Page 78 of Face Her Fear

“What carpenter?” Sandrine said.

Answering a question with a question. Deflecting. Buying time.

“The carpenter your mother married,” Josie said. “Near the end of her life. The man she said she was in love with—did you meet him?”

“Of course I met him,” Sandrine said. “She made me be her maid of honor at their stupid, cheap little wedding. It was humiliating. She acted like we were so close, like she was such a good mother. I felt sorry for him at first because he had no idea who he was really marrying.”

“Did you live with them?” Josie asked.

Sandrine stiffened. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because Brian told me that Nicola tracked you down by speaking to someone on her father’s side. If Delilah had given Nicola up in secret after she was born, like she did with Brian and Taryn, then how would someone who knew Nicola’s father remember both Delilah and you? Unless, at some point, the four of you were a family?”

Alice gasped. “Is that true, Sandrine? You were there when Nicola was born?”

Sandrine’s voice shook with rage. “We were not a family.”

Before Josie could stop her, Nicola crossed the tiny room, pushing past her to get to Sandrine. She pointed an accusing finger at Sandrine’s face. “That carpenter was my father! He was in love with our mother, and she loved him back. We were a family and you destroyed it! You ruined my life—twice!”

FIFTY-TWO

Sandrine’s head reared back. She swatted at Nicola’s finger until she retracted it. “No, no. I didn’t.”

“Twice?” Alice shuffled closer to the door, keeping her wide eyes on Sandrine. “What does that mean?”

Near the end, Sandrine had said. Near the end of Delilah’s life she had met the carpenter which meant that she must have died when Nicola was fairly young. Since Nicola hadn’t ended up with her father, he must have died around the same time. In the last forty-eight hours, Nicola had outright accused Sandrine of killing Meg and doing something to Taryn. Brian had said that Nicola had other reasons for being on the retreat than him and Taryn. Nicola had lied to ensure her place on the retreat.

Josie had been right. The siblings were there for revenge but not because Delilah had chosen to keep Sandrine while discarding all of them. Nausea roiled in her empty stomach as she realized why they’d felt the cameras were necessary.

The lid was heavy in Josie’s hands, but she wasn’t ready to put it down. “Sandrine, what happened to Delilah and her carpenter? How did they die?”

Sandrine’s face paled beneath the dried blood from the cut that Nicola had given her. “What? What are you—”

Nicola cut her off. “Tell her! Just tell her!”

From her periphery, Josie noticed Brian take the vape pen out of his pocket. He held it in one of his fists.

Sandrine sagged, shoulders slumping. “It was an accident. They were hiking to the top of a mountain they frequently climbed in upstate New York. Mother fell. She was trying to take a picture and she slipped. Nicola, your father tried pulling her back up and he went over, too. It was a horrible, tragic accident.”

Nicola advanced on her again. Sandrine’s head banged against the wall behind her as she tried to keep away. Josie said, “Nicola.”

She stopped moving toward Sandrine but narrowed her eyes. “That’s what I read in old newspapers, too, after I did the DNA test and tracked down my lineage. Embattled actress finally finds true love and settles down only to fall off a cliff a few years later.”

“Delilah wasn’t capable of love, Nicola,” Sandrine said quietly. “You were too young to remember her or know her true nature.”

“We’re not talking about her nature,” Nicola said. “We’re talking about yours. You were on that hike with them. They had asked you to come home from college because there was something they wanted to tell you. I still don’t know why you came. Was it because you had to stay in their good graces to keep your college tuition coming?”

Josie watched Sandrine’s face. One of her eyelids twitched but she said nothing.

Nicola continued, “I found my father’s family, you know. He had a distant cousin only a couple of years older than him. They were close. He remembered everything. He told me you were with them. I confirmed it with the local police. One of the officers said that all of them suspected you’d pushed my parents off the cliff, but they couldn’t prove it.”

“You have no proof,” Sandrine said, voice shaking.

No proof. In Josie’s experience, those were not the words of an innocent person. Sandrine hadn’t said, “I would never” or “I did no such thing.” She’d said there was “no proof.”

Josie glanced first at Brian, still seated along the wall, and then at Alice, inching closer to the door. Both watched the exchange with rapt attention. It seemed as though no one in the room had taken a breath in ages. Forgotten was the alleged bear attack. Josie’s fingers ached from gripping the lid.

“But he had proof!” Nicola held up her left hand and waggled her ring finger, showing off her old, pitted wedding band. “My mother’s wedding band. The police found it in your jacket pocket when they got to the scene. You left your backpack and jacket when they took you in for questioning. This was inside one of the outer pockets. How did it get there?”

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