Chapter 6: Twenty-One

Brynn turned twenty-one on Friday, and her friends threw her a party in the common room of Hartwell House.

I wasn't invited.

I went anyway, in my gray coat, with the quilt-smelling scarf she had once lent me folded in my hand.

Dustin waited in the van at the curb.

"If it goes badly," he said, "honk twice and I'll come in."

"I don't have a horn."

"I have a horn."

At the door, a girl with a clipboard looked at me and then at the clipboard.

"You're not on the list."

"I'm her sister," I said.

It was the first time I had said it out loud.

She let me through.

The room was full of white balloons and people in short dresses holding plastic cups.

Brynn stood by the window in a blue dress, laughing with her friends, and I watched the laugh die as she saw me.

The music went on.

A few heads turned.

I crossed the room and stopped in front of her.

"I'm not here to fight," I said. "I only want to ask you one thing, and you can say no."

Her friends moved closer behind her.

"Say it," Brynn said.

"Do you have a silver box from Pinecrest Jewelers?"

Her face changed.

It was a small thing, a flicker around her mouth, but I saw it.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't send it."

The two girls beside her looked at each other.

"You didn't send what?" one of them asked.

"A necklace," Brynn said, very quietly. "Two hundred thousand dollars. With a note."