Chapter 8
Marcus sat on June's sofa with his fingers locked together.
"Celeste said the recording was for insurance," he began. "She said if Brielle damaged anything else, we needed proof."
"Anything else?" Brielle asked. "What else did I damage?"
He named the scratched dining table and the missing bracelet. Brielle felt the familiar urge to defend herself point by point, but June gently shook her head. There was another question, larger than the accusations.
"Who showed you proof?" June asked.
Marcus looked away.
Celeste had always presented the aftermath: a broken object, a frightened account, an accusation at the right moment. Marcus had treated the physical object as proof of who caused it.
"I didn't want another fight," he confessed.
Marcus had brought coffee from a gas station, four cups in a cardboard tray. Nobody drank it. Brielle stared at the cup with her name written in his handwriting and tried to remember the last time he'd asked how she liked her coffee instead of assuming she would have whatever he bought. The detail would once have comforted her. Now she worried it was a substitute for a difficult conversation. She pushed the cup aside and listened to Dana's questions.
Marcus began to explain again what he had intended, but June asked him to stay with the question that had been asked. He took a slow breath. The girls had heard so many explanations that turned into excuses they could recognize the opening notes. This time he tried to answer with a fact rather than a feeling. It did not repair anything, but it let the conversation move forward without making Brielle responsible for comforting him.
When the recorded clip from the alley arrived, June replayed it only once before forwarding the original to counsel. Brielle wanted to enlarge the hidden person's face and invent certainty from the shadows. Instead Dana explained the limits of low-resolution footage. The sign on the van was readable. Celeste was identifiable. The second person's features were not. They wrote down what the video showed and what it could not show. Naomi sat beside them, humming under her breath as she colored. She eventually asked whether anyone was going to be punished for taking her mother's things. June said she didn't know what would happen, but she knew they would ask for the things to be returned. The answer was frustrating because it was real.
Brielle was furious at how small that explanation sounded. "You made me the fight."
He flinched. "I know."
"No. You know now because Grandma has papers. I kept telling you before."
Marcus's silence gave her no comfort. She had spent years wanting him to recognize her pain. Now recognition felt late and thin.
Dana called while they were still in the room. A preliminary county records search showed a document submitted for recording that week: a proposed transfer of the studio to an entity called Hale River Properties. The transfer had not yet been completed. The packet included an affidavit claiming June had voluntarily relinquished her trustee role.
June stood up. "I never signed any such affidavit."
Dana had already requested certified copies and was preparing a letter warning the buyer and closing agent of the disputed authority. She also discussed emergency court relief if the parties tried to proceed.
"Can you stop them today?" Brielle asked.
"I can put them on formal notice today," Dana said. "A judge may need to decide the rest."
Naomi sat beside Brielle and traced the edge of the graduation cap with one finger. "What happens to my dress?"
No one answered at first. Then Brielle said, "Whatever you want, as long as you're not asked to lie for it."
"I want to wear it again," Naomi said. "And I want Celeste to tell the truth."
Marcus bowed his head. "You deserve that."
The girls did not thank him for saying so.
Later that afternoon, Mr. Salazar called June. He had checked his delivery log and found receipts showing the Hale van at the studio on both nights he remembered. More importantly, he had a motion-activated security camera pointed toward the alley used by his store. He did not know whether the recordings had been retained, but he had saved one clip because a van nearly struck his delivery ramp.
He sent the clip to Dana rather than to Brielle.
The grainy footage showed Celeste unlocking the studio's back door. A second figure carried a metal storage box outside and loaded it into the van. The person's face was hidden by the vehicle.
May you like
At 10:08 p.m., the box was driven away.
Brielle recognized its shape. It was the locked records box Lillian had kept beside the blue cabinet, a box no one had mentioned since her death.
