Free Sweet Little Lies by J.T. Ellison Page B

doubles for
ages, and they were two matches from taking it all. Their yearly
run at the Richland club championship was almost a foregone
conclusion; they’d won seven years in a row.
    Tapping the fingers of her right hand on the
wheel, she used her left to pull her ponytail around the curve of
her neck, a comfort gesture she’d adopted in childhood. Corinne
hadn’t needed any comfort. She was always the strong one. Even as a
young child, when Michelle pulled that ponytail around her neck,
the unruly curls winding around her ear, Corinne would get that
little line between her brows to show her displeasure at her elder
sister’s weakness.
    Remembering, Michelle flipped the hair back
over her shoulder with disgust. The light turned green and she
gunned it, foot hard on the pedal. She hated being late for
Corinne.
    Michelle took the turn off Jocelyn Hollow
Road and followed the sedate, meandering asphalt into her sister’s
cul-de-sac. The dogwood tree in the Wolffs’ front yard was just
beginning to bud. Michelle smiled. Spring was coming. Nashville had
been in the grip of a difficult winter for months, but at last the
frigid clutch showed signs of breaking. New life stirred at the
edges of the forests, calves were dropping in the fields. The
chirping of the wrens and cardinals had taken on a higher pitch,
avian mommies and daddies awaiting the arrival of their young.
Corinne herself was ripe with a new life, seven months into an easy
pregnancy—barely looking four months along. Her activity level kept
the usual baby weight off, and she was determined to play tennis up
to the birth, just like she’d done with Hayden.
    Not fair. Michelle didn’t have any children,
didn’t have a husband for that matter. She just hadn’t met the
right guy. The consolation was Hayden. With a niece as adorable and
precocious as hers, she didn’t need her own child. Not just
yet.
    She pulled into the Wolffs’ maple-lined
driveway and cut the engine on her Volvo. Corinne’s black BMW 535i
sat in front of the garage door. The wrought iron lantern lights
that flanked the front doors were on. Michelle frowned. It wasn’t
like Corinne to forget to turn those lights off. She remembered the
argument Corinne and Todd, her husband, had gotten into about them.
Todd wanted the kind that came on at dark and went off in the
morning automatically. Corinne insisted they could turn the switch
themselves with no problem. They’d gone back and forth, Todd
arguing for the security, Corinne insisting that the look of the
dusk-to-dawns were cheesy and wouldn’t fit their home. She’d won,
in the end. She always did.
    Corinne always turned off the lights first
thing in the morning. Like clockwork.
    The hair rose on the back of Michelle’s neck.
This wasn’t right.
    She stepped out of the Volvo, didn’t shut the
door all the way behind her. The path to her sister’s front door
was a brick loggia pattern, the nooks and crannies filled with sand
to anchor the Chilhowies. Ridiculously expensive designer brick
from a tiny centuries-old sandpit in Virginia, if Michelle
remembered correctly. She followed the path and came to the front
porch. The door was unlocked, but that was typical. Michelle told
Corinne time and again to keep that door locked at night. But
Corinne always felt safe, didn’t see the need. Michelle eased the
door open.
    Oh, my God.
    Michelle ran back to her car and retrieved
her cell phone. As she dialed 911, she rushed back to the porch and
burst through the front door.
    The phone was ringing in her ear now,
ringing, ringing. She registered the footprints, did a quick lap
around the bottom floor and seeing no one, took the steps two at a
time. She was breathing hard when she hit the top, took a left and
went down the hall.
    A voice rang in her ear, and she tried to
comprehend the simple language as she took in the scene before
her.
    “911, what is your emergency?”
    She couldn’t answer. Oh God, Corinne. On the
floor, face down. Blood,