But instead of asking, I sipped my tea and said, “This is lovely. Thank you.” I looked around. “And the house is as beautiful as ever. Obviously, we never saw much of it…” Risky topic, hard left. “But it’s exactly how I remember.”
It was so identical, in fact, that walking through the front doors into the massive foyer and seeing the grand staircase had nearly given me a panic attack.
Dakota nodded, sipping her own tea. “I haven’t changed a thing.”
It was a haunted house, then, frozen in time. I could sense Scout trying to meet my eyes and share a disbelieving look, but I resisted. We weren’t here to make fun of Dakota, as tempting as it had always been. Besides, some of the darkness this house held—we were responsible for it.
I cleared my throat. “And it’s just you here?”
Dakota placed her teacup in its saucer. “My mother lives on the third floor.”
Scout coughed up her drink.
Dakota glared at her. “She’s unwell. She has been for years. Not that my father or his new wife give a damn. It’s all on me.”
“You know, all these years, and we’ve never seen your mom.” Scout grabbed a napkin, dabbing at her chin. “How do we know this isn’t a Norman Bates situation?”
“Scout,” I hissed, at the same time as Dakota said, “You really haven’t changed either, have you?”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said soothingly. “We didn’t mean to offend.”
Scout leaned back in her gilded armchair. “Dakota and I are one for one as far as dead siblings go. I’d say that puts us on equal footing where offense is concerned.”
Dakota glowered. “Why are you here? Other than to tell me the one reporter who was finally going to listen to me went and got herself killed.”
So Dakotawasupset about Rosie’s death, but mainly because she wasn’t around to give her a platform anymore.
“Rosie didn’t get herself killed, she was murdered,” I corrected. “And Scout and I are trying to figure out why. Well, we’re trying to figure out—” Scout kicked me under the table, and I cut myself off. “Anyway.” I gave Dakota a pleading look. “We came today to beg you to tell us what you were planning to tell Rosie. Please. We need to know what story she was working on.”
Smug satisfaction spread over Dakota’s face. “What else? She was writing about the Christmas party. And how there was no way Alden could’ve killed your sister.” She glanced at Scout. “Not everyone believes the poison you’ve been whispering for years.”
“I told the truth,” Scout countered. “And I said it loud. I never whispered.”
“Scout,” I admonished. We were doing the opposite of making Dakota comfortable—we were stabbing her with verbal needles.
“And the truth will always be,” Scout continued, ignoring me, “that I brought my little sister into this house, and your family notonly murdered her but made sure she never left. And then tried to erase her from the surface of this earth.”
Dakota leapt to her feet, upending her teacup with a clatter. “Liar.I was with my brother all night. He couldn’t have done it!”
What?I tried to navigate past my shock. The cops had never told us why they weren’t moving forward with Alden, just that they weren’t. “Dakota, are you saying Alden had an alibi?”
“She’s his sister,” Scout insisted. “She’d say anything for him.”
“That’s what everyone said,” Dakota hissed. “But thank god the cops were reasonable. They listened to me. They verified it. Were you so convinced it was him you never bothered to ask why he wasn’t charged?”
“Dakota.” I rose slowly, hands out in surrender. The pretense of the tea party was over. “What exactly happened that night? The last we remember seeing you, you were drinking whiskey with Emmy.” I could still picture the crystal tumblers, shiny as the grand chandelier.
Her face twisted. “Emmy got too drunk. And no one was paying attention to me, like usual, so I went to bed.”
“What time?” The police estimated Georgia was killed between midnight and two. The details of her case were burned into my brain.
“Eleven. And I wasn’t in my room for ten minutes before Alden knocked on my door and came in. He was upset and wanted to sleep with me.”
“Upset about what?” I asked at the same time Scout blurted, “Sleepwith you?”
“You don’t understand what it was like.” Genuine hatred simmered in Dakota’s eyes. “With our dad being what he was and our mom dipping out. We had no one else. Alden was my lifeline.” Her voice faltered. “And then he left me, and I had no one.” She met my gaze. “Georgia rejected him that night. I’d warned him, said she was using him because of who our family was—”
“As if,” Scout spat.
