Page 13 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

Charlie nodded. “If she has, you’ll help her sync up with us?”

Marc looked uncertainly in Big Pete’s direction.

“We can’t make any promises,” Big Pete said. “But yes. If your sister needs help getting down to the river, Marc can guide her. We don’t have anything else on the calendar for him until he meets us with the van at Lake Mead at the end of this week.”

“So that’s settled,” Charlie said.

“Settled?” PK coughed. “May I remind you that Babette is missing?”

“Delayed,” Devon said. “We don’t know what’s going on. And as you said, this is her Essence Quest. She wouldn’t miss it.”

Stefan nodded. “Business is business. The show goes on.”

“That’s right.” Charlie was standing beside Devon now, the two siblings fronting a unified confidence, unearned as it might be. “The best thing we can do now is kick off this trip like she would have wanted. You have the script?”

“I can do it!” Imogen volunteered.

PK took a slow look around the beach, as if Babette might be hiding behind a rock somewhere.

“I suppose the welcome should come from someone at the company,” he finally said, handing his phone to Charlie.

“If I could have all of your attention,” Charlie said. He pulled out a pair of glasses and peered down at PK’s phone.

“My sweet unleashable darlings,” Charlie read. Cringed. “Sorry. Maybe I’ll just paraphrase.”

“Don’t,” Fiona said grimly. “I want to hear exactly what she was planning to say.”

Chapter Eight

Charlie’s voice rose above the growling river. “My sweet unleashable darlings,” he read, “we are gathered for the dawn of a new era at Babette Botanique. We have been Raw. We have been Fierce.”

“Those are the last two lines they launched,” Mandy whispered to Liv.

“Raw?”

“Root-vegetable-derived rejuvenating serums.”

Charlie shot her and Liv a silencing glare. “I have invited you here in honor of our newest, biggest endeavor yet. In three weeks, we will launch CareFree to the world. CareFree will be on the lips of every wellness influencer and in the hands of every person who wants to be liberated. But before we sell it, we have to experience it. This rafting trip is an Essence Quest. A chance to embody the essence of CareFree. Which brings us here, to the heart of the Grand Canyon, where CareFree’s potential was born.”

Mandy looked at the other guests circled around. PK’s eyes were shining, his lips mouthing along as Charlie stumbled over Babette’s script. Imogen, too, seemed fixated on Charlie’s every word. But the others had more complicated expressions. Devon and Stefan both looked worried. Fiona looked annoyed. And Lucinda was staring out at the water, uninterested in Charlie’s recitation.

“This Essence Quest is the final test of our new product line,” Charlie said. “No more fighting. No more striving. Now we will be carefree.”

If Babette were speaking these words, Mandy might have been inspired. But in Charlie’s halting voice, the rallying cry sounded more like a dirge, or a threat. The dry air crackled the hair at the nape of her neck.

“That’s it.” Charlie looked up from the phone to PK. “Is there anything else?”

“Just this.” PK stalked over to the luggage tarp, returning with the white cardboard box Imogen had dumped on him early that morning. He handed it to Charlie.

“A present from my sister,” Charlie said. He placed it on the ground and edged back, as if there might be something dangerous inside.

“Want me to shoot it?” Imogen asked. “Like an unboxing?”

Charlie hesitated, then nodded. Imogen handed her phone to Mandy.

“Head-on shot,” she said. “Close. Like I’m going to eat the camera.”

Imogen took the box, turned, and smiled hungrily, a lopsided, incisor-flashing grin. “Babette Sauvage is full of surprises,” she said. “Let’s see if this one is worth her absence.”