Page 76 of Gilt

I send two text messages, the first to Jameson. I didn’t bother to type more than SOS. Not while my fingers are still shaking. To Josie, I managed to get out two words.

Coming home.

Now I just have to wait and not go crazy, which feels impossible. I want to get away from here and pretend this never happened.

Instead, I stare in the mirror for a moment trying to find Becca hiding in my green eyes. I’m having a hard time picturing her. I can recall all the facts: strawberry blonde hair instead of my sandy blonde, more freckles, particularly on her nose. She never tanned if she could help it. I have all the pieces of the puzzle but it’s getting harder to figure out how to put them together. That’s the real cost of grief. People you lose, slowly slip away until they’re nothing more than a list of memories you can’t recall.

“Get yourself together,” I command the girl in the mirror, but she looks scared and small. I don’t want to hug her, though, I want to slap her. Instead, I wander back into my bedroom. I could pack another suitcase, but somehow I don’t want any of these things anymore, not if they were bought with Hans’s money. My eyes fall on a framed picture from last summer. Becca and I are laughing as mom and Hans try to look serious in the background. We need a family picture, mom had said. This was as close as we’d gotten. Now it’s all we have. I grab it off the desk and fling it to the ground.

You break it, you buy it, right?

I’d been bought with private school tuition, a new car, and my mother’s happiness. How had he bought Becca?

She told me to stay away from you.

He made it sound like jealousy, but that wasn’t Becca.

Bending down, I pick up the frame, shaking the rest of the broken glass free so that I can pluck the photo out. It should be comforting to see my sister staring back at me given literally only moments ago I couldn’t conjure up her face, but it’s the exact opposite. I’ve looked at this picture every day this summer, but today Becca seems different. Is her smile forced? Is she really laughing? Did he assault her and she covered up for him, thinking no one would believe her, not even me? Hans wants me to believe the worst, but what if he’s telling the truth? What happened between Hans and Becca?

“It’s really inconvenient that you’re dead,” I say to the photo. A rush of hot tears aches in my throat, but I swallow against the pain.

Digging through my desk drawers, I find another photo of the two of us, shot at closer range. We’re hugging on a beach in La Jolla. Becca’s blue eyes stare back at me.

The only blue eyes in the family. Mom’s voice floats to my mind. I’d need a biology textbook to be positive but, if memory serves, it’s pretty rare for my father’s brown eyes and my mother’s green eyes to produce a blue-eyed child. Recessive genes, my ass. The shrill ring of my phone startles me, and I toss the picture back on my dresser.

“I can’t get through the gate,” Jameson says, and I detect a note of panic in his voice.

“I’ll open it, but meet me at the front door as soon as you can.”

“What the hell is going on, Duchess?” He sounds more worried now.

“Just meet me.”

Shouldering my duffle bag, I brace myself as I unlock my door but Hans isn’t waiting for me. Running down the hall, I’m a few steps from the front entrance when Jameson’s headlights glare through the window. A sob of relief bursts out of me.

“Where on earth are you going?” my mother calls from the top of the stairs.

“Home,” I tell her.

“I did not give you permission.”

I ignore her and open the door. “I’m not staying in this house a minute longer.”

“You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you make the rules around here—” my mother begins.

“You’re under the mistaken impression that it’s safe for me here.” I’m not even sure she can hear me past the sobs that choke my words. I can’t hold any of it back. Not anymore.

Even in the dark house, I see her face pale. She takes a few stairs down but stops again. “What does that mean?”

“Ask your husband.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I don’t have to tell Jameson to drive fast. He’s off the Von Essen property in record time. I don’t ask questions when he heads away from the city. Jameson could take me anywhere as long as it was far away from that twisted dollhouse.

Moonlight casts stark shadows over Palm Springs. Tonight it looks black and white and every shade of gray in between. It’s a city of ghosts. No place for me.

Jameson pulls into the private airfield just beyond the public airport.