Page 76 of Thicker Than Water
“Jules, are you here?”
At first I think I’m imagining it, but the front door closes, footsteps scurry, and Sienna appears, panting. Strands of hair stick to her temples. Her blue eyes blaze.
“He knows him. Wyatt knows him. Henry Hendrix. He seems to befriendswith him. But he never told me that, never acted like Henry was anything more than a stranger to him. Is Wyatt protecting him, helping him cover up Gavin’s murder? He told me a hundred times not to look into Henry Hendrix, even though Henry’s alibi didn’t make any sense—and wasn’t evenreal, it turns out. Julia, what the fuck?”
A sound escapes my lips—something between confused and startled.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’ll slow down. Henry’s alibi is that he was working at Home Depot that night, his co-worker drove him home, and he didn’t have a car, so he didn’t have a way to get to Gavin’s. Obviously, I don’t need to tell you the issues withthat—but get this: I went to Home Depot. Henry wasn’t even working that night. So I went to his house and followed him.”
“You what?”
“I didn’t plan to. I was just going to talk to him, but then hewas leaving, and his car was getting away, and—it doesn’t matter. The point is: he ended up meeting with Wyatt. Not at the station. At some random community center in Hillstead. And they werelaughingtogether. Basically hugging. So I think Wyatt’s, like, in on it, Jules. I think Henry killed Gavin, and Wyatt’s been helping him cover his tracks.”
Sienna grips the back of a chair, breathing hard, like she’s fought to cross a finish line.
“That… doesn’t sound like Wyatt,” I say.
“Yeah, well, neither did cheating,” she snaps, “but he did that, too.”
I’ll admit, it’s surprising, Wyatt being friends with Henry. He made no mention of that to me last night. For a second, I allow the idea—Henry as the killer, someone who isn’t Jason with blood on his hands—to lap at my mind.
But then I look at my phone on the counter, and all comfort evaporates.
“Sienna,” I say.
Whether or not I show the photo to the police, she needs to know it exists. She needs to be pulled from wayward theories, from the whirlpool of her indignation that scalds her every time. That’s always been my role in our relationship—to save her from herself. And now she needs to see, with her own eyes, what her brother has done.
And maybe, if I’m being honest, I need something, too. I need Sienna to share the weight of this discovery, to hold my hand as we hold on to it together.
“I know you weren’t sold on my theory about Henry,” she says. “But you have to see that there’s so much here that doesn’t add up.”
“I get it,” I allow, “but… Sienna.”
“What? Why are you saying my name like that?” She squints at me, takes a step closer. “Your eyes are all red. Have you been crying?”
I pick up my phone. “Yes. I cried a lot last night. I didn’t really sleep.”
I open the Photos app.
“Why?” Sienna asks, before swallowing in a way that looks involuntary. A spasm of her throat. A tick of nerves. She can see on my face that I’m about to wreck her. “Because of Jason’s cheating?”
“No.”
I hold the phone out to her. She looks at it warily, like I’ve offered her a weapon.
“Aiden showed me this. Yesterday.”
At her nephew’s name, she frowns and takes the phone. She stares at the photo, zooms in, then out. “What am I looking at?”
“Jason’s blazer. With blood on it,” I say.
Then, in a flood of words, I tell her about Aiden, about Jason carrying the blazer to the garbage can in the middle of the night, how it’s the same blazer he wore to the conference.
As Sienna listens, her lips separate in surprise. She looks at the photo again, brows shoved together—and I think she might actually get it this time, might finally allow the dots to connect. Already I feel lighter, less strangled, less alone.
But then Sienna shakes her head, and in that small gesture, I see her disbelief. Herrefusalto believe. She returns her gaze to me, sharp as an ice pick, and passes back my phone.
“So—what,” she says, “you think this proves he—” She pauses, expression shifting into something darker. Her voice becomes low and throaty, a distant rumble of thunder. “You really think Jason killed him?”
