St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
“JUNE,” HE SAYS. His voice isn’t the same—it’s not silky or assured, but hesitant. His hands are dangling at his sides, like he’s not sure what to do with them. I can’t speak, can’t stay his name, because logically, I know it’s not Josh I’m face-to-face with but Andrew Smith.
The resemblance is so identical its dizzying. I can’t help the tears, the way they instantly leak from my eyes. I sink down, unable to even support my own weight. Through my watery vision, I look up at him, seeing how the years have altered his face. He has the same double-dimpled smile and slate-blue eyes, his sandy hair still thick but graying at the temples. Same cleft chin and square jaw, same five-o’clock shadow, even though he probably just shaved this morning.
“I’m Andrew,” he says. “Please, come in. I think we have a lot to talk about.”
I follow him into the house, where he hands me a tissue and waits for me to wipe my tearstained cheeks. I’m feeling a heavy mixture of disappointment and foolishness. Of course he isn’t Josh. It’s Andrew. And he knows exactly who I am.
I back up, the fear finally kicking in.
“Don’t be frightened,” he says, placing his hands out, the way someone might attempt to reassure a skittish animal. “Sadie let me know you were here. As soon as I heard, I knew I needed to talk to you.”
“She said you were on a business trip,” I say, waiting for him to nod his assent. He doesn’t.
“It’s a long story,” he says slowly. “Will you sit down?”
“Where is Sadie?” I spin around, expecting to see her in the kitchen or living room. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Andrew sidle back over to the front door and lock it.
“She went to drop off our son at a friend’s house,” he says. “Our girls are asleep upstairs. Come and sit with me in the kitchen.”
I trail behind him. The hair at the nape of his neck is wavy, the same way Josh’s used to get between haircuts.
I focus on breathing normally. Andrew wouldn’t do anything to me with his children sleeping upstairs. But I don’t know this man, or what he’s capable of, only that he looks exactly like Josh, right down to the broadness of his shoulders and the coarse hair on his forearms. When he turns around, I want to freeze-frame his face, capture exactly what my husband would have looked like had he lived to forty, like those forensic police photos that show a missing person’s age progression.
“I thought the text was from Sadie,” I say, sitting across from Andrew at the kitchen table, the same table where Sadie and I sat last night.
“I didn’t think you’d show up if you knew it was from me.” The casual way he says it sends a chill down my spine, and immediately my mind goes to Josh’s final text message—the one that I’m more sure than ever wasn’t from him.
I’m careful with my words. “Sadie told me you don’t think Josh’s death was an accident either.”
“I didn’t. I spent a long time wondering. And a long time feeling guilty.”
His voice is softer than Josh’s. Josh was all confidence, all high volume and energy, the person in a room making everyone around him laugh. Andrew seems quieter, more reserved.
“Why would you feel guilty?” I ask.
“Because I was supposed to meet up with Josh the day he died. I’m the reason why he was at Mile Rock Beach.”
I stare at him, panic rising under my skin. “You asked him to meet you there?”
“Well, he asked me if I’d see him, and I suggested that place. But he didn’t show up… or so I thought, until later.”
A chill creeps over my body. “But you were estranged. Why did he want to meet up with you?”
“We’d been messaging back and forth for a couple months. Sort of… getting to know each other again. When he told me he was in San Francisco, we agreed to meet up. I think we both knew that seeing each other would determine if we’d ever be able to repair our relationship.”
“He never told me about you…” My voice trails off. “I didn’t even know you existed, much less that you were messaging each other.”
“He reached out,” Andrew says. “It had been so long, but I had been thinking about him too. I was curious what he wanted. He seemed different—like he really had changed. We were both different people back then. Our mom wanted us to reconcile so badly—she was constantly telling me it wasn’t too late.”
If Andrew is telling the truth, it means during the months Josh and I were together, he was messaging the brother he’d never told me about. Was I the catalyst for wanting to repair the relationship? Was he planning to be truthful with me about his family once he had a chance to speak with Andrew in person? It’s something I’ll never know.
