Blood Bond by Sophie Littlefield

since childhood. After the most vicious fight Gail would come slinking back, sometimes into the room where Marva was serving a time-out sentence she hadn’t earned, and pick and tease at her until Marva couldn’t maintain her fury anymore.
    â€œGail tells me everything,” she insisted. “The more I think about it, I feel like it has to do with the anniversary. But attacking someone, the blood, they’ve never done anything like that before. All these years, it’s been just the packages. Little things to make her remember, to remind her of Jess. So how does this fit in?”
    Aidan shrugged, tapped his fingers on his thighs. “I don’t know. An escalation . . .”
    â€œAnd I don’t understand why they skipped the last two years.” Two years ago, Marva had waited in Gail’s kitchen all day, holding Marshall, only a baby then. Drinking tea, trying to distract Gail. When evening came, and it finally sank in that there would be no package, no letter, no threats or accusations, Marva had been almost giddy with relief. But Gail had acted disappointingly blasé, wanting to get back to watching Dancing with the Stars . “It had to end some time,” she’d said, reaching for the clicker, but Marva sensed that the fear remained unabated beneath Gail’s feigned indifference.
    Last year Marva played it safe, staying home during the day, putting the binding on a triptych quilt for a client’s townhouse in San Francisco. Moving around the edge taking tiny stitches, dropping metal binder clips into a plastic box, occasionally poking the needle into the pad of the fingers on her left hand. But Gail had never called.
    â€œIt’s hard to say why it stopped,” Aidan said.
    It was brilliantly cruel: to wait until they all felt comfortable again, until their defenses were down, and then strike. Except—Marva always had to remind herself—none of this was directed at her; she was only the sister. “Why skip two years, and then come back and do something so different?”
    â€œIf it is the same person or persons.” Reasonable, lawyer talk. “I’m still betting on Bryce, but say it’s someone who knew Jess. Maybe they told someone else, maybe someone else took over for them.”
    â€œBut who ?”
    â€œMarva,” Aidan said gently. Lines of concern in his forehead. He placed his hand on her shoulder, gave a gentle squeeze. “It’s the same as it always was.”
    Who Could Have Done It . She’d visited that list a thousand times. Jess’s mother and brother. The girl who took the blame for what Gail had done, Deanne Mentis. Deanne’s parents. Maybe her boyfriend, if they were still together.
    â€œI always wondered if it was Deanne,” Marva murmured. Because Deanne had good reason, didn’t she? She ended up being expelled, while Gail managed to finish out her senior year. But of course everyone talked; everyone on campus knew what had really happened.
    Aidan frowned. “I’d agree except . . . well, in my line of work, I see people under great duress every day. People who’ve experienced terrible things. You know?”
    People looking for someone to pay them for their pain, Marva thought. In her mind, though there were undoubtedly exceptions, personal injury law was an ethical gray area. “Sure.”
    â€œSo I’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of crazy things when there’s been a tragedy. And what I’ve learned is, you just really never can predict how someone’s going to react.”
    â€œBut—”
    Aidan held up a hand to stop her. “Listen to this one. Case I had two, three months ago. A woman takes a spill in a pizza joint, breaks her collarbone, and when they do the X-ray it turns out there’s leaking from her breast implants. Fifty-fifty on whether the fall caused the problem, but the restaurant—it’s a chain—they