Her Sister's Secrets Read online

I wandered over to the dresser in the room and opened the top drawer. Lingerie. Some of it practical and cotton comfortable, but some of it filmy and lacy. I ran my fingers over it. Then I shut the drawer and searched every object on top of the dresser for cameras. If I was being watched, there was no way I was staying in this place.

  I didn’t find any cameras.

  I even took apart the music box that was sitting on top of the dresser. I went hunting for tools in the kitchen and came up with a tiny screwdriver. Then I sat at the dining room table and dissembled the thing piece by piece.

  It was kind of creepy, anyway, the music box. It was one of those old-school things that every little girl has when she’s twelve, with the little plastic ballerina in the middle. The kind with the fused-together legs.

  There was no camera in it, though.

  And after I took it apart, I couldn’t figure out how to put it back together, but that wasn’t a big deal, considering that it was creepy. I felt a little guilty, though, for ruining it, so I hid it in the lingerie drawer, way back in the far corner.

  Phin was still asleep.

  He and I had been friends for a long time. We’d gotten to know each other during college. I’d been majoring in Art History, like I was going to find some kind of job with that. I ended up graduating with a business degree, but I didn’t use that either.

  I made my living running a food blog.

  I cooked recipes, took pictures, and posted them. I made money from ad revenue and from selling my cookbooks. Every now and again, I’d do a collection of recipes from the blog and bundle them into a book. It always amazed me that people bothered to buy them, especially considering the recipes were free on the web. I understood it a bit when it came to the print books, because I could understand wanting a physical cookbook in your kitchen instead of your laptop or something.

  But I did a brisk business in selling ebook cookbooks, which simply blew my mind. Did people really cook with an ereader in the kitchen? If they used their tablets, did they not realize that they could simply navigate to the blog and see the recipe right there?

  I kept my mouth shut. I needed the money. I wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. What I called “making a living,” other people might call, “enough money for the first quarter of the year.” But I lived a frugal lifestyle, and I shared an apartment off University Parkway in Sarasota, so I wasn’t exactly living in the ritzy part of town.

  Making a living cooking was a dream of mine, but I had always known I didn’t want to go about it the same way that my mother had. Back when I was a little girl, she had worked in people’s homes, as a live-in cook. After we abruptly left the Wainwright’s, she hadn’t been able to get another job doing that, so she’d remade herself as a sought-after caterer. Violet and I helped out as free labor.

  Well, not exactly, as our mother would point out if we tried to complain. We weren’t working for free, we were getting paid in the food we ate and the clothes that we wore and the bed we slept in, because our labor went to support the family. It was hard to argue with that.

  Violet and I spent our adolescence at parties, charity events, and weddings. Behind buffet tables. Carrying trays of canapes. Running back and forth from my mother’s car carrying chafing dishes. We worked hard. My mother was a talented cook, and Violet and I both learned from her. We had to be able to know what we were doing to run the business.

  But I knew from a very young age that I never wanted a job like my mother’s. It was stressful, taxing, thankless, and backbreaking. There were no weekends or holidays off. It was a demanding job. Even though my mother died of cancer officially, some part of me always thought she was worn down by the job, that it ushered her into an early grave. I wanted no part of something like that.

  However, I discovered that I loved to cook. It was like painting a picture that I got to eat. It was fun to make it look pretty and also fun to layer in the flavors with spices and cooking techniques and ingredients. It was just fun.

  In college, when I first met Phin, I used to make dinner for our friends every Saturday, and I’d scour the Internet for ideas of what to make. But I never followed a recipe, not really. I tended to use recipes as jumping off points to create my own concoctions.

  It was then that I began to daydream about having my own blog like the ones I visited for ideas. I knew that some bloggers were able to make enough money doing it to support themselves, and I wanted to be one of them. But it seemed like an impossible dream. I didn’t think it could ever work.

  It was like the best of all worlds—making food for money, but not having to deal with the public. Setting my own hours. Staying in my pajamas all day. There was no possible way something like that actually happened to a regular person like me.

  So, I didn’t even try, until I had graduated from college and began to discover that all those news articles I’d read about millennials not being able to find jobs was, like, true.

  It was desperation that led me to create the blog, then, and I worked at it with everything I had, throwing myself into it. It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen. Now, I still worked as hard as I could to keep it running, and I got out of it what I put in.

  I thought it was the perfect job, and maybe I was shortsighted. I couldn’t see what Violet enjoyed about her job. Maybe if I’d been more supportive of her, we wouldn’t have been estranged these past years.

  I still remembered the last time she and I had spoken. It had been after my mother’s funeral. We’d been in the graveyard, lingering over her casket, which they had not yet lowered into the ground. We thought maybe they would, so we stuck around for a while.

  Later on, someone came by and told us that it wouldn’t be lowered for a few more hours, so we’d left. Separately, even though we’d planned to be together that evening, to be there for each other.

  But we were never there for each other, ever again.

