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I touch one of the hydrangea petals in the bouquet I picked for Heather. “I’ve never been more sure of something in my life.”
When we hang up, I feel an enormous weight lift from my shoulders. There’s no way to know if my plan will work, but for the first time since Leah passed away, my mind is clear.
I move to go wake Heather, only to sit back in the chair when my phone vibrates with a surprising round of text messages from Mortie.
Brows furrowed, I flip to our mostly barren message thread to find a series of frantic texts and links.
“What?”
The first screenshot shows messages between Mortie’s agent and the paparazzi they made the photo deal with. They go back and forth about securing the deal before there’s a significant time jump to a message received at five o’clock this morning.
I thought Mr. Matthews would want to see this.
The picture of Heather and I kissing on the beach sits below the screenshot, and what follows is a series of articles written about my brother and our family.
Confused, I click through each article, not understanding what he’s trying to show me. Each one is from the same magazine with dates varying over the last three years.
My thumb hovers over a featured article inLusterMagazine,which covered Leah’s funeral.
Acid coats my throat when I click on it. Instead of mentioning any of the things that made my sister great or memorable, the author wrote a gossip piece full of speculation and recounted photos of Leah partying with friends, painting her as a reckless young woman who could never turn down a good time.
I begin to sweat, remembering how devastating each of these stories were for the four of us. The lies and slander that surrounded her death, all because we wanted to keep her autopsy private.
Blind anger has me scouring the rest of the story for a name.
H. Sinclair
The world blots in and out around me as I receive text after text of images paired with files.
“No,” I say, hand shaking enough to blur a picture of Heather, smiling back at me out of focus.
Jango sits up with a uneasy whine while I skim a copy of her degree in journalism, then a screenshot of her name boasted proudly onLuster’swebsite as their lead journalist before I finally understand what he was trying to show me.
Mortie calls me two minutes after the last message is received, but I stare at my phone with numb disbelief, forwarding his call and the one after while I struggle for air.
Heather’s a travel blogger, not a writer for a gossip magazine, and she wouldn’t do this to me, Penelope, or my family.
Standing on unsteady legs, I round the table.
Someone’s setting her up, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.
It can’t be true.When I reach the front door, I hesitate, holding the knob in one hand and the damning evidence that Mortie’s given me in the other.Please, don’t let this be true.
I enter the house, and as quietly as possible, close the door behind me.
Halting in the entryway, I listen for signs that Heather’s still asleep, and after a moment of silence, I carefully scan the room for her things.
My first thought is to rummage through her suitcase, but then I spot a laptop sitting in the center of the coffee table. I pry it open, waking it from sleep mode with a tap on the spacebar, only to find that it’s password protected.
Mortie calls again, but I ignore it, lowering the screen with a shaky hand, and once it’s closed, my gaze flicks to the camera sitting beside her computer.
Trepidation makes me pause. If what I find is anything other than scenery for her blog, I don’t know what I’ll do.
Sitting back, I turn it on and start looking through the images.
A sunrise behind the barn pops up first, but then I’m clicking through the rest of the images so quickly, my thumb keeps slipping from the button. Cold dread pricks my neck when I reach the beginning of the photo run, where Pen and I are standing in the shipyard.
“Good morning, handsome,” Heather says, and her yawn sounds sex-drunk and sleepy. I listen to her feet descend one step at a time before they’re softly snicking over the tile toward the kitchen.
