“It’s Marin! She’s here!” His eyes widened as he stared at the empty space beside me. A cool rush of air fluttered my hair, and for a moment I sensed her. The laughter, the fights, the joy, the betrayal, all of it slid over me like a breeze. Although Marin’s ashes were scattered to the wind, she had scorched my earth. And yet my love for her rose from those flames.

“And Marin didn’t die alone,” Bennett rasped, then he muttered something in Vera’s ear before he exhaled his last breath.

Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Marin

APRIL

A breeze carrying the spring chill swept through the kitchen.

It indeed had been a long, complicated story as I poured all the details out into Cody’s ears. I fed him every sour detail, every bitter blow. While Vera had only been missing for six days now, it felt like six months. Sipping vodka between confessions, I told Cody everything, starting with the day my father dropped my mother off at the hospital to OD and die. Sip. How I found the huge sum of money in his wallet when he got back and my baby sister gone, and the name Felicity Portman scribbled on a $100 bill, then stamped on my brain. Sip. My father’s cancer. Sip. The day I met Vera in the park. Our matching eyes. Sip. The instant connection I’d felt with Cody. The velveteen rabbit and the missing photograph I had freaked out about. Vera’s questions. My answers. My father’s last text message. It was my confession. My secrets unfurled. My last hope at coming clean and reconciling everything, fixing everything, bringing Vera home. Sip, sip, sip.

Cody stood in the exact same spot while I doled it all out, elbow propped on the orange counter with the metal trim while I recounted every sordid moment. Then I begged for his forgiveness, for his understanding. But Cody wanted none of it. He accepted none of it. Forgave none of it.

He slammed his fist on the counter, rattling the forty. “You lied. You deceived me. You betrayed all of us. Was our marriage also a sham?” Vodka spittle sprayed from his lips.

“No, it wasn’t a sham, Cody. I didn’t marry you to get to Vera. I married you because I fell in love with you, and with your family. I wanted to be a part of this beautiful life with you. I never meant for Vera to find out we were sisters. But she’s smart, she’s clever, and that’s how I know she’s okay. She’s with our father, and he would never hurt her.”

Cody paced back and forth on the scratched linoleum floor, shoulders hunched like he was carrying the heavy information on his back. “You know I have to tell Felicity and Oliver everything you told me, right?”