My Sister Faked the Fall. This Time, I Filmed It. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Play It Loud

The footage plays on the living room TV in front of forty guests, Kylie and Brynn are arrested, and Willa's water breaks.

"Show me," the sergeant said.

Palmer moved before I did.

He lunged for the phone in my hand, and Finbar's shoulder came down between us.

"Sir." The sergeant did not raise her voice. "Step back. Now."

Palmer stepped back.

I opened the camera app, tapped the screen and sent the feed to the big television above the fireplace.

Forty guests turned to face it.

The picture showed the staircase from above, sharp and silent, with the time in the corner.

Three thirty-one.

My sister climbed the stairs alone.

She looked left, then right, then down the hall toward my bedroom.

She reached into the neckline of her dress and took out a small clear packet.

She squeezed it hard against her stomach, and the cream fabric turned red.

Someone in the crowd made a sound in her throat.

Then the screen showed the kitchen doorway at the bottom of the frame.

Brynn stood there with a plate of cake, laughing at something off camera.

She was not looking at the stairs.

Three forty.

My mother's voice rang from the living room, asking me to bring down the quilt.

On the television, my sister heard it too.

She waited until my footsteps crossed the upstairs hall and my nursery door closed.

Then she stepped to the edge of the top stair, looked once at the closed door, and threw herself down.

She hit the fourth step and the ninth.

She rolled, and she was careful about where her head went.

Every guest in that room watched her do it twice, because the sergeant ran it back.

Nobody spoke.

On the screen, Brynn dropped the cake plate, ran into the hall and pointed up at an empty landing.

I turned to the room.

"The woman who just told the sergeant what she saw," I said, "was holding a plate of cake in the kitchen."

Brynn's face went gray.

"That's, I mean, I looked up afterwards, I only saw..."

"Ma'am," the sergeant said. "Stop talking."

One of the paramedics had already lifted the hem of my sister's dress.

He looked at the packet's torn plastic, then at the stain, then at the sergeant.

"There's no wound," he said. "Her pulse is normal. Nothing is wrong with her."

My sister sat up.

She looked around the circle of phones, all of them pointed at her, all of them red.

"I was pushed," she said. "Mom. Mom, tell them."

My mother did not move.

She stood very straight with her hands folded at her waist, her face composed, her eyes on the television.

"I had no idea," she said. "I am as shocked as anyone."

My sister stared at her.

"Mom?"

"I don't know what she's been telling you people."

She said it to the sergeant, not to her daughter.

In all the years since she came to us, I had never seen my sister look so lost.

"Kylie Hungerford," the sergeant said, and took a pair of handcuffs from her belt. "You're under arrest for filing a false report and for staging an injury. Brynn Cecil, stay right where you are."

"No!" Kylie twisted. "You can't. She put me up to it. Ask her. I was pushed!"

The second officer took her arm.

"Pushed by who?" a guest called. "You were alone on the video!"

A woman by the window laughed once, harshly.

Others had started recording again, and this time the phones were aimed at my sister, not me.

Palmer stood beside the fireplace.

His face had gone pale, but his eyes were moving, adding it up.

"Sergeant," he said smoothly, "my wife is eight months pregnant and this has been a terrible shock. I'm sure this can be explained. May I take her upstairs?"

"No, sir," the sergeant said. "You may sit down."

He did not sit.

He took one slow step toward Finbar, toward the camera, toward the cable running into Finbar's laptop.

"Don't," Finbar said quietly.

It was the first time he had spoken since the call.

He put one hand flat on the lid of his laptop and looked Palmer in the eye.

"I've got three copies of this already," he said. "Two of them aren't here."

Palmer's hand stopped in the air.

At the edge of the room, my mother had picked up her purse and turned toward the front door.

"Mrs. Hungerford," the sergeant said without looking round. "I'll need you to stay for a statement."

My mother stopped with her hand on the door handle.

She did not turn around, and she did not say a word to the daughter being led out past her in handcuffs.

I almost smiled.

Then a cramp folded me in half.

It was deep, and low, and it did not stop when I breathed.

I gripped the arm of the chair and felt warmth run down my legs onto the rug.

"Sergeant," I said, and my voice came out thin. "My water just broke."

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