The detective grimaced. “That’s just the thing, Bri. Mara didn’t die from the fall. She wasn’t dead on impact. We’ll have to wait until the final reports come in, but there was frothy blood in her airways and water in her belly. She might have had a severe brain injury after she smacked the side of that pool, but she was breathing when she hit the water. She was breathing, Bri. She was alive in the pool, and you left her down there to drown. In my eyes, that makes you a killer.”

Part Three

“It is difficult to say who does you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.”

— E.R. Bulwer-Lytoon

Chapter Thirty-Three

Rosalee

The Wife

It was a crisp October afternoon when we said our vows, hand in hand, in the center of Merribelle Gardens. My father wasn’t there to give me away and my best friend wasn’t standing beside me. Nor was my sister-in-law, who had spent the better part of the last several months in jail, awaiting trial for her role in Mara’s death. She and Delfina would have to answer for their crimes and be judged by a group of their peers.

Although Delfina had initially admitted to hanging the body to make it look like a suicide, she had failed to mention the pool to detectives, and she’d stopped talking to the police altogether now—at the advice of her lawyer, of course.

Most of the guests in their fancy white chairs belonged to Asher’s family, friends, and co-workers. But Tinsley was there beside me. And Georgia stood with me, too.

Elizabeth Beake was front and center in the first row, watching and crying as Asher and I read our vows to one another. She smiled that day, the first real smile I’d seen from her in a long time. With Bri’s future freedom hanging in the balance and the cancer eating away at her body, she had shriveled and shrunk inside herself.

At the reception, I pulled her aside.

“I wish Bri were here today. I’m sorry she isn’t,” I told my mother-in-law.

Elizabeth gave me a critical look. “Are you really? Because she played a role in the death of your best friend. I can’t imagine that’s an easy pill for you to swallow, Rosalee.”

I shook my head. “Mara wasn’t the best friend that I thought she was. And anyways, I would feel sad about Bri regardless. She is your daughter and my husband’s sister, and I can tell that it’s killing you, Elizabeth. You feel like you’re losing her, just like you lost Edmund. And for that, I’m so very sorry.”

Elizabeth’s eyes brimmed with tears. She tried to talk, but her voice was quaky, and she waved me off.