Page 50 of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Vera’s head pops out from behind the kitchen door. “Ah, Julia, you home. Sana is here.”

“Yes, I see that, Vera.”

“She has something to tell you.”

“Yep, she was about to tell me.”

“Emma,” Vera calls out, “you are supposed to be my sous chef, remember? Come here and help me make dumplings.”

Before Julia can react, Emma wriggles out of her arms and dashes off to the kitchen. Great, now Julia’s left with Sana, and for whatever reason, the vibes in here are painfully awkward.

“Um...” Sana begins.

Vera’s head pops out again. “Sana is quite long-winded, so I help to shorten: Sana does not have a pot catch. She is an artist. Marshall steal her work. She did not kill him.” She smiles at the two of them, who are standing there with mouths agape, then says, “Okay, now I make dumplings.”

Julia turns back to Sana, her mouth opening and closing.“Wh—” Nope, nothing comes out. She doesn’t even know where to begin. Then, sighing, Julia decides to just go with it. She sinks into one of the sofas and leans back. “All right, you’d better tell me from the beginning.”

“Maybe not from beginning, it will take too long, the food will get cold. Just tell her from the spring show,” Vera calls out.

“Yep, I think we got it from here, Vera,” Julia says. She catches Sana’s eye, and there is some understanding between them, a spark of laughter.

Sana takes a deep breath. “I was at CalArts...”

•••

About fifteen minutes later, Julia sits back, her thoughts swimming in circles. She’s stunned. No, she’s actually not. She feels like she should be stunned, that’s the thing, but is she really? Was the revelation that her dead husband was conning college kids really such a shock? No, because when Julia thinks about it, it fits Marshall, the pieces sliding easily into the negative spaces of the image of Marshall. For years, she’s learned to only see the good side of Marshall, to believe him when he tells her that he wants nothing but the best for them, and after Emma arrived, he’d say things like it’s only the three of them against the whole world. But now it hits her. Why against the whole world? Nobody should be against the entire world. Not unless you’re someone like Marshall, who goes through life by cheating and swindling everyone he comes across.

She’s so incredibly sad for Sana, this young woman, a kid, really, coming across someone like Marshall so young. It’s only then, when she thinks the words “so young,” that it hits Julia that in fact, she came across Marshall at an even younger age. She wasin high school, for god’s sakes. Yes, he had been as well, both of them the same age, but now that Julia thinks about it, she should’ve seen it then, the way that Marshall had slowly, subtly prized all her support systems away so that by the end of high school, all Julia felt she could count on was Marshall. Her friendships had been peeled away by Marshall’s calculated comments about how he didn’t like Mindy, or how Oliver had talked bad about Julia behind her back. Her parents, perhaps sensing something rotten in Marshall, had tried to talk her out of dating him, but it only ended up pushing her farther away from them. And then there were Julia’s own dreams, her goal of being a photographer, gently discouraged with so much patience on Marshall’s part that she hadn’t even known he was doing it. Even after having Emma, Marshall had kept Julia from joining any mom groups, telling her that the women would just judge her for not being able to breastfeed properly, then later on, as she kept breastfeeding, he told her that the other moms would find it weird that she was still nursing Emma.

God. Julia isn’t sad now; Julia is fucking furious. At Marshall, yes, but most of all, at herself. How could she have been so goddamn stupid? How had she let him tear her down like that, piece by minuscule piece? Such tiny pieces of her that she hadn’t realized they were being taken away from her until she is left suddenly hollow. And now she’s faced with another one of his victims, a young person whose future had been so bright, who is now staring at Julia with wide, fearful eyes. Eyes that are jaded and bitter and broken.

“Oh, Sana.” Julia reaches out and grasps Sana’s hand. Sana flinches but doesn’t pull away. “I am so sorry that he did that to you. I don’t know if your paintings are among the ones that Oliverfound at Marshall’s apartment, but you are welcome to look for them. And of course, you are welcome to the... uh, the NFT part of them? I don’t quite understand how it works, but everything is yours, you can have it once I figure out how to give you ownership.” Julia shakes her head. “Look, it’s not that I suspected you, but I guess Vera’s been going on about how one of us is the killer, and honestly, I haven’t really known what to think. I mean, now we know you and I didn’t kill him, so who did? Do you think it really was an accident?”

“I don’t know,” Sana says. “From what I knew about Marshall, I think he crossed a lot of people.”

Julia nods. “Yeah. Any of them could’ve...” Her voice trails away, and for a moment, they both stare into the distance, each one lost in her own thoughts. “And there was the break-in, which seems too coincidental to have been done by someone else. Oh! Is that why you didn’t want Vera to report the break-in to the police?”

“I’m sorry,” Sana says, her voice cracking. “Yeah, I didn’t want to have to talk to the cops and—I don’t know, I just wasn’t sure what they might say. I mean, at the end of the day, I did attack him. I scratched him, I don’t know how long DNA lasts under fingernails, and I just... I got scared. I’m so sorry.”

“I understand,” Julia says, and strangely, she does. Well, maybe she doesn’t quite understand, but she can definitely empathize, and at the end of the day, she knows in her gut that Sana isn’t guilty of killing Marshall, at least.

Tears shine in Sana’s eyes. “And I’m sorry I lied to you about having a podcast. I just—”

“It’s fine,” Julia says quickly. “I don’t hold that against you.”

“I do,” Vera says, popping back out from the kitchen. “Lying is bad.” Her head pops back into the kitchen.

Julia and Sana stare in the direction of the kitchen for a while, then grin at each other. “How long do you think she’s been listening?” Sana whispers.

“Oh, the whole time, I’m sure.” Julia squeezes Sana’s hand. “I’m sorry that my husband traumatized you so much that you haven’t been able to follow your passion ever since.”

Sana gnaws on her bottom lip. “I should just move on, right?”

“No. I mean, well, yes, that would be ideal, but it sounds like he broke you down.” Julia takes a deep breath. “When I was a teen, all I wanted was to be a photographer. And Marshall—god, I don’t even quite know how he did it—but over time, he convinced me that it was a useless dream, that it wouldn’t pay enough to make a living, that I should just treat it as a hobby. So I did, but then he’d tell me that my hobby was too expensive, too time-consuming, and so on. And finally, I stopped doing it altogether. I haven’t done any photography for years aside from those portraits I did of Emma.” Julia shakes her head in wonderment. “Actually, today was the first day in years that I took photos of someone other than Emma.”

Sana raises her eyebrows. “Oh, cool! Who did you take pictures of?”

“This TikTok influencer. I think her name’s Cassie... Red?”

---