A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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MERIDIAN
Leon had a lot of nerve showing up here.
I was both amazed and shocked at the fact that Sofia was willingly giving him the time of day, especially on a day like this. If he had shown up at my doorstep, I would have left him under the pouring rain without an ounce of hesitation.
Then again, Sofia was a much better person than I was. I had no doubt in the world she was going to let him talk and blabber, and I also bet my family's entire fortune she would have answered the phone if June had called her on the night she died.
She stepped forward. "What is it?"
Leon's eyes kept darting between her and me, as though he didn't think I was welcome on the Winehearts' front porch, when, in reality, that only applied to him. "It's . . . kind of personal. It's private."
"If it's about my sister, then it's kind of my business," I intervened. Sofia threw me a warning look and, no matter how much it hurt her, June was still my sister—or had been, at least. Family wasn't defined only by blood, obviously, but I still had some sort of authority when it came to this kind of stuff. "I saw the tweets about you."
He glared at me. "And you believed them? Do you believe everything you read online?"
"This isn't about fake news, you idiot. It's about how you lied to everyone about being at the motel that night and—"
"Technically"—he raised his index finger—"I didn't lie. No one ever asked me whether I had been there. I omitted the truth, which is dead different."
"Well, guess who's actually dead, probably thanks to you!"
Sofia set a hand on my arm. At first, I thought it was an attempt to calm me down, which didn't have the desired effect, but then she pulled me forward to make me stand under the roof. In reality, it was just to shield me from the rain, leaving behind a trail of small electric shocks everywhere she'd touched me.
"Leon, if this is about June, you know he's right," she argued. Leon rolled his eyes, hands flying up to his hair, and, for a split second, I felt some compassion towards him. I still had no idea what in the world June had seen in him that made her stay in a relationship with him for so long, but there had been something. Maybe he wasn't as bad as I wanted to believe he was, but he might have killed her. "All three of us cared about June, so there's no reason why this conversation shouldn't include everyone here. We need to start getting along instead of fighting all the time for once in our lives. It's not what June would have wanted."
