Sister Dear (26 page)

When it was the defense's turn to argue for Allie's innocence, the team made a valiant effort. A first-time offender, Allie's stellar academic record was noted, as was her recent acceptance to medical school and her work in her father's veterinary office. Allie estimated that her lawyer made his fatal error when he postulated
that someone else visited the pharmacy earlier on the night of the coach's murder. Her attorney speculated about a break-in, a robbery in progress. Coach Thomas had surprised the intruder, he hypothesized.

This statement brought a short, sharp harrumph from the judge, who promptly asked for cross-examination, then closing arguments. Allie's attorney whispered to his paralegal what everyone already knew: the superior court judge wanted a verdict, and fast. Rumor had it the judge hoped he'd be tapped to fill a vacancy on the Georgia Supreme Court. A conviction would underscore his “tough on crime” motto and might cement the governor's appointment.

At the end of the day, the jurors were given instructions, sent away, and sequestered. They'd taken only thirty-six hours to deliberate. Now they were due back in five minutes.

Inside the courtroom, Allie's palms were wet with sweat. She hadn't slept in days. Her parents sat behind her, stiff and pale. Her mother's eyes had been red-rimmed for weeks. Her father lost twenty pounds. Caroline waited in the hallway with Emma.

After talking to her mother about her daughter's tender emotional state several weeks before, Allie insisted Caroline not visit the jail—and be kept away from most, if not all, of the courtroom drama and mudslinging.

Today, though, the verdict would be read. Caroline needed to be close by, Emma argued. Today Allie might go home. And in the end, Allie acquiesced. Caroline could wait outside.

Allie didn't say the rest. Today she might also face years in prison.

Inside the courtroom, Allie focused her gaze on the rich, dark wood grain of the jury box, following the swirls and knots. She reminded herself to breathe as her fingers twisted together under the table. Her lawyer, equally nervous, shuffled papers and cleared his throat.

A door opened and the judge walked in. With a collective shuffle, everyone pushed back chairs and stood up. He motioned “be seated,” and gestured for the jury to enter the room.

As the jurors filed in, taking their seats one by one, an uncomfortable silence ballooned around the room, filling it with hot, still air.

Allie swallowed, trying desperately to read faces and minds. No one looked at her. She was invisible.

“Have you reached a verdict?” the judge asked.

“We have, Your Honor,” answered the first juror, who stood up. He held a folded piece of paper, which he spread with his fingers. “We the jury, find the defendant, Allison Marshall . . .”

Allie closed her eyes.

“. . . guilty on all counts.”

THIRTY-THREE

EMMA

2016

After Allie's trial and sentencing, Emma had done everything possible to keep her life quiet. She'd created a nice little web design business for herself, built up a solid client list, saw her parents every day. Emma took care of her niece without fail.

Her life was normal. No complications. No real relationships, save the one broken engagement. Everything adhered to a schedule and was planned out, until Allie came home. Now her life felt like the loose stitches in the hem of a dress. One pull on the right thread, and everything was going to fall apart.

Emma rubbed her lip and sat up straight. She had been staring at the same web page for an hour, the piping-hot cup of peppermint tea she'd made an hour ago now ice cold and untouched. The client had her on a tight deadline, and she couldn't manage to get anything done. Photos appeared grainy and uneven, graphics refused to load, and the suggested font for the website had somehow escaped her, like runaway insects fleeing certain destruction.

With a gentle movement, she pushed away from her desk and slid her keyboard away, the power button almost out of reach.
Emma's thoughts gnawed at her mind like tiny, jagged teeth. She rubbed her temples and pressed fingers under her arched brows.

Questions pounded her brain, hammering away at the security and anonymity she'd cherished for so long. What were the odds that her niece would end up meeting Dr. June Gaines? Out of the entire nursing home, Caroline got assigned to this particular floor?

She listened for any sounds from her niece's room.

Tonight Caroline had gone to bed early and didn't even play one of those depressing Druery songs. Not one. All of the talking, the discussion about June Gaines and her mother especially, had likely worn her out.

