Page 11 of The Better Sister

7:02 pm

Heading to Catherine’s soon. ETA?

7:58 pm

Sorry, fell asleep in the car. Driver actually had to wake me up! Finally here though. Having fun? Where’s Ethan?

8:12 pm

Went to movies with Kevin. Told him he could spend the night, so you’re solo. And, yes, fun here. Bill is telling that story about hooking up with a stranger at Studio 54 before finally realizing it was...

8:13 pm

Has anyone guessed right yet?

8:14 pm

Everyone here has heard it before. I give it three more tries before someone finally says the name.

And BOOM, there it is. Better go. Catherine’s glaring at my phone. Think she’s about to herd us into the dining room. Not too late to join;-)

8:16 pm

Um, yeah, no. Plus ZZZZ. Pro tip: Water down Catherine’s vino when she’s not looking.

8:17 pm

??♥

Jesus. My last communication with my husband was a fucking emoji.

Guidry managed a friendly nod as she slid the phone back to me. “Your husband probably told others he was heading out here tonight?”

“I guess,” I said with a shrug.

“Such as?” Bowen had his pen ready above his notebook, prepared to jot down names.

“I have no idea.” Instinctively, I reached for my phone to text Adam, then shook my head. “People at work, I guess. The clients he met with today, maybe.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door. A uniformed officer whispered something to the detectives, and Bowen followed him out of the room.

Guidry shifted her chair toward the center of her side of the table so we were seated directly across from each other. “There’s another possibility I think we should discuss, Mrs. Taylor. Do you think there’s a chance someone went to the house looking to target you?”

I opened my mouth to tell her I had no enemies, but no words came out. I couldn’t begin to calculate the number of hours I had spent reading online posts about myself in recent months. I woke up at least once a week from a nightmare built upon the words that had become a familiar part of my daily routine—die,rape,bitch, every possible description of my breasts and genitalia. But at some level, I must never have believed that I was in actual danger. Otherwise, Guidry’s question wouldn’t have caught me so off guard. Can you have enemies if you don’t know who they are?

I swallowed before answering. “A lot of nasty comments on social media and that kind of thing. But nothing physical.”

“What kind of nasty comments?”

I reached again for my phone, pulled up my Twitter mentions, and handed it to her. Her eyes widened and then widened again as she read.

“Pardon me for asking, Mrs. Taylor, but with these kinds of threats, why wasn’t the alarm set?”

“The alarm?”

“At your house. You said when you got home, you entered with a key and that you didn’t need to disarm the security system. And obviously the motion detectors we saw inside the house didn’t activate an alarm after the break-in occurred. But your husband was in his pajamas, and you said it looked like he had been in the bed before getting up—probably because he heard someone in the house. You’re getting these kinds of threats, and he didn’t set the alarm before going to sleep?”

“You sound like you’re blaming Adam for what happened to him.”

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