The Watcher Girl(46)

“My entire life, I’ve wanted to meet one person who shares my blood. One.” I speak the words I’ve never spoken out loud before. Not to anyone. “You’re not my sister. You couldn’t be. You’re too weak.”

I wrestle cash from my wallet and place it on the table to cover the damage, and then I leave.

On the way home, I think about believing her.

I want to believe her. My God—a sister. A blood sister.

And her story is quite compelling. Convincing too.

But I’ve been lied to before.





CHAPTER 27

I flick through Campbell’s Instaface photos until I find one of her sandwiched between a couple in their late fifties to early sixties. It’s dated last year, but the caption says “RIP DAD!”

I zoom in on his face, then out. In and out. Everything about him screams boring, retired white guy. Thinning silver hair that fades to nothing on top. Generous double chin. Nondescript, generic features that don’t so much as hint at whether he was an attractive man in his younger days. Not even a logo or detail in the background from which to infer a profession or whether he was working-class or upper-class or comfortably in-between.

It’s the only photo she has with him in it.

I sift through eighty-nine comments until I find one that mentions his name.

Anthony Beckwith.

A quick Google search brings me his obituary, a short and sweet paragraph that mentions he managed a cold shipping warehouse for thirty-four years, was married to his high school sweetheart, Gabby, for forty-two, and had one daughter—Campbell.

Had I not gone off on her so quickly, I probably could have siphoned a few more answers out of her, but at the time, all I saw was red and all I felt was a distracting amount of everything.

Even if I wanted to believe we were half sisters, I don’t know that history would allow me to. The only definitive proof would be a DNA test, and I’m firm in my stance on those.

I chew the inside of my lip. Sometimes the only thing more terrifying than the unknown is the truth. The truth changes things. It rearranges the way a person interacts with the world. Am I ready for that? Say Campbell is my half sister—what would change? Would I become a lighter soul? Would I walk on clouds and spot rainbows everywhere? Would I laugh more? Hide away less? Would I stay in one place for longer than six months at a time?

I close out of her profile, pull up my email, and double-check my flight departure time for Sunday afternoon.

Dad and Bliss are outside by the pool, their voices carrying up the side of the house and into my open window. Staying planted in my room, face buried in a computer screen, is doing nothing but delaying the inevitable. And it’s not that I’m afraid of his response, I’m simply dreading that face-to-face I’m about to have with reality, and all those years I’ve spent loathing Daphne for something she didn’t do.

I promise myself I’m going to pull him aside tonight.

No matter what.

Worst-case scenario, if it becomes a big thing and I explode and he asks me to leave, I can spend the next two nights in a hotel.

Best-case scenario, he apologizes for being a selfish asshole and we can figure out a way to move forward.

I perch cross-legged on the edge of my bed, fingers rapping against the side of my face as I stare at my laptop screen. There’s a chance I’m subconsciously looking for one last excuse to keep me from having to trot downstairs and pull my father aside.

Logging on to the Watchers and Guardians VPN, I check a few work messages and clean out my inbox until all that remains is a handful of old emails from Jonah—and the link Imaginary_Comrade18 sent to the Whitlocks’ security cameras.

It’s been over a week. The security certificate should have expired by now. But with a cocktail of curiosity, boredom, and procrastination coursing through me, I click anyway.

The screen refreshes twice as I wait for an access denied message—that never comes.

An image of the Whitlock kitchen fills the page. A messy kitchen table. A pot of something simmering on the stove. A refrigerator door cocked open, leaking a vertical sliver of light.

Sutton circles behind Campbell as she rinses something in the sink, his arms flying in the air. I can’t see his face, can’t hear a damn thing, but she keeps her back to him, hunched. Gigi plays in her high chair, oblivious.

I zoom in when Sutton turns, and I study his face as he paces from the sink to the peninsula, his hand flying to his temple and back. My eyes burn and I squeeze them tight, giving them a few seconds of rest. When I focus on the moving image again, I find his hands are on her shoulders. He spins her to face him, his fingers digging into her shoulders—at least from what I can tell. And she’s crying. Shoulders heaving. Red-faced. Cheeks saturated in tears.

My heart sprints, my muscles jerking with sparks of adrenaline urging me to move. To get up. To go there.

To do something.

But what?

Both Sutton and Campbell have made it abundantly clear they want me out of their lives, that my mere presence has only made things worse. I could dash to my car and speed over there to intervene, but how could I explain what I’ve witnessed? Hacking into a security system is illegal, I’m sure. And Sutton’s already threatened to have me reported for harassment and stalking.

I close my laptop and wear a path into the pristine carpet of my childhood bedroom. Bed to dresser. Dresser to nightstand. Nightstand to bathroom.