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“You took away the one thing in this world I loved most,” she says, and I take another step, the sound of her voice masking the slight creak of wood beneath my weight.

“Please,” Kasey says. “Let me explain.”

Jenna lets out something between a scoff and a sob. “Explain what? What could you say that could possibly make a difference?” She’s shouting now, tears streaming down her face and into her open mouth.

I use the opportunity to keep moving.

“It was an accident,” Kasey says.

“Do you honestly think that changes anything?” Jenna waves the gun wildly through the air. “She was going to be an artist, did you know that? She was supposed to have a goddamn life.”

“I…” Kasey’s voice chokes out.

Finally, I am close enough to lunge at Jenna, but just as I’m about to try to knock the gun out of her hands, she walks over the threshold and disappears from my sight.

“Say it!” I hear her shout from within the house. “Just fucking say it!” She sounds unhinged. There’s no time to rethink my plan. I take the final steps onto the landing and turn to face the doorway. Jenna’s back is to me, her body shaking.

And there, over her shoulder, is Kasey.

Her hair is in a pixie cut, much shorter than I’ve ever seen it before. Her cheeks are slimmer too. I’ve thought of her face many times over the years, but it is so much more nuanced in real life than my own memory could ever conjure, more alive than any photo ever captured. My heart clenches at the sight—she looks terrified.

“Please.” Kasey lifts her palms, and it’s then that I see her register my presence, her gaze flickering with confusion.

Stall,I try to tell her with my eyes.Buy me time.Jenna’s still pointing the gun down toward Kasey’s legs. If I can get it out of her hands, I can save them both.

“Give—give me a minute…” Kasey stammers out. “Give me a second. To explain.”

“You’ve had seven fucking years,” Jenna says, lifting the gun and aiming it at Kasey’s head. “Your time’s up.”

There’s a metallic clicking sound as she cocks the gun, and I realize there is no saving them both. If I spare Jenna, she will kill my sister. To spare my sister, I’m going to have to kill Jenna.

It’s as if I’m suspended in time. I see Jenna bringing me a bag of peanut M&M’s, Jenna slipping her arms gratefully through my cardigan, Jenna throwing her head back and laughing at my joke, Jenna smiling softly as Banksy curls into my lap. For these past few weeks, the woman in front of me has become the closest thing I’ve had to a sister since my own went missing. I realize now that I’ve come to love her.

Tears stream down my cheeks as I lift up the hammer, impossibly heavy in my hand. And then, with all my might, I swing it down on the back of Jenna’s skull.

Chapter Forty-two

Jenna’s body crumples. I have the inane urge to reach out, to guard her head from the fall, but I’m too late, and it cracks against the faux wooden floorboards like a ceramic bowl. The gun drops from her hand and skitters into the baseboard, black and glinting but no longer ominous—a defanged snake. Without Jenna between us, I’m suddenly face-to-face with Kasey for the first time in seven years.

Without preamble, she crouches down to press two fingers deep into Jenna’s neck. “She’s dead,” Kasey says, the first words she’s spoken to me in almost a decade.

My stomach lurches.

“No!” She throws out a hand. “Don’t do it near her body. Vomit contains DNA.”

The implications of this seem abstract and faraway, but even after all this time, it feels natural to take instructions from my big sister, so I whirl around to the open doorway behind me and stagger out, a hand clamped over my mouth. I make it to the wooden railing and lean over, retching into the yard below. Like an echo in my right arm, I can still feel the force of the hammer colliding with bone, as if my body is memorizing what it’s like to inflict such violence. I throw up again.

“Close the door behind you,” Kasey says when I step back inside. Blood is pooling around Jenna’s head, crimson and slick. Her face looks blank—not peaceful or sleeping, like corpses in the movies, but hollow. The hammer, which I don’t remember dropping, is on the floor beside her, the metal stained red. “Lock it.”

Everything is moving too quickly, as if I’m in a film that’s being fast-forwarded. I need to pause, rewind. “Wait, Kasey…” I don’t know how to finish. I know she pressed her fingers into Jenna’s neck, pronounced her dead, but my brain is sludge, and the words aren’t making sense.

“We don’t have time for all that right now,” Kasey says, and that’s when I notice the wad of towels in her hands. She must have gotten them when I was outside. Gingerly, she steps around Jenna’s body and crouches down to lay a towel on the floor by her head. The blood seeps into it, turning the brown terry cloth black. With the other towel she grabs the hammer and begins to rub it down. “We need to do this first, then we can talk.”

“Do what first?” I say.

Kasey looks up. On her face is a mixture of pity and impatience. “We need to get rid of her body.”

“Wait. No. Shouldn’t we call the police?”