“C’mon, Jupe. We know you’re welcome here,” I waved Jupiter out the driver’s side door, and we dashed through the rain to the front door.

  A quick knock brought the sound of scrabbling paws on the opposite side of the door.

  “See, Jupe? Jojo is excited to see you again!”

  Jupiter gave me a healthy dose of side-eye. The front door opened, and a small black lab exploded onto the front step, sniffing and jumping all over him.

  “Hi, Kate,” Sam said, his burnished skin breaking into a broad smile. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here today.”

  Comfortable as always in his faded jeans and a white t-shirt, he leaned against the open door frame. His long, silver-grey hair was held back in a ponytail, pulling his fissured skin tighter around his eyes.

  “Hi, Sam. Well, actually, I’m looking for Selesia.”

  Sam opened the door wider and gestured for me to come inside. “Well, you came to the right place. She’s right in here.”

  Sam’s home may have had a million-dollar view, but its interior was much more modest. More 1980s rec-room than Architectural Digest, with its well-worn La-Z-Boy chairs and lacquered wood-paneled walls. I turned the corner into the kitchen to see Selesia seated at the table.

  “Hey, Kate. How’re you doing?”

  I had met Selesia a few times before, either out and about on the island or when we had crossed paths at Shea’s farmhouse. She was in her early forties. Her body, strong and lean, had been carved into shape by the marathon running she did in the free time she had outside of her job as a Social Worker who specialized in First Nation’s cases. Her straight brown-black hair hung in thick sheets around her face, a face that was a rectangle of unsoftened lines and angles. This gave her a somewhat cold and forbidding appearance. But when she smiled, her brown eyes shone, lifting her features to make her appear far less intimidating.

  “Hi, Selesia. Glad I found you here.”

  Selesia reached down to pet Jupiter. He tolerated her pats as he had something more important to focus on: finding a safe space away from Jojo. With a last push, he squeezed up against the wall beneath the table, glaring at Jojo as he did so. “Yeah, just needed a change of scenery, so I came down here to bother my brother.”

  “Coffee, Kate?” Sam asked as he pulled a spare mug out of the cupboard.

  “Yes, please. Two sugars and a little milk. How’s everything? Have you heard anything from Will?”

  Will, a recent high school graduate, and Selesia’s eldest son was away from home for the first time, working at a First Nations summer camp in Williams Lake.

  Selesia rolled her eyes. “Will’s great. He loves it up there. No mom to tell him what to do. It doesn’t hurt that his girlfriend, Tessa, also works there. It’s Brad I’m worried about.”

  Brad, her other son, was a year younger than his brother and as different from him as night was from day. Will, a star academic who had earned a full scholarship to the University of British Columbia for the coming fall, was pleasant and outgoing. He was also well-liked throughout the island. That was no small victory, as he was rubbing up against the deeply ingrained racism toward First Nations Peoples that had only begun to dissipate in the past decade or two.

  Brad was quieter and less social. A loner. I saw far less of him roaming around the island than I did his big brother.

  “Why?”

  She sighed. “This is a tough time for him. It’s his last summer as a ‘kid’. He’s got a lot of important life decisions to make in the coming year. It’s weighing on him, I think.”

  Sam fussed around fixing the coffee before placing a mug in front of me and sitting down himself. “So, what’s up, Kate?”

  I took a sip, quickly placing the mug back down as the scalding coffee burnt the tip of my tongue. “Whoa, that’s hot, Sam.” I took a moment to collect myself before starting again. “I was placed in a rather difficult situation this morning.”

  “What happened?” Selesia asked.

  “I was forced into changing the guest for Vox Pop on Friday.”

  “Forced?” Sam laughed. “That sounds menacing.”

  “Well, it was more that they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  The smile slipped from Selesia’s face, leaving only the unforgiving bone structure beneath it.

  “They?” she asked, the word slipping slowly off her tongue.

  “Yes, they.”