“I was in San Francisco with him,” I say. “We’d just gotten married earlier that week… He told me he was getting breakfast, then he sent me a text message saying he decided to go for a swim. He sent a heart emoji with it. He never used emojis.”
I watch Andrew’s face closely, but his gaze remains on the table. “Nothing from that day makes sense. I waited for Josh for almost an hour. When he didn’t show up, I was angry at myself for giving him a chance. Then my mom called the next day to tell me he was missing, and I knew something had happened.”
It’s almost surreal, imagining somebody besides me waiting for Josh that day. Andrew doesn’t offer any more details, so I jump in to keep the conversation going.
“Sadie said you’d gone to boarding school. Was it strange, going away without Josh?”
I can tell I’ve struck a sore spot. He drums his fingertips on the table methodically.
“I didn’t exactly go willingly,” he finally says. “But my parents thought it was the best for all of us. Maybe it was.”
I sense him slipping away from me, emotionally retreating, and I know it’s only a matter of time until he shuts down and stops giving me more details. But I have one question I can’t leave without asking.
“I know about Michelle—that she drowned here during a party. Is she the reason you and Josh stopped talking?”
Andrew brushes his hair off his face, a gesture uncannily like Josh’s. “Yes. We already weren’t really speaking, but after Michelle—there was no going back.”
When his eyes rise to meet mine, they’re so cold and hard. The household hums with quiet. After Michelle.
“What happened?” I ask, knowing the ultimate outcome but terrified of the answer.
We sit in silence for what feels like an eternity before Andrew speaks again. “Michelle was different from anyone I’d ever met. She was so sure of herself. Confident. Athletic. We had a couple classes together junior year, and I wanted to ask her out, but I was shy, and I didn’t think she had time for a boyfriend anyway. She had too much else going on. But then I made the mistake of admitting to Josh that I liked her. He was with a girl named Abby at the time—he always had a girlfriend. I thought I was safe to admit it, so I said I liked Michelle.”
“And what did he say?” I’m mesmerized by the idea of teenage Josh, a version of him I never knew.
“That I should ask her out.”
Relief washes over me. It’s what any normal brother would do—be supportive. But I know that isn’t how the story ends. That it’s not even close.
“I’m not sure what happened next,” Andrew says. “It depends on who you ask. But there was this photo of Abby that got passed around school. A photo Josh took of her—one he kept in his nightstand. I knew it was there. He’d bragged about it. She was—it was a Polaroid. She wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
Heat fills my chest, and I’m awash with humiliation for Abby, whoever she is, the teenage girl this happened to. It’s different, hearing the story from Andrew, than it was hearing it secondhand from Sadie. More personal, and even more disturbing.
“I got blamed for the photo,” Andrew says, looking ahead, instead of at me. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think Josh panicked and blamed me when he realized how out of hand it had gotten. I think he wanted to embarrass her because she was planning to break up with him and he didn’t want her to get together with anyone else, but he didn’t know the school administration would get involved. Somebody was going to pay for it, and I was the obvious choice. I knew the photo was there. I could have stolen it. My parents believed Josh. He was a good actor.”
“Oh,” I finally manage, wanting to defend Josh, but not wanting Andrew to stop talking. “That must have been so hard for you.”
“Hard, yes. And cruel. Abby… she tried to hurt herself, and she never went back to our school. I didn’t either. My parents came to me with the idea of boarding school for senior year. They tried to pitch it as a better education—I was doing so well in my classes and wasn’t being challenged enough. But they made it happen fast. My dad was well known, and he got everything swept under the rug. The school never actually expelled me, and it never went on my record, but I had to live with it anyway.”
“I can’t imagine,” I say, but it’s Abby I’m saddest for, a girl I’ve never met but desperately wish I could comfort. “That sounds so difficult—for you, and your parents for having to do that.”
He nods. “I always got the feeling my mom secretly believed me. That she had doubts about Josh. But she never told me that, and now he’s dead, and she’ll never say a bad word against him.”
I need to bring the conversation back to Michelle, as much as it hurts having to hear about this version of Josh. But Andrew keeps talking.
