I nod, smiling. The scenes I’ve just imagined disappear. Of course it couldn’t be Waylen. NotmyWaylen.
—
At home in the bathroom, I count my birth control pills carefully—just to be sure. Twelve little pills remaining neatly in their oval case. When Waylen returns to his home office, after we’ve stopped for a nice lunch on the way home, I rummage through the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. A big cartoon bottle that says “sleeping pills” or “ACME memory erasers.”
In any case, I find nothing out of the ordinary. I try to add up the pieces Bertram Casimir’s case has given me: a missing girlfriend, a dead girlfriend, a sister with a dark past.
Waylen would never hurt me. He wants me all to himself, yes, but not in aKiss the Girlsway.
That means that I’m the one who’s slipping, then. He didn’t give me sleeping pills—I’m just exhausted from trying to catch Bertram in a lie when the man seems too clean to even be human. Waylen didn’t tamper with my car. Bertram—or someone he hired—gained access to it while my brother is incapable of monitoring the security cameras I park under. The little partnership I have with my brother is slipping.I’mslipping.
“It was always inevitable we’d have to stop somewhere,”my brother told me from his hospital bed. We’ve been running from ourselves for most of our lives. It’s this desperation that has made us so good at what we do. I understand how well people are able to hide what they’re capable of, even from themselves. I force them to confront it. I offer them a saving grace, or a just punishment. I don’t think that I’m any better than they are, because I’ve been forced to do the same.
I hear the creak of Waylen’s chair against the hardwood floor upstairs. He’ll be preoccupied for a while. And since I don’t have my car, he knows I’ll be home. That alone seems to satisfy him—at least for now.
I take my laptop and my phone, and I slip into the basement.
It’s cold and damp. The walls are unfinished, fluffy pink insulation contained between wooden frames instead ofplaster, and exposed pipes and beams where a ceiling should be. Plastic bins of old books from Waylen’s college years, and old toys of Collette’s that we never got around to donating are stacked like giant bricks.
I can see the spines of Waylen’s old paperbacks through one of the bins. Murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and textbooks about MLA and APA stylings. Before he became an editor, he considered being the next James Patterson.
If you want to know the truth about a family, go to their basement. It’s the one part of the house they don’t decorate to impress you.
The cell service isn’t great down here, but I know it’s the only place where my voice won’t carry throughout the surrounding rooms.
My brother answers on the first ring. “Is everything okay?” is how he greets me. He sounds so tired.
“I need advice,” I say. “I’m stuck on this case.”
“The billionaire? You’re a clever fox. You’ll get there.”
“My instincts are way off,” I tell him. “Everything points to him being clean.”
“Margaux, come on,” he says. I hear the distant beep of some machine, reminding me that he’s in a hospital. Reminding me that my foundation is falling apart. “Think. He’s got a sister whose entire life has been ruined by him. Erin hired us because we’re the only ones who would work for free, but also, Bertram has bought out every legal avenue she could have pursued. There isn’t a lawyer in the world who would touch him.”
“Skylar is dead,” I say. “Bertram’s other ex.”
“What?” Mr. X’s voice is raspy. “When did that happen?”
“An ‘accidental drowning’ yesterday. No coverage in the news at all, just like when Annie went missing. Skylar had a family, people who loved her, but there’s nothing online, nothing in any news articles. Her Instagram was deleted, and the most I could find are some vloggers asking what happened to it.”
“It’s just like his parents,” Mr. X reminds me. That’s right—there’s nothing available online about them either. I’ve been so preoccupied by Bertram’s love life that I haven’t given much thought to his past. In most cases, I don’t need to go back any further than the date of the crime. “You never did like to spend time analyzing the criminal’s history.”
“Because it’s a waste of time,” I say. “It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t hugged enough as a child, or he tortured birds. My interest begins the day he stole that software from his sister. Or maybe even later than that, on the day Annie went missing.”
“Your interest begins there, but does the case begin there?” He pulls the phone away from his face, and I hear him coughing, muffled, as though into a pillow. I pretend I didn’t hear it, for my own well-being as much as for his.
“Where would I begin to look?” I ask.
He catches the desperation in my voice. “Margaux.” His tone changes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Oh, nothing, brother dear. Just that I need to prove Bertram is the one who did the evil deeds. Bertram was the one who killed Annie and then made up some ludicrous story about her stalking him. Bertram is the one who found a way to kill Skylar—maybe not directly, but through his power and influence, using someone he couldhire. I have to prove that Bertram was the one who messed with the engine of my car.
Because if Bertram’s guilty…the man I married is innocent.
Ihaveto prove that Bertram is guilty. The idea of Waylen being behind this case spinning out of my control is too crazy to say out loud, despite his renting a car to stalk me throughout the city to scare me off of it.
“Tell me,” Mr. X says. It’s a demand, but it’s given gently. He was always good at that. I found it so calming after our parents died. Someone was looking out for me. Someone kept me on the right track, made sure I did the right thing, even if everyone in the world thought the worst of us.
