Sophie Mercer was smiling for the photograph when the cake collapsed.
One second, thirty-five blue-and-white candles were flickering above a perfect yellow buttercream tower. The next, a server stumbled, Sophie reached forward, and half the cake slid sideways across the linen tablecloth.
People laughed because that was what people did at expensive parties when something went wrong and nobody wanted to admit the mood had changed.
Sophie lifted her champagne glass and forced a grin. “Best birthday ever.”
Her fiancé, Grant Keller, leaned close enough for only her to hear. “You can still save the photos. Just move to the other side.”
That was Grant. He believed almost anything could be fixed if the right angle was chosen.
Then the guests stopped laughing.
At the edge of the garden, a woman in a gray coat had appeared beneath the string lights.
Sophie knew the silver hair before she saw the face.
Her mother.
Eleanor Mercer had not been invited.
They had spoken twice in the past three years, both times through attorneys. Sophie had told herself she preferred it that way.
Then she saw what Eleanor was carrying.
A bright pink leather handbag.
The glass slipped slightly in Sophie’s fingers.
Grant followed her stare. The smile disappeared from his face.
“No,” Sophie whispered.
She knew that bag.
Ava had carried it everywhere during the last year of her life. It had been too loud, too expensive, too bright for Ava’s usual taste, which was exactly why she loved it. She called it her bad-decision bag.
And she had carried it the night she died.
Five years ago, Ava had left the Mercer estate in the middle of a storm after a fight no one would explain. Her car went off Route 9 near a flooded ravine. Police recovered her phone, one shoe, and a silver bracelet.
They never found the pink handbag.
Sophie crossed the lawn before she realized she was moving.
“Where did you get that?”
Eleanor stopped beside the long table near the stone fire pit.
Her face was calm in a way that made Sophie angrier.
“You came here with that?” Sophie demanded. “On my birthday?”
Grant arrived behind her. “Eleanor, this is not the time.”
Eleanor looked at him.
For half a second, something changed in Grant’s expression.
Not grief.
Fear.
Sophie noticed it because she had spent five years noticing everything that might explain Ava.
Her mother placed the bag on the table.
“I found it three weeks ago,” Eleanor said.
Sophie stared at her. “Where?”
“I’ll tell you after.”
“After what?”
Eleanor looked toward the fire.
Sophie’s stomach tightened.
“No.”
Her mother picked up the bag.
“Mom.”
The word came out before Sophie could stop it.
Eleanor turned toward the flames.
Grant took one sharp step forward. “Don’t.”
That stopped Sophie cold.
He had never cared about Ava’s belongings. He had spent years telling Sophie that digging through old pain would not bring her sister back.
But now his face had gone pale.
Eleanor met Sophie’s eyes.
Then she threw the pink handbag into the fire.
The leather caught faster than Sophie expected. Flame climbed one side, curled around the handles, and turned the bright pink surface black.
Sophie heard someone gasp behind her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she shouted.
She moved toward the fire, but Eleanor caught her wrist.
“Let it burn.”
“That was Ava’s!”
“No,” Eleanor said quietly.
Sophie froze.
Eleanor looked past her, toward Grant.
“That was a copy.”
The real handbag, she said, was hidden somewhere only Sophie could reach.
And someone at the party had just proved they were terrified of what was inside it.