Behind Every Lie(39)

If I didn’t, I could end up in jail.

Outside, the sky was clear and velvet black. A smattering of the brightest, most determined stars pierced the night. I was surprised by how clear they were. I traced the blaze of the North Star down to the hard lip of the Big Dipper, hovering low in the evening sky.

Once when I was five, maybe six, my mom came into my room and woke me in the middle of a hot summer night. She slipped my coat on and wrapped a light blanket around my shoulders.

“I have something to show you,” she’d whispered.

She buckled me in the car. I fell back asleep as she drove, but then she was lifting me out and we were in a field surrounded by nothing but stars as far as the eye could see.

“Mommy,” I breathed. “The stars are dancing!”

Mom smiled. She laid the blanket on the ground, and we sat down.

“That there is the North Star,” she said, pointing to the brightest star. “A long time ago people used it to guide themselves home when they were lost. And that”—she moved her finger to a collection of stars—“is Ursa Major. At school you’ll probably call it the Big Dipper. It has seven stars, but five of them move together, like a family.”

She tilted her chin up, her elbows bent behind her, and stared up at the stars. “It’s extraordinary. They all originated from a single cloud of gas and dust, became individual stars, and yet still move as one.”

I looked at my mom, her eyes wide, her profile bathed in the creamy light. At that moment she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.

She turned her head, trapping my gaze in hers. “There are millions of stars in the sky, Eva. They’re all different, completely unique. Just like you. Don’t ever doubt that, all right?”

The memory tugged softly at the corners of my mouth, but then despair washed over me, filling me with the heavy, liquid feeling of being seasick. She’d known I wasn’t Eva. But who the hell was I, then, and how did I fit into Mom’s murder? If I didn’t know who I really was, how did I know if I could trust myself? Maybe I really was the type who could randomly freak out and hurt someone, murder someone she loved.

I spent the next half hour doing yoga poses—Warrior, Lotus, Half-Moon—until my mind was relaxed. I wiped away beads of perspiration and flopped on the bed. I tried to distract myself on Instagram, then opened Gmail.

There was an e-mail from Detective Jackson. I clicked into it but it was empty except for an attachment. When I clicked it, a pdf of a toxicology report opened.

I tried to read it, but it was a jumble of scientific words and numbers I couldn’t make sense of.

“Jerk,” I muttered out loud. I nibbled a fingernail, trying to decide what to do. I dialed Andrew’s number again, relieved when he picked up.

“Andrew, I’ve been trying to call you. Where’ve you been?”

“Eva? What do you mean, where have I been?” he exclaimed. I heard the clacking of a keyboard and papers shuffling. He was at work, as usual. “I’ve been busy. There are things—procedures for events like this. Mom prepared for it, so I’m taking care of the arrangements.”

For a second I was too stunned to speak. “She … prepared for her death?”

“Of course she did. She wrote her will years ago. She paid for her cremation and memorial too.”

“Right.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I told you already. I’m in London.”

Andrew sighed. I could imagine him shaking his head at me, his disapproval blistering me even here. “I can’t believe you left the country.”

“I can’t believe you’re still at work in the middle of our mother’s murder investigation,” I shot back, even though it wasn’t actually true. Finding something predictable during a crisis was comforting for Andrew. But I didn’t like whatever he was insinuating.

“You have no idea what I’m going through right now!”

“I’m not a suspect! I’m not under arrest. I didn’t have to stay,” I snapped at my brother.

My brother.

Andrew had always been my brother, never my half brother, even though we had different dads. But now we had different moms too. Was he still my brother with no blood shared between us?

“No, but it doesn’t look good.”

“Whatever. Listen, Detective Jackson sent me Mom’s toxicology report, but I don’t understand it.”

“What’s it say?” Andrew asked with a sigh.

“The drug screen result says there were elevated levels of digoxin in her blood.”

“Digoxin? That’s a drug for heart disease, I think.” I heard clacking as his fingers flew over a keyboard. “Yeah. It’s prescribed to treat cardiac disease and chronic atrial fibrillation.”

“Mom had heart problems?” This was the first I’d heard of it.

“Not that I knew of. Hold on, it says here it comes from the plant Digitalis purpurea, also known as foxglove, a toxic flower that’s become prevalent in the last few years around Seattle. Too much of it causes fast heartbeat, nausea, loss of appetite. Sometimes it seems the victim is just tired or suffering from the flu.”

I flashed back to dinner with my mom, how she’d clutched her chest after a vicious coughing fit. “So maybe she ate a flower?”