Sweet Romance21 min read
"I Wasn't Her — Until Everyone Saw Me Be Her"
ButterPicks13 views
"I opened my eyes and my hands were tied."
I tasted orange on my lips and panic behind my teeth.
"Who are you?" the man across from me asked, eyes flat like a knife.
"I'm Kaylie." I spat the word out. "Kaylie Almeida."
"You look exactly like Marina Fisher." He touched his forehead as if the world hurt. "But your file—your fingerprints—don't exist here."
"I didn't mean to—" I started.
"You mean to what?" he said, and his voice was calm. "Break into my house?"
"I didn't break in," I said. "I don't belong here."
He listened like a judge. He looked like my friend Chase Lombardo as a stranger, then like nothing I knew at all. He told me later his name was Booker Copeland. He said his badge read Special Investigations. He said the woman who used to live in his house, his ex, was dead.
"You should stay," Booker said. "Don't leave my property."
I sat for hours in his living room while machines hummed and a cube-robot called Fox moved tea across glass surfaces. Fox chirped when it served me, "Would you like more sugar, honored guest?" in a voice that was almost human.
"Do robots ever kill?" I asked Booker, because my head was too full of horror movies.
"Not by design," Booker said. "But people can make bad things happen. We have to assume anything is possible."
"I need to go home," I said, and the word was a raw thing. "I need to call Chase."
"You said Chase?" Booker frowned. "Who is Chase?"
"My friend. Chase Lombardo. We—" I stopped. The truth about my life felt thin and odd.
"You said Marina Fisher." Booker stared at me. "Marina is missing. She was a scientist. She worked on neural links and public service bots. Her home was where we found the body."
I had been sleeping in my apartment a few towns over. Yesterday I fell asleep in a hoodie and woke up inside a house that wasn't mine, wearing someone else's clothes. I had no idea who Marina was. I knew comics, coffee, and a gray cheap heater. Booker kept asking me the same questions until my head buzzed.
"Stay here," Booker said finally. "People will ask questions."
They did. The town had the small, hot anger of a place suddenly exposed. People clustered like wires. A woman with a gold curl and a bright voice—Karlee Arnold—took my hand and called me "friend" and then, when someone else mentioned Marina's name, looked at me like a woman testing the edge of a river.
"You're with Booker?" she asked me in that syrupy way.
"Yes," I said. "He's giving me shelter."
"You look like Marina," she said. "I thought—"
"She worked with Booker," I said quickly. "I don't know her. I woke up here."
"You woke up here?" Karlee's voice fell to a whisper like a script line. "How very strange."
Across the street a young man, Cairo Ball, was loud and angry enough to be believed. He’d found the body. He hit the plate glass and said the right things: "I came to check, she was dead!" He said he used her key. He cried. He scared people with how raw he was.
Booker was never raw. He was all bone and rules. He let the local officers ask him questions about where he'd been the night of the murder. His answers were cool.
"I ran at dawn," Booker said. "Check the cameras."
They did. Cameras said Booker ran along the orchard road that morning. Cameras said Marina had been out in a town an hour away days before. Cameras said no one entered Marina's house after the day she left. But a detail made Booker pause: the house's public bot had still been doing its job. It emptied trash. It delivered tea. It moved in and out as if someone lived there.
"A robot can be given orders," I said once, when we were alone. "If someone's smart—"
"Someone in this town will be smart enough," Booker said. "Or someone hired the smart ones."
He looked at me and then at Fox, the cube-robot, and for the first time something soft happened in his face.
"Sit," Booker said. "Help me at the station and don't wander."
I became his assistant because reality bent around the fact that I looked like Marina Fisher. People assumed I was her clone, her twin, a fake. The town whispered theories and clicked their tongues. I learned how to nod and how to lie.
"You will answer truthfully if the police ask," Booker said. "You will say you are my assistant. You will not talk about Marina, unless I ask."
"I can do that," I said. I thought less about lying than about staying alive.
We went to the crime scene. I carried a small scanner Booker gave me. He handed me a pair of soft shoes that fit any foot and a cap to keep hair from shedding. He showed me how to touch the device and make projections float in the air—floating images of camera feeds and little red boxes where a robot had been.
"Why would the robot keep working if Marina was gone?" I asked.
"Because someone kept sending commands," Booker said. "But who could log in?"