Emma poured a generous glass of red wine, eased the back door open, and settled into the nearest lounge chair. She put the rim to her lips and took a long drink. After a few minutes, Emma felt the warmth of the alcohol spread through her chest.

Caroline extrapolated all ideas about her mother to the negative, decided to jump to conclusions after Emma had begun talking about Allie's pregnancy. The abortion, the adoption—none of it was close to being true, but if those were Caroline's perceptions, she wasn't about to correct them.

Emma sipped her wine, propping up her head on the palm of her hand. She glanced toward Caroline's room. All of this was necessary. The questions. The tears, the doubt.

Otherwise, without the barriers in place, her niece might open a window, give an inch, and allow Allie to slip back into her life. Emma resolved, then and there, to double her efforts to ensure Caroline's affection. They would plan a girls' spa day; she'd suggest a trip to the Florida Keys, a place Caroline had mentioned she'd always wanted to visit. Emma would buy Caroline the new tablet she'd been eyeing and take her clothes shopping. All things Allie couldn't do.

Buoyed with confidence in her new plan, Emma smiled, rose from her seat, and walked back inside the house. She poured a second glass of wine and drank deeply, letting the sweet flavor rest on her tongue. She tiptoed up to Caroline's room, plastered with posters and haphazard drawings from last year's art class. She slowed by the open door and breathed in the scent of coconut lotion her niece liked to use. Caroline lay snuggled under the thick white chenille duvet, pillows surrounding her dark hair.

Without making a sound, she slipped out her phone, tapped the screen, and pressed the record button as she scanned the room. This recording, and many others, were proof that Caroline was content and adjusted. She slept like a baby; her room was lovely and filled with nice things. She'd heard horror stories of children being carted off to the Georgia Department of Child Protective Services for neglect and abuse. A neighbor, a family member, anyone could make the call to investigate. But with the recordings, Emma felt that no caseworker could ever prove that Caroline wasn't well taken care of and happy.

And Emma didn't only take videos at night—she had started the video collection using bulky cameras to capture Caroline's dance recitals, her first loose tooth, and her first class play. Then Emma worked with smaller devices that fit in the palm of her hand—recording first days of school, soccer games, and field trips.

Her collection spanned more than two hundred recordings over the past ten years of Caroline's life. On evenings that Caroline spent the night with a friend, Emma would start at the beginning, watching every single moment since Caroline was five years old. She knew every laugh, every smile, and every moment on-screen.

Emma smiled to herself, pressed the phone screen to end the recording, and quietly pulled the door closed. She would transfer the file to her computer and watch it tonight. But when Emma
reached the office, she went past it to the back room, where she hesitated at the doorway, her hand gripping the edge of the trim.

Though it was the least-used room in the house, Emma had fashioned it into an eclectic reading area with a slouchy couch, two rounded chairs, several tall bookshelves, and a thick braided rug. Emma had framed Caroline's finger paintings, a few crayon drawings, and a watercolor of the town square's massive fountain. On the shelves, cut-glass bowls sat next to hand-painted china from England. Emma's parents had brought the set back from their honeymoon. Her mother had asked her to keep them, citing the need to downsize, though she and Emma's father hadn't done the first thing to look at a smaller house.

There were black-and-white photos in an art deco collage on the left wall. The center frame held her parents; the most recent were snapshots of Caroline at the beach. She inhaled when she glanced at the outermost rings. Almost every one contained a photograph of Allie and Emma. In high school, on the beach at St. Simons, at a high school basketball game. As she gazed at the images, her lip curled back, her eyes narrowed, and her pulse began to thud loudly, like the urgency of a summer rainstorm beating out a rhythm on a rooftop.

Rising up on her toes, she reached for the frame from the wall. Emma lifted the collage off the wall; it was heavy and unwieldy, and the wire didn't want to release from the hook.

She tugged. Still stuck. She tried tilting the frame. No use. The blood in her hands rushed to her shoulders, making her arms throb and ache. With one last attempt, Emma tugged harder.

