She had just done the most disloyal thing she’d done since kicking Brent out of this house four years ago.
She waited for the guilt to arrive.For the sick empty feeling that had followed her through the days after Brent’s funeral, the accusing voice in her head whispering,You did this.You caused this.You killed him.
It didn’t come.
What came instead was the cold, clear alertness she’d felt as she’d stared down at the evidence of Brent’s affair and her mind finally assembled all the pieces she hadn’t wanted to see before.
She didn’t know who Lucas had paid off, or why, or what they’d been paid to do or not to do.But she knew a bribe when she saw one.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.She glanced at it.
Gray had texted her.Ellie answered my question.When you’re ready, I’m ready.No rush.
She picked up the phone and typed:Not yet.
She stared at the words.Deleted them.Typed:Soon.I’ll let you know.
She hit send before she could change her mind, set the phone face-down on the counter, and turned off the kitchen light.
In her bag, the emails sat, patient and incriminating and impossible to unsee.
9
Gray accidentally read Cassidy’s notebook Saturday afternoon in the most undignified way possible.
He was on his stomach under the fire engine, reaching blindly for a socket wrench he’d set on the running board a few minutes before, and he knocked Cassidy’s spiral notebook off the running board where she must’ve left it.The notebook landed open on the concrete floor, face up, approximately four inches from his nose.
The entry at the top of the open page was written in lettering large enough to read from orbit.
Day 22: He backed the firetruck into the bay on the first try today.Nobody saw it but me.He didn’t even celebrate.He just turned off the engine and went back to sweeping.That’s how you know someone is actually doing something for the right reason.They don’t make a big deal about it.Mom did, though.When she hung up after Jenna said he finally parked the firetruck in the garage, she whooped out loud.Which, if you ask me, was too big a reaction for some guy managing to park a big truck.Conclusion: She likes Gray.A lot.
Gray blinked at the page.
The entry above it read:Day 21: Mom wore her hair down today.She only does that when she’s not stressed.Her hair was up in a bun again by the time she left the fire station.Conclusion: the fire station stresses Mom out, but she keeps coming back.Why?Only logical answer: to hang out with Gray.
He shut the notebook guiltily and rolled to his back.
Cassidy wasn’t wrong about him, which forced him to assume she was right about Bonnie as well.Did Bonnie like him a lot?And hang out here just to be with him?
But it was the pattern beneath the entries that got to him.Not what she was recording.Whyshe was recording it.
He knew exactly what she was doing.Not just the notebook, not just the careful tracking of his behavior.He knew thereasonfor it.She was testing him.
Is this person going to stay?
He knew because he’d done the exact same thing as a kid.He’d checked the driveway every morning, looking for his dad’s truck.He’d listened for stumbling, unsteady footsteps passing his bedroom door in the dark hours before dawn.
One morning, the footsteps weren’t there.
He didn’t remember the morning itself.But he remembered the silence.A house-shaped absence where his father used to be.
He set Cassidy’s notebook back on the running board.Retrieved his socket wrench.
Was he ready to step into the footsteps of a parent figure?To be there day in and day out for Noah and Cassidy?Commit to never walking away?He understood better than most the scale of the questions and the enormity of their answers.
He didn’t say anything about it when Cassidy reclaimed her notebook and slid it into her backpack as if it contained nothing more interesting than math homework.He didn’t need to say anything.The only answer was the one he’d already been giving, every day, without knowing he was being graded.
He kept showing up.