"It could be someone with inside access," I said, and I didn't know why those words felt right. "Someone who knows the bot company. Someone who knows Marina."
Booker watched me like I'd offered him a clue.
"You're good," he said. "You think like someone who looks at pictures."
"You're treating me like Marina," I said.
"You look like her," he said.
We interviewed people. We walked into towns and sat at tables. The town's pond reflected even less than the cameras. People had histories like paper folded up small.
"Why did Marina go to the Gorge?" Booker asked one of Marina's neighbors, Marjorie Allison, who lived in a tidy house that smelled of lemon.
"She said she wanted to check on an old property," Marjorie said. "Old houses can be sold. It was common talk."
"Did she take her public bot with her?" Booker asked.
"No," Marjorie said. "Not that I saw."
"Did you see anyone else?" Booker asked.
"No," Marjorie said. "But later I heard the bot going through the trash, like always. It has a schedule."
The timelines were a tangle. Marina's last known time in town was caught on a camera in a different town. Another camera caught her car going down a tourist road. Her phone and desk receiver were destroyed after February first. Her daughter, a small child named Sasha, was safe in a school's care. Marina had kept a messy life and a child she loved.
The list of people who could want Marina dead was long. Cairo Ball, the ex; Karlee Arnold, the actress friend; the neighbor Marjorie who wanted Marina's property; Joel Hayes, a teenager who liked to tinker with devices; Alonso Dominguez, a quiet engineer who used to talk to Marina at the market; and a man named Joel's friend—I stopped remembering which Joel was which when the town's names blurred.
Booker narrowed on three tech-savvy suspects: Joel Hayes, Alonso Dominguez, and a young student, Joel's friend, who had the know-how to get into the dark corners of networks. He asked me to sit in the tea room and listen to their statements. I faked an interest and tuned the scanner to pick up their micro-expressions.
"What worries me," Booker said quietly to me the night we sat at his tea table, "is not that Marina had enemies. It's that this crime required planning, brains, and nerves."
"Like a tangle," I said.
"Yes," Booker said. "And you, Kaylie, are my luck. You being here helps me read people."
Being useful felt like a new muscle.
They called a town meeting. People asked questions like knives.
"Did Marina steal from anyone?" a neighbor demanded.
"Did she threaten anyone?" another said.
Karlee Arnold stood up and said, "Marina loved drama. But she was not mean. She was a complicated person."
"She posted on the forum weeks ago," a woman said. "She called out a man. Maybe someone got angry."
Karlee's face didn't move. She held herself like someone reading a script perfectly.
"You're an actress," I said later when we walked in a rain that tasted like metal. "Do you believe what you play?"
"I believe in truth that sells tickets," she said. "People want drama. People like to see what they already feel."
"You were the first to greet me," I said. "You looked at me like you knew me."
"I know Marina," Karlee said. "She and I had the same world sometimes. She told me things. But you—"
"You're an actress," I said. "You pretend."
"My craft is not pretending to be cruel," Karlee said. "It is to be honest about cruelty."
Her hand brushed mine, quick and too light. I pulled back.
When Booker dug into the tech, he found small things. A bot command pushed a delivery at odd hours. A private account was accessed from a public kiosk. Someone had bought poison through a hidden vendor. The coroner said Marina had been poisoned slowly enough that she could have been alive in the house, bound, for forty-eight hours. Her body was discovered days later.
"Who would make sure the bot took the food?" Booker asked.
"Someone who could plan," I said. "Someone who knew the bot's routines."
When I told that to Booker, he looked at me with something I couldn't name.
"You're seeing the puppet strings because you know Marina, somehow," he said. "Or because you have a good heart."
"Or because I am her double," I said, and my voice went cold.
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe the one who made this mess is trying to pin it on everyone."
Booker called Joel Hayes in. Joel was nineteen and small, with a quick smile and fingers that moved like they were always touching a keyboard.
"Did you log into Marina's bot?" Booker asked.
"I—" Joel swallowed. "I play with bots. I don't hurt people. I helped test a module once. But I didn't touch Marina's home."
"Why would you?"
"People say I like to break things. I fix them. I tinker. I don't—"
"You're smart," Booker said. "You can do things most cannot."
"You think he killed her?" I said.
"It's not my job to think," Booker said. "It's my job to prove."
