Chapter 6: My Sister's Turn
Three days later, they let me go home.
My husband drove.
I sat in the passenger seat with one hand on my stomach and watched the streets go by.
Everything looked the same as it had before the cookout.
That still surprised me.
My phone rang as we pulled into our street.
The name on the screen was my sister, Renee.
I looked at my husband.
He looked at the road.
I answered.
"I need to talk to you," Renee said.
"Not on the phone.
In person."
"I just got out of the hospital."
"I know.
I've been waiting." A pause.
"Please.
I'm outside your house."
She was.
She was sitting on our front step in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, which was not how Renee usually dressed.
Renee usually dressed like she was expecting to be photographed.
The sweatshirt told me something had shifted.
My husband helped me out of the car.
He stood beside me on the path.
"Just her," Renee said, looking at him.
"No," he said.
Renee looked at me.
I nodded once.
We went inside.
She sat at the kitchen table.
I sat across from her.
My husband stood in the doorway.
"I didn't know about the bl00dwork," she said.
"I need you to believe that."
"Tell me what you did know."
Her hands were flat on the table.
"Mom told me the documents were about cutting you out of Grandpa's will.
That you'd found out and you were going to use it against the family.
That you were planning to take everything and leave us with nothing."
"That's not what the documents were."
"I know that now." Her voice cracked on the last word.
She pressed through it.
"She said if you caused a scene at the cookout — if things got physical — it would discredit you.
Make you look unstable.
She said it would help the legal case against the trust."
"She told you to hjt me."
"She said if it happened, it would help." Renee's eyes were wet.
"I was angry.
I'd been angry for months.
She'd been telling me for months that you were trying to destroy the family.
That you thought you were better than us.
That you'd always thought that." She stopped.
"I believed her.
I wanted to believe her because it was easier than — "
She didn't finish.
"Easier than what?" I said.
"Than admitting that she was the one doing it." Renee looked up at me.
"I went along with it.
I let her put that in my head and I went to that cookout already furious and when you started talking about the documents I just — " Her voice broke fully.
"I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
I know that doesn't — I know it doesn't fix anything."
The kitchen was quiet.
"The substance in my food," I said.
"Did you help with that?"
"No." The word came out hard and immediate.
"I swear to you.
I didn't know anything about that until the detective called me yesterday." She pressed her hands flat on the table.
"When he told me what they found — what she put in your food — I threw up.
I literally — I had to sit down on the floor."
I looked at my sister's face.
I had known that face my whole life.
I knew when she was performing and I knew when she wasn't.
She wasn't.
"You're going to have to tell the detective everything you just told me," I said.
"I already called Patricia Hale this morning," she said.
"Roy gave me her number." She looked down at her hands.
"I'm going to cooperate with everything.
Whatever they need."
My husband shifted in the doorway.
"That's a significant change of position."
"I know." Renee didn't look at him.
She kept her eyes on me.
"Mom called me last night after she left the hospital.
She told me to say the kick was provoked.
That you'd grabbed her first.
She told me to delete the texts." A pause.
"She didn't know Denise had already sent copies to the detective."
"Did you delete them?"
"No." Renee reached into her pocket and set her phone on the table between us.
"I screenshotted everything first.
Every message she's sent me in the last three months."
I looked at the phone.
"There are things in there," Renee said quietly, "that I think you need to see.
About what she was planning.
How long she'd been planning it."
She unlocked the screen and turned it toward me.
I read the first message.
Then the second.
May you like
By the fifth, my husband had crossed the room and was standing behind me, reading over my shoulder.
He straightened up and said, "I'm calling Patricia."