  That day, she was wearing a navy blue dress, and it was clingy. It came down to her knees, and she was futzing with it during the entire funeral. I knew it was the only dark-colored dress she’d had that was appropriate for the funeral, and neither of us had time to go shopping for anything else. She yanked on the end of the dress. “I’ve got to go in tomorrow to talk to Roman Wainwright about a job.”

  “What?” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

  She wrinkled up her nose and adjusted the dress on her shoulders. “I think this dress is too small.”

  “A little, maybe,” I said. “But you look good.” My sister had a completely different body type than me. While I was tall, with broad shoulders and a sturdy frame, she was small and curvy. Maybe it was because we only shared half of the same genes, I realized, and the thought made me feel cold all over.

  This job that she’d taken for the Wainwrights, had Roman known he was her father? Was that why he’d offered it to her?

  But back in the graveyard, I hadn’t known any of that yet. I remembered that I was angry. “You know something horrible happened with the Wainwrights, Violet. You can’t work for them. Mom wouldn’t approve.”

  Violet shrugged. “Taking their money? Maybe she would. Besides, who knows what happened back then. You always act like someone died or something, but no one did.”

  “It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t murder. It was serious,” I said. I bit down on my bottom lip. “So, you don’t remember either?”

  “I remember leaving,” she said. “I remember Mom crying.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t remember.”

  “Well, whatever. You can’t go work for them.”

  “It’s a big opportunity, Ems,” she said. “You know that Hazel Wainwright left her husband?”

  “No,” I said. “I avoid anything to do with them. Thinking about them makes me feel uncomfortable.” Afraid and cold and nervous.

  “Oh, come on.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “You can’t work for them.”

  “It’s a big deal,” she said. “Wi
thout Hazel, who used to organize all of the Wainwright’s social calendar, Roman is in the lurch. He wants to hire me to do every single one of his get-togethers, from the big parties to the small, intimate barbecues. And he said he wants me because he knows me by reputation.”

  Violet was an event planner, and she’d made a bit of a name for herself. She’d had a leg up because she came recommended by my mother, who was a well-known caterer, but it was a Farrow family value to hustle and work hard, so I knew she’d busted her butt for it. Still, the bulk of her work was for the wealthy people in the area, just as my mother’s had been, and I knew she was overworked and under-appreciated.

  “Turn down the Wainwrights,” I said. “For Mom’s sake.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “This could be huge for me. The fact that Mom cut ties with the Wainwrights keeps a lot of doors closed for me. If I take this gig, it will open them all up. The sky’s the limit. And besides, I love big, expensive parties, don’t you?”

  “Not when I’m being treated like dirt the whole time.”

  “They don’t treat me like dirt.”

  I shook my head at her. “You’re just being selfish and greedy, that’s what you’re doing.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Geez, don’t hold back there, Ems. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “You are.” I put my hands on my hips. “You’ve always been this way, ever since we were little girls.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to start in with that story about how I wouldn’t let you have that freaking teddy bear aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said, even though it had been on the tip of my tongue.

  “All I’m doing is taking a perfectly good opportunity and making it work for me.”

  “You only think about yourself,” I said. “Always. When we were little, when we were in high school, and now—”

  “Who am I hurting now?” she said.

  “Mom,” I said. “Her memory.”

  “Come on, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Don’t brush it aside. You act like the stuff you do isn’t a big deal, but you screw stuff up, Violet. You screw people up.”

  “Okay, that is really harsh, and you—”

  “Like in high school. Like your rivalry with Annalise and everything that came out of that.”

  Her lips parted. “I can’t believe you would bring that up. You know I never meant for anything—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “In the end, even if you didn’t mean it, you still ruined his life.”

  “Shut up,” she said, putting her finger in my face. “You just stop talking to me.”

  I snatched her finger and shoved it down. “All you ever think of is yourself. You just take, take, take.”

  “Stop it,” she said. Her face was getting red. “Stop talking.”

  I shouldn’t have said those things to her. Because for the next three years, whenever I tried to get in touch with her, she would ignore my texts and my calls. Admittedly, I didn’t try very hard. After a couple holidays went by and she didn’t want to get together, I stopped asking. I figured she was working, anyway. There was always some event to plan for the holidays.

  But now, she was dead.

  And I’d never had the chance to apologize.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I crawled into bed next to Phineas in the wee hours of the morning, after I’d had another good, long cry over Violet.

  He stirred sleepily and rolled over to make room for me. “What time is it?”

  I told him.

  He yawned, tugging his phone out of his pocket. “Need to set an alarm for 5:00.” He thought about it. “No, a half hour before that if I’ve got to drive back to the apartment.”

  “Okay,” I said, snuggling against his shoulder.

  “Unless you want to get up and go home now?”

  “No,” I said. I shut my eyes. The bed was pretty freaking comfortable. It was one of those memory foam mattresses, and it seemed to hug my body like a fluffy cloud.

  “You’re going to come back with me in the morning, though, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Right?” he said.

  I rolled over, putting my back to him. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”

  “I just… I was thinking about the last time I talked to Violet,” I said.

