Her mother screaming.
Her father drinking himself unconscious that night.
“You faked your sister’s death?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
I stared at her.
“How is there a version where that sentence makes sense?”
Claire sank into a chair near the cage.
“Melissa owed money.”
“To who?”
“People.”
“What people?”
“Before you and I got married, she got involved with a man who used her to move prescription pills. She testified against him. He had people looking for her.”
My heartbeat slowed.
That old sensation returned.
Information arranging itself into patterns.
“Witness
protection?”
“No. She refused it.”
“Then what?”
“My father helped her disappear.”
The funeral.
Closed casket.
Quick burial.
Claire’s parents refusing an autopsy because the “injuries were too severe.”
I had believed them.
