My Sister Faked the Fall. This Time, I Filmed It. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pearls Stay On
Willa refuses to lend her grandmother's pearls, Kylie falls down the stairs and blames her, and Willa calls 911 on herself.
At noon on the day of my baby shower, my sister asked to wear my grandmother's pearls, and I said no.
She stood in my bedroom doorway in a cream wrap dress, one hand resting on her flat stomach.
My mother stood behind her, holding two gift bags.
"Gran never gave me a single thing," my sister said, and her eyes filled right on time. "I was only the adopted one. I just want to belong for one afternoon."
In my last life, I fastened those pearls around her neck myself.
Hours later they were scattered down my staircase, and she told the police I tore them off while I pushed her.
"No," I said. "Gran left them to me. I'm wearing them."
My mother set the gift bags on my dresser very slowly.
"Willa. Don't be petty. What would it cost you?"
"Then lend her your diamonds, Mom. They're right there on your ears."
Her hand flew up to her earrings.
She did not take them off.
"That's different," she snapped.
"It always is."
Palmer came down the hall buttoning his cuffs, handsome and calm, the husband every woman at my shower would envy.
"What's going on?"
My sister turned her wet face into his shoulder. "Nothing. Willa doesn't have to share anything with me."
He gave me the patient, disappointed look. "Babe. It's one afternoon."
"No."
I closed the clasp around my own neck and watched my sister in the mirror.
Her tears were gone.
Her eyes followed my hands, flat and watchful.
She knew I had seen it.
By three, the house was full.
Forty guests, champagne for them and cider for me, pink and blue balloons against the ceiling.
Finbar Lovelock, the videographer I had hired, walked the rooms with his camera on his shoulder, streaming the shower to Gran's old friends who couldn't travel.
Everybody thought it was a sweet idea.
Nobody knew he was only the backup camera.
At three-forty my mother tapped her glass.
"Willa, honey. Go up and bring down the quilt Gran made for the baby. Everyone should see it."
Forty faces turned toward me.
Kylie had left the room ten minutes earlier to use the bathroom.
I knew what waited at the top of those stairs.
I went up anyway, one hand on the rail and one under my belly, because this time I wanted her to do it.
The landing was empty.
I stepped into the nursery, closed the door and lifted the quilt from the crib.
I stood still with the quilt and waited.
Then the scream came, and the thud, and another thud, and the last heavy sound at the bottom.
I opened the door.
Kylie lay at the foot of the stairs with a red stain spreading across her dress.
She pointed one shaking finger straight up at me.
"Willa pushed me! She killed my baby!"
Finbar's lens swung to the stairs, then to me in the doorway with the quilt in my arms.
Someone dropped a glass.
Someone screamed for an ambulance.
Not one guest had seen anything, because every one of them had been in the living room eating cake.
It didn't matter.
A woman was bleeding on the floor and another woman was standing at the top of the stairs.
I walked down slowly, one step at a time.
My mother was on her knees with Kylie's head in her lap.
When I reached the bottom she stood up and slapped me so hard my ears rang.
"You jealous, vicious girl! She's eleven weeks pregnant!"
A dozen phones rose, and a dozen red lights blinked at me.
In my last life, I cried here and begged, and every tear made me look guiltier.
This time I looked at my sister.
"Eleven weeks," I said. "Congratulations. Who's the father?"
The room went quiet.
Kylie's sob caught for half a beat.
"That's not your business, not after what you did to my baby."
"You announced it at my shower," I said. "On a livestream."
Palmer pushed through the crowd and knelt beside her.
He took her hand in both of his and stroked her hair, and he did not once let go.
Then he stood and drew me aside, his grip on my elbow tight under the soft voice.
"This doesn't have to go to the police," he whispered. "Family handles family. Sign me power of attorney over Gran's trust, just until things calm down."
Fourteen million dollars, and Gran's house on Larkspur Hill.
"Think of our son," he said. "Do you want him born behind bars?"
My son kicked under my palm.
I remembered the cold cuff on my wrist while I pushed, and the guard's back as he carried my baby away.
My mother, Gisela, had come up beside him, smoothing her dress.
"The papers are in my car," she said. "My lawyer drew them up. Just in case."
She had brought legal papers to a baby shower.
I looked at the three of them standing around me in my own hallway, my husband, my mother and my bleeding sister.
So I took out my phone, held it up for the whole room to see, and dialed three numbers.
"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?"
"A woman fell down my stairs," I said, looking at my husband. "Please send an ambulance and the police. I believe I'm being framed."
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