Reputation(19)
I fix my gaze on a knot in the stair finial. At first, I think my dad means my sister didn’t do the hack, but then I realize—he means she didn’t kill Greg. “I know that,” I say.
“We need to keep her safe right now. Away from the gossip. And whoever did do this? He’s still out there.”
That tagline would definitely bump Aldrich University up a spot on the US News & World Report Best Colleges ranking: Come for the e-mail hack, stay for the serial killing! I sigh. “Go to campus, Dad. They probably need you.”
“Are you sure?” His eyes are concerned. Unsteady.
I nod. “I’ve got Kit. It’s fine.” Then I scrutinize his thin face. “You look terrible. Are you sleeping enough?”
“Of course.”
“Eating enough?”
But then we’re interrupted. “Aunt Willa?” says a shocked voice.
On the landing stands Kit’s nineteen-year-old, Sienna. Behind her, like a smaller Matryoshka doll that could nest perfectly inside her older sister, stands sixteen-year-old Aurora. It’s only now that I remember my father said on the phone that the girls are staying here, too—even Sienna, who could technically escape to her dorm room. They are negative images of one another, Sienna fair and blond, Aurora with more olive skin, like her father, Martin, but they both have the same bright, upwardly sloped eyes, Cupid’s bow lips, and rounded faces. Aurora looks as ballerina-scrawny as ever, but Sienna wears a tight black dress that reveals curves. Shit. When did that happen?
“Oh my God,” I say, rushing for them. “You guys.”
I’m assaulted by a mixture of smells: fruity bubble bath, sour bedding, sticky-sweet hair products. Their bodies feel frozen stiff, like they’ve turned to wood. Their skin is cold. Beneath my arms, Sienna is trembling.
There’s a cough a few risers up, and here is Kit. There are circles under her eyes, and she looks dazed. Despite the fact that she is wearing a thick oatmeal cardigan and wool pajama bottoms, she has her arms wrapped around her body like she’s spent the night in a snowdrift. She sees me and stops short, her eyes going wide. “Why are you here?”
Somewhere in the room, a gasp. Maybe it’s me. This isn’t exactly the welcome home from her I expected.
But then again, I also kind of deserve it.
9
KIT
FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2017
I’m sorry,” I say to Willa. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’m just . . . surprised.”
“It’s okay,” Willa answers in a clipped voice, then turns. “Come on. Let’s get out of this drafty foyer, okay? Do you need coffee?”
She heads toward the kitchen, and I wilt against the banister. Willa. Just looking at her makes me well up. I so rarely see her. She only turns up at sad events—funerals, accidents, divorces—so of course I’m plunged into memories of the sad moments I saw her last. But more than that—Willa. The tie to my past. The tie to my mom. She has Mom’s eyes, and they’re looking back at me, but I don’t know what they’re thinking. Who’s at fault for the emotional chasm between us? Or maybe it’s no one’s fault. Maybe we are just normal sisters who don’t speak as much as we should. Yet that makes her being here now even more momentous. I know she didn’t want to come. I know it was a huge sacrifice to get on that plane. My chest feels tight with a mix of embarrassment for the charity I didn’t ask for as well as gratitude that she’s done the difficult, uncomfortable thing just for my sake.
Also, with Willa being here . . . it makes it all real. Greg is dead. Someone murdered him. I don’t know why the murder happened, or what motivated it, or if the person plans to strike again. I don’t know how narrowly I escaped being murdered myself. I’ve become aware that until the cops find who actually did it, they’re going to suspect me—at least a little bit, anyway. With Willa here, the past few days suddenly aren’t a dream. It’s as real as it gets.
I’m not ready to deal with that.
Willa bustles around the kitchen, knowing where everything is kept by heart because my father hasn’t changed a thing. As usual, my sister’s small, angular face is makeup-free. Her reddish-brown hair, cut to the shoulders, has streaks of blond through it—from the sun, most likely, as Willa isn’t into the whole salon scene. Her body radiates with health and athleticism, and not just because she’s wearing leggings and a hoodie that shows off her taut waist. It astonishes me that she’s still single. I get that a lot of women in LA are size zeros and look like supermodels, but Willa is truly a catch.
After the coffee is made, she carries two mugs and walks down the hall. Without discussing it first, she heads to the back room of the house, our favorite place. It’s where my mother let her interior decorating freak flag fly: All of the furniture upholstery is busily patterned, and nothing matches. The shelves are crowded with bird’s nests, pine cones, wood carvings, old egg-crate artwork Willa and I did in preschool, an old Bakelite rotary telephone in sixties orange, and a framed diorama featuring two tiny train-model people trapped in two separate test tubes reaching out to touch one another but never quite connecting. Mom’s old sketchbooks are piled in a corner. A few unfinished paintings, both of them still lifes of junk on our kitchen table at the time, rest on easels along the wall. Time hasn’t touched this room. It is one hundred percent 1997, the year of her fatal car crash.