chapter 2

Aria

For a moment, nobody moved.bThe broken glass was lying around my feet. Water was dripping down the leg of the table. Everyone was staring at me.

"Aria! Are you hurt?" Diane asked as she jumped up from her chair.

"I... I'm sorry. It slipped," I said. My voice didn't even sound like mine.

"Don't move, Miss Aria. Let me clean it," Rosa said and came running with a cloth. I couldn't take my eyes off the girl at the door.

Camilla. Her name was Camilla. Two years ago I didn't even know her name. To me she was only the rich girl with blonde hair who came into the diner every Friday and smiled at my boyfriend. The girl who was standing in front of the police that night, crying, with her dress torn at the shoulder. The girl who sat beside Ethan in the courtroom and didn't look at me even once.

And she was a Whitmore. She was the girl who lived my life.

"Oh my God," Camilla said softly and put her hand on her chest.

Then she ran to me. She actually ran. She threw her arms around me so tight that I couldn't breathe.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry," she cried into my shoulder. I stood there like a stone. My arms were hanging at my sides.

"I took your life. I took your mom and dad. I took everything from you and I didn't even know," she said and pulled back. Her blue eyes were full of tears. Real tears. How was she doing that?

"I will give it all back. I swear I will. Anything you want," she said.

Diane was crying too now. Even Richard looked like his eyes were wet.

"See? I told you she has the kindest heart," Diane said and put her hand on Camilla's back.

I looked at Camilla's face. She was waiting for me to say something. And somewhere deep in her eyes, behind all those tears, I saw it again. That little flash. Like she was laughing at me.

Did they know? My heart was beating so fast. Did my parents know what she did?

No. They couldn't know. My lawyer told me the victim's name was never written in any newspaper. It was sealed. The rich girl had powerful lawyers, he said. And Diane said she read my file. If she knew the girl in that file was Camilla, she wouldn't be smiling at her like that right now. So Camilla never told them. Why?

"Aria? Sweetheart, say something," Diane said.

I opened my mouth. I wanted to scream. I wanted to say, she is lying, she sent me to prison, she is a monster.

But then I looked at Diane's face. She was so happy. She was looking at both of us like her whole world was finally complete.

What if I said it and she didn't believe me? What if she looked at me the way the judge looked at me? Like I was dirt. Like I was a liar. I couldn't lose her. Not on the first day.

"It's okay," I said quietly.

"It's not your fault," I added. The words tasted like poison in my mouth.

"Thank you," Camilla whispered and hugged me again. And this time, close to my ear, so quiet that only I could hear it, she said,

"Welcome home."

Dinner was the longest two hours of my life. Camilla sat right in front of me. She talked about her trip to Paris, her new shoes, a charity party she was planning. My parents listened to every word like she was telling them the secrets of the world. Richard laughed at her jokes. Diane kept putting more food on her plate. Nobody asked me anything.

I moved the food around my plate with my fork. Steak, potatoes, some fancy green thing I didn't know the name of. Two years of prison food and now I had the best dinner of my life in front of me and I couldn't eat a single bite.

"You're not hungry?" Julian asked suddenly. It was the first time he spoke to me.

"I'm just tired," I said.

"Hmm," he said. He looked at me and then he looked at Camilla. He didn't say anything else. But I didn't like the way he looked at me. Like he was waiting for me to do something bad.

"Aria, Camilla can show you around the house tomorrow. Right, darling?" Diane said.

"Of course! I would love that. We can go shopping too. You need new clothes, Aria. Real ones," Camilla said and smiled at me sweetly.

"The clothes in my room are fine," I said.

"Oh, those? Mom picked those so fast. You deserve better," she said and laughed. Diane laughed too. I didn't.

After dinner, I was halfway up the stairs when someone grabbed my wrist. It was Julian.

"What was that?" he asked in a low voice.

"What was what?" I asked and pulled my hand back.

"The glass. The face you made when you saw her. Like you saw a ghost," he said.

"I was nervous. That's all," I said.

He looked at me for a long time. He had my eyes too. Grey with a little green. It was so strange to see them looking at me with so much hate.

"Let me tell you something. Camilla is the best person in this family. When she found out she wasn't really ours, she didn't think about herself. She cried for you. A girl she never met," he said.

I almost laughed. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.

"I don't care what kind of life you had out there. I don't care what you did to end up in prison. But if you hurt her, even a little, you will deal with me," he said.

"I won't hurt her," I said quietly.

"Good," he said and walked down the stairs without looking back.

My own brother. The first thing he ever said to me alone was a warning.

Then Diane came up the stairs and walked me to my room. At the door she held both of my hands.

"I know this is a lot for you. I can see it in your face," she said softly. I nodded and looked down.

"Camilla has been our daughter for twenty years, Aria. When we found out the truth, she cried for days. She locked herself in her room. She was so scared we would throw her away," she said.

"Would you?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Of course not! She's our daughter too. Nothing will change that," she said. Then she smiled and touched my cheek.

"But now I have two daughters. And my biggest wish is that you two can be real sisters. Can you do that for me? Can you try?" she asked.

I looked into her eyes. They were the same colour as mine. Grey with a little bit of green. I never had anyone with my eyes before.

"I'll try," I said.

"That's my girl," she said and kissed my forehead.

When she left, I closed the door and leaned against it. My legs felt weak. That's my girl. She said it like she meant it.

I sat on the edge of the big soft bed and pulled my knees to my chest.

Maybe it wasn't Camilla, I thought. Maybe Ethan was the one who planned everything. He was the one who gave the police those messages. Messages I never wrote, from my own phone. He was the one who knew my password. He was the one who stood up in court and said he was scared of me.

Camilla was just a rich girl. Maybe he used her too. Maybe she really believed him. Maybe.

I didn't believe it. Not really. But I wanted to believe it so badly. Because if I believed it, I could stay here. I could have a mom and a dad and a warm bed and a name. And that was all I ever wanted. There was a soft knock on the door. My heart jumped.

"Miss Aria? It's Rosa."

I let out my breath and opened the door. Rosa was holding a tray with a big mug of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies.

"You didn't eat anything at dinner. I saw," she said and walked in.

"You didn't have to," I said.

"I know. But I wanted to," she said and put the tray on the desk.

I took the mug in my hands. It was warm. It smelled like the hot chocolate Grace used to make for me when I was sick. I took one sip and my eyes filled up with tears.

Rosa didn't say anything. She just sat beside me on the bed and patted my knee.

"This house is very big, Miss Aria. Sometimes big houses have a lot of shadows," she said after a while.

"What do you mean?" I asked. She looked at the door. Then she looked at me.

"Just be careful who you open your heart to. That's all," she said.

She got up, smiled at me and left before I could ask anything else. I couldn't sleep.

The bed was too soft. The room was too quiet. In prison there was always noise. Someone crying, someone snoring, the guards walking up and down. Here there was nothing. Just silence.

It was almost two in the morning when I heard it Footsteps in the hallway. Slow and soft. They stopped right outside my door.

I held my breath. I looked at the gap at the bottom of the door. There was a shadow there. Two feet. Someone was standing outside my room.

I didn't move. Whoever it was didn't move either. One minute. Two minutes. Five.

I pulled the blanket up to my chin. My heart was beating so loud I was sure they could hear it from out there.

Then the shadow moved. The footsteps walked away, slowly, down the hallway. A door opened somewhere and closed.

I didn't close my eyes again until the sun came up. But I swear, just before the footsteps left, I heard someone laugh. Very softly.

The same laugh I heard two years ago, in the dark, when the police put the handcuffs on me.