Page 33 of The Hard Way

“Maybe!”

“So the refrigerator plug is kicked out, and he concocts the entire scheme?” Zeus said.

“Why not?”

“He’s not smart enough,” Odin said. “That’s not how his mind works.”

“What if he unplugged it the day before? Like he set it up?”

They all looked at me sadly.

“What? You think my sisters did it? No. Screw that.” I felt my eyes heat with tears. “You don’t understand. When Mom and Dad died, it was our life’s mission to be good parents to Kaitlin and Candy. People tried to take them away, and we fought. And we were fucking poor, but we were all about doing the right thing. I know, right, I helped you guys rob a bank, but that was about screwing Hank Vernon, the man who was responsible for the death of my parents, okay? But with this thing, an innocent man died. People were sickened. Fans of our cheese, the very people who have been supporting us and helping us by buying that cheese…the answer is no. None of us would risk it. And that thing where Andy was suggesting they were all looking at the cheese like, maybe we should pretend this never happened? That was him being fucking dense about the good character of my sisters.Hemight have been thinking it, but they weren’t thinking any such thing.” My heart was pounding by that time. “It’s bullshit.”

“Goddess, you left two years ago,” Zeus said.

I held up a talk-to-the-hand hand. “I believe in my sisters. They didn’t do it. And they’re too close for one of them to have done it without the others figuring it out.”

“Are you sure you’re looking at it objectively?” Thor began.

I turned my icy gaze to him. “What? You think I feel so guilty about leaving that I can’t handle that one of them could be a liar and do this? Like maybe if I hadn’t left, if I hadn’t thrown in with bank robbers, if only I’d stayed, I could’ve prevented something like this?”

“Kind of,” he said.

I looked away. Ididfeel guilty. Iwasn’tobjective. I loved them. They were my sisters!

“Vanessa was a little shaky,” Thor said. “Even she didn’t seem a hundred percent.”

“Of course she was shaky,” I said.

“Goddess,” Zeus said.

“Don’tgoddessme. We need to solve this mystery. Andy’s lying. Because it wasn’t my sisters.”

“We’ll keep going,” Zeus said, “but you need to know that we can’t rule out your sisters just because they’re your sisters. That’s bad detective work, baby.”

“No…” I whispered, throat thick. What was I even saying no to?

“That’s enough,” Odin growled. “We rule out her sisters. It’s somebody else. End of story.”

“Ice doesn’t need to be patronized,” Thor said.

“I’m not patronizing her. Ice’s instinct is that her sisters didn’t do it. So we sit here fucking wearing her down because we can’t find easy answers? Making her doubt her objectivity? She says it’s not them. She says Vanessa wouldn’t do it. She says Vanessa would know if one of them is lying. It’s good enough for me.”

Thor and Zeus looked at Odin hard. But I wanted to kiss him.

Odin crossed his arms. The tension in the room was starting to feel overwhelming. He was patronizing me. Zeus was right—it was bad detective work to automatically rule people out.

Still!

The silence was getting thick. This was bad; it wasn’t like us to be at odds.

Thor turned to me with a grave look. “No more mystical butt-fucking for you two.”

“Oh my god.” I laughed and whipped a tiny ruffled pillow at him.

He caught it and whipped it right back.

I caught it and hit him with it. He flopped back on the bed, laughing, taking me with him. Zeus hit me with a different fussy pillow.

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