Caleb’s hands go to the table in front of him, rest in front of his coffee cup.
“I’m sorry.” I rise abruptly. “We didn’t mean to bring it all up, we just—”
“We’re desperate,” Seth says quietly.
“And this helped. A lot.” I don’t know if it’s true. But I say it anyway.
Caleb gives us a stiff nod. “I know how close you and Thatcher were.” This to Seth. Then his eyes go to me. “And how close you and Fiona were. I don’t believe it was you. If I did, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Thanks,” I say, even though it seems like a weird thing to say.
Caleb’s eyes flicker from me to Seth again. “That means there’s someone else out there who…hurt them.” He grips his coffee cup tightly. “Be careful.”
Seth and I exchange a glance. “We will,” I say.
Then Seth and I go without eating, leaving Caleb in the Blue Heron Diner, bent over his cup of cold coffee, alone.
18
Seth is silent as he drives. Before long, we’re in New Jersey again. I’m quiet, too, going over everything we just learned.
Fiona found out she made it into the American Ballet Academy one day mid-spring last year. We got home from school and her phone buzzed. She pulled it out and froze. The academy, she whispered.
I stood there, my traitorous heart in my throat. I didn’t want her to go. I knew how intense that school was. She used to say she never wanted to actually go away to a ballet school. Didn’t want it stealing her childhood. But all that changed after Mom left. At first, she’d say she wasn’t good enough for ABA. It wasn’t until high school that she seriously started thinking of applying, and even then it was always They hardly ever take anyone as old as me. It’s just a dream. But then she was practicing more, and that dream was becoming a reality.
It wasn’t like she wasn’t there for us after Mom. She was home at dinner every night, she and I preparing it together, a nine- and ten-year-old doing our best to cobble together sandwiches, salads, even getting brave enough to boil water for pasta. But when Grandpa died and Dad was back in the picture, that was apparently the permission she needed to throw herself back into dance. She never missed a lesson, even practicing on her days off.
I daydreamed about what our future would be like without ballet. Maybe we’d go to the same college, be roommates, take some of the same classes. Maybe she’d even find something she wanted to do at Stanford and we could move out there together. Get some cute little apartment near a coffee shop or a park. We’d decorate it together, come home late from our respective classes or jobs, catch each other up on our days. Normal sisters with a normal life.
I didn’t want her to get into the American Ballet Academy. I wanted it to be a rejection.
But it wasn’t. Fiona’s hand went to her mouth, tears in her eyes. My heart sank. I got in, she said, over and over. I got in.
She told Dad and Davy over dinner. My dad asked to see the email. And then when he read it, a frown appeared on his face. He took her into the other room to tell her he couldn’t afford it, not with only partial financial aid. She emerged, face tear-streaked, and locked herself in her room, refusing to let even me in.
The next few months, Fiona was…off. I gave her space. She was gone even more, practicing, always practicing. I thought it was some form of denial. She took a job cleaning at her ballet studio, so she was there more often than she was home. And it wasn’t just her physical absence; she was distant, too. She didn’t have time to help me with my homework. She barely listened when I went to her to talk about Jeremy. She came to prom, but her heart was somewhere else, eyes gazing into the distance. I thought she was mourning her dreams and eventually she’d come around, realize that there’s more than one way to live a life.
Then, in July, Fiona hovering in the doorway to the kitchen. I got the money for school.
I was shocked. I didn’t even know there was another way. It took me a moment to compose my face, to jump up to hug her, even as my heart was breaking. This little smile on her face through it all—
That was weird, now that I think about it. She wasn’t jumping up and down, smiling ear to ear. Just a little half smile, her eyes downcast. This quiet certainty. And that wording: I got the money.
I assumed she meant a scholarship. But what if it was something else?
“What are you thinking?” Seth asks.
I tell him. He listens, a frown on his face. “So—you think her scholarship didn’t exist?”
“I mean, I don’t know for sure. But if there was no scholarship—where would she have gotten the money? I don’t think she was lying about leaving for school. I mean, why would she?” I frown. “So maybe when Thatcher said no, she went to someone else.”
“Or…she did something not so great for it.”
I stare. “Like what?”
“Like drugs?”
“You think Fiona was dealing drugs?”
“I don’t know a ton of jobs that pay that much in a short amount of time.”
I shake my head. “Fiona never broke any rules in her entire life. And you think in a few months she learned how to be a drug dealer?”
“Just throwing it out there.”
I think about my sister. The school of her dreams was just within reach—and suddenly it was gone again because she didn’t have enough money. And down the road, a boy she’d known her whole life held the solution.
And he said no. It must have burned her up inside when he said that.
“What if she stole the money from Thatcher?” I look at Seth. “Caleb could be lying.”
Seth doesn’t blink. “I believed him. And even if she’d stolen it—this is going to sound obnoxious, but forty-two thousand dollars isn’t that much money for Thatcher. His trust fund had…a lot more. He wouldn’t have killed her over that. No one in my family would have.”
I close my eyes. “That is really obnoxious.”
“I know. That’s why I said it.”
“You’re all part of the problem, you know. You could use that money to house people who need homes, or help people with their medical debt, or—”