“You don’t want to listen to this, but Josh had a pattern with girls. Michelle was part of it. When I came back for Thanksgiving and he was with her… he rubbed it in my face. I could see how he’d changed her. He loved to taunt me, saying I’d die a virgin. And I snapped.”
My body goes cold. I can picture it, Andrew’s temper coming to life, his shoving Michelle’s head underwater in a pond and trying to blame it on Josh, the same way he thought Josh had blamed the photo on him. The way he could snap any second in this kitchen.
“What I did was terrible,” Andrew says. “But then it got worse.”
“What happened?” I grip the edge of the table, my fingertips white.
“At the party where Michelle went missing, Josh was the last person to be seen with her. Her cause of death was drowning, but she sustained a head injury prior to that. The police thought she must have slipped and hit her head on one of the rocks that surrounded the pond. But did she really slip? I spent a lot of time thinking he either pushed her, or…” He trails off, obviously not wanting to say it out loud. “Did he do it? Or was he not even there?”
I pause; is he waiting for me to weigh in? I picture Josh with a rock in his hand, his unassuming girlfriend turning around, something I’m horrified to even be imagining. “Why would Josh hurt his own girlfriend?”
When Andrew speaks, his voice is thick with regret. “Because he found out what I did. I knew he was going to find out eventually… but at the time, I didn’t care.”
“What did you do?” I say, my pulse throbbing in my throat.
“Michelle and I—we slept together,” he says, a pained expression on his face.
“So she cheated on Josh with you, and he found out?”
“Not exactly,” he says, taking a deep breath. “But if it weren’t for me, Josh never would have been so angry.”
I’m afraid of what he’ll say next. The version of Josh I’ve met since arriving in Napa doesn’t align with mine at all, and yet, the fragments are being pulled together like magnets, forming an image I desperately don’t want to see.
“I want to go,” I say.
“I slept with Michelle,” Andrew says, his gaze locked on the table, like he’s too ashamed to look at me. “And I made her think it was Josh she was with.”
I lean back in my chair, filled with equal parts disgust and fear. Still—why would Andrew admit to doing something so hideous if he wasn’t telling the truth about everything else?
“I didn’t kill her,” Andrew says as he looks up, his eyes imploring. “But if Josh found out, did I drive him to a terrible act? Who wouldn’t have cracked after hearing about that? I’ve regretted it every day of my life, but at the time, I was so angry. I had to make him suffer.”
I stand up on autopilot. I need to get out of here. Josh was apparently the last person seen with Michelle at that party, but Josh and Andrew are twins, so who was really with her? And Andrew was supposed to be meeting with Josh on the day of Josh’s death, leaving him with a better chance than anyone to have his revenge and kill Josh.
“You did something to him,” I say, backing away. “And you were following me in Brooklyn—you were watching me.”
“No—there’s a reason,” he says, his palms coming down on the table, wiry strength coursing through his forearms. “Yes, I was watching you, but not because I want to hurt you—”
I inch along the countertop, my hands behind me. One of them closes over a hard object. It’s a wine bottle, the same one Sadie and I drank from last night, the small-batch mondeuse. I grab the neck of it, and when Andrew stands up and advances toward me, I bring it in front of me. “Don’t come any closer.”
“June,” he says, his face full of concern and regret. “Please, don’t go.”
I stalk past him to the foyer and jiggle the doorknob frantically, but I can’t get it to open. Andrew doesn’t try to stop me, but he keeps talking. “Josh kept things from you. Please let me explain…”
I don’t want him to explain. I move into the living room, where I see the sliding glass doors leading onto the walk-out deck. I unlatch the doors, slip outside, and run headlong into the dark night of the vineyard, my breath coming in short huffs.
When Andrew calls my name again, his voice is louder. “June!” he yells, and I fish through my purse with shaking hands, desperately grasping for my key card. I run straight for the Barn, my footfalls heavy. I turn around to glance behind me, but Andrew isn’t following me.
Still, I keep running, even though I’m not sure exactly what I’m running from. I might be escaping a dangerous man. Or the danger could be all in the past. Maybe the danger died alongside Josh, my kind, adoring husband.
A man who might not have existed.