  “Hey, I know that makes you feel guilty, that you called her a selfish brat, but that’s hardly the worst thing two sisters have ever called each other.”

  I managed to get myself under a layer of covers, pulling them tight against me. “Actually, I was thinking of something else. I was thinking that maybe I didn’t try hard enough to keep her from taking the job with the Wainwrights. Maybe I failed her because I didn’t convince her to stay clear of those people. Because, look, here we are, right next door to them.”

  “Well, kind of,” he said. “There’s no other houses between this one and theirs, but I wouldn’t call it ‘next door.’ I bet you can’t even see their house from your beach.”

  My beach? I had to admit, I kind of liked the sound of that. “You already know I’m staying,” I said. “You just called it mine.”

  “What are you going to do, Mila? Infiltrate the nasty rich family up the beach and prove that they killed your sister?”

  “That’s the general plan,” I said.

  He sighed. “I really want to talk you out of this, but I’m also super tired and don’t have much time left to sleep.” He yawned again.

  “You won’t be able to talk me out of it,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything else. Or if he did, I didn’t hear him, because I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  I woke up briefly when Phin’s alarm went off.

  He shook me a little. “Wake up and come home with me, Mila,” he said.

  “Mmph,” I said, and pulled the covers over my head.

  “Seriously, I’m going to leave you here all by yourself,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  He shook me again, called my name a few times, but I still didn’t answer. “Fine,” he said eventually. “I’m going to be late, so I’ll call you later.”

  I went back to sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, I realized that Phin had taken my car. I was trapped here. Well, not entirely trapped. I could always call a cab or an Uber or something. But I didn’t have an easy way to leave.

  Not that I needed to have one, because the house had everything I needed. As promised, the refrigerator had been stocked with all kinds of food, and the cabinets were full as well. I puttered around, trying to decide what I wanted for breakfast. There was a pound of bacon, and I thought that if I cooked that up, it could have all kinds of promising uses later on in the week. I could put bacon in various dishes for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and the bacon grease would be useful too.

  Bacon’s a fussy sort of thing. It really needs to be watched or it cooks unevenly. I’m not one of those people who likes my bacon burnt to a crisp. I like a crispy bacon, of course, but not overly crispy. That means keeping an eye on it, turning it when necessary, draining the grease as it renders. It’s a bit time-consuming. But it’s worth it. And this wasn’t just for breakfast this morning, but for the rest of the week.

  When the bacon was done, I made a simple scrambled egg to go along with it, topped with some nice chunks of gorgonzola cheese, which I’d found in the refrigerator. I completed the meal with an orange.

  After breakfast, I found a swimsuit and a filmy little kimono with red details that served as the perfect beach dress. I went out on my porch to look out at the ocean.

  When I was a little girl, my mother used to take Violet and me out to the ocean at least once a week, almost every week. When it was too cold to swim, we’d sit out in the sun and talk or play games in the sand. But as I’d grown older, I’d gotten busy, and I hadn’t been to the beach in months now. I could go. It was a fifteen minute drive from
our apartment to the public beach out on Lido Key, probably the closest. I just didn’t find the time.

  It was pretty amazing to look out at the expanse of white sand here and the turquoise water and know that this beach was private, exclusive to this house where I was staying. My beach, as Phin had put it.

  I wandered off the porch to put my bare feet into the sand. There was a tangle of trees and growth to my left, and so I walked down below that to see if Phin was right. Could I see the Wainwright house from here?

  Yes, I could, but barely.

  It was high up in the distance, a series of wooden steps leading up to a deck with a pool. The house was behind it, but it was surrounded by palm trees, and I couldn’t see anything but its roof again.

  What I did see, however, was a man on the beach. He was wearing a white linen shirt, halfway unbuttoned, and a pair of jeans which he’d rolled up to his mid-calf, so as not to get them wet in the water. He wasn’t an old man, which was typical for this area. The Sarasota area was a haven for retirees. He wasn’t young either, though. I would put his age as mid-thirties.

  He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at a book. He walked and read, and he was coming directly toward me.

  I wondered if that was Drew Wainwright, Roman’s son. Drew was my age, though, and this man looked a bit older. If it was Drew, I’d recognize him, I thought. We hadn’t seen each other since we were children, but I’d still know him.

  As the man got closer, I was sure he wasn’t Drew. I didn’t think I’d ever seen this man before in my life.

  He looked up from his book and saw me.

  Damn it. Now, I didn’t see how I could run back into the house. I pulled my kimono closed and held it there. I was wearing a one piece, not a bikini or anything, under there, although there had been a few bikinis in the house. I wasn’t really blessed with a bikini body. I didn’t have a lot up top, and I had a thick waist and my hips barely jutted out. I also was a food blogger, so I wasn’t much for dieting. I wasn’t fat or anything, but I had a bit of meat on my bones.

  The man raised a hand and waved at me, but he didn’t smile. Instead, he seemed to be sizing me up, like maybe I was an interesting specimen or something.