St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
WHEN I RETURN TO the Backyard, the windows of Andrew and Sadie’s house are lit up, glowing a buttery yellow. The evening chill has set in, so I wrap my denim jacket tighter around myself. I raise my hand to knock, but the door swings open before I can even make contact, leaving my fist suspended in midair.
“June, right?” Sadie says. Her hair is in a low bun, and there are red stains on her T-shirt, on her hands. Blood, I think, but I know it must be grape residue from the crushing and fermentation. “Is everything okay with your stay? Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s all fine.” In the turbulence of today, I almost forgot I’d booked a two-night stay at the Backyard; my room key was still in my purse. “Look, I’m sorry to just show up like this, but I was hoping we could talk. Could I come in for a minute?”
A line appears between Sadie’s eyebrows, but she recovers quickly, her lips turning up in a polite smile. “Okay—I just put my youngest down for the night, and the house is a total mess, but… yes, come on in.” There’s a hesitation in her voice, like she’s hoping I’ll change my mind.
I follow her into the foyer and down the hall toward the kitchen, my eyes darting to the family photos on the walls, the ones that stunned me into disbelief mere hours ago. “You have a beautiful home,” I say.
“Thanks.” She sounds a bit strained, and I wonder if she knows I’ve been here before. “Please, take a seat.” She gestures to the kitchen table. “I’m so discombobulated; this whole day just got away from me. Can I offer you a glass of wine? I sure could use a drink.”
“I’d like that, thank you.”
She reaches up to open a white cupboard above the countertop and retrieves two wineglasses. “We made a small batch last year with these mondeuse grapes as a kind of experiment. They’re native to France and aren’t grown here, but every so often, I get it in my head to try something new. I’ve been waiting to open this bottle.” She faces me, uncorks the dark bottle, and pours us each a glass, then carries them over to the table. The wine is the color of dark cherries.
“Cheers,” Sadie says, and we each sniff and swirl the wine in our glasses in tandem. I hold the first sip in the back of my throat like a breath. It’s peppery and aromatic, a throaty blend of savory and sweet.
“It’s delicious,” I say.
“And you know wine,” she says. “You own a natural wine bar. I looked you up.”
“That’s right. I—did you know who I was yesterday when we met?”
“I recognized you,” she says, taking another small sip. “I couldn’t figure out from where, until I realized you were Josh’s wife, and I saw you at the funeral. I’m so sorry about Josh. It’s terrible, what happened.”
I sip my wine, feeling it go directly to my head. The woman in the trench coat, turning away. It had been Sadie. “Yes. It really was.”
A silence hangs between us, hard and heavy.
She holds her wineglass under the light. “The funny thing is, I didn’t even drink wine until Andrew introduced me to it after we inherited this place. His dad was trying to sell it for the longest time, but nobody wanted to buy, so Andrew came to him and told him he wanted to take over. I think David was relieved, honestly. From what Andrew told me, David loved this land and wanted it to stay in the family.”
“I remembered your face from the funeral,” I say. “But I didn’t know Josh had a twin brother. I saw Andrew’s photo on your website, and I thought—” It’s almost too ridiculous to say out loud what I actually thought. That my husband had come back from the dead. That he was never dead in the first place.
Sadie’s face softens, her eyes deep with empathy. “God, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been. I know how I felt when I found out… No wonder you were looking for Andrew.”
“You didn’t say anything to me. At the funeral.”
Sadie shakes her head. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there. Andrew wouldn’t go. He completely shut down. I’d only just found out Josh existed… I felt like if I couldn’t convince Andrew to go, I at least needed to be there, to show that we cared. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to you. I thought it was best I didn’t. You were…”
She doesn’t have to say the rest. I was hysterical. I was a wreck. What would I have said, if she had introduced herself, if she’d paid her condolences? If I’d found out about Andrew ten years ago?
“Anyway,” Sadie continues, “when you showed up here and I realized who you were, I should have said something, but you were gone by then.”
“I didn’t say anything either. I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. Until today, I had no idea who Andrew was. And I’d like to see him in person, because I want to talk to him about Josh.” I feel the wine warming my insides. I haven’t eaten anything since last night. “I’m staying here another night—my fiancé is arriving shortly.” I wasn’t planning to mention Kyle, but it feels like a form of protection.