The town's anger boiled into posts and comments. A forum that had been quiet erupted with accusations. An anonymous user posted everything he knew about Marine's debts and secrets. The thread flooded. The more people posted, the uglier the noise grew.
Late at night, I woke with the same dream: a glass table, a hand offering me a cup I never drank.
I told Booker the dream. He didn't laugh.
"What did the cup taste like?" he asked.
"Orange," I said. "Sweet and cold."
"Marina loved orange juice," Booker said. "She drank it every morning."
The coroner's report said the poison used was the kind you can buy on black markets. It was slow, clear, and deadly. It could be hidden in juice.
We retraced Marina's steps. We watched camera after camera and found that on January twenty-eighth, Marina's car went to a holiday town, then walked into a path to the gorge called the Backridge. Tourists avoid it. Tour guides whisper it is dangerous. Marina walked in with empty hands. She was picked up on camera at a remote parking lot later that day alone. Another camera hours later showed her driving back in the night. Then nothing. Then dark.
Booker said the killer wanted us to see a lie: that Marina went and died out there. But the house told a different story. The home bot kept going, cleaning, feeding, emptying. Someone gave it commands. Someone kept the house looking lived in.
At a meeting with the town, Booker let me ask questions in the tea room, and I pushed where it hurt.
"Karlee, when did you last see Marina?" I asked, and the room smelled of boiled tea and steam.
"I last saw her the week of the reunion," Karlee said. "She was distant. She asked if I could help with a scene. I said no. I had rehearsals."
"Who else could be in the backridge?" I asked.
"People who seek excitement," Karlee said. "But Marina—she is a woman who leaves doors open."
"You told the police I was Marina," I said. "You saw me and you thought of her. Why did you do that?"
Karlee's eyes narrowed. "Because you look like a story," she said. "You walked in like a plot device. I was curious."
"You mean to set me up," I said.
She smiled the way actors smile when they are about to say something fine. "No. To test me. To see if you were acting. I like good acting, Kaylie. I also like good truth."
Booker watched Karlee like a man reading two scripts at once. He tightened his jaw.
"Joel, did you ever log into Marina's home account?" Booker asked again.
"No," Joel said. "I coded music bots. I might have played with a module. I sold a sleep algorithm once. But I didn't use her key."
"Who did have a key?" Booker asked.
"Only family and close friends," Marjorie said. "And maybe her helper."
At night, I lay awake and thought about the little things. Marina had a picture in Booker's study once, a photograph that had disappeared. Booker told me later that he'd kept a photo of him and Marina on his desk, once he was brave enough to let himself smile. He said it was gone now. I wondered who removed it and why.
"You knew Marina," I said to Booker once after a long hour.
"I did," he said. "She was my friend. We dated. We were… not a long story." He pressed his fingers together. "She was brilliant and fragile. I loved her. I don't know why she would leave her child."
"Maybe she didn't leave," I said.
"Maybe someone moved her," Booker said. "Maybe someone wanted her dead and wanted us to think otherwise."
We followed one thread that kept tugging. A trash collector's bot had opened Marina's bin at three forty in the morning on a night when no one should have been home. The bot had linked to a public alias. The alias had been used a few times in the past to buy small goods from an underground vendor who sold experimental neurochemicals. The purchase dates matched an odd spike of traffic from a user who later logged into a public kiosk.
We traced the kiosk to a narrow coffee shop where Joel's friend, another student named Fox—Fox Barbier—spent time. Fox wore big headphones and always had a box of takeout.
"Fox," Booker said gently when he met him. "Have you been on the forum?"
Fox blinked. "Everyone is on the forum."
"Did you buy anything on the dark web?"
Fox's face went pale. "People get lost out there. But I didn't buy poison. I buy beats and modules."
"You ever meet Karlee?" Booker asked.
Fox shrugged. "We booked a small show once. She praised me. She said I had raw talent."
It was like a map with missing pieces. The killer had to be someone with access, someone with motive, and someone who could script the bots. I started to think of another thing I knew: Marina's voice. When I closed my eyes, I could almost hear the cadence of someone who could make a crowd listen.
"Is it possible," I said one night, "that someone wanted Marina out of the way to take advantage of her assets? Her house, her rights to the scene she had with Sasha's care?"
"Possible," Booker said. "But messy. Who gains?"
