“It’s Deirdre, right? Caroline’s death must be such a terrible shock to your family.” Her pink mouth moved fast.

“Yes.”

“I’m Abby Morel, from the Globe. I knew your sister.”

She oozed a sickly-sweet gardenia scent that made my dizziness intense. I wanted to get away from her but felt rooted in place. “Where from?”

“We used to freelance for some of the same outlets.”

I weighed the likelihood of that. Caro had been a journalist before she turned to the dark side—that was how she referred to publicity.

“I know Caroline’s death was a tragedy, but what do you think happened to your sister?”

“She had an undiagnosed heart condition,” I said, repeating what a cop had told me.

“That never came up in her life? Nothing about it when you were growing up?”

“That’s what undiagnosed means.”

“Could drugs have been involved?”

I was too shattered to lock horns with her. Instead, I dashed up the steps of the church and sank into a pew at the back. The temperature inside the church had somehow dropped ten degrees, and I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth.

I couldn’t see straight during the service. My brain shuffled back in time, replaying bits of conversation with my sister. I knew she wasn’t in a happy marriage—the way Caro skittered off the topic whenever I asked about Theo told me everything she wouldn’t say. But the idea her husband wanted her dead—and that he had killed before—seemed screwy. For a split second, I wondered if that shady reporter had a point—maybe Caro had popped a pill that delivered delusions? But that thought lasted for only a minute before guilt struck me with the force of a slap. I was ashamed of my disloyalty to my sister.

Theo didn’t kill her, I told myself. Caro had a condition no one knew about.

She’d been out running early in the morning when her heart failed. It could’ve happened to anyone, the cop had told me. Plenty of people didn’t know they had a condition.

No matter what it looks like, my death won’t be an accident.

That jolted me, and I gasped so loudly even the priest glared at me. He was going through the motions with the martyred expression of a man used to dealing with heathens. I sat mutely while Caro’s best friend, Jude Lazare, read a passage from the Book of Wisdom. “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction. But they are in peace.”

I tried to dwell on that while Jude continued reading. Caro’s at peace, I told myself. The cop said she died quickly. She wouldn’t have felt pain.