Page 57 of The Family Plot
Now, my tears burn as I swipe them away. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”
“How many times did you draw him dead? And how could youbearit?” I swallow down the sob that’s threatening to escape. “He’s ourbrother. And it’s like… like you killed him over and over.”
Slowly, she turns her head from side to side. “Dahlia, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I let out a groan before grabbing her wrist. “What are you—” she starts, but I pull her toward her closet, open the door, and drag her with me to the second one in the back. Then I yank her into the passageway and push her forward, the smell of mildew sudden and sharp.
“Stop!” she says. “I hate it back here! What are you doing?”
I ignore her, reaching for my phone in my pocket. When I turn on the flashlight, I shine it on the wood, walking a few more feet until the light latches onto paper. I look back at Tate, who’s stopped moving, and with a grunt, I grab her again, pulling her toward her nightmare of a collage.
Tate gapes at the wall, taking in her drawings like she’s awed by her own skill. Mouth ajar, she runs her hand over one and then looks at her fingers, eyes wide, as if she expects the sketch to have transferred onto her skin.
“These are of Andy,” she says.
“And how do you think I felt when I stumbled upon them? How doyou think it makes me feel when I see”—I glance at one in particular, my heart stopped by all its gray, graphite blood—“my twin brother looking like this?”
Tate stares at the paper, but her head is shaking back and forth. “You thinkIdid these?”
“Oh, stop it—they’re your studies for the Andy diorama! Just like the ones you did for the Blackburn women.”
She continues down the passageway, squinting at the other sketches, and I follow her with my flashlight, letting my vision glaze over so I don’t have to see them too. Still, I make out the shape of them, the way the papers overlap. A shiver whirls through me.
“And the way they’re arranged!” I say. “It’s exactly like the photos under the shed.”
Tate swings toward me. “Are you going to accuse me of doing those, too? Photographingmurderedwomen?”
“Why not! You make dioramas of them!” I shout—but then I hear myself, and I shake my head. “No. Sorry. I don’t… I know you didn’t take the photos. You were a teenager back then.”
“Oh,that’swhy I didn’t do them! But if I’d been—what, in my twenties?Thenyou could see me killing people?”
“That’s not what I’m saying! I’m just— It hurts, okay? Seeing these studies! And it’sweirdthat—”
“Dahlia! I’ve had three days to do the diorama. I haven’t had time for studies. What do you think—”
“What’s going on? It sounds like a bad production ofKing Learup here.”
We turn to find Charlie in the doorway, lifting a hand as my flashlight blinds him. I jerk my phone back toward the wall, and he steps forward with a slouchy swagger, pulling the smell of alcohol into thetiny space. Shadows pool in the hollows of his cheekbones, and for a second, I’m stunned by how gaunt he is, like weight has dropped from his skinny frame in the last few days alone.
He takes in the papers illuminated against the wood. “What the…”
“She thinks they’re mine,” Tate says, “but they’renot.”
Her words are so pointed, so adamant, that I finally take notice. My hand slips to my side, casting the light on the floor, blackening the blue of Tate’s irises as she turns to me.
“Do you think it’s been easy for me, doing this diorama? Do you think Ilikedoing it? I told you: Ihaveto do it. It’s the only way I know to—” She stops as Charlie squeezes her shoulder. She closes her eyes, inhaling sharply. “Butthis? These sketches? I didn’t do them.”
I rub my forehead, pushing deep circles into the skin. “But—if you didn’t do them, then…”
Charlie fills my silence as I trail off. “I think you should listen to her, Dolls,” he says, words a little slurred.
“But,” I try again, “I don’t get it, who would—”
And then a different voice cuts in: “Dahlia.”
The three of us turn to find Mom in the passageway, a few feet from the door that leads to her own closet. I point my phone toward her, and it spotlights her exhaustion. Her ponytail, loose and rumpled, is pushed toward one side of her head. Her eyes are circled with shadows. Her arms hang limp at her sides.