  I glanced back and forth between Selesia and Sam as the emotional temperature of the room skidded rapidly downwards.

  Oh shit, this is worse than I thought.

  “Who are they, Kate?” Selesia repeated, her voice gaining strength but not warmth.

  “Rosalie Morgann, her manager, Jason, and her personal assistant, Scott.”

  Selesia’s mug collided loudly with the tabletop, causing a splash of coffee to wash over the rim and onto the table.

  “No! I won’t have that bitch on my television show!”

  “Selesia, at least hear her out,” Sam pleaded.

  “No! How can you say that, Sam? You know what she did to me! To the kids!”

  “I know. I know.” Sam leaned across and grasped her hand, pinning it against the table. “But smashing your coffee mug isn’t going to change anything. So just calm down.”

  Selesia leaned back in her seat, her chest heaving with the sudden adrenalin of rage. “Okay,” she said once she had calmed herself down. “I don’t want that bitch anywhere near my kids or me. Alright? Is that calm enough?”

  “If you insist, I will tell her she can’t come on the show,” I said.

  Selesia breathed out another exhalation of anger and then glanced over at me. “You really don’t know what she did?”

  “Well, not all of it. I mean, I’ve heard that she ‘slept around’ with a lot of men.”

  “Yeah, ruined a lot of marriages, including mine.”

  “You see, Kate,” Sam started out, “Rose was a very troubled girl.”

  “Troubled,” Selesia sniffed, “more like trouble than troubled.”

  Sam glanced over at Selesia, his hazel eyes a mixture of sadness and exasperation. “Rose lost her mom and, to all intents and purposes, her dad as a young child. She ended up basically raising herself. The island kids were quite mean. Selesia tried to help her.”

  “What a mistake that was!” Selesia retorted, taking an aggressive swig of her coffee.

  Sam continued on as if she had said nothing. “Selesia became like a big sister to her, and Rose spent a lot of time out here on the Reserve. Then she hit her teens, and it got complicated.”

  “Yeah, if complicated is what you call being a slut!”

  “Selesia,” Sam barked out. “Throwing names around doesn’t help anything.”

  Selesia grumbled and retreated into silence.

  “For the first time in her life, Rose had something other people wanted. And that gave her power and a weapon she could use against the women on the island.”

  “But why?” I asked. “What did she have against the women on the island?”

  “I guess she had hoped that one of them would save her—from the poverty, from her home life—and they didn’t. That sense of betrayal, especially when you’re a child, doesn’t necessarily have to make sense.”

  “So she hurt them by sleeping with their husbands.”

  “And sons. And then she would move on to the next person who would give her what she thought was love.”

  “Or money. Or expensive gifts,” Selesia inserted. “She had a wealthy ‘mystery lover’ who would fly her all over the West Coast for shopping trips and little get-togethers. Quite the racket.”

  “But I still don’t see how she hurt Selesia?” I asked.

  Sam sighed. “She was very close to Selesia, almost too close. And when Selesia and Rick got engaged, Rose viewed it as another betrayal.”

  Selesia leaned forward across the table towards Kate, her eyes deadly serious. “She told me that she had slept with Rick. That the only reason he was marrying me was because I was pregnant with Will.”

  I, in mid-sip, clunked my now-cooling coffee back onto the table. “That’s horrible. Was it true?”

  “No, we don’t believe it was,” Sam shrugged, “but you never truly know. Rose had planted a seed of doubt. And once something like that takes root, it grows until it eventually strangled their marriage.”

  “We lasted five years. He remarried and moved with his new wife up to Prince George. That’s why the boys don’t see that much of him.”

  “What happened to Rose?”

  Selesia laughed, a bitter, harsh sound that grated against the air in the small kitchen. “She ran away. Caught the first ferry out the next morning. No one had any idea what happened to her until someone spotted her on a TV soap. That’s when we discovered she had moved to L.A. and become Rosalie Morgann, the actress.”

  “And then, out of nowhere, she decides to return to Wynter Island,” I murmured. “After how many years?”

