Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“Bea told me about that,” Grace spit out. “Said she thought you must’ve messed with her meds, or drugged her some other way. Your sister remembered you smiling as you videoed her.” Tears in Grace’s voice. “She cried! She loved you and you did that to her!”
It took everything I had to keep my voice calm. “That still shouldn’t have been enough for a doctor and a judge. She could’ve been on a recreational drug trip, for one. Why no further investigation?”
Swallowing, Darcie ducked her head.
It was Grace who answered. “Darcie has a way of courting successful people who she might be able to use,” she said silkily, the tears yet an echo in the thickness of her words.
I thought of Darcie’s social media accounts, all the smaller profiles she was cultivating because they were linked to far more influential ones. Yes, Darcie knew how to play the long game.
“She started on the judge and the doctor when she was thirteen, fourteen,” Grace added. “That’s what Bea said when she learned how to cheek her pills and wasn’t a zombie all the time. Darcie was always so interested in what those disgusting old men had to say, the perfect young acolyte.”
Her lips were curved and her eyes narrowed on the back of Darcie’s head when I glanced at her. “Bea never said it went further than that with the old men, but since Judge Landis Beale apparently has a thing for underage girls, I’ll let you draw your ow—”
“You liar!” Darcie screamed with what energy she had. “Uncle Landis was never inappropriate with me! He just liked me better!”
Funnily enough, I believed her. Because Darcie wouldn’t have sacrificed when she could manipulate. Massage an old man’s ego as a pretty young woman while dropping seeds in their ear about her “unstable” sister and, when the time came, they’d do exactly as Darcie wished.
“What about the facility itself?” I asked with the same remote calm that had brought me to this moment. “Why did the doctors and therapists there not begin to question her diagnosis or her heavy drug regime?” Even Darcie couldn’t manipulate that many people.
“Everyone in the insane asylum says they’re sane.” Grace’s laugh was jagged. “Your friend and her lapdog of a doctor made sure Bea’s intake forms were filled with words like ‘delusional’ and ‘expert at masking’ and ‘incapable of accepting her diagnosis.’
“This wasn’t a slapdash plan, Nae-nae. Darcie was meticulous, down to the extent of turning in a disturbing diary that Bea was supposed to have written. The doctors trusted the older sister who was so worried about Bea, and who a judge had granted authority over Bea.”
Darcie’s eyes overflowed. “I had to do it.” A trembling plea. “I had to protect her the only way I could. Grace is twisting everything up. Bea was sliding downhill fast and I knew that could be dangerous. Everything I did was for her own good.”
“Oh, was telling everyone she died by suicide when you knew she was alive for her own good? Or was it so you could fuck the man she loved?”
Grace’s words were a bomb that spit out shards of frozen silence.
Plastic crackled, and I realized I was in danger of collapsing the bottle and spilling water all over myself. I shoved it into the map pocket on the inside of the door. “Darcie? What does she mean?” A brittle demand.
“I have the death certificate!” Darcie sobbed. “They told me she was dead.”
“Twelve months ago,” Grace said with a vicious smile. “The facility informed you of Bea’s death twelve months ago. Before that, you paid all the fees for her prison cell out of her own fucking inheritance. Eight years. That’s how long you knew Bea was alive while letting everyone else believe she was dead. Eight. Years.”
“I knew she wasn’t going to come back.” Darcie’s words tumbled out one after the other in a rapid torrent—as if she could convince me if she spoke fast enough. “I knew she was too sick to ever come back. I just thought it’d be easier if—”
My hand stung from the force of the slap, Darcie’s head slamming into the headrest then bouncing forward with a nasty jolt.
When she looked back at me, it was with a whimper, blood trickling out of her nose and fear a scared child in her eyes.
I should’ve felt bad.
I felt nothing.
The cold had gone beyond skin and blood and bone.
“You’re the best actress I’ve ever known.” I looked at her in true admiration. “I really thought you were grieving your sister the day you told us she was dead.”
“I was! I knew she was too sick to ever recover!” Blotchy skin, blood trickling from her nose to her upper lip in a fine tributary. “I thought it was for the best that I left her to heal as much as she could, without any pressure—”