Then she shifted her weight.
A faint, thin scar sliced through her left eyebrow.
I was there the day she got it. She was ten years old, climbing on the kitchen counter to snag cookies from the top shelf. She slipped, split her head open, and begged me not to tell Mom what really happened.
My younger sister, Sarah.
Sarah had gripped my hand tightly at Derek’s funeral. She slept in my spare room for a week afterward because the quiet terrified me. She brought me takeout, washed my hair, and helped me organize the mountain of paperwork covering the dining table.
She knew exactly where the spare key was hidden. She knew my daily routine. She knew which prescriptions knocked me out for the night.
“She’s still my sister,” Sarah murmured quietly.
Derek didn’t miss a beat.
“She stopped being your sister the day she took the house.”
“Mom left it to her in the will.”
“Because Claire played the role of the devoted, perfect daughter while you were shoved to the side.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
For the last three years of our mother’s life, I drove her to chemo, changed her bandages, managed her finances, and slept in a hard plastic chair beside her hospital bed when she was scared. Sarah visited when she felt up to it, which was rare.
When Mom died, Sarah got half the cash savings, a few investments, and Grandma’s vintage jewelry. I inherited the house because I had quit my lease and cut my work hours to become a full-time caregiver.
Sarah called it blatant favoritism.
Derek had listened to her complain. Clearly, he had been listening with an agenda.
“You promised we would leave together,” Sarah said.
“We are going to.”
“When?”
“The second you find that folder.”
“You’ve been telling me that for months.”
Derek’s tone turned icy. “Check the nightstand.”
Sarah flinched.
That microscopic reaction told me everything I needed to know. She had eagerly betrayed me, but she was just now realizing that Derek’s promises belonged to the same place as his funeral—it was all just another calculated performance.
She pulled the nightstand drawer open.
My cell phone buzzed against my chest.
One short vibration.
Sarah froze in her tracks.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” Derek asked.
“A cell phone buzzing.”
She took a slow step toward the bed.
I shoved the phone under my stomach, but the screen had already illuminated the dust motes in the pale light.
Sarah dropped to a crouch.
First, her palms hit the carpet. Then her dark hair spilled forward. Finally, her face appeared under the edge of the mattress.
We locked eyes. Her jaw dropped.
I lunged before she could make a sound.
I slammed my shoulder into the wooden frame, grabbing her wrist tight. Sarah tumbled backward, and the phone went flying out of her grasp.
“Sarah?” Derek’s voice crackled from the speaker. “What’s going on?”
I scrambled out from under the bed and snatched her phone from the carpet. The screen displayed a blocked caller ID. The line was still live.
I brought it to my ear.
“Derek.”
Dead silence on the other end, save for the sound of breathing. The exact same steady, rhythmic breathing I had listened to in the dark for eleven years.
“Claire,” he finally breathed out.
My knees almost buckled.
I had envisioned this exact scenario in my dreams. Derek would come back because the coroner made a terrible mistake. He would walk through the front door, pull me into his chest, and apologize for every tear I shed.
But in none of those fantasies did he sound annoyed that I was alive and lucid.
“You watched me bury you,” I whispered.
“Just listen to me.”
“Were you at the cemetery?”
“It’s complicated, Claire.”
“Did you stand there and watch me cry over that grave?”
Sarah started inching closer. I held the phone up, out of her reach.
Derek let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re acting hysterical. Hand the phone back to Sarah.”
“You let me grieve for you for two entire years.”
“I did what was necessary.”
“And now you’re trying to lock me in a psych ward.”
“We are trying to get you the psychiatric help you desperately need.”
For a heartbeat, I just stared at the framed wedding photo on the nightstand.
This man used to bring me coffee when I was working late. He used to slow-dance with me in the kitchen. He held my mother’s frail hand in her final moments.
He had mastered every tender, loving thing a good husband was supposed to do. And then he used that absolute trust to construct a cage around my life.
I threw the cell phone onto the hardwood and stomped on the screen with my heel.
Sarah shrieked and shoved me hard. My spine hit the dresser. The framed wedding photo tumbled off, scattering glass across the rug.
“You ruined everything!” she screamed.
I stared at my own sister.
“What exactly did he promise you?”
She snatched her red leather purse. “Get out of my way.”
“What did he promise you, Sarah?”
“A life where I didn’t have to constantly come in second to you!”
She bolted for the hallway.
I chased after her and snagged the strap of her purse near the top of the staircase. The leather snapped.
Two keyrings clattered to the floor. Three orange bottles of my prescription meds spilled out. A USB drive, a folded passport, and a glossy photograph skidded under the entryway table.
The passport had Sarah’s face, but the name printed next to it was Jessica Thorne.
In the photo, Derek had his arm around her in front of a white beach house. His hair was shaggy, and he sported a thick beard, but he looked perfectly healthy.
Perfectly alive.
Sarah dropped to her knees, frantically grabbing at the items. I kicked the USB drive deep under the console table.
Then, I sprinted to the open living room window.
“Mrs. Higgins!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Call 911!”
Her voice carried over from the garden instantly.
“They’re already dispatched, sweetie!”
Sarah’s face drained of all color. She darted toward the kitchen, but I jammed a heavy dining chair under the back door knob.
“You have to let me out of here.”
“Not a chance.”
“He’s going to come after both of us now.”
“You should have thought about that before you handed him the keys to my house.”
The sirens wailed closer.
The second two police officers breached the front door, Sarah burst into hysterical tears.
She spun a wild story about coming over to check on me because I didn’t show up at the office. She claimed I was suffering from delusions that Derek was still alive and had violently attacked her without provocation.
Mrs. Higgins marched through the front door, clutching her smartphone and a metal trowel.
“I got this woman on video letting herself in with a key,” she announced to the cops. “And yesterday, I recorded the screaming. It started right after she went inside and abruptly stopped before she walked back out.”
One officer located the Bluetooth speaker under my mattress. His partner bagged the stolen pills, the spare keys, the fake passport, and the smashed cell phone.
When they fished the USB drive out from under the entryway table, Sarah stopped faking her tears.
At the precinct, Detective Laura Vance slid a paper cup of water across the metal table toward me.
