Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“Okay.” Courtney shifted on the couch, taking my hands. “I want you to look in my eyes and hear me. It looks bad right now. It feels like we’ve hit a dead end, but we haven’t. No matter what, we won’t stop until we discover the truth and put the right psychopath behind bars. Got it?”
“Got it,” I mumbled.
“Uh-uh, you have to do better than that. Got it?!”
“Got it!” I belted out. “We’re taking that bitch down!”
“Fuck yeah, we are!” She clapped. “But we’re not doing that this minute, so distraction time. Let’s do something that’ll put a smile on your face. Oooh,” she cried. “This fancy hotel has a nice bar. Wanna get drunk and dance on the tables till they throw us out?”
“You got a taste for the bad-girl life, didn’t you? You can’t wait to go back to jail.”
She fell over herself cracking up.
“Not that, but can you help me with something?” I got up, went into the bedroom, and came back holding two laptops. “The videographers sent us all of the footage from the party. We’re supposed to pick our favorite moments, and their boss will cut it all together into movie magic.” I handed her Alex’s laptop. “There are hours’ worth of stuff from ten different cameras, so I need help going through it.”
She hesitated. “Babe... are you sure?”
I swallowed hard, sinking on the couch. “I know it seems ghoulish. Trust me, part of me almost deleted all the videos, but now...” I looked away. “That was the last night—the only night—we were all happy in that house. Up until nine thirty-fucking-seven, the men of my dreams were in love with me, my best friend was back in my life, everyone was in awe of me, the daughter I always dreamed of slept soundly, and the mother I always wanted finally had a good relationship with me.
“That’s what I want to remember,” I whispered. “That brief stolen time where we were a happy family.”
“I get it.” She rested her cheek on my shoulder, saying more without words than she did with. “I do.”
That’s how an hour later, the two of us were tipsy on champagne while watching me dance like a lunatic from every camera angle.
“Hera in heaven, why didn’t anyone tell me how stupid I looked?”
“We tried,” Courtney mourned. “Oh, how we tried.”
I snorted, spraying my sip on my laugh, and setting Courtney off giggling.
“Pull up the video from camera eight,” Courtney ordered. She had long ago ditched her coat and shoes, and was now stretched out on the sectional in her bright pink minidress. “It says that guy got the outside shots of the workers in the kitchen and all that. I want to see the dude who sneezed on his hands and didn’t wash, and the lady that flicked her booger in the pudding.”
“What the hell, Court, what have you been doing in that bakery kitchen!”
Naturally, that set her off laughing so hard she fell off the couch and took me with her. We howled on the floor like a couple of loons—more than a little under the influence of the alcohol.
But I didn’t care.
This was the first time I laughed—really laughed—since the very same night we were watching in the video. But instead of all the trauma and the pain from that night, just for a minute, we got to indulge in how happy I was for the first time in ten years. You could see it in my eyes from every angle that I had gotten back something I lost—hope.
As commanded, I queued up the video from the eighth cameraman. It actually would be nice to get some shots of the cooks preparing the feast. Even better if there was video of the cake being born.
I could ask them to speed through these scenes, I thought as we watched the camera leave the ballroom and moved down the hall to the kitchen. Watch the cake go from plain to decorated in fast-motion, and then—
“—can’t fucking stand all this playing nice and smiling through.”
Courtney, the cameraman, and I jerked to a stop as a loud voice came through the speakers.
“That wrinkled old bitch set us up and stole our money,” growled a familiar voice. “You and Dad had to sell the house. Everything you saved for retirement is gone. It’s not right that Omma gets to drift away on a bed of goose feathers while you’re clipping coupons and cutting Dad’s gout medicine in half to make it stretch farther!”
“Of course it’s not right,” Marsha Spencer hissed. “But what can we do about it?”
The naughty cameraman stuck to the wall, slowly moving closer, not away, from the alcove their voices were coming from.
“I’ll tell you what I want to do about it,” Micah snarled. “I want to grab a knife, go upstairs, and stab that witch in the heart—”