“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What are you doing here?” she echoed back.
“Looking for you,” I said, wanting to take a step toward her but finding my feet unwilling to move.
“You weren’t supposed to,” she said, lifting one foot and dangling it over the void. My heart leapt into my throat. “Didn’t Ann give you my letter?”
“She did. Can you please stop doing that with your foot?”
Lanie met my eyes and leaned forward slightly, daringly. Even though she said she didn’t want me to find her, part of me wondered if she had been waiting for me. She knew I’d look for her. Maybe she wanted me to save her. Maybe, after all those times when I had done exactly that, she expected it.
“Lanie,” I begged. “Don’t.”
She sighed and put her foot back where it belonged. “I don’t know what to do, Josie. I’ve made such a mess of everything.”
At one point in the not-too-distant past, I would have agreed with her. Lanie was the emotional equivalent of a bulldozer: nothing—and no one—was safe. She had consistently abused our long-suffering aunt, driven our delicate, tormented mother into the arms of a cult, and destroyed my relationship with Adam, robbing me of any sense of stability in the process. For nearly a third of my life, I had blamed my sister for everything—but I was starting to realize just how unfair I had been. Adam had played more than a passing role in his betrayal, our mother had emotionally abandoned us long before Lanie put that pillow over her face, and my time abroad had, in the end, probably been good for me. The only thing that Lanie was responsible for making a mess of was herself.
And so I extended a hand to my sister and said, “That’s not true. Come on. Let’s go home.”
“I can’t go home.” She aimed her flashlight over the edge of the loft, to the hard ground that I knew existed beneath the cover of darkness. “I’m sorry.”
“Think of your daughter, Lanie. She needs her mother.”
Lanie’s face twitched. “She’ll be better off without me.”
“That is absolutely not true,” I said, summoning all my courage and taking a reckless step toward her with an outstretched arm.
Lanie whirled toward me, moving so fast that she wobbled. I stopped short, choking on fear while my sister regained her balance.
“It is true. A girl needs a mother she can look up to, someone she can emulate. She needs a role model. That’s not me. I can’t be that person. I’ve tried—oh my God, have I tried—but I can’t do it. I’m a bitter, unhappy mess, and all I can give is pain and suffering.”
“Lanie, no. You might be unhappy right now, but you won’t always be. Trust me. You have people who love and care about you, people who will help you. You have me.”
I reached for my sister’s hand, and this time she didn’t jerk away.
“I’m sorry I ruined your life,” she said softly.
“My life is just fine,” I said, squeezing her hand tightly. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
“I ruin everything.”
“Stop it. That isn’t true.”
She tugged her hand away from me and switched off her flashlight, receding into the shadows. “You don’t know everything I’ve done.”
Do you think Lanie might have pulled that trigger? Adam’s words materialized in my head, pulsating and bloodred. If Warren Cave didn’t shoot him, what other reason would she have for saying he did?
Swallowing my fear, I said, “Then tell me.”
There was no answer, and I swept a hand in front of me, looking for my sister in the pitch-black. The small flame of a lighter flared suddenly, and I startled backward.
“Cut that out. Think of the hay. It’s a fire trap in here.”
She ignored my warning, inhaling audibly and making the tip of a cigarette glow cherry-red in the darkness.
“Lanie,” I insisted. “Please. Let’s get out of this barn.”
She said nothing, the up-and-down movements of the cigarette the only evidence I had she was there. Then, on an exhalation, so quiet that I almost missed it, she said, “I don’t think it was Warren Cave.”
“What?” I demanded, sure that I had misheard her mangled words. “What did you just say?”
“I don’t think it was Warren Cave,” she repeated more clearly. “I don’t think he killed our father.”
My blood went cold in my veins. If Warren Cave didn’t shoot him—
“Wait,” I said, interrupting my own thought process. “You don’t think? You mean you don’t know?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t know. I used to be certain. But now every thing’s all mixed up. I don’t think it was him.”
“Who was it?” I asked, barely daring to breathe.
She shrugged slightly.
I exhaled; my blood thawed and began to travel sluggishly through my body once more. This wasn’t going to be a confession; this was confusion.
“Lanie,” I said carefully, “tell me the truth. Have you taken something?”
She sniffled and dropped the cigarette, its glowing tip disappearing under the blackness of her foot. “That’s not what this is, Josie.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“You don’t believe me,” she said, her voice incredulous in the dark. “I’m finally telling the truth, and you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” I said, worried that I was about to lose her again. “I believe you when you say you’re not certain anymore. But I also believe that you’re extremely tired and possibly not entirely sober right now. Let’s just go home, and we can talk again after you’ve had some sleep. I promise.”
“I can’t sleep yet, don’t you understand? Everything is a mess.” She grit her teeth audibly. “On the one hand, I have this really clear memory of seeing Warren Cave walk through the back door. I remember his big black coat, his dyed black hair. I remember seeing him put a gun to the back of Dad’s head, and I remember hearing him say, ‘This is all your fault.’ And then I remember him pulling the trigger.”
Something sparked in a recess of my brain. I opened my mouth to ask Lanie to repeat herself, but she’d already moved on.
“But then sometimes that memory isn’t quite as clear. Sometimes I think he said something else, something . . . something about a pearl. Sometimes I can see his hair, but not his face. And then sometimes it’s more clear, but clear in a way that I know can’t be right. Like, sometimes I can see his hand on the gun so clearly that it’s like a photograph. But I can also see this flash of gold on his hand.”
“Warren could have been wearing a ring,” I said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Except,” Lanie said slowly, scratching at her chest with her nails, leaving angry little welts down her skin, “I can see the ring because it was facing me. I was standing to his left. The ring was on his left hand. It was a wedding ring.”
I blinked. “A wedding ring? You mean like what Melanie might wear?”
“Was Melanie left-handed?” she asked. “The hand with the ring was the hand holding the gun.” She paused to gulp. “And Warren was right-handed.”