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I peered at her, slowly taking back the sheets of paper, filled with small, black type. “What do you mean?”
“Turn to section forty-five.”
I turned the pages, following the numbers printed down the left-hand side. “Why is this so much longer than the one I saw? It was only a double-sided page.”
Sasha jabbed one of her manicured fingernails into the page so hard it almost tore. “Exactly! The one I saw wasn’t nearly this long either. But you know how I follow those true crime groups? The buzz about your mom and Bart died down for a minute there, and I don’t know what happened, might be because the funerals were this morning, but two days ago, someone anonymously posted this version of your mom’s autopsy. And section forty-five…”
My gaze landed on the number and the words next to it. My head snapped up. “Pregnant? She was pregnant?”
Sasha nodded. “But hey, listen, hold my hand for a second, because section forty-six is the analysis they did on the fetus…”
Wide eyed, I scanned the text beneath a heading called ‘Genetic Findings’ and then read it out loud. “Fetus DNA is not compatible with that of the mother’s partner, Bartholomew Weston. Father unknown.”
Sasha cringed. “Should I have not told you? Are you mad? I don’t know what this means exactly…”
My fingers crumpled in the paper. “It means my mother was sleeping with someone other than Bart. And recently, if this report is to be believed. She probably didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
Grief crushed in. It was weird. I’d gone from having no siblings my entire life, to having four sisters, then five when Kara had come along.
Then in one fell swoop, I’d lost one I didn’t even know about.
It shouldn’t have hurt.
But it did. It hurt just as much as if I’d held that baby in my arms, stared down at her little face, and promised to look out for her always. My heart felt crushed and robbed of the fact I’d never get to do that.
It didn’t matter to me that my mom had slept with someone else. I didn’t think any less of her for cheating on her husband, though it did surprise me. She’d seemed so in love with him.
“Maybe this isn’t true,” I said to Sasha. “Maybe the original autopsy was the right one.”
Sasha nodded, taking the piece of paper and folding it again before putting it back in her pocket. She looked up at me slowly. “But what if it is? Whoever killed your mother might have been her lover…”
I swallowed thickly. “Why do I feel like you’ve already played out this entire scenario in your head?”
Her shiny teeth dug into her pink bottom lip. “You being away for a few days after I found this gave me a lot of time to come up with different scenarios. I considered a lot of different people. Everyone I’d ever met at their place. Then I went further, digging into their pasts…”
“So you’re saying you have a new list of suspects?”
“Actually, I’m saying it all came back to just one.”
“Who?”
She cringed. “Kian.”
I breathed out sharply. “He swears he had nothing to do with her death.”
“Men lie, Rebel,” Sasha said. “I think we both know that. I heard screams in that house nights before they died. Has he ever explained those?”
I shook my head slowly. She’d brought this to me before, but I’d let it die, unable to believe Kian had anything to do with it.
He’d promised me.
“He lived with them, Rebel. He was there every night Bart worked late. He’s never mentioned your mom having a lover, right? Surely, if she had, he’d be the one to know about it. He lived there! He would have known!”
My stomach twisted painfully. “Unless it was him. Unless he was her lover.”
She nodded.
“People are usually murdered by those closest to them.” I’d heard that somewhere, and it had stuck with me.
