Sophie obeyed. Noah ran.
When they were gone, I handed her Liam’s note.
She read it once.
Then again.
Her hand trembled.
“Mom?”
She sat down as if her knees had dissolved. “Oh, Claire.”
“You knew?” My voice came out small. Childlike.
“No.” She pressed the paper to her lap. “Not this. Not murder.”
“Murder?” The word struck the room like a thrown stone.
My mother looked up, eyes wet. “Emily, Claire has always wanted what you had.”
I recoiled. “That’s not true.”
“It is. You just never saw it because you were the thing she wanted most.”
The house seemed to go quiet around us.
My mother told me then about the small thefts of childhood. My blue sweater found hidden in Claire’s drawer. My diary pages torn out. The college acceptance letter Claire “forgot” to bring in from the mailbox, found later damp behind the garage freezer. Things I had explained away because sisters fight, sisters envy, sisters hurt each other and grow up.
“She loved you,” Mom said. “But love in Claire always came with hunger.”
I thought of Claire’s hand around my wrist.
Whatever happens, remember I love you.
That night, after the children fell asleep on Mom’s pullout couch, I plugged Liam’s flash drive into her old laptop.
My mother sat beside me, one hand over mine.
There was one video file.
Its title was simple.
For Emily.
I clicked.
Liam appeared on screen in his office, the lamp behind him casting warm gold along his tired face. He wore the blue shirt I had ironed the morning before he died. His hair was mussed, his eyes red-rimmed.
For one impossible second, my body forgot he was dead.
I reached toward the screen.
“Em,” he said, and his voice broke.
I folded over my own hands.
“If you’re watching this, I failed to come home. I need you to listen carefully, sweetheart. I need you to be angry later. Right now, I need you to survive.”
My mother began to cry silently.
Liam looked down, gathering himself.
“Claire came to me three weeks ago. She said Daniel had made mistakes. Bad ones. She begged me not to report him. She said he owed money to people who didn’t forgive. I told her I couldn’t cover it up.”
