Reputation(50)

Still, after a moment I call out, “Girls? It’s Willa. Can we talk for a sec?”

After a beat, I hear footsteps padding across Sienna’s wood floor, and her door opens a crack. There are circles under Sienna’s eyes. The shirt she is wearing is rumpled and stained. “Hey, Aunt Willa,” she croaks. “Um, I’m kind of not feeling well.”

“This’ll only take a minute.” I rap on Aurora’s door next. “Honey? Can you come out, too?”

Aurora’s door creaks open, revealing the tiny bedroom with the slanted roof. I can’t help but smile, poking my head in. “I lived in this room for a few years in high school, once Grandma and Grandpa trusted me in the attic.” I point to the far wall. “That was painted black. And there was a big Nirvana poster on the ceiling. I used to love Kurt Cobain.”

The corners of Aurora’s mouth curve into a frown. “I was sleeping,” she says moodily.

“This won’t take long. I just have a couple of questions.”

When I say questions, Sienna seems to flinch, and Aurora’s arms tighten around her torso. “Sit down, sit down,” I tell them. I gesture to the little love seat my mother placed in the hallway years before.

“You guys still mad at each other?” I ask.

Aurora chews on her lip. Sienna spins a silver ring around her finger.

“You girls need each other. You’re going through a hard time. Don’t forget, your mom and I lost a parent when we were your age, too—and just as abruptly. After all these years, it still hurts.” I feel my throat close. Sienna’s head lifts an inch. It’s not often that I show emotion, and this has gotten her attention.

The house makes a series of small settling clicks and groans. “You guys have been through so much. It isn’t fair. And I feel like a jerk—I barely got to know Greg. Is it awful to say that I was still kind of stuck on your dad as, like, Kit’s soul mate? I mean, he and Kit were together for so long. I remember them snuggling up on the couch in high school, hogging the TV. But I should have gotten to know Greg better. Your mom talked a little bit about him back when your dad was really sick. Said he was this amazing surgeon. A really good, genuine person. He really dazzled you guys, huh?”

The girls nod but don’t say anything.

“You know, I wonder what it feels like, as a surgeon, to have a patient not make it.” I try to keep my voice light, contemplative, but my heart is pounding harder than I’d like. “How can they teach you to deal with that in medical school?”

Aurora frowns. Picks at an imaginary piece of lint on her knee. “There’s no point in being angry at the surgeon. Sometimes things just happen.”

I’m surprised at how well-adjusted she sounds. I glance at Aurora, and she’s nodding, too. So maybe I was wrong, then. Maybe these girls don’t harbor some sort of deep hatred for Greg for inadvertently killing Martin on the operating table. It makes me feel better.

But it still doesn’t clear up all my intuition that they’re hiding something. “So are you getting annoying backlash from friends about what you guys are going through now?”

“A little,” Sienna admits. “People have a lot of questions.”

I lean forward a little. “I hate to ask this, but did you guys read those e-mails?”

Sienna’s jaw tightens. Aurora clears her throat. “They were pretty gross,” she says in a loud voice. “Like, way, way more disgusting than I imagined e-mails like that would be. I can’t believe she . . .”

But she trails off as Sienna gives her a hard, inscrutable look. I don’t understand what’s gone down, but suddenly I’m filled with new questions. She?

I cock my head. “Do you girls know who Lolita is?”

Sienna raises her chin. “No, she doesn’t.”

“Aurora? You can speak for yourself.”

Aurora stares at her fingers. “No.” But a hot, crawling sensation eases across my chest.

“Is it a friend of yours?” I deliver the next line very, very carefully, glancing at Sienna. “Like Raina, for instance. She’s gorgeous. And she certainly seemed broken up about Greg’s death.”

Sienna sniffs. “Raina isn’t Lolita.”

But she covers her nose when she says this, an obvious tell that she’s lying. I hold her gaze, and she looks away first. “You don’t need to protect her,” I urge. “We need to figure out the truth.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Okay, then, who is it?”

“Why would I know?” Sienna slaps her thighs, then stands. “Why are we having this conversation?”

I glance at Aurora, but she’s staring blankly into her lap. “Okay. Well, whoever Lolita was, the cops will figure it out eventually, if they choose to look,” I say evenly. “There are ways to track the origin of those e-mails. By certain markers in the language. Or by the IP address.”

“The cops probably looked already,” Sienna says, her eyes shining. “And the IP isn’t going to tell them anything.”

This is the most effusive Sienna has been my whole visit. There’s even a sudden bloom of pink on her cheeks. “You seem to know a lot about computers,” I say carefully.

She shrugs. “It’s common knowledge. And I have a friend—he says IPs always just give you generalities about an area an e-mail came from, not the particular user.”