CHAPTER ONE
Exhibit 1: Recorded statement of Sydney E. Reilly, 1 of 5
Exhibit 2: Aerial photo of 716 Sea Cliff Drive
Exhibit 3: Photo of Lila Shore, Giacomo “Big Jake” Antonetti, and Sydney Reilly, Original Joe’s, North Beach, undated
I had a bad feeling, even before I left home. A strong one. If I’m here to tell you what actually happened, well, it started there. With a sense of dread. Like some pissed-off old ghost was going to haunt me until I heard whatever she had to say. It was eerie and unsettling like that. Urgent.
The feeling was there late at night, when I was alone in the dorm showers and the hot-water pipes creaked and groaned like a dying man, and it was there when I lay awake in the dark, watching headlights flash across the ceiling in a way that made me pull my covers up. But it was there in bright daylight, too, when Hoodean and Cora and Lizzie and Meredith and I went to Cupcake Royale and we made fun of Hoodean for getting vanilla (he always got vanilla). It was there on those last weeks of school, when the sky was blue and the sun was out and the air smelled delicious.
I tried to tell myself there were logical reasons for it. I didn’t want to go to San Francisco anyway. I know it sounds crazy, since Lila lived in that Sea Cliff mansion perched above the Pacific. But I was happy at school—just being in class, or walking around Green Lake with Meredith, picking out what dog we’d want. Or sitting on my bed with Cora under my Frida Kahlo poster, playing our favorite songs to each other. Volleyball in the fall, crew in the spring, dim sum in the International District with Meredith’s parents.
Leaving my friends for the whole summer—that’s why I felt dread, I thought. Especially since things were getting so good lately. I felt like IT was about to happen. I didn’t know what IT was, exactly, just something large, something that would change everything. Maybe IT was love, the passionate, all-encompassing kind, or actual sex, or maybe something else. Whatever it was, I wanted it bad, this something-big. I could feel it coming. I could feel it when my group of friends would be walking down the street, elbowing each other, laughing too loud, and people watched us with what I thought was envy. Or when we’d stroll into Victrola and the men would look up from their laptops to stare, even when Hoodean was with us. God, if I missed IT because I was stuck in a jillion-dollar house with my famous mother, I’d be heartbroken.
Which was another logical explanation for the dark feeling that followed me. Three months with Lila. She was a celebrity, and she was beautiful, but she was still my mother. The summer before, when I was fourteen, I wanted to tell her everything, to be best buds, to do stuff together. And then suddenly I didn’t. Moms—they can be like a winter coat, helpful and warm and cozy, but then spring comes, and it weighs you down and maybe you just want to feel the cold anyway.
But I’m supposed to be telling you the truth, aren’t I? And the truth is, Lila was never like that. She wasn’t a warm and cozy mom like Meredith’s, even if I felt the weight of her.
And the truth is, nothing made that sense of doom disappear—no explanations, no blue sky, nothing. It was persistent. It was spooky.
I didn’t know what that feeling was. I didn’t know which exact ghost from the past was trying to warn me. But she was real, and I didn’t listen.
CHAPTER TWO
Exhibit 4: Yearbook photo of Sydney Elizabeth Riley, Academy of Arts and Sciences, Seattle
A few weeks before I left, I tried to get out of going. I was at Edwina’s for dinner. “Hey, I could live with you for the summer!” I said. I made it sound like an idea that had just come to me, when actually I’d thought about it every night since the ghost started talking.
My grandmother scowled.
“I don’t want to go,” I whined.
But she was having none of it. “Sydney. Stop that. Of course you do,” she said.
Of course I didn’t. The weekend before, Cora and I had gone to her cousin Simon’s baseball game. A cute boy had talked to me by the concession stand and played with my hair, and who knew what else might happen if I stayed for the summer. IT was everywhere, though maybe IT was just more.
“Pleeeease?”
Eye roll.
Because of my mother’s career, and also because Lila wasn’t exactly what you’d call maternal, Edwina pretty much raised me. You probably already know this. She lived with us wherever we went, from our first apartment, to Papa Chesterton’s estate, to the modern house in Topanga Canyon. When I left for Academy in the fifth grade, Edwina came too, sitting beside me on the plane with her purse on her lap so no one would steal it. They chose Academy because Edwina used to live in Seattle when Lila was born, and she liked it there.
I passed their old house often. You picture Lila in Nefarious or in What the Neighbor Knew, and you’d think, No way. Now it was a tiny, crappy rental for university students, with a beat-up couch on the porch and a Huskies blanket covering one window. It was right next to a Wing Zone, which was pretty hilarious. Seeing that house—you understood why she changed her name from Linda Short to Lila Shore. A shore—all that wide space. Solid land on one side, the open sea on the other.
That night at dinner, in the nice craftsman house that Lila bought her, Edwina carried a big platter of ham to the table using pot holders that had seen better days. Ham for the two of us kind of cracked me up. It was probably on sale at Fred Meyer, since Edwina loved a good sale. My friends always liked going to Edwina’s because she cooked big, old-fashioned food, food you barely saw in Seattle, stuff like gravy, like roast, and also because they thought Edwina was colorful. That’s the word people use when someone has a big personality but you’re kind of glad you don’t have to deal with them yourself.
“You’d rather stay here with an old lady than go to that big, fancy place?” Edwina stabbed a slice and slapped it on my plate. I had a brief desire to become a vegetarian, because ham always has a way of reminding you where it came from.
“There’s a new boyfriend,” I said.
Edwina met my eyes, and our gazes played a whole film of the past.
“Well. You never know,” Edwina sighed.
“Jake Something-Italian.”
“She likes those tough guys. The Jets and the Sharks.”
“The Jets and the Sharks?” I laughed. “What are those, made-up gang names?”
“You’re kidding me. West Side Story? You never seen it?” She snapped her fingers, danced toward me like a gang-member grandma getting ready to rumble on a dark street.
“Ooh, scary, haha. Especially in those slippers.”
That’s how it was, you know? Lots of things were funny. I folded a piece of ham into a buttered roll. It was so good. I ate one and then another. I wasn’t in that part of womanhood yet where your body was something you were supposed to keep one nervous eye on all the time, like a bank balance. I still belonged mostly to myself, but not for long.
“She’s all gaga in love,” I said with my mouth full.
Edwina waved her hand as if the new guy were a pesky insect. “That beautiful house right on the ocean? You should’ve seen the Mission District, where I grew up. Six miles from there, but another universe. You’re a lucky girl.”
“All my friends are here.” There was no way I could tell her how great things were getting lately, let alone about that uneasy feeling. The way it felt like the shutter of a camera, briefly opening, revealing a dark and gaping hole.