Reputation(105)

Aurora shields herself with her hands. She’s bawling now. “It just happened! I read the e-mails, and they disgusted me, and I was just trying to protect her!”

Kit’s jaw goes slack. I’m so stunned I have to sit down. What is Aurora saying?

“Protect who?” Kit asks. She looks at Sienna, then back at Aurora again. “Aurora knew you wrote the Lolita e-mails, is that it?” Neither girl reacts. Kit keeps trying. “But why did you feel like you needed to protect Sienna? You didn’t want anyone to find out? You thought Greg was going to hurt her?”

All I can see of Aurora’s lowered head is her crown. She shakes miserably. “No. No.”

“No what?” Kit’s voice has risen to a shriek. She looks desperately at Sienna. “What is she talking about?” But Sienna is stricken, motionless in her chair.

“Sienna didn’t plant those e-mails,” Aurora mumbles into her chest. She sounds both angry and devastated.

We look back and forth between the girls. Sienna is hiding her face in her hands, her long, elegant legs crossed prettily at her ankles. Even though I can’t see her face, I can practically feel her shame. It oozes out of her the same way it oozed out of me. And then I think of what Sienna told me after Greg’s funeral, about why the two sisters were fighting: We had a fight about this guy . . . it’s dumb.

My skin goes cold.

I turn to Aurora slowly. “You thought the e-mails between Greg and Sienna were real.”

Aurora shrinks in the chair, but after a pained few moments, she nods. “I . . . I saw him, once. He touched her . . . inappropriately. And she didn’t pull away.” She glances up at her sister, and there is fear in her eyes.

“Is this true?” Kit gasps.

Sienna lowers her hands just a little. Her face is a mask of pain. “I couldn’t,” she whispers. “I couldn’t pull away.”

Kit’s body is rigid. “Those e-mails really were from him? You didn’t write both sides? The e-mails . . . were real?”

Sienna’s eyes flit to her mother’s for only a second, then lower again. “I can’t do this,” she blubbers, and then gets up and runs out of the room.





46





KIT


SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017


For a moment, everyone is too stunned to move. Then I wrench away from the bed after my daughter. Willa catches my arm. “Wait. Just let her . . . decompress.”

“Decompress?” I run my hands down the length of my face. My heart is racing so fast I can hardly see straight. “What did she just tell us? Did she just confess something?”

Willa blinks. There are tears in her eyes. “I-I don’t know.”

I walk to the door, touch the knob, and then pull back. Pace around. Yank the door open and peer into the hall. It’s empty.

Is it really possible that Greg was involved with my daughter? But then I think of Lolita’s e-mails—in the beginning, they were fun and flirtatious, like she was enjoying herself. So Sienna played along, then. Sienna fell for him. Fell for my husband. Just like I did.

But then I think of how the e-mails shifted, Greg’s words becoming more aggressive and suggestive. All those dirty scenarios he presented. All that sex talk. I can feel the bile rising in my stomach. I stagger to the bathroom and throw up in the sink.

When I’m finished, I wipe my mouth and eyes. My father’s room is quiet. Willa is sitting on a chair staring, dumbfounded, at the blank whiteboard. Aurora is sobbing in a corner. I turn to her, realizing what she’s admitted to. It was nearly buried under Sienna’s horrible truth.

“Honey,” I squeak out. But I can’t go closer. It’s almost like I’m afraid to touch her. “Aurora. What happened that night?”

She shakes her head. “I . . . can’t.”

“You have to tell me. You have to tell me before things get worse.”

She glances up at me, terrified. “Worse how?”

How can she not know what might happen? The police will circle back to us. They’ll question everyone whose prints aren’t on record. They might even focus on Aurora first, being that she was at a neighbor’s house the night it happened. Hell, I’d thought she was home that night.

And she was, I guess. For a little while, anyway. And I guess she hid the knife in the garage, hoping—praying—it would never be found.

My thoughts, unbidden, turn to how it might have gone down. Aurora must have let herself into the house with her key, which explains the lack of a forced entry. And then . . . what? She found Greg in the kitchen? Stabbed him in a blind rage, furious for what he’d done to Sienna? But I can’t quite buy that. Aurora is moody, but she’s not stupid.

I turn to her. “What happened that night?”

Aurora wipes her eyes. It seems to pain her to speak. “We . . . argued.”

“About what?”

“The e-mails.” She sighs. “I knew they were to Sienna. I felt . . .” Fresh tears spill onto her cheeks. “It’s gross, Mom.”

I’m nodding. There is a boulder on my throat, making it almost impossible to swallow.

“And then what?” I ask gently.

Her face breaks, and something inside me does, too. I guess it isn’t so hard to figure out what happened next, now that we have all the pieces. “I told him I thought he was disgusting,” she whispers. “I said I would make him pay. I never wanted him to touch her again. And then . . .” She takes a breath. “He lost it. He came at me. Started denying stuff, started calling me all these names . . . I didn’t know what to do.”