Karlee did, in a strange way: as a celebrity, her public sympathy could rise if she appeared as a grieving friend. But Karlee already had a career. She had been jealous sometimes. The dead girl had stolen roles. People said it in the market. She had motive for anger and had the ability to manipulate stagecraft.
But motive and ability do not mean guilt. We needed a scene of truth.
We planned to flush out the killer. Booker set a sting: we staged a small film reading at his house and invited everyone. I was to play Marina in a scene. I hated the idea. I felt like a puppet. But Booker wanted to watch reactions. He wanted to see who slipped.
"When I read a line," Booker told me before the meeting, "watch people's faces. People cannot hide everything."
"Are you watching me like a suspect?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I'm watching them. And you help me watch."
"You used to be a detective before you were lonely," I said.
"Lonely comes with the badge," he said. He touched my hand for a second. "You are brave, Kaylie."
At the gathering, Karlee sat close to the stage like someone waiting to be praised. Cairo Ball came, looking restless. Joel Hayes folded his hands. Alonso Dominguez was distant. The room smelled of coffee and nerves.
I stepped up. My lines were small and honest. I breathed orange, hotel linens, and truth. I said words only Marina would choose if Marina were honest. I looked at the audience and saw them rearrange like birds.
After the scene, Carson—one of the actors—applauded. Karlee stood and clapped the loudest. Her eyes were bright. But Booker watched the replays from cams he had hidden in the room.
"Watch the replay," Booker whispered.
On his screen, Karlee's hand twitched. Her smile went wrong for a moment. She leaned toward Jonah, a friend near her, and whispered. Jonah's face went tight. He pushed his cup away.
"She told Jonah to lie," Booker said.
We followed Jonah. At first he would not speak. Then he cracked.
"She asked me to log into a public terminal and send a message," Jonah said. "She said it would make people look at the right thing."
"What message?" Booker asked.
"A fake tip," Jonah said. "Saying Marina had been out in the Backridge."
Karlee had planned to put suspicion on Backridge. Why? To make the timeline messy. To make Marina look like she was lost in the gorge. To make evidence point away from home. Jonah said Karlee had given him money and told him to make the post.
We dug deeper. Jonah's bank logs showed a transfer from Karlee's account the day before. Karlee paled but denied it.
"Why would you order that, Karlee?" Booker demanded.
"Because Marina cheated me," Karlee said. "She took a role from me. She took my chance. She hurt people. I wanted justice."
"You ordered a post to mislead an investigation?" Booker said. "You tried to make people look elsewhere."
Karlee's eyes hardened. "I wanted the truth to come out. She was a liar. She could hurt. I wanted to make her sorry."
"That's not a reason to kill her," I said.
Karlee's face split. "Do you know when people break down?" she said. "They break in parts. They lie. They whisper because they cannot face the thing they did. Marina hated me sometimes. She took roles. She told people things that made me look small. All I wanted was—
"I didn't kill Marina," she said. "I told Jonah to post a lie because I wanted a scene. I wanted people to look at the gorge because Marina relied on drama. I thought she would be found. I wanted to be trusted. I didn't kill her."
The room gasped. The actress shook, and then she wept like a scene finally honest.
"You didn't kill her," Booker said, almost gentle. "But you set a stage. You tried to direct the world."
"I wanted people to see," Karlee sobbed. "I wanted justice for what she did to my career."
It was not enough. The killer needed more than a motive of wounded pride.
We kept looking. Evidence was in small things. A private account, a trash pickup logged at odd hours, a delivery bot route shifted to cross Marina's path at particular times.
I started to suspect Joel Hayes again. He had the skill and the connection to bots. I found a message thread between Joel and Alonso Dominguez that hinted at money and a job.
"Joel, did you help move a schedule?" Booker asked when we questioned him again.
"No," Joel said. "I didn't. I would never."
But Joel's hands shook.
"Who pays you, Joel?" Booker said.
"Who pays us," Joel said, and the words were a small break. "We did it for the challenge. But not the killing."
"Who is 'we'?" Booker said.
Joel's lip trembled. "Alonso wanted a piece of property. He wanted that small house that Marina had. He asked me to help him change some logs. I said it was wrong. He said do it or I lose my job. He had money."
