Avery, look over here!”
“Any comment about the arrest of Drake Sanders?”
“Can you comment on the future of the Hawthorne Foundation?”
“Is it true that your mother was once arrested for solicitation?”
If it hadn’t been for the seven rounds of practice questions I’d been put through earlier, that last one would have gotten me. I would have answered, and my answer would have contained expletives, plural. Instead, I stood near the car and waited.
And then the question I’d been waiting for came. “With everything that’s happened, how do you feel?”
I looked directly at the reporter who’d asked that question. “I’m grateful to be alive,” I said. “And I’m grateful to be here tonight.”
The event was held in an art museum. We entered on the upper floor and descended a massive marble staircase into the exhibit hall. By the time I was halfway down, everyone in the room was either staring at me or not-staring in a way that was worse.
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw Grayson. He wore a tuxedo exactly the way he wore a suit. He was holding a glass—clear, with clear liquid inside. The moment he saw me, he froze in place, as suddenly and fully as if someone had stopped time. I thought back to standing with him at the bottom of the hidden staircase, to the way he’d looked at me, and on some level, I thought that was the way he was looking at me now.
I thought I’d taken his breath away.
Then he dropped the glass in his hand. It hit the floor and shattered, shards of crystal spraying everywhere.
What happened? What did I do?
Alisa nudged me to keep moving. I finished descending the stairs as the waitstaff hurried over to clean up the glass.
Grayson stared at me. “What are you doing?” His voice was guttural.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Your hair,” Grayson choked out. He lifted his free hand to my braid, his fingers nearly touching it before he pulled them into a fist. “That necklace. That dress…”
“What?” I said.
The only word he managed in reply was a name.
Emily. It was always Emily. Somehow, I made my way to the bathroom without looking too much like I was running away. I fumbled to tear my phone out of the black satin handbag I’d been given, unsure what I was planning to do with the phone once I got it out. Someone stepped up to the mirror beside me.
“You look nice,” Thea said, casting a glance sidelong at me. “In fact, you look perfect.”
I stared at her, and comprehension dawned. “What did you do, Thea?”
She glanced down at her own phone, hit a few buttons, and a moment later, I had a text. I hadn’t even realized she had my number.
I opened the text and the picture attached, and all of the blood drained from my face. In this photo, Emily Laughlin wasn’t laughing. She was smiling at the camera—a wicked little smile, like she was on the verge of a wink. Her makeup was natural, but her eyes looked unnaturally large, and her hair…
Was exactly like mine.
“What did you do?” I asked Thea again, more accusation this time than question. She’d invited herself along on my shopping trip. She was the one who’d suggested I wear green—just like Emily wore in this photo.
Even my necklace was eerily like hers.
I’d assumed, when the stylist had asked if I wanted to look like the picture, that Alisa was the one who’d supplied it. I’d assumed it was a photo of a model. Not a dead girl.
“Why would you do this?” I asked Thea, amending my question.
“It’s what Emily would have wanted.” Thea pulled a tube of lipstick out of her purse. “If it’s any consolation,” she said, once she was finished turning her lips a sparkling ruby red, “I didn’t do this to you.”
She’d done it to them.
“The Hawthornes didn’t kill Emily,” I spat. “Rebecca said that it was her heart.”
Technically, she’d said that Grayson had said it was her heart.
“How sure are you that the Hawthorne family isn’t trying to kill you?” Thea smiled. She had been there this morning. She’d been shaken. And now she was acting like this was all a joke.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with you,” I said.
My fury didn’t seem to penetrate. “I told you the day we met that the Hawthorne family was a twisted, broken mess.” She stared at the mirror a moment longer. “I never said that I wasn’t one, too.”
