Thirty-one
Sam freezes against my body, and for a second, I think I said the wrong thing.
But then he curses and grabs my bra and panties from the ladder. “Someone’s coming. Get dressed.”
Putting on a soggy bra feels like an impossible task, but I quickly realize doing it underwater is the only way to get the fabric to stop sticking to my skin long enough to shrug it into place. By the time I resurface, I know who’s found us.
Alex.
Sam helps me up the ladder and tries to shield me from view as we scramble along the wall with, but Alex’s hoots of laughter when he sees us wake half the forest, I’m sure of it.
“Shut the fuck up!” Sam growls.
“Oh, man,” Alex says, wiping tears from his eyes. “I hope it’s worth it, because James is going to kick your ass!”
“James doesn’t know,” I say. Feeling naked, my arms snake around Sam’s waist, loving the way his stomach muscles clench beneath my hands even though I’m half out of my mind with fear. “I don’t
want
him to know. Please don’t say anything.”
Alex waves me off. “I’m so drunk, I probably won’t even remember this in the morning. In fact, I’m lucky I didn’t get lost in this fucking forest. You guys have the right idea, though.”
When he strips off his t-shirt, exposing his ripped abs and chest, my nails dig into Sam’s skin. He’s a redheaded, bruise-free version of my brother. Panic sets in immediately.
“Turn around so I can get dressed,” I choke out.
“Nope. I’ve always wondered what you look like under all those clothes. What’s with that, anyway? You’re hot, Sarah.”
Sam’s body clenches tighter than his jaw. Alex thinks he’s getting a show, analyzing what he thinks is a normal body hidden behind his friend in the shadows. When Sam grabs our clothes and moves toward him, I’m sure we’ll be carrying a very bloody, very unconscious Alex back to camp. Mortified, I hang my head and wait for this to be over.
Alex’s wolf whistles and catcalls abruptly die when Sam’s body no longer shadows mine.
“Oh, fuck,” Alex blurts out.
The grim look on Sam’s face when he turns around makes my blood run cold. Standing there in front of them, my hands shielding my wet bra and panties in case they’ve turned see-through in the faint light, I feel my eyes welling with tears I don’t want to shed. I lift my chin and try to meet Alex’s gaze, but his eyes are still glued to the scars on my stomach.
“Now you know,” Sam says. “And you
will
keep your mouth shut.”
The two of them drop back into the shallow stream on the other side of the wall and Sam reaches up to help me down. No sooner do my feet hit the ground, Alex lurches forward to yank me into his arms. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?”
“I thought you guys knew,” I mutter, trying to put distance between my bare stomach and his. “How could you not with all the crap he did to James?”
His massive shoulders and strong arms keep me in place. “Your
dad
did this?”
Who else?
I want to ask, but Sam is clearly not enjoying the sight of his mostly naked girlfriend in the arms of another guy. He clears his throat and Alex backs away.
“Here,” Sam says, and hands me my clothes. “We should get back before James wakes up. Where’s Kelly?”
“I left her puking by the lake,” Alex says as I shrug on his sweatshirt. “Forgot all about her when I saw you guys sneaking off. Guess I should go find her, huh?”
We stare at him.
“Going,” he says, balling up his t-shirt. He hesitates, glancing at my stomach again even though it’s covered. “You know you can call me anytime, right?”
“Thanks,” I say, right as Sam glares at him and says, “She’ll call me first.”
“I care, too, you know.” Alex’s frown morphs into a lopsided
grin. “Hey, did you know I was her first kiss?”
Drunk as he is, Sam’s menacing step forward is all the warning Alex needs. He raises his hands and backs away. “Yep. Definitely going.”
Sam says nothing while he yanks on his own clothes, oblivious to my mouth hanging open. “Alex” and “caring” are two words I never would’ve put together. And even more strange…I believe him. At least he wrapped it up with a predictably disgusting comment about the kiss I’d like to forget. When Sam takes my hand and leads me into the trees, I shake the craziness out of my head.
Up ahead, I hear Alex stumbling and cursing his way through the underbrush. He seems to be going in the right direction. Maybe that’s all Sam needed to hear, because he stops me next to a big tree and stares at the ground.
