FORTY-NINE

I lock my knees to keep from falling. The tone in Cate’s voice is so on the nose it hurts. It’s sprite or tart or any of those words people use when they mean to say a girl’s astute, but don’t want to give her too much credit. But I don’t underestimate my sister. Not one bit. In her brightness and cheer, what I pick up is threatening undertone and the final arrival of a long-brewing storm.

Cate’s all about subtext.

“What’s going on?” I ask, as my gaze darts from the stormy night to the swinging French door back to my dirty boots, that triad of dread I can’t yet piece together.

“Why, hello to you, too,” she purrs.

“You—you’re setting me up, aren’t you? You’re trying to get me in trouble.”

It’s like I can hear her smirking through the phone. “Are you mad at me, Jamie?”

“No! I’m not mad. I’m confused. The cops want to talk to me about some fire. They think … they think I did it.”

“Did you?”

I take a deep breath and think back to the bag in the Jeep. The firecrackers. The stolen jewelry. My own smoke-stained clothing.

The way I forget things.

“I d-don’t know,” I whisper.

She laughs. “So naturally you want to blame me. Figures. How’s Danny, by the way? You can tell him to stop calling. I’m not interested.”

“Danny’s not here.”

“But you have his phone?”

“Yeah, I do. I have your stuff, too, you know. I went and dug it all up this afternoon.”

“My stuff? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The messenger bag you hid in the tree trunk after the fire. Remember that? With your journal and those books from Dr. Waverly’s office and our mom’s stone tiger. And your phone. I have that, too.”

There’s a long pause. “Hold on. You have all that?”

“Yeah. And Cate, the owl in Dr. Waverly’s office. That was our mom’s, too, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was.”

“How did she get it?”

“Maybe I gave it to her as a fucking Christmas present. Maybe I didn’t want to keep it hidden in a box in the back of my closet just to preserve poor Angie’s sobby feelings any longer. Hold on, did you say there was a phone? What phone?”

“The phone you used to lure Sarah Ciorelli into the barn that night.” I shake my head. “You tried to kill her.”

Cate sputters. “Where the hell did you find all of this?”

“What do you mean where? I’m the one who buried it.”

“You did that? Why?”

“For you! So the cops wouldn’t find it. So you wouldn’t get in worse trouble than you already were! But I shouldn’t have bothered because now you’re trying to ruin me!”

“Oh, God,” she says. “Oh, no. This is like … I don’t even know. Wow.”

“Wow? Are you drunk or something?”

“No, I’m not drunk. That is not what I am.”

“What are you, then?”

“I’m sad. I’m really fucking sad right now.”

“I don’t get it. That’s what the thing with the conversion disorder was about, right? You knew I felt guilty about hiding evidence and that’s why my hands go numb when I get upset.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Um … yeah.”’

“No, no, that’s not right, Jamie. Your conversion disorder isn’t about burying my shit.”

“It’s not?”

“Well, when did your hands first go numb?”

“They went numb when I was at school. With Scooter. It was when I heard about Sarah Ciorelli and the fire.”

“Was that before or after you buried those things in the woods?”

I start to tremble. My whole body.

“Before,” I say softly.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know that. We need to talk. In person.”

“Why? So you can send the cops after me?”

“No. Not that.” She tells me where she is.

I can’t hold back any longer. “Did you kill her, Cate? Our mom? Is that what this is about?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Why would I not? You tried to kill Sarah. You gave me that play. Electra. The one where the girl ends up killing her own mom. It’s like, you want me to know but you don’t want to say it!”

There’s silence.

“Cate?”

“Did you actually read that play I gave you?” she asks.

“Part of it. Enough.”

“Well, no, not enough. Because Electra doesn’t kill her mother, dickhead.”

“She doesn’t?”

“No. She’s an accomplice, but she doesn’t do the actual killing.”

“Then who does?”

“Orestes,” Cate says. “Her goddamn brother.”

There’s horror and then there’s this moment.

There’s right now.

No. Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. She hates you. She’s luring you in for the kill.

“You still sure you want to know the truth, Jamie?” Cate asks.

Do I?

Is there still a choice?