We picked at this like a patient wound. Alonso had the money and the motive. He wanted Marina's property for development. But development was a poor motive for murder. Who would take such a risk? Joel insisted his role was to alter records and bots, not to buy poison.
Then a piece fell into place: the poison was bought on the dark marketplace using a public alias. That alias was tied to a kiosk where Karlee's message was posted and Jonah logged in. Screens showed transfers to a pay address that then moved money to an offshore account tied to a shell company. The shell company paid Alonso. The money then moved again.
"Who did the fronting?" Booker asked.
"Someone who uses performance to hide," Joel whispered. He looked at Karlee. "She loves to stage. She gave Jonah cash, make posts. She created noise. Alonso created the logistics. I touched the logs. I never thought this would happen."
"Where is the poison now?" Booker demanded.
"We didn't get it," Alonso said. "We were supposed to buy something else. A property push. I sent money. Then that night Marina got sick."
"Who delivered?" Booker asked.
Alonso shook. "Casa's bot—public unit. I told the bot to deliver a package that would allow kitchen supply. I told them it was for trash. I only wanted to change schedules to make it seem lived-in."
"Someone else poisoned the drink," Joel whispered. "It was not us. We found a bottle of orange juice in Marina's fridge with a label swapped. The bottle had been delivered twice. One for clean up. One was for—"
A memory clicked. Fox was a courier in the nights. He did odd jobs, and he had the code to release bots. He went quiet when we cornered him.
"I only moved things," Fox said. "I was paid to swap a bottle. I didn't know what was inside."
"Who paid you?" Booker asked.
Fox shook. "Joel's friend paid me. A man in a jacket. I didn't look. I can't—"
"Who is he?" Booker demanded, and the room constricted to focus.
Fox looked up and pointed like someone losing a memory. "It was—Cairo."
Cairo Ball. The man who found the body. The man who kept yelling about justice. His answers had always been loud and raw, like a performance that deserved applause. Booker felt it through the phone lines. I felt it like a cold slap.
"Cairo," I said. "Why?"
Cairo folded. The truth came out in pieces, ugly and human.
"I loved her," he said. "I thought she loved me. She used me. She told me promises, told me she would leave the baby with someone, then she laughed. She said I should go away. I was drunk the night before. I went to find her. I knocked. She didn't answer. I got the key, I opened the door. I found her on the sofa, tied up. She was alive. I tried to untie her. She couldn't speak. I left and came back with a knife. I wanted to cut her bonds. I wanted to free her. In the kitchen I found a bottle of orange juice open. I drank a little to see if she would wake. She didn't. I got angry. I wanted to hurt the man who hurt her. I wanted to hurt myself for letting her go. I—"
"Did you poison her on purpose?" Booker asked, and the room was a blade.
"I didn't mean to," Cairo said. "I wanted to find out who did it. I wanted answers. I was a mess. I thought if I stirred things maybe she would wake. I put more juice. I left. I came back. She was gone. I panicked. I tried to remake the scene so it looked like I found her. I called the police."
Cairo's face crumpled. He was not the controlling master we had feared. He was confusing guilt and action. His story did not explain the poison, only his foolishness.
"Who brought the poison?" Booker demanded.
Fox and Joel and Alonso traced the payments and found a name hidden in a string of data: a courier who'd been paid to change a bottle at the curb that night. The courier had used the public bot network. And the payment originated from a studio account, a small vendor tied to Karlee's manager.
"You used Jonah to post," Booker said. "You used a courier to swap a bottle. You let Alonso manipulate schedules. You paid Fox to switch things. But you say you didn't directly buy the poison."
"It was a new scene," Karlee said. "We wanted to scare Marina. We wanted to show her what she had done. We never bought a poison. We only wanted to shame, not to kill."
Joel broke in with the final piece. "I accessed the market to test an algorithm. I saw a vendor offering a chemical that would slowly stop the heart. I thought it was a script experiment. Someone else completed the order. The shipment IP matched an address linked to a small arts foundation that had paid Karlee for a talk."
We had one moment to bend the world into truth: confrontation.
Booker arranged it like a stage, and I hated that we were forced into acting. We sat them all in his house. The cameras were on. The town had the right to see the face of who had hurt Marina.
"You all tried to direct a story about Marina," Booker said, his voice a hammer. "Someone tried to make her a story. That story killed her."
