Page 96 of East

Legacy indeed is something Rouge took very seriously. In her lifetime, she often remarked that the end was the beginning. Very few women were as successful as she was in her line of work which was very impressive. Every beginning, she said, meant something. So fairwell, Rouge, we hope you have found peace.

I blink. “That’s one of the most terribly written obituaries I’ve ever seen.” I read through it again. “All the misspelled words. The stilted language. It glosses over the organ trafficking completely. And what the fuck is that tangent about legacy about? What does that have to do with anything?”

“It is odd.” Thea squints at the text. “And then in the middle of the legacy stuff, they add that extra sentence about very few women being in her line of work. The flow is off.”

“Off? The flow is completely plugged up.” I laugh. “I guess bad writing can be fun to read, but we should check someplace⁠—”

Thea holds up a hand. “Just a minute.”

“What?”

“The end is the beginning…” she reads aloud. “Every beginning meant something…”

“It’s nonsense,” I say.

“You worked with her for years, didn’t you? Did Rouge ever talk about legacy like this? About beginnings and ends and all that fortune-cookie nonsense?”

I furrow my eyebrows. “No, come to think of it. But it’s not like we ever had any deeply philosophical conversations.”

But that’s not true. Rouge often cornered her employees and asked them odd questions. I remember one time she asked me point-blank with zero context what I would do if I were trapped in a hot-air balloon with no way of getting it down. She looked disappointed when I didn’t come up with an answer before telling me I should consider chopping off my own legs, roasting them in the fire that keeps the balloon afloat, and eating them. She then nearly collapsed in a fit of laughter when she saw the look on my face.

She really was an insane bitch.

“It’s a puzzle,” Thea says.

“What?”

“The obit. The legacy bullshit. It’s telling us that the beginning of every sentence in the obit is important. That’s why the language is so awkward. They’re fitting in a message.”

“No way.”

Thea nods. “They probably threw in the misspelled words to throw you off the scent. You’ll just think it’s a bad writer and move on. And that’s if you find this blog, which is buried under thousands of articles about Rouge’s death.”

I grab a pencil and pad from the kitchen counter, quickly writing down the first letter of each sentence. When I’m done, I look at the message, my eyebrows nearly flying off my head.

“What does it say?” Thea asks.

I hold up the piece of paper. On it are written two words.

AUSHA LIVES.

35

THEA

“No way,” I say. “That can’t be the same Asha from that other article, can it? The spelling is different.”

“I think it’s because the spelling is different that the article wasn’t scrubbed from the internet,” Aus replies. “I think this woman is named Ausha Paisley with a U, and Rouge tried to get rid of every mention of her name. But that Tribune article misspelled it, so she missed it.”

“And then whoever this blogger is tried to get the message out. But even in her death, they knew people would try to keep her name off the internet, so they made a riddle out of it. Then they added the other pattern names so the ‘Paisley’ tag wouldn’t stick out.”

“Damn.” He rubs at his forehead. “This is a lot.”

“It is.” I hang my head. “Unfortunately I don’t think it’s any help to us. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t implicate someone else in Kin’s murder.”

“You don’t know that.” Aus lifts my heads up, kisses my cheek. “Rouge is—was—an extremely clever woman with an uncanny knack for understanding how people function. She was able to easily manipulate people in her orbit to perform heinous crimes.” His voice catches for a minute. He clears his throat and continues. “She just had this way about her. It’s difficult to put into words.”

Again, I’m sensing there’s a story here, but I can’t dive down that rabbit hole right now.