by Callie Rose
I shake my head, trying to process her words and deny them at the same time. “What does that mean? I mean, it doesn’t prove anything, does it? You didn’t do it, so how can they make it seem like you did?”
“I don’t know, kiddo.” She smiles softly, and even though this one is genuine, it breaks my heart anyway. Because there’s something that looks like resignation in it. “It doesn’t prove anything. But it gives them something solid and tangible to present in court. We’ll get to present our evidence too, and hopefully Leda can put together a strong case. I just… I don’t know.”
My stomach churns, unhappy about the pizza I ate in the cafeteria several hours ago, as I stare at my mom through the glass. Her brown eyes are dim, and she shakes her head, huffing a humorless laugh.
“I guess I should just hope Alexander is the judge assigned to the trial.”
“What?”
“Oh. Judge Hollowell,” she clarifies. “He’s the one I went out with a couple of times. Although I guess maybe he’d have to recuse himself because of that? I don’t know if having gone on a few dates qualifies as having some kind of previous relationship or not.” She sighs, reaching up to brush an escaped tendril of hair behind her ear. “We never really had a spark, but I like to think he’d believe I’m not a murderer.”
“You went out with Judge Hollowell?”
I scrunch up my nose. I remember the guy from a couple of Mr. and Mrs. Black’s cocktail parties. He was good-looking, in an older, George Clooney kind of way, but I wouldn’t have pegged him for Mom’s type at all. He seems a little too posh and polished for her, not to mention a little handsy. Although I got felt up by so many men at those parties, he’s in a giant fucking club.
My mom purses her lips, humor glinting in her eyes, and for a moment she looks more like her old self.
“All right, you. None of your sass now. I was lonely and new in town, and he asked me out. No harm, no foul. And he’s not a bad guy, just not a good fit for me.” She glances behind her and lowers her voice slightly. “And maybe it was fate or something. He’s a pretty well-known judge in town, I think. Maybe he’ll be able to help me somehow. It never hurts to have friends with a little bit of clout, right?”
I can tell she’s grasping at straws a bit, trying to find something to be hopeful about in the face of so much relentless shit, but I feel myself getting drawn along with her. We both need something to cling to, and hey, she’s not wrong. In Fox Hill, a lot really does seem to depend on who you know. We’ve got the Black family in our corner—for now, at least—and if she can get Judge Hollowell to help too, maybe that’ll turn things around.
“Yeah. Maybe so.” I shrug, tilting my lips up. “I guess it just depends on how bad you broke his heart when you dumped him.”
She rolls her eyes. “Ha ha. I didn’t dump him. It was a mutual realization that it wasn’t going anywhere. Your mom isn’t quite the heartbreaker you think she is, kid.”
“Tell that to every one of my classmates back in Bayard who had a crush on you,” I shoot back, lifting my brows. “And Dennis Keeland from down the street. And that guy from the PTA—what was his name?”
I keep going, making an elaborate list of everyone who’s ever had the hots for my mom, and we’re both laughing by the time I finish. It’s forced and fake, but… it feels nice.
It feels needed.
It still doesn’t stop me from crying on the bus ride home though.
5
My exciting Friday night is homework with a side of homework, and a little homework cherry on top.
At about nine p.m., there’s a knock on my door just like last night. A few seconds later, Lincoln’s voice murmurs, “Harlow?”
I don’t answer, and there’s a beat of silence before the doorknob jiggles as he tests the lock. Then there’s a dull thunk, which might be his forehead hitting the door. But I still don’t answer. I stay completely still and silent until I hear him walk away, even though I know he knows I’m in here.
I can’t tell if I’m being cowardly or smart by refusing to talk to Lincoln—a little bit of both, maybe. I want to talk to him, and that’s what scares me the most. My mom needs me right now, and my priority has to be helping her. I can’t risk giving my trust to someone who doesn’t deserve it.
