Page 15 of The Same Backward as Forward

This was my sister’s wake.

Rooneys didn’t do funerals. Bodies were always burned—legally or otherwise—no evidence left behind. Kaylie had alreadybeenashes, so that was taken care of. There would be no official burial, no gravestone, no minister or priest.

In our family, there was only ever a wake.

“She wouldn’t like so many people wearing black,” I said. It was unlike me to have said anything. That was Invisibility 101.

“Think she’d approve of gray?” my mother asked me. Her voice was flat, but there was something almost human in her expression.

“I doubt it,” I said, because the truth was that my sister would havehatedmy sweatshirt.

You beautiful bitch. You glorious thing, you.She’d always seen me completely differently than the way I’d seen myself.

My mother assessed me for a moment, then walked to stand right in front of me. “I know you, Hannah.” I thought for a moment that she might know something, but then she continued, “You need to hear me say it.” She held my gaze. “She’s dead.”

My mother didn’t know—not about where I’d been or what I’d been doing or who I’d been doing it for. But she did know that until I’d heardhersay it, part of me had still—still, still, still—refused to fully accept that Kaylie was gone.

I knew it was true. Ifeltit. But I’d been hiding from it for days.

“I know.” My voice came out hoarse.

“Do you, Hannah?” She studied my face. I knew what she was looking for.Fire. Fury.Eden Rooney wanted to see some hint of violence in me, some desire for retribution.

I gave her nothing. It didn’t matter that I’d felt those things, all of them—that Istillfelt them every time I looked at Toby Hawthorne and forgot to recast him asHarryin my mind.

I was not my mother’s daughter.

“Eden.” My father spoke from behind her, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Let the girl eat.”

Once I left the kitchen, it was easy enough to fade into the background again. I ended up in the den, where a group of my uncles and “uncles” and cousins and “cousins” were gathered for the gnashing of teeth and the drinking of beers.

“—fixers. At least three of them, working for Hawthorne.”

I came in, mid-teeth-gnash, to a conversation I had no context for. One after another, they one-upped each other.

“Damn cops are stonewalling us, which means they got a better offer.”

“Wouldn’t be an issue if state police hadn’t taken over.”

“Even the damn feds are circling.”

I wanted no part of this conversation, but backing out of the room ran the risk of drawing attention.

“So, what?” Rory spat. “We just let them walk all over us because they’ve got money? We let them talk about our Kaylie likethis?” Rory slammed a newspaper down onto the table.

I remembered what my mother had said about reporters, and then I remembered my father’s words, days earlier:They’ll pin this on her. You just wait and see.

I stepped out of the shadows, which was probably a mistake, but almost every mistake I’d ever made, I’d made for Kaylie. I reached for the paper. It took me less than a minute to read the front-page article.

The picture it drew was clear enough.A bad girl—a drug addict with a criminal record. Three promising young men, gone too soon.

“They’re blaming Kaylie for the fire.” I said it out loud. Forget the fact that those three boys had come to Hawthorne Island looking for trouble, forgetkerosene—

“It’s bullshit,” Rory growled. “Eden should have let me—”

“Rory.” His father cut him off just as my mother stepped into the den.

“Seems to me,” my mother said slowly, “that this particular problem has taken care of itself. Those boys are dead. Trash took itself out this time.”