Karlee stared. Her eyes flicked from face to face. She was a woman who had staged tragedies to make money. She had led Jonah to post the false tip. She had pushed actors into being complicit. She had funds that had flowed to a shell company. She had made a plan to shame Marina, and to benefit herself by being the one who stood at Marina's side and called for justice. That was motive enough for some. But motive is not proof.
"You did not directly buy the poison," I said. My voice surprised me with its steady edge. "But you bought the stage. Alonso bought the logistics. Joel touched logs. Fox swapped bottles. Jonah spread lies. Cairo found the body and made it his own. But one thing none of you expected—Marina didn't die in the gorge."
Booker projected the evidence, his hands moving. He showed Marina's bot logs. He showed public bot routes. He showed a courier scan that had a unique pattern: a handprint on the bottle cap, a smear of a brand not sold locally. It matched a glove found in Karlee's van's trunk after Booker had the warrant.
Karlee's face went white.
"You wanted to ruin Marina," Booker said. "You wanted people to look away from what she had done to you. You hired people to do the dirt. You staged the scene. Someone in your chain delivered poison and then left. You didn't sign the order directly, but the money trail goes through your accounts."
"No," Karlee whispered. "I didn't—"
"You used your power over people," Booker cut in. "But you did not pull the final trigger. The person who completed that order did."
Booker looked at Alonso. Alonso looked at the floor.
"It was me," Alonso said.
Alonso's face broke in a way a man breaks when he has made a decision to be honest like a rock hitting glass. He had a developer's calm with hands that claimed not to shake. "I didn't plan a murder," he said. "I wanted the house. Marina wouldn't sell. Karlee wanted drama. Joel changed logs. Fox swapped bottles. Jonah made posts. Cairo panicked. I paid an intermediary to clear a path, but not to kill. I thought I was only putting in motion a plan to make the house appear occupied, to make Marina seem unstable and sell the place. I never meant for her to die."
"Why did you order the chemical?" Booker asked.
"I didn't think it was real," Alonso said. "They called it a 'cardiac recalibrator.' I thought it was a dramatized toxin used for a scene. The vendor promised a harmless compound for the demo. I did not realize the vendor was selling a lethal version. I didn't test it. I wish I had."
The room went very quiet.
"You bought it," Booker said. "You sent it through Fox and the bot network. You paid out. The courier swapped the bottle in Marina's kitchen. You were the last link."
Alonso's face melted. He sank into his chair like a man struck by an avalanche. "I wanted to fix a life I couldn't afford to lose. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to build a development that would give me standing. I didn't want Marina dead."
"You set the stage," Booker said flatly. "You created the conditions. That is enough for the law."
Karlee's cheeks shone with tears. Cairo's shoulders wracked. Joel buried his face. Jonah, in a weird twist, looked relieved. Fox looked like a child being told he had done a bad thing.
"You all hurt people," Booker said. "You did not watch the human cost. Marina is the cost."
They were all arrested or detained or given restraining orders. Alonso confessed in the end because the data matched payments and logs. Jonah testified about Karlee. Fox told the courier's name. The investigators followed the money and the vendor and the dark market accounts. Joel's role was reduced to altering logs, and he took responsibility for being complicit. They all cried and gave statements. In the courthouse, the room reacted in waves. The town's eyes were hungry.
"How can this be?" Karlee said to me as we sat in a quiet room months later. "I wanted to fix my life."
"You fixed nothing," I answered. "You made a scene and it killed a woman."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I never wanted her to die."
"Sorry doesn't make things right," I said. "But maybe you can make a different kind of amends."
The trial was messy and public. The prosecution argued that Alonso ordered a substance without sufficient verification. The defense said he was reckless, not malicious. Karlee was charged for staging and incitement. Jonah and Fox were charged with accessory. Cairo's clumsy actions were handled with leniency because he had not planned murder but had lied badly. Joel confessed to log tampering and cooperated. Alonso faced the hardest charges.
In the courtroom during the day the judge read the verdicts and the family sat quietly. Sasha, Marina's small girl, grew up fast. The court ordered a guardianship plan for Sasha until a careful adoption could be arranged. Booker's voice sounded on the recording as he stood up and told the court the truth about Marina: not that she was perfect, but that she was a mother.
After the trial, when the town turned inward, Booker and I stood on the porch of his old house and watched a thin rain.
