Chapter 7: The Night Train

"She called me Friday night, crying," Mom told the theater. "She said she missed her sister. She wanted to see her sing."

Her voice broke beautifully on sister.

It was a real break. That was the worst part.

She had cried exactly like that every birthday of my life.

She'd tell the story of the month she held Amelie through two holes in a plastic box.

"I met the night train at six Saturday morning. I drove her home. I fed her. She was at that theater."

She turned to Raegan with her hand on her heart.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. She's sick. She's been sick with jealousy her whole life."

Raegan stared at her with her mouth open.

On the screen, Dillon was looking at his shoes.

Then the livestream cut to a slide that said TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.

The Annex dining room was quiet except for the popcorn pot ticking as it cooled.

Twenty faces turned to me.

I stood up off the floor. My knees didn't feel like mine.

I didn't know what to say to them. I had never once been believed on the first try.

Bo said it for me.

"She was on my deck." His voice filled the room. "Six p.m. to seven a.m. She ran every cast."

"Anybody here not see her?"

Nobody said anything.

"Anybody?"

"She threw up in my bucket at eight-fifteen," one of the cribbage girls said. "I'll swear to that. I held her hair."

Somebody laughed.

Then everybody did, a little shaky.

The cook put the stockpot down with a bang. "That woman's a liar, and I've only seen her on television."

I had to sit back down.

My phone started ringing before I hit the floor.

It rang all night. Mom, Dad, Griffin, numbers I didn't know.

I let every one of them go to voicemail and listened to none of them.

At seven Monday morning, a campus detective called from the main campus.

He had a tired, polite voice.

"Ms. Tilden, I have four sworn statements here," he said. "Your mother, your father, your sister, and a Griffin Upton."

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