Page 18 of The Better Sister

“This was all after the movie?” she asked.

“Is this like on TV? Where you make sure Ethan and I agree on what movie we saw? You can’t seriously think Ethan did something to his dad, right? Because that’s, like, crazy.”

“Nothing like that,” Guidry assured him. “It’s standard to exclude members of the family first so we can move on from there.”

“Okay, cool.”

“Great,” Guidry said, jotting down the recited movie title before tucking her pen away in the spiral notebook.

Walking to her car, she told herself she’d made the right decision going back to speak with Kevin Dunham. The name of the movie itself wasn’t especially noteworthy. It was the same film Chloe had mentioned when she accounted for Ethan’s whereabouts the previous night.

The problem was that, according to Ethan, there had been no movie at all.

11

I’m standing at an altar, surrounded by white orchids, looking out at a sea of despondent faces. Everyone is wearing black. I think I’m wearing a veil, because when I look down at the pages on the lectern, I can’t read the words. I fumble with the netting in front of my face until I can make out the letters clearly. I begin reading automatically, not even processing the sentences that are coming out of my mouth. The people in the audience glance at each other in confusion and begin to murmur. They grow so loud I can’t hear my own voice. I look down at my notes and realize I brought the wrong speech. I’m thanking everyone for my award during Adam’s funeral.

I was still opening my eyes when my hand grabbed for the cell phone I had tucked beneath the throw pillow. According to the screen, it was two in the afternoon. I had gotten a response to the message I had sent before finally drifting off to sleep.

You were up awfully early. How was the party last night? I’m out here, too. Let me know if you can find time.

He obviously hadn’t heard the news yet.

I sat up, already feeling the crick in my neck from sleeping on the hard, narrow daybed in the pool house.

I clutched the phone to my chest and said a silent prayer of thanks that he had insisted on being so careful. He had given me the tiny black flip phone five months earlier, right before Christmas.

“What are we, spies?” I had asked.

He held up a second one that he had purchased for himself. “My regular phone’s billed through the firm. Someone might recognize your number. I figured you should have one, too. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but Adam will never shake that former prosecutor bug.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s organically suspicious. He notices everything—and interprets every detail in the worst light. Am I telling you something you don’t already know?”

I remember pulling the sheet over my chest, pinning myself down beneath it with my elbows as I studied the burner phone. I couldn’t disagree with what he was saying, but I also didn’t want him talking about my husband—not like that.

He turned on his side and brushed sweat-damp hair from my brow. “Hey, where are you right now? Is it the phone? Am I being presumptuous to assume this might keep happening?”

The first time, I had insisted afterward that it was a mistake. A one-time thing that we could never allow again. Then it kept happening, and we both knew it was going to continue.

Are you home now?I typed.

Yep. My aspiration for the day is to see how long I can sit next to this pool. Unless you come over. Then I will move.

I made my way off of the daybed and looked up at the sleeping loft. Ethan was on his side, his back facing toward me. His breathing was slow and deep. I hoped he was actually sleeping and not just pretending.

I peered through the edge of the white curtains that covered the sliding doors out to the pool. Crime scene tape ran the width of the backyard, starting at the edge of the swimming pool closest to the house. I could see the movements of police personnel inside.

I slipped on a pair of old flip-flops I found under the bench that stored the beach towels and slid the door shut quietly behind me. I kept expecting an officer to catch my attention as I made the trek past the pool, down my driveway, and halfway down Pudding Hill Lane, but no one came. With my test run complete, I ventured back to the pool house and dropped both of my phones in the front pocket of the beach cover-up I was wearing. I donned my Chanel aviators as a final touch, just in case they stopped me this time and asked me why I had returned to the house so quickly.

As I stepped outside once again, I thought about the headline-of-the-moment crime stories I had covered over the years and the formula that had ensured top-of-the-hour billing on all the cable stations. White victim. Good teeth. Female preferred, but not essential. At least three photographs to suggest a seemingly perfect life. But the real kicker for a local crime story to go national? You needed a suspect. It couldn’t be a slam dunk, because then the police would have an arrest, and there’d be nothing much to talk about until trial. No, you needed someone who seemed guilty enough to deserve the public’s scornful attention, without quite enough evidence to back up the speculation. A chicken to stew in the pot.

A sure way to land in the Dutch oven was to fail whatever stereotypes the true-crime junkies held for family members of the victims. The stepmom who went to the gym the same day of the kidnapping. The husband who smiled during the heart-wrenching interview. Too many social media posts was always a no-no. I remembered every single name I had helped grind through the mill, based on nothing other than the failure to meet fantasy expectations.

I hated myself for even thinking about it, but the fact of the matter was that I now had a role to play. My husband’s murder would be noteworthy, and I was his widow. If I had absolutely nothing to hide, what would I do?

I assured myself that a lonesome walk to Main Beach made perfect sense. If anyone were ever to ask, I could recite from memory all the reasons that the beach had been special to Adam and me.

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