It all came to me. Cora exuded calm and competence, but asking anyone to keep such a juicy story secret was a waste of time. I was out of my mind thinking he could stay at the same school. There was no way that was going to turn out well.
“They’re in seventh grade.” I didn’t have to do more than state the simple fact. She nodded. They’d tell their parents, who included a TV executive, a studio lawyer, and an actor in $100 million tentpole movies. Who all knew who else. The murder would be rehashed in the Hollywood Reporter in forty-eight hours or less. It would filter to the internet sites, where Phin would see it even if I threw the router in the trash where it belonged.
“I’ve spent the past eleven years protecting him from what happened to his mother. You don’t have to like how I did it, but that was my motivation. Now there’s no way to keep him from it.”
“He was going to find out eventually,” she said. “The community here can help him deal with it, but I don’t think we can pretend it didn’t happen.”
“It’s one thing for him to know. I didn’t want the world to know.”
She nodded, hands folded in front of her. I didn’t know if she was judging me or how difficult it was to hide it. Fortunately, I didn’t care what she thought of me. I cared only about my son.
My nephew. Whatever. My responsibility.
I stood and held out my hand. “Thank you for speaking with me. I’m going to take him home.”
“Let us know how it’s going.”
I went back into her office. Phin hadn’t moved. I picked him up. He was so skinny I could carry him as if he were a baby again, one arm behind his knees and another at his shoulders. He started crying when I moved him. His face was beet red and swollen. I backed through the school doors to get into the parking lot. The security guard stood up when I came through. His name was Marco, and he and Phin always exchanged a few words of greeting when he passed.
“He all right?”
“Yeah.” I held him closer. I didn’t want anyone to see how upset he was. I didn’t want him to have to explain tomorrow or ever. I still wanted to protect him. “I can’t sign out with—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. No worries.”
“Thanks.”
Phin’s cries echoed on the concrete walls and floor. I got to the car. The keys were in my pocket. I’d have to put him down to get them.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him out of my arms to put him into the back seat of the car. To drive where? For what reason? I stood at the side of my car and realized I couldn’t let him go, period. Even if he’d stand on his own two feet, I couldn’t let him go.
Right after Genevieve had been killed, he’d been fine. He was just hanging at Uncle Carter’s house for a week. His young brain just rolled with it until he realized his mother wasn’t coming back; then he cracked like an egg and everything came out. He cried for two days. He wouldn’t be quieted with food, water, or utter exhaustion. The doctor gave him a sedative, which, thanks to the undiagnosed ADHD, made it worse. The only thing I could do was pick him up and carry him. He turned it down to low sobs as long as he was close to me and I was moving.
At the end of day two, he’d collapsed into sleep mid-sob. When he woke up eighteen hours later, he called me Daddy. And that had been that.
He was thirteen years old and eighty pounds when he found out what happened to his mother. But I carried him nonetheless. When I stopped to take a rest, he cried harder, so I kept moving. I carried him around the corner, down Olympic, back down some random street with a lot of trees. He’d always loved looking up into the trees. Loved digging in dirt and chasing birds. Had I exposed him to enough nature? Had I taken him camping? Skiing? Had we eaten outside enough? Looked at the stars and talked about God? Or had I just demanded perfection?
The lies were over now. As he sobbed in my aching arms and I walked up and down and around the neighborhood, I knew it was over. The secrecy I’d enforced. The security I’d demanded. The Plexiglas shell I’d put over him was gone. He wasn’t my son. He’d never been my son, and he knew it. He probably hated me. He had to.
I deserved it. All of it. But I carried him because I didn’t know how to stop.
CHAPTER 51
CARTER
When Phin had stopped crying, I stopped carrying him. My elbows were locked in position and my shoulders ached, but he’d stopped crying.
In the hours I carried him around tree-lined streets of the west side, I’d run through everything I’d done to protect him over the years, and I decided my one big mistake was keeping him in Los Angeles. I’d been trying to reduce disruption in his life. A new house. New neighborhood. New people caring for him. It seemed like quite enough.
The second mistake had been less clear. I hadn’t given him a more truthful narrative to believe. I’d kept the lies very broad and simple so I wouldn’t contradict myself. I told him about his mother, minus the acting, which he could look up, and minus the fact that she was my sister. I told him I’d loved her, which was true, but left out the murder. I didn’t want him to have the inclination to try and remember what he’d seen, and I didn’t want the shock of it to blindside him. His toddler’s tears those first days when his mother was gone were so strong, so gut-wrenching, that I never wanted him to experience that again. And when he’d called me “Daddy,” I hadn’t wanted to deny him the truth he’d created to comfort himself.
Mistake number two was going with it and letting him determine his new reality. I should have based what I’d done in truth.
You wanted to be his father.
I did. I’d taken care of him since he was born and his real father split like Road Runner in a cartoon cloud. I’d slipped into a role, spending more time at my celebrity sister’s Hollywood Hills mansion with the nannies than I did with my own friends.
Mistake after mistake. Now the lies were dropping like a distracted juggler’s pins.
When he had his second crying fit, at thirteen, he did the same thing when it was done. He fell asleep in my arms.
I’d let my guard down because of Emily.
I’d gone to her house to take care of her, leaving him alone to work on his family tree. If I hadn’t done that, if I’d been giving him 100 percent of my attention like always, he wouldn’t have hacked the LA County Registrar. He wouldn’t have hacked anything while I was in the house. I could have helped him with that project so he wouldn’t have felt the need to break into a government database. The whole thing wouldn’t have happened.
That regret sat heavy in my gut, and it was absolute bullshit.
I had nothing to regret. I’d done my best. The truth was going to come out at some point. I couldn’t lie to the kid forever. I knew that. But I couldn’t beat myself up with it.
“Do you want to turn a light on?”
Mom stood in the doorway as I sat in the dark of Phin’s bedroom. He was under the covers in a fetal position, body rising as his lungs filled. No other movement came from him.
“No.”
“Do you want to eat something? I can stay here and watch.”
“I’m fine.”
“Carter.”
“Leave me alone.”