Page 101 of She’s a Doll

That’s such an obvious lie, I said as Ginger dialed triple zero, the words spilling out of me so fast they tangled. You can’t see anything from up here, and who goes walking just before a thunderstorm? Also, you’re pretty famously the person who was accusing Kyle of my murder. They’ll accuse you of planting the body. They’ll say you did it. They’ll say . . .

Nicola looked up at me. The rain was already flattening her hair against her forehead; her hands were covered in mud, her jeans soaked to the thigh. Despite it, somehow, there was a quietness to her. An aura of control. “It’s OK, Lu,” she said, low but loud enough to carry. “Leave the lying to me, OK. I can handle it.”

That’s very noble. Stupid, but noble. You know, they’re probably going to blame you, arrest you. I thought that’s what you didn’t want to happen. A life behind bars.

“It’ll be fine, Lu. It’ll be fine.”

You say that. But maybe we should just leave. Maybe we should just forget about this. Maybe⁠—

“We’re not leaving you here.”

“Yes,” Ginger said into her phone. “Hello? My friend and I are at the creek, and we think . . . we think we’ve found a body . . .”

Lose the shovel, I suggested, soft as a whisper, so none of it would leak into Ginger’s call. The police might have questions about that.

Nicola picked it up off the bank and threw it into the water. I watched it drift slowly away downstream.

35

It took seven days for my body to be identified. They used dental records and old DNA samples from my grandma. Foreign DNA was found under my fingernails, which “brought to light a new suspect not previously considered in this cold case.” The police didn’t say exactly who it matched, but everyone figured it out pretty quick when they offered a $10,000 reward for information as to the whereabouts of Kyle Richard Lawson.

After two weeks it became $20,000.

By week three the local gardening club had banded together and pitched in to get the number up to $26,755.

Honestly, I was surprised he hadn’t been found. The woman who’d answered the phone that night, Brenda, knew he was going to the construction site, and I’d bet if the police got a dog to run around the lot, they’d zero in on the place where he was. But that didn’t happen. Even as the weeks turned into months, that didn’t happen.

Krissy posted a video on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The title: They COULDN’T find the KILLER⁠—now they’re BLAMING my BROTHER!!

“The police are liars,” she said, jaw wobbling so much it looked like it might come off. “They keep saying Lucy called me the weekend she went missing except she didn’t. They’ve been making up stories to try and blame my family since the start. Now they think it’s my brother because . . . what? There might be DNA. That’s not evidence. It’s all bullshit. We’ve been nothing but cooperative. Kyle’s my twin. I’ve known him my whole life. I don’t know where he is, but he wouldn’t do this. He’s probably just scared and in hiding.”

The video got over a hundred thousand views before she deleted it.

At least a thousand of those were mine.

I watched it over and over again, curled in the corner of the sofa with Nicola’s phone propped up against the cushions. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Perhaps a hint of uncertainty, a flicker of doubt.

A tell.

Something that would let me know what was going on behind her painfully familiar eyes. Had she known all along? Had she lied to the police? Had she helped him cover it up? Or had Kyle used her too?

Whatever I was looking for, I couldn’t see it.

Even as Kyle’s photo started appearing on real wanted posters, ones printed by the cops, she kept telling everyone her brother couldn’t possibly be the monster the police were making him out to be. Even after she deleted the video, she continued posting stories about what a good guy Kyle was, how kind, how nice, how incapable of murder. Her feed flooded with photos of him helping out at the community garden, standing by the family’s business sign, smiling over a birthday cake.

I know you’re innocent.

Come home soon.

RIP Lucy. You were my best friend. I pray they find who really did this to you every day.

None of those posts got as many likes as the one Ginger pinned to the top of her profile.

For all those asking: I don’t know where my husband is, and I don’t care. He’s not the man I thought I married. I hope the police find him and lock him up for the rest of his life.

Which, by the time week four rolled around, seemed to be the unanimous opinion of everyone in town.

“Never trusted that guy,” I overheard the barista say as Nicola bought an iced latte. “Always got hazelnut syrup. Only sociopaths get hazelnut syrup.”