Page 160 of Deacon

Then my knees started shaking, and I sat.

At some point in the chaos, I had gone into Jade’s room for the phone she’d left behind and pulled Jackson’s old high school hoodie from the back of my closet. I didn’t remember deciding to put it on. The faded Wicker Falls colors were cracked with age, the cuffs worn soft from years I had refused to throw it away, and somehow wrapping myself in something that had once belonged to the boy I loved made breathing a little easier.

Jade’s phone rested heavy in the front pocket. I kept one hand around it.

Across the room, Matty paced near the window. Evan had retreated to the kitchen, where he was taking his anger out on the kettle, and Cage stayed folded over in the dining chair with both hands around his own phone. He stared at the screen without blinking, like enough concentration might make Jade’s name appear.

Looking at him hurt.

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t talking. He just looked too young to be carrying that much guilt inside his body.

Matty stopped so abruptly I looked up. “Dad,” he said.

I blinked at him.

He pointed toward me, impatience sharpened by fear. “We need to call Dad. Tell him what happened. He’d be crushed if he found out we kept this from him.” His voice tightened. “He’d want to be here for you.”

I rubbed both hands over my face. “Yeah. You’re right.” Even my own voice sounded far away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking past...”

Past Jade’s empty room. Past her phone sitting against my stomach with no daughter attached to it.

Matty crossed the room and bent over me before I could finish. His arms closed around my shoulders, and for one brief second he held me the way he had when we were kids and whatever hurt me had still been small enough for my brother to fix.

“I know,” he said quietly. “I know.”

Then he straightened and moved toward the window again, already calling Dad.

I watched Matty’s face change when our father answered. He didn’t waste time trying to soften anything. There was no version of this that could be made gentle.

“Dad, listen to me,” he said, low and clipped. “Lila came home and found Jade missing. Cage was outside the apartment door because Jade was supposed to meet him and didn’t show. He called her, texted her, got no answer, came here, and could hear her phone ringing inside. Lila got here, let him in, and Jade wasn’t in the apartment. Her phone was. She wasn’t.”

Dad’s voice exploded loudly enough through the phone that even I could hear it from across the room.

Matty pulled it away from his ear. “Dad, yelling isn’t helping. We’re at Lila’s. Police are on the way.”

More shouting followed. Cage flinched without looking up.

Matty’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Yes, I said police. No, I don’t know anything else yet. Just get here.”

He listened another few seconds before ending the call. Instead of immediately moving again, he stared at the phone.

“He’s already half way here.”

Something about the way he said it made me sit straighter. “What?”

“He said he was coming out to visit you and Jade tonight, so he was already halfway here.” Matty’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Did you know he was coming?”

I shook my head. “No. We didn’t have plans.”

His gaze held mine for a beat.

Then someone knocked.

Matty answered with his shoulders already squared, the brother disappearing beneath the detective as soon as he saw the two men outside. One was older, his face weathered and tired around the eyes. The other looked younger and sharper, notebook already in hand. Both wore the kind of careful expressions people used around families who might shatter if handled too roughly.

They stepped inside, and I hated them for one irrational second because they had arrived without Jade.

Then I answered everything they asked.