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fifty thousand dollars.”
    In a distant corner near the back of my mind, a warning whistle shrilled that this had been too easy. That “dependable” sounded a lot like “expendable.” And that I was missing something crucial.
    Then my eyes went back to the photo. From a distance, it looked like just a nice family, the tensions I’d seen at closer range invisible.
Family
. That word was so foreign to me, and yet, suddenly, dangerously desirable.
    I said, “How do we start?”

CHAPTER 7
    I t took less than an hour for them to explain what they had in mind. Fifty-three minutes to outline what would change my life and the lives of a dozen people irrevocably.
    The plan was well-thought-out—Bridgette was an excellent organizer. Each piece clicked against the next with the precision of well-set-up dominoes. But the problem of being a good organizer is it gives you the illusion you know what is going on everywhere. It’s the periphery that will get you every time.
    It was simple: I would spend the next month living there in “the cabin” and learning everything they could teach me about Aurora. A month before Aurora’s birthday, I would move to Tucson and take my place in the family. Once I had the money, they figured it would take me three weeks to get my affairs in order, and then I’d disappear. The way they made it sound, it was like being Cinderella: Girl goes from pauper to princess, only in this modern version she doesn’t even have to tie herself up with a dubious prince at the end.
    “The fact that Aurora took off once will make it easy for people to believe she’d do it again,” Bridgette said.
    “But everyone will think she just came back for the money. That she’s opportunistic,” I said.
    “Exactly.” Bridgette sat forward. “And that’s precisely why it would be credible, her coming back right now after all this time. Otherwise we’d need some elaborate story.”
    “People like to believe the worst, especially about families like ours,” Bain said. But his voice held no bitterness—he almost sounded proud. Bridgette, though, didn’t feel the same way. Her neck went pink, and she fiddled with her ring.
    I tried to think of the right questions to ask in the right order.
    “Why would your grandmother still let her have the money? Wouldn’t she get mad and cut Aurora out of her will?”
    “It’s not a will,” Bain said. “It’s an estate.” Bragging again. It struck me that he was trying to impress me.
    “She can’t,” Bridgette said, ignoring him. “The money Aurora inherits when she’s eighteen is from her parents. They’re both dead.”
    “What was Aurora like?” I asked.
    Bain frowned. “Why does that matter?”
    “I want to know if I’m going to like being her.”
    “She was nice,” Bain started to say, but Bridgette cut him off.
    “She was spoiled, conceited, and wild. She never thought about anything except pleasing herself and having a good time.”
    “She doesn’t sound anything like me.”
    “All you have to do is ask yourself, ‘What should I do to be the center of attention?’ And then do it. I’m pretty sure that was Aurora’s only guide to her behavior,” Bridgette said.
    “It sounds like you weren’t exactly friends.”
    “Just because I’m frank doesn’t mean I wasn’t fond of her,” Bridgette said. “She was careless, but she could be a lot of fun. And she was my cousin. Family. I loved her.”
    Wow. I wondered what Bridgette said about people she only
liked
.
    “What about DNA?” I asked. “Won’t it be easy to show I’m not your cousin?”
    “They tried to take DNA samples when she disappeared. But there wasn’t anything to take, so there’s nothing to match it to. Her toothbrush and hairbrush were gone, and our grandmother has a very efficient cleaning staff. In terms of the rest of the family, her father was adopted by our grandparents, so she wouldn’t match any of us. There were a few fingerprints, but we have a solution for