My eyeballs feel like they’re about to melt out of my skull by the time I finally turn the lamp off and crawl into bed, but I’ll take it.
The massive study sessions mean I’m getting caught up on missed work pretty quickly, and besides, I like being exhausted when I go to bed.
I’m less likely to have nightmares that way.
For the few weeks after Iris’s death, my dreams were haunted by horrifying images of her body flying through the air, of a man in a black ski mask staring at me from across a dark expanse, and of a small, still lump in the middle of the road. They got a little bit better for a while, but now they’re worse again.
Because now they’re a confusing mish-mash of images and emotions relating to both Iris’s murder and my mom’s arrest.
In my dreams, sometimes it’s the man in the black ski mask who bursts in on the cocktail party to take my mom away, but no one seems to realize how wrong that is, that he shouldn’t be allowed to take her. I keep trying to get to him, to pull his mask off and expose him, to make everyone see that he’s not the real detective, not even a real cop, but Dax’s arms band around me like iron, and I can never quite reach the man.
Or sometimes I dream about Iris’s death, except when the driver of the dark car gets out to check the body, gloved hands reach up to pull off the ski mask... and the face below is my mother’s.
The first time I had that nightmare, I sprinted to the bathroom and barfed as soon as I woke up, clinging to the toilet bowl while sweat cooled on my body.
But the upside of cramming my brain full of facts and figures for a half-dozen different classes is that it leaves less room for my cruel subconscious to fuck with me.
And tonight’s a good night. I hardly dream at all.
I wake up late on Saturday morning, feeling fully rested for the first time in a while. After showering, I twist my hair into a loose knot on top of my head and throw on a long knit top and a pair of leggings. The world outside is gray, and a few little white flakes dance around in the air outside my window—snow is threatening, but I don’t think it’ll actually stick.
It’s weird. I’m not used to having such drastically different seasons, and I can already tell I’m not going to love winter. I’m more of a “t-shirts all the time” kinda girl. This “bundling up” thing blows.
The Blacks keep their house nice and toasty though, and I’m about to settle into the comfy chair by the window with one of my textbooks when I hear another knock at the door.
I freeze.
Shit.
Lincoln Black is persistent, I’ll give him that.
“Harlow? Low.”
I don’t say anything.
The same dull thunk from last night comes again, and then he knocks again. Harder. More demanding.
“Dammit, Low. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
My heart pounds hard in my chest as I stare at the door.
No. Not after what you did.
I don’t even say the words out loud, but my silence says what it needs to. He waits for another few minutes, then bangs on the door again and tries the handle.
Locked.
I hear him mutter something that sounds like “goddammit”, and then his footsteps move away. I’m just about to breathe out a relieved exhale when the door on the far side of the room—the one that leads to the laundry room, the one I stupidly forgot to lock, stupid, stupid—flies open, and Lincoln bursts inside, slamming it behind him.
An angry yelp escapes my lips, and I jump up, clutching my textbook to my chest as if he walked in on me naked instead of fully clothed.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I expect him to make a beeline for me, but instead, he walks to the bedro
om door, flipping the lock and yanking the door open. Dax and Chase are on the other side, their postures almost identical—hands in their front pockets, heads tilted slightly to the left. I might think it was funny if I weren’t so shocked and pissed off.
“I said, what the fuck are—”
“Yeah, I got it the first time.” Lincoln turns to me, his hand still on the doorknob and a hard look on his face. “You don’t want to talk to me? Fine. Fucking fine. But you will talk to someone. You need to hear this.”
He pulls the door open wider, and the twins step inside. Before I can utter another word of protest, he walks out, slamming that door behind him too.
The room grows suddenly quiet and still in the aftermath of the mini-tornado that just tore through here, and I have a very strong suspicion that Lincoln is standing outside with his back pressed against the door, prepared to keep the three of us in here indefinitely until I listen to whatever Dax and Chase have to say.
