Dark Favors

“Kind isn’t a word often used to describe me,” I said. “In fact, I think the last person to call me kind was my sister.” It slipped out before I could stop it. I’d been thinking about Rebecca a lot lately. I’d been missing her more than usual. Still, I hadn’t planning on bringing her up to anyone, let alone Paige.

She looked at me for a moment. Paige always seemed to just look. She was more perceptive than most people probably gave her credit for. She was the type of person people probably underestimated.

“You must miss her a lot,” she said, and instantly, I felt overwhelming relief that she hadn’t said something else, something that hurt like I’m sorry or there’s a reason for everything. Those are the kinds of things I was used to hearing, and somehow, having someone say something like that always managed to make me feel worse instead of better.

“I do.”

“I read about her,” Paige said, explaining how she knew about my sister. Her honestly surprised me a little bit. Most of the time, if we look up people we know online, we keep that a secret.

“What did you read?” I asked.

Paige shrugged and looked around, not meeting my gaze. Suddenly, she seemed to find everything else in my office more interesting than me.

Nope.

Not going to happen.

“Paige,” I said, my voice a little more firm. Apparently, my tone of voice was strong enough that it got her attention because she stopped and looked at me.

“I read that she did a lot of volunteer work,” Paige finally said. “And I read that she was died in an accident.”

An accident.

Of course.

Because that’s what everyone wanted to believe. Nobody wanted to know the truth. Nobody wanted to believe that a young woman in her early 20s could have discovered information that would get her killed. Nobody could even bear to think about the fact that someone had killed her in cold blood.

I didn’t want to show all of my cards just yet. There would be a time when I let Paige in on the fact that my sister was killed by someone very important in our city. Until then, though, I had to keep it together and be totally calm. I had to let her believe whatever she wanted to believe even though it kind of killed me a little bit.

Anytime someone said something about the accident, I got the distinct impression I was somehow betraying my little sister’s memory. It hurt, as though her loss was nothing more than some sort of cosmic mistake, when the truth was so much worse than that.

Paige seemed to sense that there was nothing more to be said about that, so she carefully changed the subject.

“About that research...”

“Of course,” I said, nodding.

Keep it together.

Keep it together.

“You can sit there,” I said, gesturing to a desk in the corner.

She looked at it and frowned.

“That wasn’t here the other day.”

“No, it was not.”

“Did you have it brought in just for me?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“I feel like I was caught being a bad student or something, like I’m somehow in trouble. It sort of seems like I’m being forced to sit at the front of the class at the bad kid’s desk or whatever.”

I shook my head.

“Trust me, Paige. You’re not a bad kid. You couldn’t be even if you wanted to.”