  “Eighteen or so,” Selesia said. “She better be careful, that’s all I’ve got to say. There are a lot of people on this island who have axes to grind with her. Me included.”

  “Selesia,” Sam scolded, “being dramatic is not going to help anything.”

  “Like I give a damn,” Selesia spat out.

  “Okay,” I raised my hands and made a T out of them. “I think I’ve got the whole picture now.”

  “Good, so you can cancel the interview.”

  Selesia pushed her chair back with a long, low squeak and carried her mug to the sink.

  “Yesssss,” I said, drawing out the word into one long syllable, “but there will be some fallout.”

  “Fallout?” Selesia spun back around to face me. “You said you could cancel it!”

  “And I can,” I repeated, anxious to make things clear. “it’s just that they’ve gone out of their way to make that difficult.”

  “Why? What have they done?” Sam asked.

  “Well, over and above coming to the station and demanding that Rosalie be the guest this coming Friday—”

  “Yes—”

  “They told me that a press release listing Rosalie as the first guest on Vox Pop had already been emailed to all the major media outlets in Southwestern B.C.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, like I said, they’re trying to make it impossible for me to refuse to have Rosalie on the show.”

  “What does that mean?” Sam asked.

  I sighed. “It means they know we can’t afford any bad publicity for the station. And it would look pretty bad to get all this attention for CWYN because of Rosalie’s participation and then, out of the blue, cancel her.”

  “I’m not doing it,” Selesia said, leaning against the sink. Her lip had jutted out into a bowl-like rim protruding from her face.

  “Selesia, listen to me,” Sam started out.

  “No, not doing it.”

  “Selesia. It’s been a terrible summer for the island. You know that as well as I do.”

  “So?” Selesia’s lower lip jutted out even more.

  “Think about it. What does Wynter Island need more than anything else right now? Tourists. If this publicity brings people to the island, that could be lifesaving for our businesses, Selesia.”

  “Why do I have to fix that for them? It’s not my problem.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Sam said as if repeating a well-known fact to a toddler. “Every living thing on this island is interconnected. Hurt one, you hurt them all.”

  Selesia walked over to the kitchen window. The room was silent, except for the dripping rain on the roof and the scratch of Jojo’s toenails as she tried to squeeze underneath the table to be with Jupiter. Selesia’s lean body seemed to be battling some kind of internal struggle as her hands balled up into fists and then released. Finally, she turned around to face us.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. But I don’t want anything to do with her other than asking the questions on-air. No friendly greetings, no thank you for doing this, no goodbyes. Nada.”

  “Agreed,” I said in relief. “Only the interview. I promise.”

  Chapter Four

  “How do I look?” Shea asked as she sat in the host’s chair and looked straight into Nate’s camera.

  Shea looked quite smart, having changed from her usual jeans and t-shirts to a more professional-looking pair of charcoal slacks and a light tan sweater. She was Librarian Shea today, rather than my normal BFF/Animal Rescuer cohort. I had been so lucky when she had taken me under her wing on my arrival on Wynter Island. She and Gwen Wynter, my boss at the station and the unelected Matriarch of the island, had been my solid supports during those first dreadful days after Daniel’s death. And also in the weeks that followed as I battled to prove my innocence.

  I gave her the thumbs up from behind the soundproofed window of the control room. She moved to the guest’s chair and settled herself in that seat, adjusting her posture to make the best use of the lighting. Earlier that morning, I had set up a simple set: two thrift shop wing chairs facing each other against a lit backdrop.

  “Dougie, tell her that the lighting looks great,” I said into the microphone connected to Dougie and Nate’s headphones and Selesia’s earpiece. “She can head over to the control room now.”

  “Kate says everything looks fine,” Dougie said. He looked over at Nate, who was on the opposite side of the set with Camera Two, with a smile of amazement. “Can you believe we’re actually going live in half an hour, Nate?”

  Nate spoke into his mic headphone. “I know. I just hope I can remember everything.”

