for a tissue to wipe my nose. There wasn’t one.

Frances’s tote still sat on the back seat. I pulled it into my lap and dug inside for a pack.

I didn’t find tissues.

Her wallet. A lip gloss. A pack of hair ties.

Then…

Driver’s licenses. Andrea’s and Blake’s. One of Burt’s IDs. His engraved wristwatch.

All the things that Frances said she’d planted near the creek. She hadn’t done it.

She’d lied to me.

But I’d been there. I’d watched her.

Except it had been dark and raining. I’d followed her down the bank, but had I seen if she’d left anything behind? I couldn’t remember. But this was proof she hadn’t.

I shoved my hand deeper into the bag until I felt something hard.

I pulled them out. Phones. Cheap, clunky plastic. The kind used as burners.

Why would Frances have two burner phones? But…I knew why.

I knew why, though I didn’t want to believe it.

To be sure, I opened my own cell and scrolled through my call log until I got to the number for the phony Puddle Creek detective. I pressed call.

The burner in my hand immediately began vibrating silently, and I remembered that too-perfect, artificial voice that had come from other end of the calls. I’d bet anything the other phone’s number was blocked.

Burt’s accusations played through my mind. Their little games. How Frances had chosen Blake and Andrea. How she had orchestrated everything. His little monster…

Then I remembered the other thing he’d said. How I’d been so ungrateful after she’d done me a favor and killed Casey.

My chest constricted, that flutter, that familiar stabbing pain grinding against my sternum. Burt was a liar. It couldn’t be true.

Except.

The helmet, Casey’s ring. No body…

What else… The whisper in my mind was soft but undeniable, words slipped beneath a door. What else? What else?

At first, I didn’t understand. But then clarity: Frances worried about her shoes while the corpse we made lay mere feet away. Frances’s college roommate missing, never to be seen again. And even my aunts’ old cat, the original Sarge, disappearing not long after we arrived. That cat had a habit of scratching my sister…was it possible that she…

No. This meant nothing. She’d been so young. A traumatized teenager. A distraught college kid. A scared little girl.

Except, what if it did? As singular moments, each on their own, excuses could be made, but stitched together, they told a story. Sister sister sister.