My Sister Faked the Fall. This Time, I Filmed It. novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Second Copy

Finbar's POV

I told her in Gran's kitchen at ten at night, with the baby monitor humming on the counter between us.

I had rehearsed it in the car and none of it came out the way I'd planned.

"The clip I posted from the stairs," I said. "I cut the front of it."

Willa put her tea down.

"How much of the front?"

"The last six minutes before your sister went up. Half a minute of that is you."

"Me."

"At three-twenty, you came up beside me with a glass of cider and said, quietly, keep your lens on the stairs, whatever happens. Don't look at me."

She did not move.

"The stream picked it up," I said. "Nobody remarked on it that day. But I heard it afterward and thought, a lawyer plays that and says she knew. So I trimmed it off before I posted, and I told nobody."

"You promised to take down every copy."

"I took down the posts. I kept the master."

"Because you didn't trust me with it."

"Because I didn't trust anyone." I made myself keep looking at her. "I did to you what I told myself I'd never do. I decided what you could stand to be known for, and I decided it alone."

Her eyes were very steady.

"Palmer's lawyer will say I orchestrated it."

"You did."

"I did."

"He'll have the first version of the file by Thursday. The one I cut is the only edit in this whole case." My throat felt raw. "I'm the reason his motion has a leg to stand on."

"Yes," she said. "You are."

I let her say it.

I had earned that much.

She stood up and walked around the table, and for one second I thought she would hit me.

She sat on my knee instead and took my face between her hands.

"Finbar. Give them the master."

"It has your voice on it."

"I know what it has. I stood at the top of a stair and let my sister do the worst thing she could think of, and I filmed it." She held my eyes. "I'm not ashamed of that. I was dead once because nobody filmed it."

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