“How can you be sure?” Hazel asked slowly. “I mean . . . how do you know he didn’t?”
The false smile melted down. A storm rolled across Jenny’s face, so sudden that Hazel filled with a liquid regret.
“Oh my God,” Jenny said. “This is so classic.”
“What?”
Jenny smirked. Let out a phony little laugh.
“Come on, Hazel,” Jenny said, her tone incredulous now, almost amused. “You love this.”
“I don’t understand,” Hazel said, cheeks burning like panic.
“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you? You cling to anything that makes me weaker than you.”
“That’s not fair, Jenny.”
“You know it’s true. Ansel would never do anything like that—but you actually wish that he had, don’t you? You would go as far as wishing my husband had murdered people, because it would make you better than me.”
“Jenny, please.”
“I remember how it used to be. How you used to look at me, at Ansel, at everything I had.” Jenny gestured to the starched hotel sheets, the sloppy plates, the puddles of grease. “I know a part of you is happy. You only feel content, Hazel, because I’ve ended up here.”
“That’s not true,” Hazel said. Meek, shamed.
“You won, okay?” Jenny said. “You got everything you wanted.”
Jenny’s words hovered in the air. An infection. As the tears bubbled, scorching in Hazel’s throat, as Jenny rolled her eyes and flicked on the television, Hazel felt like a human swamp, stewing in her own vulgarity. The TV played a rerun of Real Housewives—Hazel did not look at Jenny, and Jenny did not speak again. They passed an hour like that before Hazel noticed that her sister had slumped against the bed, her head nodding along her chest, that Jenny had fallen asleep.
*
Hazel stacked the plates as quietly as she could, then kicked the door open, depositing the detritus of their meal onto the floor of the hall. The air smelled different, outside that stifling room. Sterile and new. Hazel exhaled, a great relief flooding—she wedged a towel into the doorframe, let it creak heavily shut behind her.
It had never been more obvious or more embarrassing: Hazel was sheltered, privileged, ignorant by default. Luis often poked fun at her for it. You white girls always have it good. It seemed impossible that a concept as violent as that word—homicide—had latched on to Jenny, her own sister. Things like this did not happen in Burlington. Hazel had always felt confident in her vision of right and wrong, good versus evil. She had voted for Obama. She believed she would have been the kind of German to hide a family of Jews in her attic （though of course this theory had never been tested）。 For the first time, Hazel felt close to something that scared her. She wanted to be brave.
Hazel slid to the scratchy carpet in the musty dim hall, her head pounding fogged. She peered down the corridor of endless identical rooms, then pulled her cell phone from her pocket. The hotel’s Wi-Fi was slow—she waited anxious as the search engine buffered.
Saffron Singh appeared right away. A search for Saffron police New York produced an article from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise: ny state investigator promoted to bci captain. It was accompanied by a photo of a woman, standing rigid on a stage in a military-style cap. She looked competent, capable, her face delicate and angular. Hazel navigated to the state police website, where Saffron Singh’s office information appeared immediately, a phone number blinking beneath an email address.
She dialed.
The first ring felt like a dunk in a frigid pool—shocking, harsh. Hazel pulled the phone from her cheek, nearly hurling it in surprise at her own nerve, as a tinny whoosh of static came through the other end. A breath.
“Captain Singh.”
The adrenaline rushed as Hazel’s own idiocy pulsed, taunting.
“Hello?” the voice said. “Is anyone there?”
Hazel smashed her thumb down, ending the call. The silence that followed was interrupted only by her panting, jagged breath. She sat with the shock, praying that Saffron Singh would not look up her number or try to call her back. She was reacting to the gravity of the question Jenny had refused to pose—Hazel knew it would sit in her gut, a niggling suspicion she would not be able to answer or expel. She couldn’t consider it, in any complex way. It was too heinous, too unfathomable. And, most obviously, unprovable.
So she navigated back to her phone’s home screen, fingers quaking. She counted four breaths in, all cleaning supplies and vacuumed carpet. Luis answered after three rings—he’d been asleep. His voice was low, creaky. Hazel cried at the very soft of it.