The Towering Sky

This felt a little like that: the bright cold truth you never saw coming and yet once you collided with it, you wondered how you hadn’t noticed it there. You felt there had been so many signs, glaringly obvious signs, but you missed them until it was too late.

“It makes more sense than what you thought was going on—that Eris was having an affair with your dad.” Avery sighed. “Leda. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Leda looked utterly broken. “Because I was ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had killed my sister. I wanted to forget it all, to wipe the slate clean and move on. That’s what my doctor told me, at least,” she said softly. “That’s why I tried to cut out everything related to my old life when I came back from rehab.”

Avery thought of what her dad had said as he signed her transfer papers for Oxford—that it was no use running from things if you would have to face them eventually. She and Leda had both tried to run, in their own ways. And look where it had gotten them.

Her heart ached for Leda, wrestling with so much unthinkable guilt. For Eris, who had died too young. For all of them, hemmed in by things beyond their control. If Leda’s dad hadn’t cheated on her mom; if he’d told Leda the truth about Eris; if Avery’s parents had adopted another boy instead of Atlas; if the zetta hadn’t caught them in the elevator last night—if, if, if. It struck Avery as irrational and cruel that the world was built on so many ifs, so many small choices that seem like nothing at the time, but become the axes upon which whole lives turn.

“You couldn’t have known,” she said to Leda, who shook her head.

“When I saw them sneaking around, meeting up in secret, I just assumed they were having an affair. I never asked any questions. I never guessed that”—her voice shook a little as she went on, gaining momentum—“that Eris was my half sister. I was always so brusque and impatient with her; I never even tried to be her friend, and then I killed her, and I might have killed Mariel too!”

She took a deep breath. “Which is why I’m going to the police, to confess to pushing Eris. And to tell them that I could have killed Mariel, while I was blacked out.”

There was something chillingly final about the way she announced it: the stubborn lift to her head, the implacable set of her jaw. But Avery saw the shadow of fear glinting in her eyes.

“Leda,” Avery said softly. “Telling the truth about how Eris died won’t bring her back.”

Avery didn’t mention what would happen to Leda if she confessed to pushing Eris and then lying to cover it up. It would go badly for her: much worse, in fact, than if she had told the truth in the first place. At least then she could have pleaded involuntary manslaughter. Now she would also be confessing to obstruction of justice, to willfully concealing the truth for a year. And the truth would probably come out—that Leda and Eris had been related—and Avery knew a jury wouldn’t view that sympathetically. It might look like some twisted motive for murder, as if Leda had wanted to get her half sister out of the way. Not to mention the damage it would do to both families.

“I know I’ll do prison time,” Leda said, reading her mind. “It’s no more than I deserve. And at least then I’ll have a clear conscience.”

A clear conscience. Avery couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one of those. She wondered if she ever would, after what she’d done to Max.

“You don’t deserve that, Leda. I was there; I saw—I remember how Eris ran toward you, and there wasn’t a safety railing, and she was wearing those enormous sky-high platform shoes, and it was so windy, we were screaming into it. . . .” She trailed off and took a slow breath. “Leda. Do you want that single, accidental mistake to define you for the rest of your life?”

“What do you want me to do, forget it ever happened? I can’t!”

“Of course not. I want you to remember. No offense,” Avery went on, “but I knew Eris better than you did, and I don’t think she would want you to confess. She would want you, her half sister—the only sister she ever had—to go off and live your life to the fullest. To honor her memory by living.”

“What about Mariel?” Leda whispered. “Maybe if I talk to the police about it, they’ll share some of the details, explain why they reopened the case as a murder investigation. Maybe something they say will trigger my memory, and I’ll know for sure whether I killed her or not.”

“That’s a pretty flimsy reason to confess to something you aren’t sure you did,” Avery snapped.

Leda shook her head. “The police have already made the connection between Eris’s death and Mariel’s. Sooner or later they’ll learn that Mariel knew our secrets—the ones I told her. It will look as if someone killed her to cover up what she knew. At least this way I’ll take the fall. Then you’ll all be safe.”

There was something oddly heroic about Leda’s decision. It was as if she’d reached a searing conclusion within herself and was determined to follow it through, no matter the consequences. Typical Leda, Avery thought. Stubborn until the bitter end.

“Don’t do anything drastic. At least wait for a day,” Avery pleaded. It was the best she could come up with. “Just promise me you’ll think it over, and then if you still want to go through with this tomorrow, I swear I’ll be there with you.”