Page 79 of Count My Lies

None of this would have worked anywhere else, but on this tiny island, things were different. Violet knew that when she brought us here; it was why she brought us here.

Danny waited with me until a police officer pulled into the parking lot. I rode in silence to the station where I repeated the same story I’d told the cops at the house. They thanked me, then brought me to Harper. She flung her arms around my neck and I held her tightly.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked finally, pulling back to look at me.

“It’s just going to be us for a little bit,” I told her. I hugged her again, then, into her ear, whispered, “But don’t worry, you’ll see her soon.” Then I handed her a king-sized pack of M&M’S, her favorite.

An officer gave us a ride to a nearby hotel; the beach house was now a crime scene. There, when Harper was asleep in the double bed next to mine, I called Laura. Laura, my Dolly Parton client from the spa.

I’d run into her while we were shopping for Harper’s dress the day before. As Harper and I started toward the register, Violet waiting for us next door, I heard my name. “Sloane? Is that you? Hi, sweetheart!”

When I turned, I did a double take. I hadn’t expected to see anyone I knew on the island, especially not a nail client.

I told her I was visiting with a friend and her family, introduced her to Harper. She gave me a hug, her heady perfume thick in my nose, then her number. “Call me,” she said, smiling. “If you ever need anything.”

When I did, only two days later, she gasped when I told her what had happened. “Howawful,” she’d said in her deep Texan drawl.

She put me in touch with her lawyer, said her retainer would more than cover a few phone calls. Within a week, I’d been granted temporary custody of Harper; I was awarded full guardianship two months after that.

Ten days after the shooting, Danny drove his car onto the ferry, Violet tucked out of sight in the back seat, and brought her home, home to Harper and me, our arms outstretched.

With the help of Laura’s lawyer, everything has been transferred into my name: the Lockhart home, money for raising Harper.

Violet almost never leaves the house. We don’t want to risk anyone recognizing her. Which is why, as soon as Jay takes the plea, we’re packing up a moving van, driving to California. Not to San Francisco, but somewhere sunnier. We’re looking at houses in San Diego, bright bungalows within walking distance from the beach.

There, we can be a real family, the three of us. Thanks to Violet’s grandmother, we’ll have more than enough money; neither of us will have to work. Legally, we’ll share my identity, both Sloane Caraway, but tell everyone we’re sisters. I go by Caitlin now, to make it easier.

Once we’re settled, I plan to convince my mom to join us. The warm weather will be good for her joints. But not just that. She loves Harper as much as I do; she even comes with us to the park on Fridays, pushes Harper on the swings. She dotes on her the way a grandmother would, pinching her cheeks and slipping her Hershey’s Kisses when she thinks no one is looking.

My list of lies is shorter now. One, I am the only Sloane Caraway. Two, Violet Lockhart, Harper’s mother, is dead. Three, I felt nothing when I saw Jay this morning in the cellblock.

This last lie, about Jay, is what I wish were true. But when our eyes met, my heart skipped a beat, my stomach tightened. This is the only lie Violet can never know. The one I’ll bury so deep it can’t breathe.

Because I’ve found my happy ending. It’s not the ending I fantasized about when I first met Jay at the park, not the one I thought I wanted, but it’s better. Thanks to him, I’ve found what I’ve spent my whole life looking for. A sister. And not just a sister: a Gemini twin.

Not by blood, but by choice.