Her smile fades. “How do you know he’s not like them?” she asks. “That they’re not all the same, deep down?”
The privileged. That family has hurt so many.
I search for the answer I know must be there.
“No one asks for the life they’re born into,” I say finally. “You can’t blame him for who his family is.”
They think about this, and then Jeremy nods, wincing again.
“Stop doing that.”
“I keep forgetting.”
A nurse comes in with medication for Jeremy. She doesn’t tell us to leave, but I can tell from her expression that she wants us to let him rest.
I look at Gen. “Should we go?”
“I want to stay a little longer.” The look that passes between her and Jeremy has something new in it. Something that doesn’t involve me.
And for the first time, I don’t begrudge them that.
Not all relationships are meant to stay the same forever. And that’s okay. As long as there’s still a place in their lives for me—and I know now that there is—I can handle whatever other changes come along with that. The three of us aren’t back to what we used to be. We’ve been through too much. But we’re something again, and that’s more than I could have asked for.
“I can walk home,” I say.
“I can call you a cab—” Jeremy starts, but I shake my head.
“It’s a mile. I can walk.” I look at Gen. “So…I’ll see you soon?”
“I’ll call you later.”
I lean forward and kiss Jeremy lightly on the cheek. Then Gen and I hug, and I rise from his bed and head out of the room.
Once I’m out in the gray summer day, I check my phone, like I do constantly now, but there’s still nothing from Davy.
“Where are you?” I ask the empty afternoon.
I turn the corner onto my street twenty minutes later. I’m four houses away when I see them.
In front of our house, three people.
One of them is Davy.
The second is Marion.
The third is Caleb Jones.
51
“I can explain.” Marion’s voice is soft.
She pushes a strand of brown hair out of her eyes and looks from me to my dad to Seth, whom I called right away.
We’re in our living room. Davy sits next to her on the couch, his hand clasped in hers. I’m pacing the living room, too agitated to sit, Seth leaning against the doorframe behind me, while my dad and Caleb are in the two armchairs by the window. Caleb is stiff, trying to look composed, and failing. My dad leans forward, as if he wants to walk over and reassure himself that Davy is really here.
I’d run immediately up to Davy and thrown my arms around him.
Then I had to resist the urge to scream at him.
“I know,” he said before I could do so. “Just let us explain.”
Parts of the story have come out already: how Davy and Marion decided they needed to get out of town but didn’t know where to go, who they could trust. It was Marion’s idea to message Caleb and ask if they could come talk to him. It wasn’t until they’d already taken the bus to Philly that Caleb realized they’d run away. But once Marion told him what she knew, he agreed to let them crash on his couch until it was safe to come back.
“I knew,” Marion says now. She looks down at her feet. “The night Fiona died—I was…” She looks at Davy, who nods at her to go on. “I was here. I heard something in the middle of the night and I got up and I saw—my sister coming out of Fiona’s room. She had something in her hand. Later I realized it was Fiona’s journal. That the police were looking for. I didn’t know what was going on then, so when they were asking me questions, I didn’t know what to say or what to do, so I—I didn’t tell anyone.”
She’s trembling a little. Davy pulls her close, whispers in her ear. I’m taut, watching them. I want to shake her, tell her we could have used this information a year ago. But I know complicated relationships between sisters, maybe better than anyone. I touch my necklace as she goes on.
“I kept quiet for almost a year. I broke up with Davy and stopped talking to him. I just couldn’t stay with him when I was keeping a secret this big. I thought about asking Kendall, like maybe she had a good explanation, but I was too scared.” She takes a deep breath. “Then when we came back here this summer, I couldn’t handle keeping it to myself anymore. So I told Thatcher.” She says his name like a sigh.
“When was this?” Seth asks.
“The night before we came. I told him what I saw. He told me not to worry about it, that he would take care of everything.” She inhales sharply, and a tear spills out of one eye. “And then…”
The room is silent.
“Then I knew.” Marion looks up at Seth. “I knew it was her. I think I already knew, but then—I knew for sure.”
“And Kendall didn’t know you knew?” I ask.