The room’s tension ratcheted up to the point of explosion. The walls seemed to shift, locking me in an airless trap that stole my breath. I stood up and headed for the hall, hoping to find a space the screaming silence couldn’t reach.
The opening of the courtroom door stopped me. A woman slipped inside. The odd angle blocked my view, but she had shoulder-length straight hair.
Marni’s gasp came first. It bounced around the near-empty room. My gaze shifted from Marni back to the unexpected attendee. During those few seconds, the woman turned.
Holy shit.I might have said the words out loud. My stomach dropped. A terror-filled screech begged for release as the reality of what I was seeing took hold.
That face. She looked just like her mother. The steady stare and unreadable expression. Glasses long gone. The blondish hair now brown. No longer a cute but awkward fifteen-year-old with long legs and stooped shoulders. A grown woman. Tall. Pretty. Rigid and assessing.
Aubrey Tanner. The missing Tanner daughter. Technically, my cousin. Back in Sleepy Hollow after a fifteen-year unexplained absence.
Not missing. Not dead.
A thousand questions bombarded my brain. Where the hell had she been? What had she done... and why had she shown up now?
I blinked, trying to stop the buzzing in my head before it stole my balance and sent the room careening into a wild spin. No matter how hard I wished for the invading vision to disappear, it didn’t. The harsh truth finally seeped in.
The dramatic entrance contradicted the pile of evidence pointing to Aubrey’s demise. But she wasn’t another one of the town’s ghosts. She stood there, alive and refusing to be ignored, as if her presence hadn’t just dropped a massive ticking bomb in the middle of all our boring lives.
Aubrey looked around, her gaze hesitating on Hanna, then Marni, and finally landing on me as she scanned the room.
Aubrey smiled. “Looks like I arrived just in time.”
Chapter Two
Marni
Aubrey Tanner...Why now?
My already wrenching anxiety at being forced to take part in this courtroom spectacle spiked with her unexpected appearance. Years of therapy forgotten in an instant. The breathing exercises I’d learned failed me. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to begin a guided meditation through the app on my watch.
The procedure for moving forward now that the old bastard finally had died from whatever rot festered inside him was supposed to be simple. Declare the members of the younger Tanner family dead, settle Xavier’s estate, and move on. Instead, Aubrey’s sudden arrival kicked off an emergency. Just by walking in the room, she brushed away the filthy layer of dust covering the memories of that horror-filled day fifteen years ago.
The judge ended up postponing the hearing to “give Ms. Tanner time to talk with counsel and come up to speed”—which sounded ominous—and with that Aubrey left the stunned roomwithout saying another word. She didn’t offer an explanation. Didn’t even bother with asorry, I forgot to tell you I wasn’t dead.She waltzed in and slipped out, leaving upheaval and chaos in her wake.
Nothing new there. Even at fifteen she’d walk into a room and a chill would sweep through it. “Accidents” would happen when she was around, like her brother falling down the stairs while she insisted he tripped. That fire in her parents’ bedroom on the Fourth of July weekend when she was twelve. The one she swore she didn’t start even though she conveniently disappeared from the family’s pool party right before the flames consumed the curtains and the alarm blared.
I didn’t go inside. Ask Marni. She’ll tell you. I was sitting next to her the whole time.
A lie she repeated without blinking. Manipulative as a kid and being thirty only made Aubrey scarier. Potentially more resourceful. A survivor... but of what?
I could have handled the hearing surprise in a bunch of objectively understandable ways. Gone up and hugged Aubrey. Lied and told her how relieved I was that she was okay. Welcomed her back. Asked where she’d been. Begged her for the answers that eluded the town for so many years, including the whereabouts of her mother. My missing friend, Victoria Tanner.
I didn’t choose a rational path. I bolted. As soon as the judge excused us, I got up and cut through the room’s choking tension on the way out. I didn’t acknowledge Stella and Hanna as they pummeled me with heated side glances. Their building fear barreled into me and threatened to drag me under its crushing wheels. I couldn’t handle their panic until I got control of my own.
Twenty minutes later, sitting in my car in the courthouse parking lot with the doors locked and engine turned off, I struggled to quiet the shouting in my head. Years had passed but I would have known Aubrey Tanner anywhere. She’d been blessed with her mother’s piercing ice-blue eyes. For Victoria, they provided a blurry window into the brilliant but troubled mind behind the beauty. With Aubrey, those dead eyes hinted at a future strike. A killing blow.
She creeped me out even as a teenager.
Aubrey being in town should have been a cause for celebration. A relief. But danger lurked. Anyone with half a clue would know that.
The media would go wild. That guy who called me once, a month ago, claiming to be writing a book about the disappearances would resurface. Rumors would surge again. The conspiracy theories would ramp up and outrun the truth. Just like last time, some people would plow the facts under a fictional layer of bullshit. Camera crews would descend, all waiting for a word, for a peek, into the woman who walked out of the Hudson Valley mist and back into our bumpy lives.
My heart ached for Victoria, the best friend I eventually betrayed. We met when I was Aubrey’s kindergarten teacher, just out of college, and bonded over how to deal with the child’s obvious lack of empathy. My connection with Victoria grew and deepened over the next decade despite our steep financial differences and respective places in the societal pecking order. Mine being far below hers.
She said I was the one person who listened to her and didn’t judge. I loved her energy. Her style. The way she swept into aroom and commanded attention while I sought comfort hiding in a corner.
She trusted me, which turned out to be her worst mistake... and my biggest regret.
