Watching My Fake Sister Dig Her Own Grave novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Girl in White

In the ER, Annabelle tells only Sergeant Dez Coughlin that Verity pays the ring, and they agree to watch her, until Verity's flowers arrive with a photo of Annabelle's old corner dated today.

The ER smelled like bleach and burnt coffee.

A nurse cut the bandages off my stumps and said a word she probably wasn't supposed to say at work.

Both ends had split along the new seams.

The surgeon had closed them three weeks ago.

Now they looked chewed.

Mom stood by the curtain in her pearls from dinner.

Dad stood next to her, holding my legs.

Brendan leaned against the wall by the sink.

He hadn't looked at me once since the stairs.

"Ten stitches on the left," the doctor said. "Twelve on the right. No weight on these for a week."

She left to get a suture kit.

Brendan pushed off the wall.

"Verity was right there," he said. "She had your arm the whole way up."

"Brendan," Mom said.

"I'm just saying what she told me. She let go for one second to say goodnight."

"And you went over backwards like you'd been waiting for it."

Nobody said anything.

"She threw herself down," Brendan said. "To make Verity look bad. After the sleeve, after all of it, it's the only thing that makes sense."

Dad set my legs down on the chair very carefully.

Dad got angry with a voice so quiet the nurse at the desk stopped typing.

"Get out."

"Dad, I'm only..."

"Your sister has twenty-two stitches in her and you are accusing her of doing it for attention. Get out of this room."

Brendan stood there one second too long.

Then he went.

The curtain swung behind him.

Mom sat down on the edge of my bed and took my hand.

"He doesn't mean it," she said. "He's been so protective of Verity. Ever since..."

She didn't finish.

Ever since me.

"Is there anyone you want us to call?" Dad asked. "Anyone at all?"

"Sergeant Coughlin," I said. "His number's in my phone."

Dez Coughlin came in at one in the morning with his canvas jacket zipped over a Sox hoodie.

His hair was flat on one side and he had a pillow crease across his cheek.

He took one look at my legs on the chair and the blood on the sheets and said, "You're supposed to be resting, Devlin."

"I was. On the stairs."

He pulled the visitor chair up to my right side, my good side, without being told.

Mom and Dad went to get coffee.

The second the curtain closed, I stopped smiling.

"It was Verity," I said.

He didn't ask what was.

He took a packet of sunflower seeds out of his pocket and put it back.

"She pushed you."

"She hooked my ankle. I caught the rail."

"And?"

"And I let go."

He stared at me.

I told him the rest.

The wall, the money table, and whose name was on the monthly envelope.

Dez didn't move for a long time.

When he finally spoke, his voice had gone flat and careful, the way it had in the two-flat when he found me on the floor.

"You're sure."

"I counted it. Every month. Forty-eight months. Seven hundred twenty thousand dollars."

"In your head."

"He didn't keep paper. Paper's evidence."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"Okay. Here's my problem," he said. "Everything you just said is a memory. A defense lawyer eats memories for breakfast."

"I know."

"And the day we so much as knock on her door..."

"The money stops," I said. "Uncle knows the cops are close. He runs. And the seven go with him."

"Or he dumps them."

We were both quiet after that.

"So you let her push you," Dez said.

"I let her think it worked."

"Jesus, Annabelle."

It was the first time he'd used my first name.

I took the phone he'd given me out from under the pillow.

"There's something else. When she came down the stairs, I hit record."

I played it for him.

The rustle of my sleeve.

Verity's voice, close and sweet and poisonous.

"Crying about scars won't get you anything. They love me. Not you."

Then our feet on the steps.

Then, "Goodnight."

Then a thump, a crack, a long clatter, and my own breath going out of me.

Dez played it twice.

"You can hear her," he said. "You can't hear the foot."

"No."

"So it's a mean girl being mean, and then you fall."

"Yes."

He put the phone back in my hand and closed my fingers around it.

"Then we don't touch her," he said. "We watch her. She pays him somehow, she meets somebody, she screws up. And when we've got the kids, we take her apart."

"Deal."

"And you stop falling down stairs."

"I'll take it under advisement."

He almost smiled.

The curtain rattled open.

A volunteer in a pink smock came in carrying the biggest bouquet I'd ever seen.

White roses, two dozen at least, in a crystal vase.

"For Annabelle Devlin," she said. "Somebody loves you."

She set them on the tray table and left.

There was a small white envelope tucked between the stems.

Dez reached for it.

I got there first.

The card said, in looping pink ink, Get well soon, little sister. All my love, V.

Something stiff was folded behind it.

A photograph.

The steel stairs up to the L at Lake Street.

The third step from the bottom, where the wind didn't reach.

My corner.

I'd sat on that step every winter from the age of nine.

The date stamp glowed orange in the bottom corner.

It was today.

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