Sisters Under Fluorescent Light

Tessa and I end up in the same maintenance warehouse because our family has apparently exhausted all more civilized venues. Under the failing fluorescents she looks less like a ghost and more like what she actually is: the woman I learned courage from and resented for it. There is no time for tenderness, which may be why honesty finally fits.

"Vivian kept a scripting room," Tessa says, pacing once around the chair. "She would rehearse girls into saying what made the donor look least criminal. Poppy's reading the same cadence."

"Where?"

"Anywhere controlled enough. likely the estate, maybe the old witness rooms she kept after Harbor House downsized. She always preferred places with curtains."

I show her the demand for the original recordings. Tessa laughs bitterly. "Of course. The files hurt. Voices kill."

"Why didn't you tell me about the scripts before?"

She stops pacing. "Because I didn't know if you'd trade the archive for your marriage before you traded it for your child."

The sentence should make me hit her. Instead it simply lands among all the other accuracies and waits. "I didn't know which parts of you were still mine," I say.

Her face changes, very slightly. Then the practical woman wins again. She kneels by the tablet and pulls a memory card from behind the tape mount. "Whoever staged this was sloppy because they needed speed. That's not Roman. He likes ceremony. This is Vivian under time pressure."

"Or Owen covering for her."

"Same blood. different flavor."

We take the card to Nico in the lot. He hates seeing Tessa alive in person only slightly less than I hate needing his reaction as validation. Still, he moves fast, sending the file for frame analysis while Tessa points out the curtain fabric behind Poppy in the video.

"That pattern," she says, "is from Vivian's rural estate nursery wing."

Nico turns to me. "If she's right, we move now."

"Then move," I say.

Tessa catches my sleeve before I go. "If we get her back," she says quietly, "you do not let Owen make himself the hero in the reunion footage."