The letter was still on my kitchen table when the call came.
It sat there like an accusation, cream envelope gone soft around the edges from the number of times I’d picked it up and put it down again. Avery’s handwriting on the front—my name, the loop of the y heavy with pressure as if she’d dug the pen into the paper—had been haunting me for a week.
I’d almost convinced myself it was a joke. Drama. Avery’s specialty.
Then my phone rang.
“Ms. Hart?” The voice was male, clipped, official. In the background, I heard a murmur of distant announcements, the hollow echo of a high-ceilinged space. “This is Officer Tran with the Seattle PD. Are you related to an Avery Hart?”
I sat down without meaning to. The chair scraped across the tile, sharp and ugly.
“Yes,” I managed. “She’s my sister.”
A silence. I could hear paper rustling, a cough. “I’m very sorry. There’s been an accident.”
The words came like they were falling down a long stairwell. Accident. Identified. Personal effects. Next of kin. I listened but none of it made sense because my eyes were on the table, on the letter stamped a week ago.
If anything happens, you take my place.
My fingers moved before my brain did. I grabbed the envelope, tore it open, and smoothed the crumpled page with shaking hands while he kept talking.
Riley,
No greeting, no apology. Classic Avery.
If you’re reading this, it means I ran out of time or nerve. It’s bad. I can’t explain it all in a letter, but I need a favor and I know you won’t like it.
If anything happens to me, go to my townhouse. Take my place. Don’t call Mom and Dad until you understand what’s going on. Tell no one you’re you.
Trust K. Until you can’t.
– A
“Ms. Hart?” the officer repeated. “Are you still there?”
I folded the letter with a deliberate care that didn’t match the chaos in my chest. “Yes. I—what… what kind of accident?”
He told me enough. Car, late night, wrong turn over a barrier near the waterfront. No skid marks. Fire. The details lodged in my throat like glass.
We hadn’t spoken in two years. The last real conversation we’d had ended with me saying, “I can’t keep covering for you,” and her laughing like that was the funniest lie she’d ever heard.
After I hung up, the kitchen felt too white, too bright. The fridge hummed. Somewhere outside my third-floor apartment, someone slammed a car door and called to a dog. The ordinary sound of a Saturday afternoon in Portland. My heart hadn’t gotten the memo.
I read the letter again. Take my place.
I should have called my parents immediately. I should have comforted them, let them comfort me, followed the normal script where grief arrives with casseroles and floral arrangements and logistics.
Instead, I booked a train to Seattle and packed a weekend bag like I was going on a work trip.
The townhouse was cleaner than I expected.
Avery had always lived like a storm had just passed through—clothes draped over chairs, mugs abandoned in places that made no sense. The last apartment I’d visited, years ago, had smelled like cinnamon and printer ink and something perpetually burning on the stove.