The collage came loose and slipped from her fingers, bouncing against the floor and breaking in two. Emma wrinkled her brow and knelt down, listening for sounds of Caroline, now possibly awake from the noise. But the house remained silent.

With careful fingers, she turned over one half of the collage and then the other. The glass was shattered in most of the frames. It was a sign. She should get rid of the entire thing. Emma's stomach twisted, bubbling with anxiety. She glanced around the room. Emma hadn't really noticed it before, but there were reminders of Allie everywhere. Not just the photo on the wall.

There were books they'd shared as children, a jewelry box Allie gave her on her sixteenth birthday, and trinkets from trips they'd taken as teenagers. Seashells from the beach in Hilton Head, “gold” nuggets from Nevada, and an ornate Mardi Gras mask they'd picked out together in New Orleans after Allie's high school graduation.

Why did she hang on to any of it? It gave Caroline the wrong impression. Caroline had already said she wanted Emma to adopt her. The keepsakes conveyed that Allie was still important in their lives, when exactly the opposite was true.

Emma touched the mask, running her finger along the lace edge and over the plume of feathers. She drew in a deep breath, picked it up, and crushed it between her hands. With a soft cry, she ripped at the satin and intricate lace trim.

She would destroy it, and every single reminder of Allie in her house.

THIRTY-FOUR

ALLIE

2016

It had been a week since Allie had paid a visit to Ben's house, and the rejection still stung. She hadn't tried to talk to Caroline again, though she thought about their conversation, and her daughter's challenge, every minute of every day.
Prove it.

Though painful, she could make sense of Ben's reaction and Caroline's distance. Emma's behavior, though, was the strangest. Her sister remained distant and irritable, making excuses to get off the phone or pleading that she was too busy to talk.

Allie unlocked her front door and let her keys drop into a dish on a table in the small foyer. She set down her bag, flicked on the overhead lights, and pulled off her jacket. The house was starting to feel more like home. She lit a cinnamon candle, letting the spicy scent fill the air with warmth.

She leaned down to scoop the mail off the floor. Allie noticed one additional letter, stuck in the delivery slot. She grabbed it, tossed the junk mail into the recycling, and examined the envelope. No stamp, no address, no postal markings.

Allie glanced back toward the front door. A hand-delivered
note. Who had left it? With her thumb and forefinger, she picked up the letter by the corner and held it over the trash. Whatever it was—hate mail, a nasty note, junk—she didn't want it.

Then, on instinct, she changed her mind. She drew her arm back, flipped over the envelope, and tore it open. She withdrew the paper inside, unfolded it slowly, and read the first line.

“The Lockland Law Firm of Aiken, South Carolina, is representing the parents of Lamar Childree, a rising senior at Feld Ren High School, who died a day after collapsing at football practice.”

Allie shivered. It was a press release, dated more than twelve years ago. Childree couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen. Poor kid. She bit her lip and read the next few lines.

“The voluntary football practice was held on a sweltering summer afternoon. The players were required to participate in two-hundred-yard sprints, finishing in less than forty-five seconds. Failure yielded additional, more extreme exercises, or being cut from the team.

“While Childree showed signs of heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and dehydration, he was forced to continue running. The coaches did not halt practice. When Childree collapsed, he was rushed to a nearby hospital with a body temperature of 108 degrees. He died the next day.”

What did any of this have to do with Brunswick? Coach Thomas? Or her? It was possible that someone had slipped the letter through her mail slot by accident. Except no one made mistakes like this.

Allie read the press release again, more slowly the second time. Press releases were sent to newspapers. TV stations. Journalists. She tapped a finger to her bottom lip and stared out the window.
Was Ben trying to help?

The doorbell rang and Allie jumped, folding up the paper and sliding it into the nearest drawer. Allie peeked out the window, seeing a familiar figure on the front steps.

“Mom?” Allie opened the door wide, trying not to appear stunned.

Her mother held up a colorful tote bag, looking cheerful, as if a dinner date had been planned for the last three months. “I didn't think you'd mind a visitor. You've been working so much, so I decided to bring you some supper.”