“Grandmother decided.”
“She did?”
“It’s already set up. If something happens to me, then it goes to the next person in line.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I- Do I want to know where I stand on that list?”
I sighed.
“You’re not jumping to give me an answer.”
“No,” I told her. “You don’t want to know.”
The silence was painful to listen to. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked? To get where I am? You ran away. Molly… I don’t even know what happened, but she apparently fell apart before she even had the inheritance, then got worse after. Ellie and Roxanne never deserved that money, too spoiled, in very different ways. Your little sister is obviously too young, and Kathryn was the worst of us when it came to tearing down everyone else to get her hands on it.”
“And you?” I asked.
The microwave beeped. I left it alone.
“I… damn it, I worked for it! I did some stuff I’m not proud of, but not against Molly or Ivy. Only against my sisters, who were already playing dirty. But I didn’t make it an obsession. I made myself my own person, worked hard at school, and I made it something that could be. Not something that had to be.”
Except somewhere along the line, it sounds like, you let yourself believe you were the only one who deserved it, and you pinned too many hopes on it.
I didn’t say that, though. “When she asked, you know, I said you should get it.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sure you understand if I say I don’t believe you,” Paige told me.
She was wrong. I didn’t understand in the slightest. I asked, “Why not?”
“Why would I? We don’t know each other. You don’t know me.”
“We did, we were friends.”
“We were family who saw each other because we had to.”
That stung. More than it should have.
“We were friends,” I said, again. Firmer. “Back when we were kids. Then we got along at the inheritance meeting. We ran into each other at school. Talked in passing.”
“In passing. Nothing more.”
“Why are you so dead set on denying any connection we had?” I asked.
“Because we didn’t. We weren’t friends, Blake. We just moved in some of the same circles, and you’re pretending the past has more significance than it does.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but then I thought about the scars I’d erased.
I couldn’t deny that I gave history an awful lot of weight.
“I think you’re a genuinely good person, Paige,” I said. “So I’m going to assume that it’s the late hour and pressure that are making you obsessing more over the inheritance than Molly’s murder.”
“Murder?” she asked. Seizing on entirely the wrong point.
Hadn’t she said-
No. Fuck.
I was too tired.
“That’s how I understand it,” I said.
“The police didn’t say anything about murder. If anything, it was apparently an accident.”
Someone was revising history, just as Paige was accusing me of doing. Washing over the murder, turning it into an ‘accident’. However they managed that.
“I don’t know exactly who said what,” I said. “What did they say?”
“If you’re looking to get your story straight-”
“Paige,” I said.
“…The police said it looked like she shut herself in, because she was scared of backlash from the locals, Aunt Laura seemed to back that up. She supposedly got cabin fever, fled, and got a little too far out into the cold. But you said murder. Which isn’t an idea you throw around lightly.”
Laird’s work?
“Paige-”
She steamrolled over me. “It’s a little fucked, Blake. Either you know something you’re not sharing, or you’re fucking with me, or-”
“It was damn suspicious,” I said. Which it was. “And clues were dropped.”
“Is that why they’re looking for you? I thought they wanted to find you because you’d be the second person to disappear.”
“I don’t know why they’re looking for me.”
“But you thought that there was a murder, and you left the area? Even if you’re a suspect?”
“As I understand it, one of them confirmed my alibi.”
“Did they? Which is it, Blake? Were they looking for a murderer or not?”
This was Paige. She’d always been sharp.
She was a problem, and if she kept along this line of questioning, then it was very possible she’d get the wrong idea and take that wrong idea to legitimate authorities.
I needed to look at her as the threat she was, and that meant treating her as I’d treated Conquest and Pauz. Figuring out what she wanted and utilizing that knowledge.
What she wanted was knowledge. Understanding.
“What I know,” I said, speaking very slowly and carefully, “Is that grandmother was involved in something pretty messed up. Some of that relates to the police chief back in Jacob’s Bell. Some of it ties to what happened to Molly. Molly died, I got a message saying as much, I walked right into the middle of it, and the whole reason I’m here is because I can’t do anything there. I need to wrangle some help from above if I’m going to deal with this, before anyone else in the family gets wrapped up in it all.”
“That’s a little hard to swallow.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Tell me that, with all the stories we shared between us about the family, that it isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that they were caught up in some hinky town council secret society bullshit.”
She didn’t reply immediately. I took a forkful of lasagna.
“…Is that what it was?”
“A small few people with too much power, trying to get more power. It relates to the house, to the whole inheritance thing, and a lot of the stuff Molly was talking about, when she sounded as paranoid as she did.”
“I’m trying to remember what she said.”
“Don’t. Don’t worry about it, don’t get involved.”
“How am I not supposed to get involved? Either you’re lying to me, telling me something convenient… or you’re telling the truth, and this does make sense, and I’m supposed to do nothing?”
“Do nothing,” I said. “Okay? You’re furthest away from this, out of all of us possible heirs. You’re, aside from the little ones, the cousin with the best shot of coming out of this okay. Take your exams. Spend time with friends. Enjoy life. And if this does come-”
I stopped myself.
“If it what?”
“Nevermind.”
“If it does come…”
I frowned. I was too tired. Saying things I shouldn’t. “I’ll see about leaving you a few notes. The stuff I’ve figured out, tips. Maybe make sure that Ellie and Kathy can add to it, if they move fast enough.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense, here. You’re saying you’re in danger too? That Ellie and Kathy might go the same way?”
“I’m saying… it’s complicated.”
“That’s a pretty terrible answer.”