Page 54 of The Lies We Conjure
“Holy shit, HexdatedWinter?” Wren asks, breathlessly latching the doors before throwing herself against the jamb with a dramatic flair, like she’s about to faint. “And then he snuck out and tried to get with her last night? After all that?”
“None of our business,” I stonewall, making a beeline for the stuffed bookshelves.
“Are you kidding?” Wren screech-whispers, following my path.“It’s totally our business! A secret like that is exactly the sort of juicy shit we need to know.”
“I highly doubt Ursula was murdered because those two used to date and Hex apparently has exactly zero self-awareness or boundaries.”
“But it could be important. You heard Ada—their parents might blow a gasket if they figure it out.Quel scandale!”
“Thewrongscandal. We want to learn about whatever happened ten years ago.”
Wren cocks a brow, her mood swinging back to mischievously delighted with the croissant carbs hitting her bloodstream and the thrill of what she’s just learned in the hall. “Turn our educated guess into a research-based reality? Or drop it on the cutting-room floor?”
Talk about mixed metaphors. “Yes. That.” I gesture to the bookshelves. “Let’s dive in at eye level and work from there. You start on the left; I’ll start on the right. Our priority is anything that can give us insight into what happened to Marcos Blackgate, the cousins’ parents, and, I don’t know, any sort of ledger or record that Ursula may have kept.”
Wren rolls her eyes but allows me yet another mock salute and gets to work. Though she can’t do so without hearing her own voice. “You know, I’m supposed to be the trusting one and all that but maybe I’ve been listening to you because, well, not that they have something nefarious going on but… why would Infinity just offer up their theories to you in the hallway?”
This does surprise me. Both the timing of Wren’s query and that she’d think of it at all. Even worse, I don’t have a great answer. “I… uh, thought they were making conversation.”
“Before seven in the morning after a night full of literal terrors?”
My breakfast flops unceremoniously in my gut. “Valid point. I thought they just wanted someone to talk to. Some people are morning people, you know.”
“Well, yeah, but, like, whyyou? You’re so much of a stranger that they didn’trecognizeyou.” I don’t miss her emphasis on the factthat I’m not the person they knew all those years ago and yet they accepted me as such.
“Um… I guess that’s something to think about.”
Wren taps her temple. “Multitasking. Searching books, thinking about motive.”
“You know studies show that multitasking actually makes you mediocre at everything instead of more efficient, right?”
“Only someone who fears the power of multitasking would even set out to prove that point.” Wren starts combing through her side of the shelf. “Anyway, something to chew on with Infinity.”
“Indeed.”
It doesn’t take long for me to key in on several uniform, leather-bound journals. I pull out the first one and flip through it—last year’s date is prominently stamped at the top. Short entries line page after page, with longer missives taking up pages in handwritten ink. “Looks like these are dated ledgers of some kind.”
Sweeping across the slim spines, I go ten years back. Ledger retrieved, I begin thumbing through, intending to find the dates in July because the yearly dinner seems like a good place to start in figuring out the timeline and circumstance of the deaths in question.
My sister frowns. “Where’s the one for this year?”
“Maybe in her desk?” I guess.
Wren must agree because without a word, she scuttles around the desk and starts yanking at knobs and handles carved into the massive piece of furniture.
Within the ledger, the pages are lined, and thick with the same looping handwriting I’d seen in Ursula’s signature when I bound my blood—and the two of us—to the contents of the will. Dates run in an orderly fashion throughout—each page is topped with one, and though there are often gaps of three and four days, they’re sequential entries of what appears to be Four Lines business.
Funds donated against a new oil pipeline.
A record of a presentation from Horatio Cerise (Hector’s father?) on new medical technologies.
Correspondence with the United States Forest Service.
But in mid-March the pages go blank with a strange gleam.
“Locked, locked, locked,” Wren groans. “Maybe that key Auden has goes to these?”
“Maybe. Though Evander had a key too, remember? He put that ring on its chain.”
