“Don't be like that. I have every right to worry. Your brother has a way of always dragging you into his messes. Don’t you remember the last?—”
“Don't,” I snap, cutting her off. “Don't start the whole'after the last'thing. I'm fine. I'm just tired. I just… I’m a little overwhelmed.”
She pauses. “Is it your brother? Did you find him? Is it…bad?”
The question slides into me sideways, right under the ribs. “I haven’t found him, so no. It’s not him…”
“Okay, well…” Something in her tone shifts—and not in a good way. “I read about a fire on the news… Up there where you are…”
Every ounce of warmth drains from my body, and I sit up. “What?”
“I’ll send you the link,” her voice is deathly soft now. “I think it might be him.”
I pull the phone from my ear, put her on speaker, and wait for the link to come through. As soon as it opens, my heart fucking sinks.
Double homicide in Ridgecrest. Arson.
I close my eyes, see the flames dancing in the backs of my eyelids, the memory of a different burning house, Cade's voice screaming through the static of my memory. My mouth fills with the taste of ash.
“Jen?”
“I see it,” I sound distant to myself. “But I don’t know if it’s him. Why would he… Why would he do something so fuckingstupidwhen he’s wanted for murder?” Anger and exasperation leak from my tone, and I want to throw my fucking phone across the room.
My mom is silent for a few moments, and then says something sheneverhas before. “We can't save him, Jenna. We just…can’t.”
I blink back the tears, my heart squeezing. “But he saved us. He deserves for me to keep trying, and not give up on him.”
“But if he wanted us to find him, then he wouldn’t make it so hard.” My mom is crying, I know she is. I can hear it in the way her voice quivers. Ihatethis.
I bite my lip until I taste blood. “I think I might be close though.” Telling her that I think I might’ve seen him is on the tip of my tongue, but even now, I’mcompletelysure it was him.
And it doesn’t matter anyway.
“Just come home,” she pleads, ignoring the drop of information I gave her. “It’s killing me to watch you give up your life for someone who just keeps leaving anyway. He’s never going to come home. Hecan’t. I realize that now. I don’t know why I pushed you. I should’ve never pushed you.”
Something stings in those words.
“Okay,” I snap, louder than I mean to. “Well, I don't need a lecture about it. I don't need your parental guilt trip. If you just called to say he isn’t worth it and to take it all back, save your breath. I need to know he’s okay. Just like he always did for me.”
There's a brittle silence, broken only by the distant hum of her TV or maybe a radio. “Jenna, I just want you to be safe. You're all I have left. But you keep?—”
“Chasing him,” I finish. “Yeah. Okay.”
The quiet stretches once more. I can almost see her there, in the fancy fucking house Lance bought her, sitting at the kitchen table with the same mug she's had since before I was born, wearing her disappointment like a cardigan. I imagine telling her everything—about the job, about Calvin Bradford, about the fact that I'm so far off the rails I can barely see daylight—but I can't. That’swaytoo much for her.
“I love you, Mom. I’ll come home. I will. I just… I just have to find him.”
She answers me with a sigh, and I hang up before she can say anything else.
For a minute, I just sit there, listening to the pipes rattle in the walls, letting the shame and rage churn in my chest.
When I finally get up, my limbs move on autopilot. I pull on sweatpants, then the least dirty shirt I can find. I try to dosomething with my hair, but it just falls limp around my face. I look like someone who’s just survived an animal attack, and in a way, I have.
Calvin Bradford issometype of animal.
I open the fridge and grab the last bottle of water. I force it down, trying to flush the memory of last night out of my system. I pace the room, running scenarios in my head. How to find Cade, how to fix the damage, how to make sense of what happened with Bradford.
Every solution runs into a wall of exhaustion.
