“Two of you can go back now,” Dr. Hannover says. “She’s a little groggy from the anesthesia, but she’s awake.”
Crew and Caia share a look, a silent agreement. He turns to Clint and places a hand on his shoulder. “You and Coop go.”
Clint nods, then looks to Caia. She musters up the bravestsmile she can and says, “Tell her we’re here. Tell her we love her. So much.”
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
In the cafeteria, over steamingcups of black coffee, Crew tells Caia everything. How he’d fallen in love with Grace, how they’d fallen in love with each other—a fact by which Caia is unsurprised; she could’ve guessed that all the way from Manhattan. The puppy dog eyes he’d given Grace at their dad’s birthday party had been a dead giveaway; her brother was down bad, worse than she’d ever seen him—not that he’d had a ton of girlfriends growing up, but when he had been in relationships, in high school and then post-military, there’d never been that kind of unencumberedyearningfrom his end. That was a new look on him, and Caia had enjoyed witnessing it.
What she doesn’t expect to hear is the tangle of lies Grace has found herself caught in, a sticky web of corruption and spite. Not to mention the darkness of her youth—Caia can’t spend much time thinking about that right now—chills her to the bone even trying to imagine it.
When she’s processed it all enough to form follow-up questions, about a hundred pile up in her brain, each warring with the others to be the first to tumble out of her mouth. Leaning forward, elbows resting on the small table between them, she asks, “What exactly did Forty say when you talked to him?”
Crew is quiet for a beat. There’s a contemplative, pained look on his face, and she watches his hands ball into tight fists. “He said he saw her walking to the west entrance with her backpack,” he finally says. He sounds wistful and resigned, like there’s a full-body ache accompanying his every syllable. “Saidhe called her name a dozen times but she never turned around, so he got on the Gator and caught up with her.” He drops off into silence, though Caia knows there’s more.
She swivels slightly to peek back at him, chin still resting in her hands. “And?”
Crew’s eyes flit to hers. They’re shiny—barely holding back the cascade of tears threatening to fall. “And she said she wanted to go. Apparently, she said she doesn’t belong at Halcyon, and it would be better for everyone if she left.”
“But you two—”
He cuts her off. “It doesn’t matter, Cai.”
Caia leans forward, grabbing on to his wrists. “Of course it matters.”
“How can it? She’s gone,” he rasps, his jaw tightening.
Caia takes a deep breath, recognizing that her brother is in a highly emotional, highlyirrationalstate right now. She keeps her tone even, pulling back on any incredulity or vehemence in an effort to keep him—and herself—calm.
“Let me get this straight,” she says, releasing him to lean back in her chair and fold her arms over her chest. “Grace came to us from a really bad situation at her uncle’s ranch, where she lived for nearly a decade because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. And she didn’t have anywhere else to go because—”
Crew’s eyes flick up, and he’s looking her dead in the eye as he braces himself for the hardest, most brutal truth of them all.
Caia takes another deep breath, this one markedly more shuddering than the last. “Because she killed her father after he murdered her mother.”
Crew’s mouth folds into a tight line. His entire body is vibrating with tension. “That’s right,” he says quietly.
Caia nods, tamping down the sadness, the grief, the fury she feels for Grace as she recounts her story. This girl she doesn’t really know, who has made her brother come back to life, who has brought color into his cheeks and reignited the spark in his eyes. She loves her without knowing her, and without reservation, for that alone. “She spent nine years there because she figured that if she left, he’d blacklist her and rat her out to the cops.”
Crew nods slowly, as if digesting it himself once again. “Yes.”
“But then he—and the group of demented frat boys he calls ranch hands—started to get more and more abusive. They sabotaged her, got her in major trouble, and she was punished for it by her uncle selling her horse.”
His jaw flexes again. “Vesta.”
“And that loss made her finally snap.”
Crew nods, biting the inside of his cheek. When his head turns slightly away from her, the fluorescent ceiling light illuminates the shine of a tear streaking down his face.
“And then a few months went by before someone called Mom to let her know there was a talented horse trainer floating around somewhere in Minetta.”
“Your ability to repeat stories verbatim—stories you’ve only heard once—is so unsettling,” Crew grumbles. He leans back into his chair and scratches his unshaven jaw. “But yeah. And then I picked her up and took her to the ranch.”
Unfazed by his barb, Caia pushes on. “Right. And after that, everything seemed perfectly normal, exceptyouwere a bit of an asshole because you were suspicious of where she came from, even though youknewfrom Mom that she’d had a really hardtime and that there were literal scars on her body. But in the end, Mom hired her anyway.”
Something leaks into Crew’s eyes at that statement. A strong cocktail of regret, disappointment, and anger. It twists into something darker, making his irises nearly indistinguishable from the blackness of his pupils.
Caia goes on. “Grace eventually opened up to Mom about what Braxton was really like—told her about the scams Bellamy ran to make money. The scams he ran, the animals he hurt. This—of course—pissed Mom off, and she decided to tap into her connections with law enforcement, andthe state, to start really investigating everything going on at Braxton. And she wasn’t subtle about it.”
