Page 69 of Deacon

She blocked the number and deleted the messages.

Her thumb remained over the dark screen.

Breakfast replayed in her mind. Evan telling her problems belonged to family. Her mother crouched beside her, furious at everyone except Jade. Blue would probably read the messages once, go frighteningly calm, and immediately start figuring out what came next.

Jade could walk into the kitchen and show them.

The idea lasted until she pictured her mother’s face.

Lila had already gone pale that morning when Jade told her about the party. Evan had gone from funny to furious in a breath, and Jade had cried so hard she barely recognized her own voice. Giving them this too felt like opening another wound before the first one had stopped bleeding.

Tomorrow made more sense.

She would tell them tomorrow.

Jade shoved the phone into her pocket and headed for the bathroom before she could change her mind. The light over the mirror felt too bright after the living room, showing every swollen edge around her eyes and the faint crease pressed into one cheek from the couch cushion. She looked wrecked.

She also looked different.

Some of the tightness she had grown used to seeing around her own mouth had eased.

Jade braced both hands on the sink and stared at herself. She hated that everyone had seen her cry. She hated remembering how badly her voice had shaken when she talked about Chloe, and she hated the helpless expression that crossed her mother’s face before anger replaced it.

But she had laughed afterward.

She had fallen asleep in a room full of people who knew the truth and stayed anyway.

That mattered.

Jade splashed cool water over her face and dried it before stepping back into the hallway. The kitchen voices came through more clearly now.

“…not sending her back in there blind on Monday,” Lila said, her voice low and tight.

“You aren’t,” Blue answered. “We’ll figure out the next step before then.”

Evan made an approving noise. “I volunteer as glamorous bodyguard. Intimidation through cardigans. It’s a very niche skill set.”

A smile tugged briefly at Jade’s mouth, but she stopped before turning toward the kitchen.

Her mother’s bedroom door stood cracked open farther down the hall.

The box came to mind immediately.

Jade had seen Lila with it before, though only once clearly enough to remember. Her mother had been sitting alone with old photographs spread across her lap, her expression carrying that distant quality it sometimes took on whenever conversation drifted too close to Jade’s father. Lila had closed the box quickly when she realized Jade stood in the doorway.

Private.

Important enough to hide.

Jade glanced toward the kitchen, then stepped into her mother’s room.

She knew which shelf held it. The box sat pushed toward the back of the closet, out of sight unless someone already knew where to look. Jade lifted it down carefully and carried it to the bed while voices continued in the kitchen.

The box felt lighter than she expected.

When she opened it, the faint smell of old paper rose into the room.

Photographs filled the inside, dozens of them gathered in loose stacks rather than albums. They looked like the kind of things someone had kept because throwing them away would hurt and leaving them where they could be seen would hurt differently.