Page 210 of Because I Killed Him
Hillaire stands on the bed, her feet planted wide apart and her arms crossed over her chest, glaring down at Vivian with beady eyes. Vivian stands front and center, half-turned so I can see the full sweep of her dress. She’s wearing Coquette—myCoquette. The diamond-green gown, silk the color of deep bottle glass, clings to her like paint, with its sequins sparkling like tiny, captive stars. Vivian lifts her hair, drops it, spins again, and the fabric gleams brighter with each toss. It knocks the breath out of me.
“It shows too much cleavage,” Hillaire declares.
“I think it’s tasteful,” Vivian says, striking a slow, sultry pose in the mirror behind her. “Just the right amount of mystery.”
“The right amount for every man at your rehearsal dinner—including Father—to know what you look like naked.”
Vivian scoffs, then pivots toward me. “Tellher, Lore. Tell her she’s wrong.”
Hillaire scowls and shifts to the edge of the bed as if to storm off, until her gaze lands on me.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks flatly.
Before I can respond, Vivian’s smile fades. Her eyes widen as she moves closer to the phone and inspects me more closely.
“Lore,” she whispers. “Are you okay?”
I open my mouth, searching for the right words, but nothing elegant comes out.
“I… miss you guys.”
Vivian’s lips tremble with guilt before she presses them together, as if recalling every call she ignored, every message she left unanswered, and every silence she forced me to choke on alone. Hillaire, meanwhile, remains stone-faced, her sharp features half-shadowed by her platinum bob.
“That’s why you’re this upset?” Vivian asks, her voice gentler now.
“Yes… and no. I had a bad day.”
“Tell us about it,” she says. “We’re here, Lore. Just talk.”
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to peel the scab off, piece by piece, until the wound bleeds again. What I want is to tell my sisters that I needed them, that if they’d been here sooner, maybe I wouldn’t have made the cowardly choices I did. Maybe they’d have forced me to tell Edmund the truth before everything fell apart. Now it’s too late. They can’t fix it. No one can.
But they’re my sisters. And they asked.
So I tell them everything, from Charles trying to kill me in the locker room to touching down at the Roaring Rails Station to the moment Edmund walked away in the rain. The only piece of the truth I guard is how deep my feelings for him went, how deep they still are, spreading through me like a sickness. I tell them only that Edmund was my friend.
Vivian listens with a mask of shock and fear, while Hillaire remains stone-faced, standing above it all like a judge I can’t read.
When I finish, Vivian breaks first, her voice thin with disbelief.
“Oh, Lore… I’m so sorry. I knew there had to be more. I knew you wouldn’t have walked away from fencing without a reason, butthis? Being attacked, having to kill Charles… and then this deal with Edmund Prew.” She swallows hard and wipes away tears. “You did what you had to do. I don’t judge you for any of it. But Lore… they’re not like us. Harry says it too. Blues can’t be trusted, even when they pretend to care. And they can’t help it either. It’s how they’re made.”
At the mention of Harrison’s name, Hillaire stiffens. She steps off the bed, right in front of Vivian, and looks straight at me.
“Why are you letting this happen to yourself?”
“Hilly,” Vivian snaps, her fingers digging into Hillaire’s arm.
Even though the question stings, I keep a straight face. With Hillaire, it’s always like this: I never understand her until I do.
“Why are you letting this happen to yourself?” Hillaire repeats.
“Because I… I don’t know how to survive here. Not anymore.”
“Survive?” Hillaire spits the word as if it offends her. Then, though her face remains stiff, her eyes fill with tears, gathering so steadily they don’t tremble. “You think that’s what saved me? Wanting tosurvive? You think that’s what dragged me out of that river?”
Vivian gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. My pulse pounds once, then stops.
The river. The boat. The storm. Two years ago, when Hillaire was only twelve, Vivian and I pressured her to go out on the water in front of the mansion, even though the sky was snarling. After five minutes, the boat capsized, tossing us into the raging current. Vivian and I clawed through the reeds toward the bank, screaming Hillaire’s name and fearing the worst. Hours later, we found her trudging along the shore, half-drowned and half-dead, clutching the blood-slick stump where her hand used to be.
