"Are you sure about this, Jake?" I whisper, holding onto his arm as we creep towards the Walker house on Stone Road. A crow makes it cry as it flies from a tree to our right. I yelp and clench his arm tighter. "Jake." My voice has turned into a whimper.

"Hush." Jake says with a slight laugh. He stops on the sidewalk and turns around to face me, his smile barely visible in the quarter moonlight. "Look, I don't think that Micah did it. He wouldn't hurt a fly. You know that."

"I know."

"Then if we have a chance at proving it we have to." I look around at the houses on Stone Road; each and every one of them is over one hundred years old with hidden passages, old-fashioned fireplaces and creaky floorboards. "I feel like we're in some kind of horror novel."

"More like murder mystery. We're trying to find out what really happened to Lillian. Micah loved her too much to hurt her. Hell, he couldn't even find the guts to confront her about dating exclusively."

"What if she pushed him though? You know how she is—was. God, I can't get used to it."

"Neither can I but we can't change the fact that she's gone now. " I nod, still holding on to his arm. Jake starts walking down Stone Road again towards the end of the road where the Walker house lies; the largest house in the neighborhood.

Jake and I creepy by the thin moonlight up to the house and climb deftly over the iron front gates as we had done a million times before—except we usually had a third member to our party, Jake's best friend Micah Williamson. Right now, however, Micah is sitting in a holding cell at the local sheriff's office as the prime suspect for the murder of Lillian Jean Walker.

Jake uses the key Micah gave him to unlock the front door, checking behind us as he ushers me inside just to be sure no one is watching. We are entering a crime scene. We are illegally entering a building about to rummage through evidence in a murder investigation. I feel a little light-headed.

As Jake walks forward toward the stairs that lead to the second and third floor I grab onto his arm once again to keep my balance. He smiles and says quietly, "Relax, Zoe, no ones going to be home. Mr. Walker is with Lillian and the rest of their family in another state—I don't even know where—but he won't be back for another week."

"What about cops, huh? Alarms? Dead bodies falling out of closets." I say, eyeing the hall closet warily as we pass it. We start up the stairs to the third floor that entirely belongs—belonged—to Lillian.

Jake laughs lightly. "You are way too paranoid. I turned off the alarm system when you were looking around like a chicken."

I punch his shoulder and glare at him in the dark. We stop in front of Lillian's room. "I don't know if I can do this, Jake. She—Lillian died in there. Somebody killed her in this room. I—" I can't help a tear rolling down my cheek. Lillian wasn't my favorite person in the world, but she was a friend—and no person deserves to be killed in cold blood.

Jake looks down at me. "Look, if we can find something to prove who really killed her, this will be worth it, alright?" I look into his eyes, a mirror image of my own, of our father's who himself was murdered in a gas station robbery three years ago, the killer still on the loose, and I nod.

I open the door myself, hands shaking, and the first thing I see is the spots of deep crimson on the white carpet, her lavender computer chair, and on her black, white and lavender fleur-de-leis comforter she had bragged about for weeks after buying it. I close my eyes, but my eyelids produce the same image, only in my mind, Lillian is sitting, her throat split open and eyes staring blankly, still on her perch in front of the computer.

"W-where do we l-l-look first." I say, still shaking. Jake steps forward shining his flashlight around the room and giving my shoulder a squeeze of reassurance, looks at the computer.

"I don't think the cops went through anything on the computer, but if there is some kind of evidence it will probably be over there."

We begin our search of the room. Latex gloves cover our hands because; after all this is a crime scene and we don't want to ruin the investigation at all. I run through her room, trying to find any sign of struggle. Did she know someone was in her, trying to kill her? A broken lamp on the floor and several broken pictures suggest as much. Not to mention a… broken bottle of beer?

Lillian didn't drink.

"Oh my God." Jake says. He is bending over Lillian's computer, her life as she called it, staring at the screen.

"What is it?" I ask, temporarily forgetting about the bottle.

"She was pregnant."

"What?" I say, gluing my eyes to the screen. Jake had pulled up an e-mail she had sent to several people; her aunt, her best friend, and—"Her mom? She still keeps in touch with her mom?"

"I guess so. Hold on, I can track the recipient by finding the computer the account was made on and when." Jake, being the computer genius he is, sends his fingers flying on the keyboard and in a minute, a box pops up on the screen with several lines of information on it—none of which I understand.

"What does it say?"

"This address was made on her father's computer two years ago."

"Mrs. Walker hasn't been here for five years though."

"Exactly." Jake says.

"What are you thinking?"

"What if she thought that she has been talking to her mom, but in reality she has been talking to her dad. She thought she could confide in her mom about the pregnancy but really, she told her dad. You know Mr. Walker, he would have flipped if he found out."

"What if he did?" Jake and I exchange significant looks. "There's a broken beer bottle over there. What if he got drunk and then stormed up here and was so angry he unleashed all of that fury? I've seen him drunk before. That night Lillian had her all girls night he was drunk out of his mind and he hit her. He punched her right in front of all seven of us."

"Oh, God."

We sit in silence, stunned at what we have stumbled across.

"Mr. Walker killed her."

"God, do you think Micah knew?"

"That Mr. Walker killed her?"

"No, that Lillian was pregnant." Jake's eyes drop.

"No. He didn't know." His voice is softer than before and he looks away from me.

"How do you—"

"Because Micah wasn't the last one to sleep with Lillian."

I stare at my brother. "What—"

"I did." Jake stares at the spots of crimson on the floor. "I'm the reason she's dead. It's all… it's all my fault." Jake's arms wrap around himself and he begins to rock back and forth. I wrap my arms around my twin and hold him close as he sobs. "P-please don't tell Micah." He says once he can catch his breath.

"Let's just get him out of jail." Jake nods and, taking one last look at Lillian's room he takes a deep, shaky breath.

"I can never be sorry enough."