How Lily stole eleven million dollars and I have to find it.
Then I tell her about Judge Bay and Joe Bender, and honestly . . . I should finesse the story. I should tell Bren I had a slip of the tongue when I told Michael what Joe did to my mother and that I made a terrible mistake and that I was sorry. Bren would believe I fell from grace, but I didn’t fall.
I jumped.
“I knew what would happen,” I say, watching Bren’s face and waiting for the revulsion. “When I told Michael what Joe did, I knew he would kill him. It’s my fault.”
“You didn’t pull the knife.”
“No, but I feel responsible.”
“There is a world of difference between what you did and what your father did, but you will have to live with your actions—so will Michael. In the end, we all have to live with what we’ve done.”
We study each other for a long, long moment.
“Is that everything?” Bren’s voice is scratched and frayed, just like everything between us now.
I nod, feeling light-headed. “I think Michael is far more than a small-time redneck with credit-card scam ambitions. He was involved with Looking Glass—so was Judge Bay. But I don’t know what that means and I don’t know what to do about it and maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore because I need that money and I don’t know where to find it.”
“Anything else?”
I shrug, shake my head.
“I wish you had told me,” Bren whispers.
“I wish I had too.”
“I’m glad you didn’t until now.” Bren’s breath catches—or maybe it was mine. She stands, turns to the sink, and spends several seconds moving dishes around until finally saying, “I wouldn’t have understood. Being a mom . . . wasn’t like I thought it would be. You were getting bullied at school and you were sneaking out and I didn’t know what to do. I screwed up.”
I can’t see her face, but I can hear the tears. They always make her voice slide Southern, diluting her vowels until they spread like butter.
“I screwed up being a daughter,” I whisper. “I didn’t know what to do either.”
Bren sniffles. I still can’t see her face, but I know she’s smiling and this one will be lopsided, and somehow, that gives me hope. We can’t be truly broken if I know this about her, right? Surely I wouldn’t have learned those details if this was never meant to be mine.
“Do you want to try again?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Wick?”
Lily. She stands in the kitchen doorway, half hidden in the dark. It’s late. I hadn’t realized how long we’d been talking, but exhaustion has hollowed my sister’s face.
“You’re going to want to see this,” Lily says. Based on her flat tone, I highly doubt it, but Bren and I follow her anyway. Lily’s pale hair makes her a candle in the dark. When we reach the dining room, my hand gropes for the wall, ready to turn on the light, and she grabs my fingers. “Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Look who just joined us.”
My skin prickles. Lily points to a computer setup—my computer setup—that’s arranged on the dining room table. She resurrected my security camera feed.
“What is it?” Bren asks.
“It’s Hart.”
“Well, this feels familiar,” Lily says, picking at the table’s edge.
Not quite. Where Carson stuck to the shadows, Hart’s standing in the streetlight. He’s staring straight at the house. He’s waiting.
“He knows we can see him,” I say, and as if he heard me, Hart smiles. He slides both hands into the pockets of those always perfectly pressed dress pants and walks away.
Lily opens another camera angle, checking to see if Hart went around the side of the house. The yard’s empty though. He’s gone. “That was awfully easy,” she murmurs.
I suck in a breath. “He’ll be back.”
“It’s only beginning,” Griff adds. We talk over each other and it should be kind of funny, but both of us look away.
Bren shakes her head. “I can’t believe this is my life.”
“I’m sorry.” Again with the apologies. It’s like I’m filled with them, like they’re all I am anymore.
Bren’s hand snakes into mine. She squeezes until our fingers are tight tight tight. “I was never sorry you came into my life. Ever. We’ll figure this out.”
And for the first time tonight, Bren sounds more like Bren, like the woman she was before I exposed Todd. She takes a deep breath and it sounds only the tiniest bit shaky on the exhale.
“I wanted to believe Hart. I thought he was good, that he was . . . I believed him because I was scared.” She’s crying, but the tears are silent. They drip down her chin and it’s like she doesn’t even notice them. Because they’ve become so common, so everyday? You don’t brush away what belongs to you.