“That’s great,” Sadie says. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you found someone after what happened to Josh. That couldn’t have been easy.” She looks genuinely happy for me, her blue eyes on the brink of tears.
“It took a long time,” I say. “It took me years to accept Josh’s death as a random tragedy. I got a text message from his phone telling me he was going for a swim, and it just didn’t feel like him. He used an emoji, which he never did.” It sounds ridiculous out loud, even more so now than it did in the months after Josh died.
“I know,” Sadie says, drumming her fingertips on the table.
My breath comes as a sharp inhale. “How do you—”
“Bev told me you went to see her today.”
“She told you?”
Sadie nods, the insides of her lips stained from the wine. “She was worried about you. She and I talk almost every day. She called me right after you left.”
“Oh. Okay…” I’m temporarily thrown off, irrationally annoyed that Bev and Sadie are so close, when she didn’t approve of me as a daughter-in-law. But I force myself to refocus and move on.
“Look, I found out what happened here, on the vineyard, with Michelle. Were you there the night she died? The party at the winery? I know you and Andrew have been together for a long time… Were you in high school together?”
She shakes her head. “No, we met in college. I never knew Michelle. But why are you asking about her?”
“I’m trying to figure out who Josh was. The parts he never told me about. Did Andrew ever tell you anything about that night?”
“Not much,” Sadie says. “Just that Josh was the last person to see Michelle alive, and that they were arguing. Andrew said Josh flipped out when he saw him talking to Michelle. Andrew didn’t mean anything by it—he was home from boarding school for the weekend. But Josh had a pattern—he only seemed to want girls when somebody else was interested in them.”
I think back to the first night Josh and I met. He’d been at the party with another woman, but I was there alone. I hadn’t seen a jealous side. I’d been wholeheartedly swept up in the heady romance, the idea of love at first sight. We rarely had normal days. They were full of grand gestures. Our relationship was an amusement park ride, a carousel I never wanted to get off. It was thrilling, the certainty in Josh’s voice when it came to us. I’d marry you today.
I shrug off the intrusive thought. “Boarding school? Josh never mentioned anything about boarding school.” I don’t say that Bev already told me about Andrew going there. I want Sadie to give me her own, unbiased version of events.
“Because he didn’t go,” Sadie says. “Only Andrew was sent away.”
“Wait, what? Why was he sent away?” My head is spinning wildly. Bev had said Andrew was at boarding school, but the way Sadie phrased it made it sound like he was sent there against his will.
Sadie looks uncomfortable, like she wishes we weren’t having this conversation. “There was an incident with one of Josh’s girlfriends… Andrew got wrongly blamed for it, and that was when their relationship fell apart.”
“What kind of incident?”
“It was so many years ago, June… Do you really want to hear all of this? I don’t quite understand why this all matters.”
“It does.” There’s an edge of desperation in my voice. “I know it doesn’t seem relevant, but it is. I need to know who Josh was.”
Sadie sucks in her bottom lip and briefly chews before letting go, like she’s weighing how much to tell me. “One of Josh’s ex-girlfriends had a nude photo that somehow got passed around the school. Apparently Josh had had it in his nightstand, and other than himself, only Andrew would have had access to it. Josh told everyone Andrew was the one who circulated it as some sort of revenge because he was jealous of Josh, but it was Josh who did it. He was mad because he’d heard from a friend that she was planning to break up with him, and he didn’t handle rejection well.”
“At least, that’s what Andrew told you,” I snap, immediately defensive. But Sadie doesn’t snap back. Instead, she just looks sad and resigned. “What was her name? The ex?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie says. “Does it matter?”
I change course, sensing a shift in Sadie, like she’s about to shut down. “Does Andrew think Josh was responsible for Michelle’s death?”
Uncertainty clouds Sadie’s face. “They were arguing. That’s what he told me.”
The panic I felt sitting across from Rodney threatens to return. I’ve been so fixated on finding out who killed Josh that I haven’t let myself dwell long on why someone killed Josh. On whether it was an act of vengeance for something Josh had done—something that might have been even worse. I can’t give in to those ideas. I’ll get lost in the pitch black of them.
“When did you find out Andrew was a twin?” I ask, pushing the image of Josh and Michelle, Josh and another wronged ex, out of my head.