His dark eyes are barely visible in the flashlight’s dull beam, but I don’t need to see them to feel their force. He runs a hand through his hair. “I get why James kept you away from us now. I can’t stand the thought of you going to Alex instead of me.
I
want to be that person for you.”
I touch his arm. “You are that person. And it’s not like he was serious. He’s
Alex
.”
“Doesn’t matter. And it’s not Alex, it’s me. I can’t control it.” He steps closer, cupping my cheek in his palm. “Every time my dad left for a deployment, he’d make me promise to take care of my mom. He loved her so much, the thought of something happening while he was away killed him. The last time he left…”
Sam’s voice breaks and his eyes close. I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his neck.
“I get why my dad felt that way, now,” he whispers.
Thirty-two
When I wake up, James is sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag watching me. His calculating gaze flickers from my face to my hair to my olive green sleeping bag, which is still unzipped from last night. I didn’t zip it up when Sam and I crawled back into the tent, terrified he’d hear it. I paid the price by freezing all night long.
Feeling uncomfortably naked under his scrutiny, I drag the ancient sleeping bag to my chin and sit up. “What?”
I expect him to ask why I’m still in bed when everyone else is gone. He doesn’t.
“You look like shit.”
My hands go to my hair, which feels like a tangled, mangled mess. With the chaos of Alex finding us, I didn’t think about how it would dry after swimming in the fish ladders. There’s probably a bunch of crap knotted into it. Moss, even. I frantically smooth down the unruly mass of waves and scramble to come up with a good lie. “My pigtails must’ve fallen out.”
“So it seems.”
James stands up and yanks off his shirt. I focus on one of the few scars on his chest—a jagged zigzag right over his heart that came from the tree at our old elementary school and not our father—and try to pull myself together. I’m so focused, when he unties his flannel pants and drops them and his boxers to the floor, I suck in a breath and turn away two seconds too late.
He chuckles. “Jesus, Sarah. You act like you’ve never seen a naked guy before.”
A wave of panic threatens to turn my stomach inside out. There’s no way he knows. If he’d woke up while I was gone, he wouldn’t have gone back to sleep until he found me. He was still out cold, sleeping bag tangled around his legs, when we snuck back into the tent around three. To be sure, I listened to his light snores mingling with Sam’s even breathing for an hour before letting myself drift off.
The zipper on our duffel bag slides open and shut. Fabric rustles as he shoves his legs into new boxers and shorts and pulls on a shirt. It sounds like he slings the duffel bag over his shoulder, but I refuse to open my eyes until his nakedness is erased from my mind.
“You’re gonna have to hitch a ride back home. I’ve gotta be somewhere and I can’t wait around for you to pack up your shit.”
When he steps out of the tent, I flop onto my back and stare at the navy blue fabric of the tent, swaying lightly in the morning breeze. Where is Sam? Whenever we’re apart, it’s like every trace of happiness he and I worked so hard to create gets zapped out of my heart like static on a plastic slide. I feel like two different people—a normal girl with a hot boyfriend when we’re together, and then the wilted shadow I have to be at home. I hate it, now more than ever.
Things only get worse when I finally stumble out of the tent into the warm morning sunlight. Apparently Alex wasn’t drunk enough to forget what he saw last night because he’s there, waiting outside on one of the boulders.
He shoots to his feet. “So, um, your brother left, but I don’t want you to think I had anything to do with it. I swear I didn’t say anything.”
“Okay.” I look around him, hoping to see Sam nearby, but it’s just me and Alex. I choose a boulder across from his and sit down. “Where’s Kelly?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. There is something seriously wrong with that girl. Is James coming back for you?”
“No.” I avoid his probing stare and try to remember where Sam’s car was parked when we pulled up. Alex only has a motorcycle, so they would’ve had to carpool to get the tent and all their stuff up here. Hopefully there will be enough room for me.
“Hey, about last night…I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I always knew something was up, but James swore he had everything under control so I let it go. I mean, who could take care of himself—and you, for that matter—better than your brother? The guy’s a fucking maniac in the ring, just like your dad.”
I hardly have the chance to glare at Alex before he scrubs his face with his hands and lets out a half-hearted chuckle. “Probably not the best comparison. Forget I said that.”