I press my hands to my face, blowing out an angry breath. “Jesus. Can he ever do anything the fucking normal way?”
Chase cocks an eyebrow. “Linc? Yeah, uh, no. Not likely.”
“In his defense,” Dax drawls, slipping his hands back in his pockets and leaning against the door just like Lincoln is probably doing on the other side, “you didn’t give him a lot of choice. He’s been trying to talk to you all week.”
“Yeah?” I toss my biology textbook down on the cushion of the easy chair. “Well, I don’t want to hear what he has to say.”
“Not even an explanation?”
My head snaps up, my gaze locking on Dax’s green eyes. They have just a hint of blue in them—the exact opposite of his twin, whose eyes are blue with a touch of green. And right now, they’re serious, the teasing light that usually dances in them nowhere to be found.
Swallowing hard, I dart my tongue out to wet my lips.
I’m sure Dax doesn’t know that in my dreams, he’s always the one holding me back, preventing me from helping my mother, from exposing the man in black, from doing anything. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it if he did know.
“Isn’t an explanation just another word for an excuse?” I demand.
He thinks about that for a second, then nods. “Can be. But you won’t know until you hear it, will you? Whether it’s an explanation or an excuse?”
“Low, we know you’re pissed. And we get why.” Chase steps forward, and when he sees my body tense like I’m about to run or fight, he holds his hands up, palms out, and takes a seat on my bed facing me.
“It shouldn’t have gone down like that,” Dax adds. “But we had no choice.”
“That’s bullshit!” I blurt.
The shock at their sudden invasion of my room is fading, and although I spent a week refusing to talk to any of these guys, it turns out I’ve actually got a lot I want to say.
“There’s always a choice! Linc didn’t have to erase those fucking pictures from his phone. You all didn’t have to lie about what you saw! You could’ve backed me up! You could’ve told Detective Dunagan what we saw, and maybe if all four of us told the same story, he would’ve looked into it! You had plenty of choices. So don’t pretend like you didn’t.”
Chase shares a look with his brother, doing that strange twin thing where they seem to have an entire conversation with no words. Then Dax pushes away from the door and comes to sit next to Chase on the bed.
“Yeah, okay.” Dax dips his head in a nod, running a hand over the back of his neck. “We did have a choice. And the option we chose was a shitty one. But out of all the choices we had in a fucked up situation, it was the best one there was.”
I blink at him.
That’s not what I was expecting him to say.
I expected more platitudes, more denials that they did anything wrong. I never really expected him to admit that what they did was awful. That they hadn’t wanted to do it.
“Why?” I whisper.
I wish I hadn’t dropped my textbook. I want something to hold onto, a buffer between me and these boys who get under my skin too fast, too easily. They break down my defenses as if the walls around my heart are made of fucking paper, and I can’t afford to get burned again.
Chase leans forward, spreading his legs and planting his elbows on his muscled thighs. He’s wearing dark jeans and a forest green shirt that draws out the green in his eyes.
“River was keeping as close of tabs as possible on what his dad knew about the police investigation. Granted, that wasn’t everything—it’s not like the cops call up the lawyer with every little piece of information they get. But Mr. Bettencourt was running his own investigation too, trying to dig up stuff the police missed to prove that Iris’s death wasn’t an accidental hit-and-run. That’s what the Lepianes hired him for.”
“Yeah,” Dax chimes in, picking up smoothly where Chase left off, as if the two of them share a damn brain or something. “And as far as River knows, his dad didn’t have any clue your mom was on Dunagan’s radar. Not until after she was arrested.”
“We didn’t keep anything from you, Low.” Chase shakes his head. “It wasn’t like we all saw it coming and lied to you about it or didn’t tell you. We were as surprised as you were.”
Something in my chest loosens a bit when he says that.
I got roped into this thing with them, dragged into the inner circle of this tight-knit little group because I was with them when they witnessed a murder. But for a long time, it felt like I was just “the girl who was there too”, the annoying little thorn in their side who they had to keep from doing anything stupid.
