Chapter 13: Prove It

By eight that morning Mercy General had suspended me.

The email came from the chief of pharmacy, who had been cut by the same glass at the fair.

"Pending review of a complaint from the Holloway family's counsel. Do not report to the pharmacy. Return your badge."

Rafe read it over my shoulder.

"I'll buy the hospital," he said.

"You'll sit down and never say that again."

He sat down.

At nine we were in Lorna's drawing room, and Jarrett was already there.

He stood by the piano with his lawyer, a gray man with a leather folder, and he came toward me with both hands out.

"Justine. I'm so sorry about this."

I didn't take his hands.

Lorna sat in her wing chair with her cane across her knees and her face closed.

"Sit," she said. "All of you."

Jarrett propped a tablet against the vase on the piano.

"I wanted this to stay in the family," he said. "I haven't gone to the police. Aunt Lorna can decide that."

"Play it," Lorna said.

The picture was gray and grainy.

A car park, a stage rig under tarpaulin, the clock in the corner reading 2:04 a.m.

A woman in a green coat walked into the frame.

Her hair was pinned up the way I pin mine.

She stopped at the foot of the ladder, turned and looked straight into the camera.

It was my face.

The jaw, the mouth, the small scar through my left eyebrow.

I heard Rafe stop breathing.

The woman climbed the ladder, reached up into the dark, and came down again with something in her hand.

Jarrett stopped the clip.

"Friday, two a.m.," he said. "The night before the rig fell on my cousin."

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