Her eyes take on a misty, faraway look, and she’s silent for a moment. When she finally speaks, her voice is low. “Not until after Josh was dead. Andrew completely broke down when Bev told him the news. He told me everything. It all spilled out—the photo, boarding school, Michelle, Andrew thinking Josh might have had something to do with her death. I was shocked. I had no idea he had a twin, and apparently he wanted to keep it that way.” She laughs bitterly.
“Josh didn’t tell me anything either,” I say, a small part of me grateful to be in solidarity with Sadie, given that she’d been kept in the dark too. “Everyone said we barely knew each other when we got married. But I really thought I knew everything about him.”
Maybe that’s what is bothering me the most. Not that he lied, but that he lied so easily.
Sadie’s face clouds over. “Andrew thought not telling me was the best way to protect me. From what Andrew told me, and forgive me for saying this, Josh bounced from girl to girl, always chasing the next high. He wanted what he couldn’t have. I think Andrew was afraid Josh would try to break us apart.”
Hearing her tell the story that way—the way Andrew must have told her—sends a shiver down my spine. Sadie obviously believes it. Did Andrew lie to her to make himself look better, or was I on a familiar trajectory with Josh? Had he not died, would our roller-coaster ride have ended in a staggering drop? Rodney Young seemed to think so. I take another sip of my wine. My glass is emptying a lot faster than Sadie’s, the wine hitting me harder than usual on my empty stomach.
But Rodney and Sadie are both biased. Rodney is a grieving father, and Sadie only heard Andrew’s side of things. Maybe they misunderstood Josh. He had been a hopeless romantic—not chasing the next high but trying to find true love.
Suddenly, Sadie rises from her seat. “Mila’s up. She’s going through a sleep regression at the moment, and she’s waking up a few times a night. Terrible twos, I guess.” She heads for the stairs, jogging when she reaches the bottom.
I hadn’t heard Mila make a sound.
I remain in my seat, my mind racing. Andrew has obviously convinced Sadie that Josh was involved in Michelle’s death, but the version of Josh she’s describing is the complete opposite of the man I married. Josh was passionate, and he moved quickly, but that’s only because he was sure about me.
Still—he lied about his past. Was he trying to protect me, or was it more about protecting himself?
A staticky sound comes from the counter, followed by Sadie’s low voice murmuring something to Mila. I notice the baby monitor, the same kind Phoebe has, the one with a video screen. Kyle and I occasionally babysit her girls, so I’m familiar with how it works.
I stand up and turn the monitor’s screen on, expecting to see an empty toddler bed, because Sadie probably picked Mila up to soothe her. But instead, I see a fully sleeping little girl sprawled on her back, curly hair matted to her face. And what I hear isn’t Sadie comforting her child but Sadie speaking with someone else on the phone, in lowered tones.
“… says her fiancé is joining her. What do I do?”
I hold my breath, turning up the volume as high as it can go.
“I’m going to say something,” she hisses, then a long pause. “Fine, but you need to get here soon.”
My damp palms clasp the monitor. There’s a good chance she’s talking to Andrew. Which means whatever he’s doing, and whatever he wants with me, she’s probably a part of it.
Suddenly, there’s no noise. I frantically turn off the monitor’s screen and place it back on the counter where I found it. I sit down at the table and scroll through my email on my phone.
“Sorry about that,” Sadie says, sitting down across from me. “Look, June—I know we just met, but you seem like a good person, and I’m sorry for everything you’ve gone through. You’re right that Josh kept Andrew a secret. But only because Andrew cut him out first. Andrew wasn’t perfect back then either, but… Josh might have been truly dangerous.”
I blink, my eyelids heavy. “What are you talking about?”
Sadie sighs. “I get the feeling you think Andrew is somehow involved in Josh’s death, but I can assure you he wasn’t. He spent a lot of time thinking it wasn’t an accident, but eventually, he accepted the truth. And I think you should too.”
My mind reels. I’m not the only one who didn’t think it was an accident.
I try to stand up, but my knees buckle.
Sadie’s kitchen goes fuzzy around me. I was right all along. Josh was murdered. But I don’t feel any warped degree of relief that I wasn’t crazy for believing it. Instead, panic lights my brain like a match as I sink to the floor.
My vision goes dark as my mind spins with what I’ve learned.
Josh was murdered, but he might also be a murderer.