“I was trying to protect Mom and Dad. I thought it would be easier for them to think it was an accident. For you to think it was an accident. I’m sorry, but I thought it would make it easier.” Her words sounded pleading to her own ears. She’d thought she’d done the right thing, but now it seemed . . . wrong.

“What gave you the right to keep that from us? Marley killed herself, and now we know why she was so messed up. She was abused, and you, you . . . you kept that a secret.”

“I didn’t know this. I had no clue about that.” Olivia gestured to the heartbreaking sketch pad. “But I knew she OD’d on purpose. It wasn’t an accident.”

“Jesus, Liv.” Neve’s voice was filled with such anguish.

“I tried to protect our family.”

“From what? The embarrassment? Where’s the note she left? I want to see it.” Neve’s face had fashioned into a mask of outrage.

“I tore it up and threw it into the ocean. I was waiting for the police, and after they came and took my statement and the coroner came, I walked down the beach. You remember the one we went to that time when the house was getting fumigated? We had so much fun there, and that’s where she went to . . .” She couldn’t say the words that her sister had chosen a place full of good memories to die. After they’d taken her sister away, Olivia had stood on the hard-packed sand facing the drowning sun. The cool spring wind tore at her hair, whipping it into her eyes and mouth as she dug the crumpled note from her jean pocket. Olivia remembered the way the pieces had fluttered around her—swirling, scattering, eventually sticking to the sea-foam as it sucked the horrible words into the sea. Those bits ebbed and flowed as her tears dripped down her face.

“Fuck.” Neve sprang off the bed. “And Dad did this. Oh my God, he did this, and he did that to those girls, too. I believed him when he said that they’d been coached to say those things. When he said that he’d only been affectionate. But he lied, because he did this to our sister. Oh my God, he did that to Marley, and she bore that. She bore that.”

Olivia watched helplessly as Neve covered her face with her hands and then sank onto her knees, sobbing.

“Neve,” Olivia said, sliding off the bed. “We didn’t know. She never told us.”

She reached for her sister, but Neve slapped her hands away. “Stop. Don’t touch me. Oh God, don’t.”