Heath doesn’t look at me, but his mom and sister do.
I thought I knew that look, the one that curls lips and ensures a wide berth. What I see in Mrs. Gaines’s eyes and that of her daughter, Gwen, is filled with so much more than distaste and anger. Mrs. Gaines’s arm shoots out to clutch her daughter’s when I shift my feet. I thought it was to steady her from the shock at finding me in her house with her son, but I quickly realize my mistake. She’s not holding herself up; she’s holding her daughter back.
“Her? You’re withher?” Gwen is looking at her brother like she just walked in on him making a bomb instead of making out with a girl. And she’s looking at me as though she could detonate me herself and not blink an eye.“Her brother murdered Cal!”Cal’s name tears out of her, a twisted, pained screech, the sound almost makes me cover my ears.
Beside me, Heath says nothing, does nothing. He holds his mother’s gaze and I can practically feel the shame seeping from his pores.
“Allison wasn’t enough for you? First it’s your brother’s girlfriend, and now the sister of his murderer!” Gwen chokes. “In our house, in Cal’shouse!”
“Gwen—”
Gwen slaps away her mother’s whispered word along with the hand restraining her and starts toward her brother. “Get her out. Get that fu—” the rest of her words are muffled with the wild blows she rains down on her brother when he walks forward to intercept her and I back away. He barely tries to block them, letting her hit him as she screams.
I can’t think and I can’t look at Heath. I flatten myself against one wall as Mrs. Gaines moves to the other. Our gazes meet. She doesn’t scream profanities at me, but there’s no hiding that she wants me out of her house just as desperately as her daughter.
I run out the front door, chased by the sounds of a broken family and nothing else.
CHAPTER 37
Clouds of rich red-brown dust billow around Daphne’s tires as I hit the brakes harder than normal and throw the car into Park in front of my house. Laura is on the front porch and she stands as soon as she sees me. For once, I barely notice her as I hurry to get inside, numbness keeping all but one thought at bay.
Allison was...Cal’s girlfriend?
But I stop on the top step at a sight that I haven’t seen in I don’t know how long. Laura on the porch swing is common enough, but Laura without her earbuds, without her phone?
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my brain skidding to a halt along with the rest of me. “Did something happen?”
“No, nothing. I just—” Without her phone to hold, Laura doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She wrings them to the point that I half expect her to draw blood. “I wanted to talk. We never talk anymore.”
I blink at my sister.I’mnot the reason we never talk. I’m the one who has tried over and over again to restore some semblance of the relationship we used to have, and she’s shut me down every time. It didn’t matter how I cried or pleaded, she always turned away.
And right now, with my stomach churning in sickening knots, I’m the one turning away.
I say something to her as I pull open the door.Not now, orWe’ll talk later, I don’t even know the words that come out of my mouth and as I hurry up the stairs, I don’t look back to see if my dismissal wounded her half as much as all of hers wounded me. I can’t think about my sister right now. I can barely think at all.
My urgency to flee and hide deserts me when I reach the hall.She can’t be right about Allison and Cal.My steps grow slower, heavy as fresh dread hits me from inside and out as I approach the door to Jason’s room, fully shut this time. I reach for the knob then flex my fingers before grabbing it and opening the door. My mind has been showing me what I’ll see since I left Heath’s house, I know it, yet I need to look at it again before I let the final piece lock into place.
Not wanting Mom to notice it missing, I’d returned the photo of Jason with a laughing Allison on his back to its proper place the other day. It’s tacked up over the desk, both of them seeming to smile at me as I approach.
Jason adored this photo even though the top of Allison’s head is out of frame and there’s some random guy photobombing in the background. But I never asked him why. It was something in her smile, in the way her hands curled around his shoulders and the tilt of her head against his. A stranger could have looked at that photo and known with complete certainty that she was in love.
Only, she’s not looking at my brother, she’s looking at the person taking the photo. My eyes start scanning the other photos, searching for—something that itches at the back of my mind. Not quite a memory, more like a space where a memory should be.
There.
It’s a tiny corner peeking up from behind his desk. I inch the desk forward then bend down to pick up the fallen photo.
It’s the same day. Allison is wearing the same sky blue bikini, and the same white-and-yellow daisy is threaded through the braid in her hair. She has one arm over Jason’s shoulder as he holds the phone out in front of them and the other around Cal.
She’s not looking at my brother.
Her expression is the same. It’s exactly the same.
And the picture’s been ripped in half, severing Cal from Allison.
I start shaking all over.
“Brooke?”
