Let’s try.
Recording takes me about two hours, editing in real time, to complete the finished take. When I’m finished, I glance at the alarm clock on the corner of the desk. It’s almost five in the morning, which means I should be able to grab a couple more hours of sleep before Mom is banging at the foot of the stairs telling me to get up for school.
“I’m doing my best, Sibby,” I whisper.
I click upload. An instant later, the episode is live.
I take a minute to send a quick email to my mailing list, informing subscribers that there’s a new episode. Then I post the same to my various social media accounts and several of the more popular true crime forums on Reddit.
I stretch my arms over my head, then glance past my laptop at the window. Across the street, the old Dunlop house is dark except for a single upstairs window, which glows orange from behind a curtain. I wonder if it’s that girl, if she’s still awake, talking to friends back wherever she came from.
There’s one last thing to take care of. I erase my browser history.
Because here’s the thing: I keep my shit locked down tight. I have impossible passwords. I only use private browser windows, and even so I erase my history every time I use my computer. I don’t use my real name. I use audio filters to disguise my voice.
I never slip up.
I created and host one of the most popular true crime podcasts in the world, and nobody—not my parents, not my teachers, not my neighbors—knows.
5.
I wake to my alarm, completely exhausted, but with a lingering tingle of exhilaration from my late-night work session. I crawl out of bed, yawn and stretch, and grab my phone. My screen is full, announcing the thousands of notifications I received overnight, everybody with something to say about the latest episode.
I resist the urge to check out the notifications and new emails, the endlessly growing threads and subthreads on my message board. That can wait until later. It’s important to keep a wall between what happens in the podcast and what happens in my real life. Otherwise, I’d go nuts.
I make my way down to the bathroom I share with the twins. After a quick shower, I rush to dry myself off, shivering against the draft that creeps in through the ancient leaded-glass window that sits somewhere on Dad’s endless list of things to fix or replace. I change into a pair of faded jeans and my Nevertheless, She Persisted T-shirt and head downstairs.
Our house is huge. Half the rooms on the second floor are empty, closed off, with stuffed socks running along the bottoms to keep out the drafts. The ceilings are high, with elaborate plaster moldings running along the edges, big ragged chunks missing in several spots. Dad’s fixed a lot of the moldings on the main floor, but he hasn’t made his way upstairs yet, which also explains the peeling wallpaper and worn floorboards.
My mother complains about this house every single day, but I know she loves it. Most of all, she loves how much my dad loves it.
We moved from our old neighborhood when I was seven, after everything that happened with Sibby. Almost ten years later, this house has been hacked apart and changed in a million different ways, but it still feels like it will never be done.
I don’t mind. I love its quirks and charming details. I love the elaborate original light fixtures and the intricate brass doorknobs. Most of all, I love the staircase, the wide steps that make two ninety-degree turns, the oak paneling that follows its progress, the grand, hand-carved wooden banister that took Dad years to refinish. I stop on the upper landing, like I do every morning, and glance through the bubbles of old stained glass in the gothic window that looks out onto the driveway. In the afternoon, when sunlight hits the window just right, colored light streams through and fills the staircase with a magical glow.
At the bottom of the stairs, I carefully step around the empty cans of paint stripper and pieces of cardboard covered with tools and tape and brushes. Dad’s been working on the wood paneling in the main hallway for months, a bit at a time, stripping layer upon layer of old paint down to the raw wood beneath. He swears that it’s going to be beautiful when it’s done, but it’s hard to imagine him ever finishing it at this rate.
I follow the sound of voices toward the kitchen, giving a wide berth to the twins’ bulky hockey bags that have been tossed down in the hallway, a dank waft of hockey stink floating around them like mist.
“Morning,” I say as I enter the kitchen, which sits in a sunny, windowed addition at the back of the house.
“Delia, please talk to your mother,” says my father, standing at the sink, an apron over a paint-spattered T-shirt and raggedy work jeans. “Tell her that I’m perfectly capable of repairing the chimney myself.”
I turn to my mother, who’s standing at the island, dressed for work in a classy business suit, her hair pulled back into a tight bun, a thin gold chain around her neck. My parents do not look like a couple you’d expect to be married to one another.
Dad stays at home, keeping house, which involves everything from cooking and cleaning to the never-ending renovations. He’s a remnant of the ’90s and he dresses like it: torn jeans, faded grunge band T-shirts under plaid button-ups, scruffy hair. Mom, on the other hand, is the chief administrator at our local hospital and the kind of woman who likes to dress for success—tailored suits, manicures, classy makeup. Despite the differences in appearance, they are head over heels for each other. They both have the same weird sense of humor; they’re both into good food and good wine; and judging from their constant, sickly sweet public displays of affection, they have definitely not lost the hots for each other.
“Mom, Dad is perfectly capable of repairing the chimney himself.”
Mom looks up from her laptop, a bemused look on her face.
“Delia, please tell your father that he has plenty of jobs to keep him busy without climbing up onto a steep-pitched roof in January.”
“Dad, you have plenty of jobs to keep you busy without—”
He raises a hand, cutting me off. “Okay, fine. I’ll call around for some quotes.” He comes around the island and encircles her waist with his arms. “I love it when you set firm limits.” She smiles up at him, and in front of my eyes, they’ve turned into gooey mushballs, nuzzling noses and batting eyelashes.
The twins, Kurt and Eddie, are sitting in the breakfast nook in the large bay window at the back of the house. They groan in tandem, without even looking up from their phones.
“Jesus Christ,” says Kurt. “Get a room.”
“Seriously,” says Eddie. “You guys are gross.”
“Hey,” says Dad. “You guys should just pray that you find someone who still finds you ferociously sexy when you’re in your forties.”
“Well, I’m out,” says Kurt to Eddie. “Let’s go.”
The twins are up from the table and stomping toward the front door before anyone has time to react.
“Will you be home for dinner?” my mother calls after them.
“Hockey,” says Eddie before the door opens and slams behind them. When it comes to the twins, hockey is a noun, a verb, an adjective, and a perpetual one-word explanation.
My father hands me a plate of eggs and toast, and I slide into one of the chairs in the breakfast nook.