  “Don’t worry, Nate,” I said from the control room, “you’ll do fine. So will you, Dougie. Just remember, I’ll tell you the shots when I need them. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Nate said.

  Selesia walked out onto the set in a cream linen skirt and blouse, her perilously high heels adding a few inches to her already tall frame. Her hair had been pulled back off her face in a simple chignon that Shea had done in the washroom. Her makeup was just strong enough to make it appear on camera as if she was effortlessly attractive.

  “You look great, Selesia,” I said into her earpiece.

  “Thanks, Kate.”

  Her cell phone jingled from her purse. She pulled it out and placed it to her ear. With a nod to me, she pulled off her earpiece and walked off-set to talk in private.

  “When she’s done on the phone, Dougie, can you get her miced up, please?”

  The front doorbell tinkled through the station.

  “Here we go,” I muttered and stepped out into the hallway, locking Jupiter in the control room behind me.

  Rosalie and Jason were already in the open-plan office by the time I got there, placing their coats and bags down on one of the empty chairs.

  Rosalie wore a pale pink sheath dress with a silver necklace and matching earrings. Her hair was loose again, the golden waves bouncing off her tanned shoulders.

  “Good morning. How’s everyone doing today?” I asked.

  “Hi, Kate,” Jason looked up from their bags as Rosalie continued to rummage in her purse. “We’re ready to go. Rosalie did her hair and makeup before we left the house.”

  “Great.”

  “There it is.” Rosalie pulled a metal tube out of her bag, swiveling it open. She swiped a fresh layer of lipstick on. “Just need a quick touchup with my Charlotte Tilbury.”

  “It’s a lovely shade,” I said.

  “Very Victoria. My absolute favorite.” She dropped the lipstick back into her bag.

  “I don’t know how many copies of it she’s got,” Jason said, his eyes narrowing with worry as he looked at her.

  I examined her more closely, spotting what Jason had already seen. There was a faint sheen, almost like dew, of sweat across her forehead. I would have thought it was fabricated, some makeup trick, if not for the fact that I could see the discomfort in her eyes.

  “Yes, I’ve got one in every bag I carry. Always best to have your HG lippy with you.” She smiled bravely and then wiped two fingers over her forehead. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling all that great this morning, Kate.”

  “Are you well enough to go on?” I said, suppressing any irritation that after all this trouble, we might not be able to go ahead with filming today after all.

  “Yeah, I think so. It’s just a bit of a fever. Probably a bug coming on. I took an ibuprofen in the car. Jason has some more if I need another.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded her head firmly. “Yes, I’m sure.” She looked towards the closed studio door, the red filming light waiting to be lit. “I need to do this.”

  “Well, you don’t have to …,” I started, but Jason shushed me.

  “Yes, Kate. She has to do this.”

  They were reading from the same script, so I changed the subject.

  “Where’s Scott? Your assistant.”

  “Oh, it’s his days off. He left a couple of days ago to go and have a break in Victoria,” Jason answered.

  “Alright,” Rosalie breathed deeply a few times and then pointed towards the studio. “Let’s get in there.”

  She headed briskly down the hallway, Jason and I scuttling to keep up with her. She pulled at the heavy, soundproof studio door, hesitating for a moment as if unable to find the strength to fully open it, before stepping through.

  “Hey, Rosalie, wait for me,” I said, but it was too late. She was headed directly across the studio floor towards an unknowing Selesia, like two cars skidding toward each other across an intersection.

  “Hi, Selesia,” Rosalie said as she stopped in front of her. “It’s been a long time.”

  Selesia’s head jerked up, momentarily surprised. As I watched, anger replaced the shock, the angles of her face slipping so rapidly into frigid disapproval that they might as well have had icicles hanging off them.

  “Excuse me. I have something I need to do,” she replied with a blunt tone that veered into rudeness before turning on her heel and walking off the set toward the washroom.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Rosalie muttered to herself before turning back to me.