“‘Here’ meaning Loxahatchee?”
“‘Here’ meaning this house.”
Newbury nodded, but he already knew all of this. “Do you get back to visit a lot?”
We were cutting to the chase.
“Not really.” I kept talking to speed things up. “I come to Florida once or twice a year, but it’s usually to visit my brother Will in Miami,” I said, feeling my back teeth grind together. “I never come back to Loxahatchee instead.”
“And why is that?” Newbury replied.
“I’m sure you can gather why, Detective,” I said coolly. “But for your records, this place holds bad memories for me. If I want to see my family, there are plenty of other places I can do it.”
I was pleased with myself for keeping it somewhat together. I thought Marta would be proud of me too. I hadn’t called this town acesspool of discrimination and gossip, the way I normally did. Newbury had his eyes locked on me regardless.
“So I take it you don’t see your younger sister all that often then?” he pressed.
Heat started to climb up the back of my neck and across the apples of my cheeks. I’d trained myself over the years to not let my face betray too much emotion, but every now and again it slipped.
“No, I don’t. Like I said, once or twice a year, whenever I come down to see my other brother,” I admitted, keeping my voice hard. I didn’t like the knowing look Newbury wore in response.
“I can understand that.” He looked down at his notepad. “You live far away, and you young people text more than call these days, don’t you? I can never get my daughter to answer the phone. She sends it straight to voicemail.”Newbury looked up at Pullman briefly, letting out a rehearsed chuckle. “Do you text, you and Hazel?”
“Occasionally,” I said, but that was overstatement. I bit the inside of my mouth thinking about our text history—or lack thereof.
The truth was I was a shitty sister to her. Hazel always tried to keep in touch, dangling the carrots of a relationship in front me, even though she was the child. I ended up ignoring most of her messages. And it wasn’t just texts. She sent me TikToks, replied to my stories on Instagram. I just always had something going on. I did mean to respond, it just always slipped my mind, and now I had to admit that I had done the bare minimum for our relationship.
I tried to remember the last time she and I had spoken, and I felt my stomach flip. It was three months ago, back in January. I’d been in an Uber downtown to a meeting with my editor.
“Ohmygod, Rose!” She cried out when I picked up. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
I was glad she couldn’t see my frown. Had it really been that long? “Hey, Hazel, what’s up?”
I heard her take an excited breath on the other end of the phone. “So, remember how I told you that we were having all those meetings about colleges at school?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, saving me the embarrassment of realizing I had no recollection of her telling me this. “Well, someone from NYU did a whole presentation last week, and it was so cool. I’ve becomeobsessed.”
“That’s … great!” I said, hoping she couldn’t tell that I was becoming preoccupied by other messages on my phone.
“It made me want to come look at colleges up there, see the NYU campus, you know? I looked it up, and it’s not far from your apartment.”
“Yeah, it’s cool.” I continued scrolling.
Hazel kept gushing. “And I haven’t seen you since Thanksgiving, so what if I came up for spring break? I could tour NYU, and we could get brunch at this cool place I found online. Oh! And Chappell Roan is playing up there then too. Remember that singer I keep sending you the TikToks of? Dad told me he’d get us tickets!”
As her words began to sink in, I closed my email. “When’s spring break?” I asked. It had been a long time since I’d seen her, and I was touched that she wanted to come up here to spend some time together. I knew that I’d let my loyalty to Will trample my connection to everyone else in my family, and Hazel was the most undeserving collateral damage.
“First week of March,” she said, sounding happy.
I opened my calendar and groaned, seeing the glaring red block on my schedule.
“Oh, Hazel, I have to be in Miami for Will’s appeals court then,” I said. “And then I’m on deadline for book two.” My agent had already capitalized on the publicity of my first book by getting me a deal for another “factionalized” murder, and as ever, we needed the money.
I could hear the disappointment in Hazel’s silence. I felt a wave of guilt. “What about April instead?” she suggested quickly. “I bet Dad would let me take a couple of days off school—”
“Ma’am—” The driver interrupted. “We’re here.”
I nodded. “Listen, Hazel, I just got to my meeting. Can we talk about this another time?”
There was silence on the other end. “Sure,” she whispered.