“Hey,” Sam says from behind me.
The second our eyes meet, all the heat and love I felt last night before Alex barged in on us rolls over me like a tsunami. I hesitate—do I throw myself into his arms with Alex right here, or do I act like last night never happened?—but Sam takes charge of the situation. He slips his arms around my waist, pulls my back to his chest, and plants a kiss on my temple.
The goofy grin on Alex’s face is enough to make me smile a little.
“It’s about goddamn time,” he says. “Now, what’s for breakfast?”
Thirty-three
We leave Alex on the sidewalk in front of his house with the tent and camping stove. I’m surprisingly disappointed that Sam didn’t offer to help stow everything away because I’ve never been to this side of town—the “nice” part of Granite Falls. The two little redheaded girls running around on the lawn in front of the giant blue house are like miniature, feminine versions of Alex in their matching green dresses. I’ve never pictured him as a big brother.
“So I’ve been thinking,” I say when we pull away from the curb. “The first thing I want to do when we get to L.A. is go to Disneyland.”
Sam chuckles. “I was kinda hoping you’d want to go to Magic Mountain. The rides are supposed to be awesome.”
“And the beach. I want to go to the beach, too.”
“Only if you let me buy you a bikini,” he says with a sly grin. “Can’t go to a California beach in all those clothes. The sun will be good for you.”
I scowl at him even though I’m loving this conversation. He’ll have to work a lot harder to get me in a bikini. Still, it feels incredible to be talking about our future together like this. Like maybe things are going to be okay. “We’ll pick one up right after you buy me a guinea pig.”
“The dog I plan on buying will eat your guinea pig. Sure that’s a good idea?”
Grinning, I slide my hand across the center console to his knee, my fingers tracing a path of hearts up his thigh. “
All
of my ideas are good.”
When my hand reaches its destination, Sam jerks the car into a gravel parking lot. I barely register the store in the distance before he has me unbuckled and in his arms. This intense desperation is one of the things I love about Sam. Drowning in it—in him
—
keeps me sane.
Unfortunately, I’m losing sight of the goal. “So about that bikini…”
“You play dirty,” he grumbles. “Finish this and you can wear whatever you want
and
have your damn guinea pig.”
“Deal.” With a triumphant grin, I pull away and buckle my seatbelt.
“I meant now.”
Sam’s smoldering gaze could burn down a forest, and for a second, I consider giving him what he wants right here in the parking lot of Shop Mart, but no. I want all of him and we won’t have that kind of privacy here.
“Take me home, and I’ll more than finish what I started.”
We reach my street faster than should be possible without a rocket-propelled car, but the two red lights and four stop signs Sam runs probably has something to do with it. How could I have ever thought he didn’t want me? I laugh as he careens around the last corner and hits the gas. Thankfully, it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon and most of the town is holed up in one church or another.
“Wait!” I gasp.
He sees it at the same time I do—a beige, unmarked police car, the same model and color all the undercover cops in Granite Falls drive—sitting in front of my house.
“Should I keep going?” he asks. “We could go back to my place.”
It’s too late for that. The cop saw us the second we skidded around the corner and will probably pull him over for running the stop sign anyway. All I can think about is James. His truck isn’t out front and I have no idea where he is. Was there an accident on the way home? Did the cops finally bust Leslie while my brother was with her?
We pull up to the house, but the cop stays in his car. Weird. Maybe he’s not here for us? Keeping my head down, I follow Sam up the driveway.
He slides his chain out from beneath his shirt and stoops low enough to unlock the front door with the key I gave him last week. Before I slip inside, I glance over my shoulder at the car and the hulk of a man hunched over a notepad inside. He looks up, as if sensing my eyes on him, and shuts off the engine.
“Hurry!” I all but shove Sam into the foyer, then slam the door behind us.
Now that we’re inside, I should feel safe. I should, but I don’t. A film of stale nicotine clings to the walls like a ghost, stacks of boxing magazines litter the end table, and my father’s recliner still waits for us in the living room.
No, I’ll never be safe here.
Rap-rap-rap.
The sharp knock sends me scrambling into Sam’s arms. “What do we do?”
