—
Ashlyn’s just inside the classroom, and she’s alone. There’s a large monitor in front of her, and her glasses shine in the reflection—but it’s definitely her. It’s the long blond hair, and the confident posture. A pen rests between her teeth. She doesn’t seem to notice us hovering near the entrance.
I knock once on the open door, and she jumps, the pen dropping from her mouth. “Can I help you?” she asks. It’s obvious she doesn’t know who I am, but she’s working it out. Her eyes flash in vague recognition, and she’s processing it as she stands. I can tell the moment she figures it out. Her body stiffens, her face pales.
“Ashlyn Patterson?” I ask, though I already know it’s her. I’m blocking her exit, and it makes me feel powerful. “We’re here about Caleb.”
She shakes her head, looking between me and Max. “I don’t know any Caleb.”
“I remember you,” Max says. “From a lacrosse game last spring. And she remembers you from a ski trip.”
She looks between the two of us again, presses her lips together, undecided.
“Look,” I say, “we’re just looking for answers. I just want to know how you know him. That’s all.”
“You’re the girlfriend,” she says, matter-of-factly.
“Jessa,” I say, nodding.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she adds, and then she looks away.
“How did you know him, Ashlyn?”
“Look, I just really don’t want to be involved, okay?”
Involved in what? is what I’m thinking. But I can’t just shake it out of her.
“I only want to know how you know him,” I say. “I found your things in his room.” That letter, at least, is a ticket in.
“My things?” she says. “I’ve never even been there.” Then she relents, falling back into her chair, shifting it back and forth so the squeak fills the room. “I met him by accident,” she says, “when he came by my house a few years ago. But I’ve never been to his place.”
“He came by your house, though?”
“Yeah. To see my dad. He’s an estate attorney, has an office out of his home, and Caleb and his mom meet with him once a year or so, to go over finances or something. I don’t know. Anyway, we were young, and we hung out a couple times. But we lived so far away, and I mean, neither of us could drive or anything.” She shrugs. “We just kind of…faded. I was devastated at the time. But it is what it is, right? We were just kids. It was mostly just emails and phone calls, anyway.”
“You never sent him any letters? On paper?”
She frowns. “Letters? No.”
“You didn’t ask him to come see you?”
“No. Not at all. It was the other way around.”
My stomach twists. I hate her answer. That Caleb was the one pursuing. “Then why did you pretend you didn’t know him?” I ask. “You could’ve just said that.”
“I told you. I don’t want to be involved. I did something for him. It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t think anything of it. But now that he’s gone, I don’t know. If anyone finds out, my dad could lose his job.”
“What did you do?”
But she’s already shaking her head, in denial. “I’m not even sure what I showed him, even. It’s just the setup of his trust. I figured he’d seen it before, so what was the harm?” Her hand goes to her mouth. “But now I don’t know. I don’t know what I did. He died a few weeks later, and I’m worried it was related, even though that doesn’t make sense. I’m worried it was somehow because of me.” She covers her face with both hands.
“What’s because of you?” I ask, but I know I’m coming on too strong, because I am. I’m angry, I’m strong, and I want answers.
“It’s probably not,” she adds, taking a deep breath. “It’s probably just because he’s dead, and he was my first boyfriend, and now my dad has to deal with the paperwork once probate’s up, and I’m feeling this weight of guilt. So, you see? I just want nothing to do with it. I don’t want to get pulled in. I’ve got colleges I’m applying for, and I don’t want my name in the news.” She points to the computers. “I’m studying journalism. I mean, the last thing I need is to become part of the news first.”
But I don’t see. I don’t see at all.
“What was he looking for?” I whisper.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. My dad says trusts are funny. They can say whatever the person wants, deciding when the beneficiary is able to get the money themselves. I figured he had already seen it, and was just checking details.” She shrugs. “It looked normal enough to me, though. Pretty basic. Guardian until twenty-five. All the typical stuff.”
“Twenty-five?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Honestly, that’s not so bad. My dad says for some people, it goes a lot longer.”
Caleb was looking at his eighteenth birthday as a way out, but it wasn’t. Still, I didn’t think that would be enough to make him take off, to set something like this in motion.
She takes my arm, and I smell mint from her breath. “Please don’t tell,” she says. I picture Caleb leaning closer, the scent of her enveloping him, the laughter on his face. Her hand is trembling. “My dad will kill me,” she adds. “Listen, Caleb asked to meet me when he was going to be up at our school last May, said he had some questions that he didn’t want my dad to know about. He asked if I could make him a copy of something, or take a picture. I almost did it, but I chickened out. When I saw him, I told him I couldn’t do it. Then he called again at the beginning of the school year. Like, the first weekend, asking if he could stop by. I thought maybe you guys had broken up and he was coming to see me, but when he showed up, he was asking to see the setup of his trust. Caleb had seen the paperwork from his grandparents before, I’m sure. It didn’t seem like a big deal. My dad doesn’t need to know about this.” I can feel she’s close to tears, and I don’t want to see them. They’re tears for herself, not for Caleb, and I have no room for anyone else’s guilt.
But something isn’t sitting right, in her explanation. “You mean his father, not his grandparents,” I say, my voice in a whisper, out of respect for the dead. “The money is from his father.”
She stops crying, shakes her head. “No, his grandparents. He’s got some trust from them.”
“Right, only you’re wrong—it’s from his father.”
“No,” she says, her voice rising, her spine straightening, and I think she’s the type of person who likes being right most of all. “That’s kind of the catch. It skips his father. It goes right to him.”
“What do you mean, it skips his father?”
“Just that. I don’t know why. All I know is that it skips his father.”
“His father is dead,” I say. I picture the suit in Caleb’s closet. The letter opener that’s been passed down. The pictures hidden in a box on a shelf. The thing he was missing in his life, that he slowly let me see.
She scrunches her nose. “His father is not dead. That’s why my dad’s in charge of it in the first place.”
—