Page 6 of Cup of Lies

Who did I watch it with?

My sister?

I’ll ask her. Anything to get out of this office. It makes me feel like a failure.

As I walk past my bookshelf, a book catches my eye. Something about it niggles at my memory, but I can’t seem to place the importance of it.

Calista.

A flash of my sister’s name shaded on a paper. Me tossing a note into the fire.

Bizarre.

Giving my head a small shake, I exit my office to seek her out. She’s a quiet girl and spends most of her time drawing on her iPad. The kid’s got talent. Her art is impressive and well beyond her years. Perhaps she’ll attend a prestigious university to further her art skills or maybe she’ll go right into having her own illustration business. The options are plentiful.

I stride down the hallway to her room at the end. The door is ajar, which means I’m welcome to enter. Like always, I knock anyway, respecting her space.

“Hey, sis,” I say when she calls out for me to enter. “What are you up to today?”

She eyes me warily and chews on her bottom lip. I’m just glad she’s looking at me again. Something happened to her—something she refuses to speak about—and it makes it difficult for her to raise her eyes from the floor. It’s only been the past few weeks that she’s been meeting my gaze.

I approach where she sits in an armchair by the big window in her room. Now that it’s summer, the trees are a hundred varying shades of green. Her iPad is nestled in her lap and she sips from a small teacup.

“Drawing.”

Her answers are always clipped and soft. I try to remember when we were younger. Was she this way back then too, or did it all stem from the mysterious incident?

If only I could remember.

“Let’s see.” I take a seat in the armchair next to hers and reach over the small table. “I bet it’s awesome.”

She purses her lips like she doesn’t want to share but then hands it over. Her black eyebrows pinch together, clearly worried about what I’ll think.

The image is strange. Abstract. There’s a woven, gray pattern—maybe a rug—with dark red dots that lead to a large red circle. A giant G is in the center.

I don’t pretend to know what the hell this means.

“Interesting,” I mutter, quickly looking away from the unsettling image. “What does it mean?”

Her dark eyes bore into mine, searching my gaze for something. I’m welcome to her finding out the hidden parts of me because I sure the hell can’t seem to do it. After a beat, she relaxes and shrugs.

“Nothing. Just doodling.”

I arch an eyebrow at her. “Right. What else you got?”

She makes to pull the device from my grip, but I’m already swiping to one of her other canvases on her drawing app. The picture I find first shocks me silent.

It’s a picture of a terrified woman peering down at the floor or a table. The perspective is from the table looking up. Her blond hair hangs around her face in sweaty tangles and her blue eyes are wide with horror. Dark circles ring the woman’s bloodshot eyes and her lips are parted. A single tear streaks down her pink cheek.

It’s hauntingly beautiful.

“What’s this one mean?” I rasp out, unable to tear my gaze from the woman in the artwork.

“You don’t know?”

“Should I?”

She shrugs. “I thought maybe you would.”

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