Page 89 of The Favorite Sister

“I’m sorry,” the officer says, “I should have phrased that more clearly. Your sister wasn’t in the car. She was in the trunk.”

“Thetrunk?” I’m at a loss. “When did she get in the trunk?”

“Sometime between when she came home from Talkhouse with Stephanie and when you woke up in the morning.”

“Why didn’t we hear her? Wouldn’t she have been kicking and screaming?” As I ask the question, I work it out for myself. “Oh,” I say, my voice low, the sharp threat of vomit high in my throat. “Oh. She was... she was not alive? In the trunk?”

The officer shakes his head, wincing on my behalf. “We believe she was deceased before she was placed in the trunk, yes, but that is one of the things we have yet to conclusively determine.”

“You’re saying she was murdered. Is that what you’re saying?” My mouth is sticky and dry. I must look like I’m having difficulty swallowing, because Jesse brings the water bottle to my lips.

“Drink,” she commands, lifting the bottle. Water leaks from the corners of my mouth, splashing my bare thighs. I rubbed my legswith bronzing lotion this morning, and the real color of my skin is exposed in jagged rivulets.I rode in a car listening to the new Taylor Swift song while my sister’s dead body was in the trunk. Like patting my head and rubbing my stomach, it is a cognitive challenge to have this thought and swallow water at the same time.

“How did this happen?”In the library with the candlestickmy mind answers with a giggle that tells me I am not well.

“We’ll know more when the autopsy report is in, but your sister sustained a sizable wound to the back of her head. It’s possible she slipped and fell, but if it were an accident, there wouldn’t have been a need to conceal the body. And also. Because your sister was not, um. Well. It would have taken some strength to move her. A woman couldn’t have done that on her own.”

Because your sister was not thin,is what he was almost about to say.

“Vince did it,” Jesse says, and the officer shoots her a reproachful look. “I don’t know why she can’t know that is what everyone is thinking. He found out about Brett’s affair with Stephanie and he fucking lost it.”

I am standing. Why am I standing? I have my hand on the wall. I am doubled over, as if I am in labor, again. Maybe I am, a little bit. This is a realization so awful it must be born.

Someone killed my sister and that someone may or may not have been Vince, but we are going to say that Vince did it. We are going to say that he did it just like we are going to say that Brett and Stephanie had an affair when they didn’t. We are going to rig reality.

Jesse and the officer are telling me to sit down. I try but I immediately get back up. To sit on the truth. That’s something people say, and I understand it now. There is a strain of the truth that is a cement-backed chair, a pea in your mattress, and a pebble in your shoe. Bearable, but just barely.

So I pace until Layla arrives. By that time Jesse has worked out what we should tell her.