“We answer the door,” he says calmly, “and ask him what the hell your brother did now.”
Rap-rap-rap.
“Miss O’Brien?”
Sam pries me from his body and moves us toward the door. One of my hands grabs for one of his, while the other dutifully reaches for the knob.
A man about my father’s age, at least six foot four with jet-black hair and the body of a weightlifter, towers like an enormous totem pole on the porch. He pins me in place with his dark brown eyes. “Sarah O’Brien?”
My mouth drops open in an attempt to answer the man, but my brain isn’t keeping up. There’s no way this guy is an undercover cop—everything about him screams
ex-boxer!
The way my father talks about it, they’re like the mafia, which can only mean one of two things: he’s here to kill my father, or my father sent him to kill me. Before he has a chance to make a move and just as my knees threaten to give out, Sam wedges himself between us.
“Can I help you?”
The man produces a black leather wallet that flops open to reveal a shiny brass police badge. “Detective Lilly, Granite Falls police department.” The wallet vanishes and a small spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen materialize in its place. “Your name and relation, for the record?”
“Sam Donavon. I’m a friend of Sarah and James.”
Detective Lilly nods once and scribbles down the information. “I’d like to speak with the O’Brien siblings. Individually, if possible. Is James home?”
I shake my head, but Sam must still be stuck on the first half of the statement, because he says, “I’m not going anywhere unless Sarah wants me to. What is this about?”
Those intense brown eyes give Sam a onceover before turning to me. “May I speak freely in front of Mr. Donavon?”
“Yes,” I squeak. My mind races through everything James might have done to get himself in trouble. A drug bust at Leslie’s,
buying an illegal weapon, getting into a brawl at work, doing one of his stupid brake-checks in the wrong neighborhood…
“All right,” Detective Lilly says. “An investigation has been opened with regard to your mother’s death. We’d like to gather some information from your family. See if we can’t piece together a more accurate picture of what happened that morning.”
Though he’s standing in front of us—in front of Sam, who is still shielding me from the brunt of Detective Lilly’s presence—speaking directly
to
me, my brain struggles to process the words coming out of his mouth. An investigation? As in, maybe they suspect the same thing I do? Sam fumbles behind him for my other hand and gives both a tight squeeze.
“So,” Detective Lilly says, snapping his notebook shut. “Shall we go inside or would you like to answer my questions out here on the porch?”
I let Sam direct the detective into our living room and trail behind them both. We sit silently on the scratchy beige couch that never gets used and wait for Detective Lilly to finish perusing my father’s memorabilia.
Finally, he stops walking and smiles at us—a terrifying facial expression that resembles a grimace more than a smile. “I know your father,” he says. “Knocked me out on more than one occasion during my boxing days. How’s he doing?”
No matter how hard I try, the smile I try to give him refuses to stick to my face. “He’s fine.”
Detective Lilly keeps right on smiling, his dark gaze boring into my skull. “Good to hear. No trouble around the house then? No problems at work that you know about?”
I can feel the blood draining from my face. He knows—somehow, someway, he knows. The realization is paralyzing. Sam nudges me, which catches Detective Lilly’s eye. The man doesn’t miss anything. “James says he’s gotten in trouble at work a few times,” I say to deflect his attention. “We don’t know why. They keep James away from our father at the mill.”
Sam nudges me again. When Detective Lilly reaches for his notebook, I pinch Sam’s leg to shut him up. If the detective notices Sam jump half a foot off the couch, he makes no sign of it. Instead, he settles into my father’s rust-orange recliner and flips through the notebook.
“Tell me about the medication your mother was taking. Are you aware of how many she took? How long she’d been taking them?”
As clear as if she’d died this morning, I can picture the open pill bottles lined up like dozens of unorganized military men on top of James’s old dresser. “I know there were a lot. And she’s been taking at least some of them for as long as I can remember.”
“Who picked them up for her? Or were they mail-order?”
Uh-oh.
“James brought them home.” Along with cartons of cigarettes and God knows what else he slipped into those brown paper bags. I don’t know how he pulled it off before he turned eighteen, but he’d faithfully delivered everything to her door once a week since his sophomore year in high school. Maybe that’s how he met Leslie.
