always worried about what a trial and its verdict would mean for Katie and for me. But in that moment, I discovered I was mostly relieved. Finally, I thought, the exhausting burden of her secret—our secret—would be lifted from my shoulders. I would be able to tell someone where Missy was and see to it that she was properly buried.
I tipped my head and looked into my sister’s model-pretty face.
“Okay,” I said slowly as I tried to figure out how to express my only reservation. “I’ll go with you, confess to my part in it. But maybe we could say that we met Missy by chance and helped her run away from her husband. All on our own. Then you killed her because she reminded you of our mother. And I dumped the body to protect you. That way, we keep Gran, Aunt Lucy and the Underground out of it.”
“Fuck Gran,” Katie said very clearly, “and Aunt Lucy.”
By now, the fingers on her right hand were repeatedly raking through the grass, almost as if they had a life and will of their own.
“You don’t mean that,” I said quietly, and I believed what I said. Katie adored Gran. She always had. And Aunt Lucy was more mother to us than Lydia Tyler had ever been. “I know you love them and would never do anything to hurt them.”
She dug her fingers into the sod, yanked out a handful of grass, flung it away from her. The blades scattered in the breeze coming up from the river. Then she scrambled to her feet and stood over me. Her eyes narrowed, her face flushed red and her whispery voice became a snarl.
“You think you know everything, don’t you? Gran’s little pet. So smart and brave and perfect. But I know a secret that you’ll never know.”
I stared up at my sister, distressed at seeing jealousy I’d never realized was there. But mostly appalled that I’d been right all along. That despite her years away from Maryville, Katie remained a dangerously angry young woman. She’d just gotten better at hiding it.
The jealously made no sense to me. But I understood her anger, knew that its roots were twisted deep into the earliest years of our childhood. I understood her anger, had always felt somehow responsible for it. But now, most of all, I feared it. Feared that tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, Katie would lose control again and direct all her pent-up rage at another innocent victim.
At the moment, that rage was directed at me.
Perhaps it was my expression, but something made Katie realize that she’d gone too far. That I’d glimpsed the demons still possessing her. Her anger vanished as quickly as it had come.
“I’m so sorry, Brooke,” she said urgently. “Please forgive me. I lied. I don’t really have any secrets. I just want so badly to be a member of this family again. To do something worthwhile, just like you. More than anything, I want you, Gran and Aunt Lucy to trust me. Like you did before—” She shook her head, pushing away that thought of the past. “I would never go to the police. Never do anything to hurt the Underground. Or our family. Especially not you.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She pulled the edge of the white apron she wore up to her face and, for a little while, she smothered anguished sobs in it.
As I had ever since I could remember, I ignored all my other concerns and focused my attention on my sister’s breathing. I listened carefully, alert for gasping or wheezing or for any other sign that she might be having a potentially deadly asthma attack. From where I sat, I could clearly see the outline of her albuterol inhaler in her skirt pocket. A tiny metal cylinder with a jointed blue plastic sleeve. If I had to, I could help her use it.
But despite her tears, Katie’s breathing remained normal. Her sobs turned to sniffles and, after a little while, she lifted her reddened face from her apron and carefully blotted her eyes. She spent a moment adjusting her tearstained apron back over her skirt. Only then did our eyes meet again.
She flashed me a shaky smile, stuck out her hand.
I hesitated for just a moment before grasping it.
Always stronger than she looked, Katie pulled me easily to my feet.
“Sisters forever?” she asked as she put her arms around me.
It was the way most of our childhood fights had