It took a long time for me to feel like they actually trusted me, and to start to actually trust them back.
The night we snuck into Mr. Bettencourt’s law office and dug around for information on Iris’s investigation, I thought something changed between us all. It was the night I found out about River’s hearing impairment, and I made the guys promise to stop keeping me out of the loop on things.
And I thought they had—until my mom got dragged away in handcuffs.
When that happened, part of me was sure the guys had all known it was coming, that they’d planned for it, and that they’d deliberately kept me out of the loop as they conspired to betray my mom.
So it doesn’t make everything better, but it sure as fuck helps to know that they were as shocked as I was.
Assuming Chase is telling the truth.
“How can I believe you?” I tug my hair out of the knot at the top of my head, running my fingers through the long brown strands. “You guys lied to me and kept me in the dark about so much shit. I found out from girls in the fucking locker room that Lincoln hooked up with Iris last year. He could’ve told me about that, and he didn’t!”
Dax rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well. Linc’s personal issues aside, I promise you, Low—we didn’t know. If we’d had any idea your mom was gonna get arrested, we would’ve told you.”
“And that’s the whole fucking point!” Chase adds. “Somebody set her up.”
Seemingly unable to contain himself anymore, he jumps up from the bed and strides toward me, grabbing my shoulders and steering me toward the easy chair. He presses downward gently, and when I perch on the edge of the seat, he crouches in front of me.
“Who do you think called in that tip on your mom?”
“What do you—?”
“The man in the black mask.”
My heart feels like it stops beating, sitting like a lump of clay in my chest. “What?”
“We don’t have proof yet, but that’s our best guess. I mean, think about it, Low. Why would someone frame your mom for a murder you witnessed? It all ties up too neatly to not be connected somehow.”
“Yeah.” Dax steps forward to join his brother. Their shoulders brush as they both crouch before me, two sets of blue-green eyes gazing up at me. “And Detective Dunagan said they got a credible tip. That means it had to come from someone who knew enough about the murder to offer a believa
ble piece of evidence implicating your mom.”
“But…” I shake my head, sucking in a breath. “That’s even worse. If whoever killed Iris framed my mom, then—”
“Then they think they’ve won,” Chase finishes, cutting me off. “As long as she’s in jail with evidence piling up against her, the real killer will think they’re safe. It gives us time to keep looking—to keep digging.”
“While my mom rots in fucking jail!”
The words come out louder than I mean for them to, but I can’t help it. My volume control goes down when my anxiety goes up, and my nerves are like live wires right now.
“Yeah.” Dax grimaces. “That’s why I said this was the best of several shitty options.”
“Even if we all started raving about a man in black, if Lincoln showed that detective guy the pictures on his phone, and if we all claimed we were witnesses to the murder—it wouldn’t have been enough to keep your mom out of jail. It might’ve been enough to get Dunagan to look into it, but in the meantime, there would’ve been a pissed off psychopath out there who knew exactly what we knew. Your mom wouldn’t have been safe… and neither would you.”
Chase stops talking and shrugs, biting his lip as he gazes up at me.
I feel my jaw go slack as I process his words.
Fuck.
Fucking fucking fuck.
He’s right.
If they had backed me up, if they’d convinced Detective Dunagan to take me seriously, all we would’ve been doing is antagonizing a killer with no clear idea of how to stop him.
And if the cops hadn’t taken my mom away, if I’d managed to stop them, who’s to say the killer wouldn’t have gone after her next?
I slump back in the chair. The biology textbook is still on the seat, and it digs into my back as I slouch, but I can’t work up the energy to move it.
“How… how did you all see that when I didn’t?” I ask softly, thinking of the night they took my mom away—trying to remember exactly what I said, and exactly who was around to hear it.
Is it possible the man in black somehow found out about my rant? That he knows what we know?