Chapter 15: The Engagement Party

Joanna's POV

Last night I had stopped Danny's voicemail almost immediately, because I couldn't stand to hear a dead man's voice.

At six that evening I played all of it at Bea's kitchen table.

Whitney sat across from me with her hands pressed between her knees.

*Whit, it's me. Don't call back, I'm in Trevor's car.*

*Trev, slow down. You're drunk, man. Give me the keys. Trev, you're doing ninety, give me the...*

*I'm calling my sister so somebody knows. Whit, if I don't...*

*Trev! The light!*

Then there was a long, tearing sound, and the message ended.

Bea put her hand over her mouth.

I turned off the phone.

"Three years," I said.

"Three years," Whitney said.

"You sat on this while he held your hand at the funeral."

"I sat on this while he proposed to you."

Her voice was flat, and she wasn't asking me to like her.

"When I played it for him, he cried and begged me to delete it."

"I told him I would if he never left."

"You used your brother's last words to keep a man," I said.

"Yes."

"Did Desmond know?"

"Desmond found out in a week. He paid for the lab to lose the blood test and the police to call it weather."

"Then he told me to keep Trevor close, because Trevor would do anything for him as long as I held the tape."

"And you did."

"I loved him, Joanna," she said. "That's the worst part."

"No," Bea said from the stove. "The worst part is the dress."

Whitney flinched.

"I'll say it anywhere," she said. "I'll say it to anyone."

"Then you'll say it Saturday," I said.

On Saturday night, the Langston family held a reception in the glass atrium of their own building.

Two hundred investors and buyers drank champagne under a banner that said *Langston & Co: The Next Generation*.

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