Detective Lilly nods and scribbles something into his notebook. “Where did he pick them up? Which pharmacy?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.” More scribbling. “Any idea why your father didn’t pick them up? Or do you not know that either?”
“Sorry.” I’m starting to feel uncomfortable—more than when he showed up and way more than normal, which is saying a lot. “James and I have never been close to either of our parents,” I say. Hopefully that explains enough without actually explaining anything.
Beside me, Sam is getting antsy again. I can feel the tension in his body and have a pretty good idea what he wants me to do. And why wouldn’t I turn my father in? He’s not here to stop me, and I don’t have to worry about my mother getting hurt when he finds out. Even James would be proud.
But what if I tell Detective Lilly and he doesn’t arrest my father? It’s my word against an adult’s, and I have firsthand experience how badly that ends. When I was in second grade, my teacher saw the edge of a bruise I hadn’t been able to hide completely with my too-short sleeves. She coaxed the barest of information out of me—enough to deduce I hadn’t fallen down a flight of stairs or something—and hauled me straight to the principal.
Who called my father.
That had been a Friday. Even with James’s protection, I couldn’t walk until Sunday night. The memories from that weekend, how battered both James and I had been, and of having to watch my father drag our mother around the house by her hair while she screamed, keeps me from ratting him out.
I’m pretty sure that was his intention.
Detective Lilly stares at me while I replay that horrible weekend in my mind. My whole life, James has been able to read my face. I hope it’s a brother thing and not a transparency thing, or else I’ve just given the Granite Falls police department exactly what I didn’t want to tell them. Shifting closer to Sam, I try to make my face blank.
With a flick of his wrist, the detective flips his notebook shut and stows it wherever he’s been pulling it from behind his back. “Thank you for your time, Ms. O’Brien, Mr. Donavon,” he says, suddenly all business. “If I think of anything else, I’ll come by again. Do you have any questions for me?”
“No,” I say at the same time Sam says, “I do.”
I gape at him, but he grabs my hand and pulls me off the couch with him.
“Why are you investigating a suicide?” he asks. “That’s not normal, is it?”
For several long seconds, I don’t think Detective Lilly is going to answer. I don’t blame him. Sam’s question sounds like a challenge.
After trying to stare Sam down and losing, he says to me, “Your mother had been using depressants for a very long time from what the medical examiner can tell. He collected eight separate non-prescription depressant drugs from her bedroom, ones your brother has somehow been refilling for years, if what you say is true. The drug she overdosed on was an amphetamine—a powerful one, and an extremely high dose of it.”
He uses that dark gaze of his to bore into my skull again. “And yet, there was no trace of that drug anywhere in her room.”
Seemingly oblivious to my silent horror, Detective Lilly pretends to tip a hat he isn’t wearing and stalks out the front door.
I lose my mind the second the door closes.
“I knew he did it!” My whole body trembles, and I cling to the front of Sam’s t-shirt to keep me upright. “I knew it the second he looked at me that morning. I knew he did it. Oh my God!”
Sam holds me tightly against him. If there were a way to climb inside his skin and hide in his warmth and love, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Anything to take away this horrible ache in my chest. All the fighting and the burns—I didn’t think he’d kill her. Me, sure, but her?
“This is my fault,” I sob into his chest. “If I didn’t always hide or if I’d made James stay away, maybe letting him hurt me would’ve been enough. Maybe he would’ve left her alone. Maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be,” Sam says. “I’m sure she’d rather it be this way.”
Thinking about her protecting me makes me cry even harder. My whole life, she shut herself away in her room. She heard my screams and not once did she try to stop my father, no matter how many times I cried her name. I can’t believe she’d die so I could live. I won’t.
“Your brother will be home in a couple hours,” Sam says when I’ve cried myself into exhaustion. “Want to rest for a little bit? I’ll stay awake.”
I don’t want to rest. I want to escape. I lead him back to the scratchy couch and ignore the troubling fact that he seems to know where James is and I don’t. Not even his soothing presence or the safety of his arms wrapped around me can touch the dread gurgling in my gut.
You’re next
, my father’s look had said.
I know I am.