A silence. I realize we have never in our lives talked on the phone.
“I’m sorry about my dad,” he says.
“It’s not your fault.”
“He’s just…been under a lot of stress at work. And sometimes he takes it out on me. Also, he’s worried for me. Not taking my lawyer’s advice and all.”
It sounds like an excuse. But I let him have it. We can’t control what our parents do. I know that better than anyone.
“Um, so I talked to my dad,” I say.
“Yeah?”
I tell him what my dad said about the scholarship, then pause. “And—my mom had an affair. With Gen’s dad.”
Seth sucks in a breath. “Well. That explains why her mom never liked you.”
“Yeah.” It should make me feel better, knowing Gen’s mom not liking me isn’t my fault. But it doesn’t.
“Do you think Gen’s mom killed your sister in some kind of warped revenge scenario?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I was actually wondering if the cops knew about this.”
“Do you want to go talk to them?”
I bite my lip. “What do you think?”
That’s why I called him. Because I can’t decide this by myself. I’ve come to rely on him. My partner in all of this. For better or worse.
“I don’t know,” Seth says. “Maybe we should try and get something more concrete before going to them. So they don’t think we’re just making up stories.”
“How?”
“Try asking Gen about it?”
I start to shake my head, then pause.
We don’t have any other leads right now.
I exhale. “Let me think about it.”
“Okay.” A pause. “We’ll figure this out, Addie. I promise you.”
I suddenly wish I wasn’t here alone, but in Seth’s little attic room, curled up on his bed under the picture of an old castle, with the rain falling outside, his arms around me, holding me tight. Falling asleep to the sound of him breathing.
“Addie?”
I blink. “Sorry. Yeah?”
“I said, sweet dreams.”
“You too, Seth.”
I hang up the phone, wishing more than ever that Seth and I had been born into a simpler world, one where we weren’t separated by our families and their drama, where we could just fall asleep next to each other without worrying what people would think.
Where we could just be us, and that would be enough.
26
I wake to a knock on my door.
It was a restless night, and I’m disoriented, unsure if the reality in which Fiona and Thatcher are dead is the dream, or if what I was just dreaming is. Sadie lifts her head, alert, nose pointed toward the door.
The knock comes again, louder. “Addie? You awake?”
My dad’s voice.
He doesn’t wake me up, ever.
I grab both my phones, shove them in the pockets of my pajama pants, and stumble to my door.
My dad is on the other side, looking tense—Detective Ramsay behind him.
Sadie barks.
I feel a flash of fear, followed by rage.
They’ve come to arrest me. They couldn’t figure out who the killer is, so they’re going for the easy target. The girl who comes from nothing.