“Okay, Brooke.”
I put my grandmother’s quilt back in the attic that night.
CHAPTER 40
Jason stops midstep when he enters the visitation room on Saturday morning and sees me alone at the table. From twenty feet away I see him swallow before the guards urge him to keep moving. After that he practically stalks to me. The first thing out of his mouth isn’t about Mom.
“What did you say to Allison?”
I draw back against my seat as he leans across the table, almost glaring at me.
“Mom’s fine,” I say, finding my spine. “Laura and Dad too. Uncle Mike came for dinner the other night, and he’s good too.”
Jason’s narrow-eyed expression falters, but only briefly. “What did you do, Brooke?”
“What didIdo?” His continued anger throws a spark that kindles my own temper. “What do you think I did? You let slip about someone else being there the night Calvin was killed, someone you care enough about to protect by staying in this—” my lip curls “—place longer than maybe you have to. Who else is there besides Allison?”
Jason flinches when I say her name.
“I thought it was her because...because...” My anger is doused almost as quickly as it ignited. “I found out about her and Cal.”
Jason screws up his face and shakes his head softly while flexing his hand, a hand that I can now see bears tiny white scars along the knuckles. The memory of finding out about his girlfriend and his best friend still visibly pains him, seemingly more so than the memory of smashing a window.
I suddenly feel eight years old again, pleading with my infinitely older brother for...something, anything. I was always asking him do things with me, go places, play games. He could have said no or put me off, but he almost never did, and more than that, he’d make it seem like he was having so much fun. With me.
My heart fractures seeing him now, in this place, fading before my eyes. Even anger isn’t enough to rouse him for long.
“Jason, please. You have to tell me. I know it wasn’t Allison, but it was someone, wasn’t it? Why are you protecting them? Please.” I let him hear my voice break, and it makes his face twist tighter, his head dropping to his chest. “You know it’s not just you in this place. Mom and Laura, me and Dad, Jase, we’re locked up too.”
He remembers what I told him last time about Mom crying, Dad retreating and Laura withdrawing, I know he does. But he doesn’t know about me.
“I don’t sleep anymore,” I tell him. “When I close my eyes at night I see Cal dying over and over again. It’s never the same, because when my mind tries to fill in the details they don’t fit. Nothing about Cal’s death makes sense to me. I wake up gasping and crying and there’s no one I can talk to, because Mom and Dad and Laura are hurting too much to hear.” He looks away like he doesn’t want to hear either, but he’s the only one who has to. “You never asked why I’m not auditioning forStories on Ice. Don’t you care?”
“Brooke, don’t.” There’s a choked quality to his request that normally would have silenced me, but I can’t stay silent anymore.
“It’s not just about Mom, Dad and Laura.” The hand I’m resting on the table strays a few inches toward him. “I hate the thought of leaving them like this but I can’t bear the thought of leaving you at all.”
I know he’s crying. His head is lowered and he’s barely moving, aware even now of drawing that kind of attention to himself in this place, but I know my brother.
“Allison made it sound like—she thinks you planned it—I can’t believe she’s right, so you have to tell me. Please, Jason. Please.”
Slowly, so slowly, Jason lifts his head. His eyes are glassy wet, but open. There’s no scowl, no anger. There’s something else, something that quivers in his chin as he holds my gaze, willing me to see a truth he can’t bring himself to say.
“Jase—” I wait for him to say something, to blink or breathe in a way that means anything other than what his face is silently telling me, but he doesn’t.
“I died when she told me, whentheytold me.” His voice is like broken glass, sharp and so cutting that I flinch. His hands flex again, drawing my eyes to the scars left from breaking the windows of Cal’s truck. “I couldn’t believe that she’d do that, that he’d do that. For days it was like living in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. Nothing I did helped. I even went to the tree, you know, and cut out our initials with a knife.”
My heart pounds, remembering the brutal attack on that tree, the one I’d briefly thought Heath responsible for. It was so savage, full of so much hate, but not for my brother like I’d thought. For Allison’s initials linked with his.
“That’s where I was when Cal called. He was drunk and said he was leaving but wanted to see me first.”
“No, Jase,” I say, my lips trembling. He keeps looking at me, so I say it again, quieter. “No.”
“I didn’t think I’d do it, Brooke, I thought he’d fight back.”
Tears run down my face. “You brought the knife, Jase. You could have left it in the car but you brought it with you.”
Jason says nothing.
