I grab a river rock from the bottom of the fountain gurgling in the courtyard. It’s cold and slippery. I hurl it at the glass lantern on the ground by the outside fireplace and feel the relief as it shatters from the blow. It’s funny, I’m able to keep myself contained, calm, even with all the betrayal going on around me. Every once in a while, though, I just have to throw something. You understand, don’t you?

It is a release I needed. The cleaning service will be here tomorrow. They’ll take care of the little mess I made.

Now back to work.

14

4:55 p.m.

It’s check-in time, again.

I pull out my phone, open Find My Friends, and there they are. David is still at the office, or at least his phone is. That doesn’t mean much, of course. As for Betsy, let’s see, she is in a car, driving north along Pacific Coast Highway. It’s long past school hours, so where is she heading? Who is she with? Is her art class Plein Air painting, I wonder? Or is it her official tutoring spot, a class for one, led by a certain substitute teacher named Bo? I’m not exactly sure where she’s going. So I watch her dot.

I expand the map in my hand and watch as her dot turns into the entrance to Point Park. My God. Is she just trying to look guilty? I take a screenshot.

Personally, I could never go to that park again. I mean, just a few yards away, her sister fell to her death. Well, actually, according to the coroner, she was alive when she hit the water and was still breathing when she went under. There was water in her lungs. So she was likely unconscious and drowned. Chilling to think about, I know, and also seemingly impossible given the height of the cliff she fell from that she would survive the fall.

The experts—the coroner and others—tell me she hit her head on something on her way down, perhaps on the rock outcropping visible from the top. And that’s comforting, they tell me. She would have been unconscious when she fell into the deep, cold Pacific. She would have died underwater. Dead by the time something took a nibble of her foot. It gives me the chills, too.

Cold ocean water is a preservative of sorts. She still looked beautiful when she was found. My beautiful, perfect daughter.

A shudder runs down my spine when I think about that cold room, when we had to identify her body. I glanced at her pretty face before I shut my eyes, and let David handle it. I shake my head, push those images away. I can control them during the daytime at least. When I think about her death, I try to focus on the beauty at the top of Point Park.