“She must have had help.”

“She wouldn’t let anyone touch a thing. She went to the house every day for weeks, boxed things up, and then moved them here.”

“Everyone grieves differently, I suppose.” Tenley snuggled into my side; the contact kept me grounded.

“Her way was better than mine.”

Time gave so much in the way of clarity. I could see now how difficult it had been for Cassie when she lost her sister because in many ways she lost me, too. Not forever, but for a long while. We were close, even during the beginning of my rebellious, ass-hole teen phase. She’d been the one person I could go to when I screwed up and needed to find a way to fix things. But I’d been so submerged in guilt and blame afterward, I cut her off along with everyone else.

I exhaled a heavy breath and stepped across the threshold. As organized as it was, the space made me feel panicky—all the stuff just sitting there in boxes with no real place or function. Moving toward an ornate cherry desk, I ran my hand over the plastic-covered surface.

“This used to be in my mom’s office. She always had a stash of twenties in the back of this drawer. I never touched them, though.”

“That would be hard to resist as a teenager.”

I shrugged. “She put a lot of trust in me, even though I didn’t deserve it most of the time. I didn’t want to mess with that. I miss her a lot.”

“You were close?”

I nodded. “She let me get away with too much shit, but she understood me better than my dad. We were a lot the same, me and my mom.”

It had been a long time since I’d let myself feel all the emotions that came with losing them. I’d been quick to don emotional and physical armor after their murders. It had been easier to bury it all than to face the pain.

Tenley gave me space as I moved around, running my fingers over all the things I remembered. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. I didn’t like it. I stopped at a lamp made out of bent silverware.

“That’s really cool,” Tenley said from behind me.

“My mom and I made it when I was a kid. I thought it was cool because I got to use a blowtorch. Dad hated that she put it in our sitting room. He said it didn’t match the antiques. Mom had all these cool ideas that didn’t fit with convention. Dad was different; always looking to climb the social ladder. She couldn’t have cared less. I loved that she didn’t give a shit what people thought most of the time. I mean, she wasn’t exactly thrilled when I came home with an eyebrow piercing on my seventeenth birthday, but she wasn’t bothered by it. It was my dad’s reaction she worried about.”

“Did you get along with your dad?”

“As long as I followed the rules, which wasn’t very often. We argued a lot. He was away on business most of the time, so it was just my mom and me. And Cassie, when she lived with us. Mom was permissive and I took advantage of that. Dad would try and put the hammer down if I’d been a shit while he was gone. It wasn’t very effective.”

“Isn’t that what all teenagers do?”

“I guess. But some of the crap I pulled was pretty awful. I started hanging out in Damen’s tattoo shop during my junior year. I thought he was so cool back then. I came home wasted all the time, fucked up on drugs, with hickeys all over the place. That was when things went downhill. I shouldn’t have been out with Damen and his drugged-up loser friends the night my parents died.”

I stopped at a stack of long, narrow boxes, ones that would hold framed art. I went through them, reading the descriptors scrawled on the front of each one. I recalled every piece by title alone.

“You remember yesterday when I told you that you couldn’t keep going over all the possibilities? That you had to let it go?”

“You were right on both counts. But it’s not easy,” Tenley said softly.

Her arm came around my waist. I looked down at her. No pity was in her eyes, just understanding.

“It was a hypocritical thing to say. I still think about it sometimes—about what might have happened if I’d just stayed home like I was supposed to that night. If I hadn’t started hanging out with Damen in the first place, I wouldn’t have been grounded or pissed my dad off, or gotten all shitfaced. Things might have been different.”

“The what-ifs are so hard to deal with.”

I turned back to the boxes and continued flipping through, still caught up in memories and guilt I couldn’t shake and maybe never would. This whole thing gave me new insight into how resilient Tenley was. Inside of a year, she’d got her life back together and found a way to move on that wasn’t completely self-destructive. I’d taken seven times as long to do the same, and I was still working on it. The paths we took to reach the same end were vastly different.

“Shit. I think it’s here.” I stopped at one of the boxes halfway through the pile.

ELEANOR’S ANGEL was written in big block letters on the top of the box. If the contents matched the description, it was the painting I kept dreaming about. The one I remembered from my childhood, and the first thing I saw when I opened my parents’ bedroom door that night.

I didn’t know what I expected to get from it. I slid the box out from between the others and peeled the tape off. The flaps fell open. It was the right painting. I could tell because of the scuff mark in the corner of the mahogany-colored frame from when I’d dropped it a long time ago.

“I probably shouldn’t touch it.” My voice cracked. “I don’t want to leave fingerprints. Just in case, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should call Officer Miller.”

“What if it’s nothing? What if I’m not remembering right?” I asked, irrationally panicked. My vision went blurry.

“Shh. It’s okay.” Her gloved fingers cupped my face. “If we call Officer Miller, we can ask her what we should do.”

“If you leave your gloves on, you could look at it first. I don’t want to call for nothing.”

“I can do that. What should I be looking for?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we should just leave it alone.”

“I don’t think it hurts for me to look,” she said reassuringly.

Tenley carefully lifted the painting out of the box. In the garish fluorescent lights, I could make out the details of the art clearly. Seeing it brought back another flood of memories. It was such a strange painting. I’d never asked my mom what compelled her to use that particular color scheme. Seeing it now, with the perspective I had gained, I understood her a lot better. What I couldn’t understand was why in the world my dad had let her keep it in their bedroom. It was as horrifying as it was ethereal, which I suppose was much of the appeal. The angel was painted in various shades of red. The part that freaked me out, though, was the way her wings appeared to be dripping down the canvas, as if they were bleeding feathers.

It was eerily familiar, I realized. In some vague way, it reminded me of the original version of the tattoo I was putting on Tenley. Except I’d changed most of the red to gold and silvers, so it was more a reflection of life, not death.

Tenley leaned in closer, inspecting the painting. Her leather-clad fingers hovered over the surface, never touching.

Even from where I was standing, I could make out the maroon dots scattered over the canvas and the frame. Ones that didn’t match the brushstrokes.

“I’m right—I have to be. That painting was there when I found my parents.” My legs went watery and I leaned against the wall in case they decided they weren’t all that interested in supporting my weight any longer.

“We should call Officer Miller.”

There were so many unanswered questions. It didn’t make sense that this painting hadn’t made it into evidence. Maybe if it had, the case wouldn’t have been closed. I didn’t want to speculate, but I had a pretty good fucking idea whom I wanted to point the finger at. The question was why.