"Why did this happen to you?" he asked.
"Because I look like someone who had a life others wanted to tell a story about," I said.
"You helped," he said. "You gave us something we needed. You made people look at faces they did not want to see."
"I still want to go home," I said.
He looked at me, hard.
"I know," he said. "But for a while you stayed. You were brave."
"You called me brave when I was lying," I said.
"You were brave anyway."
Booker had run through the motions of everything like a precise machine, but there was a softness to him when he looked at me after that. I had watched him move through people like water, but with me he hesitated. He had trusted me as more than a prop; he trusted me as a person. The feeling, I could not name it then, was a small light.
"Will Marina come back?" I asked.
"No," Booker said. "But we're trying to give Sasha a life. That's what Marina would have wanted."
We had to decide what to do with me. I could return to my old life. Marina's place in Booker's house was filled with echoes. I had a laptop I owed people updates to. My comic pages needed finishing. But after the trial, Booker offered something I did not expect.
"Stay," he said. "For a while. Help me with cases. You saw something I missed—the way people act. You can learn the law. You can be careful. You can help people like Marina."
"Be your assistant?" I asked.
"Be Kaylie," he said. "Not Marina. Kaylie."
It was the first time he used my name like an anchor and not a label.
"You sure you're not settling for a lookalike?" I asked before I laughed.
"I'm sure," he said, and there was no mockery in his voice.
I stayed. The town did not forget. People still scrolled through threads and said mean things. But some neighbors came to help. Sasha's guardianship was placed under a woman who had been an old friend of Marina’s, and then later she was adopted by a family who promised to keep her near school and sunshine and the park she loved. Booker came with me to watch the adoption meeting through glass, and he held my hand like a quiet promise.
Months later, I found Marina's photograph under Booker's old desk wrapped in a faded paper. He had kept it hidden, and it had a crack on one corner like a memory's scar. He handed it to me.
"I thought," he said, breathing out, "that I was protecting myself by hiding it. But you helped me see I need to stop hiding."
I looked at that photograph. Marina's smile was small, but it was there.
"I won't be Marina," I said. "I can't be. I can be me."
"You are you," Booker said. "Kaylie."
People started to call me Kaylie who I actually was, not Marina. At first I flinched at the sight of my own face being called by other people's lips, but the edges softened with time. I finished my comic. I held a girl's hand who modeled for one of the panels. I learned how to ask police questions in a way that did not sound like a script.
One night, after a long day, Booker stood at my door with a plain paper bag. He had brought fruit, like a neighbor. He looked tired. He looked human.
"Do you miss home?" he asked.
"Every so often," I said.
"Do you want me to find you a way back?"
"I don't know," I said. "At first I wanted to run. Now I'm learning to help."
"You helped a terrible thing become less wrong," Booker said. "I won't lie—it's not closure. It's repair."
"Repair is a good thing," I said.
He reached and brushed my hair back from my forehead. "Kaylie," he said softly. "If you ever want to go back for good, I will help."
"I'll give myself a little time," I said. "And you—are you going to stop hiding things like photos in drawers?"
He laughed, small and private. "Maybe."
We kept working. Sometimes the cases were small—stolen bikes, a bot gone rogue. Sometimes they were ugly and long. We kept Sasha's guardian updated. The town continued to have its loud voices. Karlee worked at theatre doors, her projects smaller and quieter after the trial. Alonso paid his debt. Joel and Fox learned to use their skills for public good. Cairo paid for what he'd done but later found a place to work with people who had the broken pieces of their lives he might help.
I learned something about faces: they are not proof. They are a starting point. The truth lives in the small acts that follow.
One early morning, when the sky was a soft pearl, Booker and I stood at the orchard road where he had run the morning Marina vanished. He pointed at where cameras had once shown him.
"Do you ever regret trusting me?" I asked.
"Every day," he said. "But I regret not telling the truth more than I regret trusting."
"Then you were brave," I said.
He tipped his head. "We were brave."
We looked out at a town that was uneven and human. A woman walked by carrying a small child. It could have been Sasha or any of the small joys that keep a town together.
"I don't know if I ever go back," I said.
"You won't be pretending," he said. "You will be Kaylie. That will do."
I turned and smiled. It was a small thing in a long list of small things. It was mine.
The End
— Thank you for reading —