“What’s wrong?” I asked, even more concerned than I was earlier. “Is it that girl again?”
“No,” she said, sounding muffled against the receiver. “I just need to come home. Can you call me out, please?”
I didn’t want her to think this would be something that happened all the time, but the sound of her voice scared me.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Thanks,” she breathed, sounding relieved.
Principal Langston was less than thrilled when I called, but I was persuasive enough that she said she would allow Callie to take a half day so long as she made up the classwork she missed.
I sat on the stairway, waiting for Callie’s car to pull up. When she came inside, her hood was pulled up over her head and she slammed her bag down in the hallway. When she saw me, she froze. I could tell she had been crying.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“If you change your mind, I’m here.”
She nodded and muttered her thanks and ran past me to her room.
A few hours later, I went to pick up Chase. While and he and Emma were playing one of his favorite board games, I decided to go check on Callie, who hadn’t emerged from her room since she came home earlier.
I knocked tentatively on the door.
“Hey, Callie. Can I come in?”
“Sure,” she called, her voice muffled.
I opened the door slowly and found her face down on her bed.
“Hey,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as soothing as possible. “What’s going on?”
She burst out into tears.
“I can’t do it without her, Lauren. I can’t. I miss her so much.”
I knew she was talking about her mom. I knew because I felt the same way about my dad.
“Come here,” I said, pulling her towards me. I hugged her tightly and stroked her hair as she cried into my shoulder.
“It’s just not fair,” she said. “I want her back.”
“I know sweetie, I know.”
She cried for a few minutes and then seemed to calm down.
“Can I tell you something?” She said, pulling away as she sniffled.
“Anything.”
“I found her.”
My heart fell.
“What?” I gasped.
She swallowed and looked at me seriously. I knew another wave of tears was about to come.
“I found her. It was the worst day of my life. I came home from school and kept calling her and she wouldn’t respond. So I went into her room and that’s where she was. I had to call the police and go and get Chase and Emma, it was so awful Lauren. I’ll never be able to wipe that day from my memory.”
I started to cry with her just thinking about it.
“Oh Callie,” I said, hugging her once more. “You’re so brave. That is probably the hardest thing you’ll ever have to go through in your life. I can’t even imagine.”
We sat there for a long time, her sniffling and me trying not to cry harder than she was.
“Can you help me?” she asked finally. “I can’t do it by myself.”
“Do what?”
“I need to clean out her room. We’ve just left it there, I haven’t touched anything since the day she died. It can’t say that way. She would want us to clean it out.”
I swallowed nervously, but I tried to look strong for Callie.
“Okay, we can do that,” I told her as calmly as I could.
I didn’t really know if I could even muster the courage to help Callie clean Linda’s bedroom− the room that she had shared with my father before he died, but I couldn’t leave her alone in this.
“If you want, you can even move upstairs,” Callie suggested. “You can live in their room.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know if any of us are ready for that yet.”
I wanted to tell her that I could never sleep in that room, but didn’t want to go into detail why.
“Can we just go in there?” Callie asked. “I just need to.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to be as brave as she was.
She got off the bed and I followed her down the hallway to the master bedroom. Taking a deep breath, she pulled on one knob of the double doors and pulled it open.
She let out a sigh and walked in.
I just stood outside of the doors, not wanting to budge.
“Lauren, are you coming?” she asked, turning on the lights.
I shook myself out of my reverie.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” I said, bracing myself. If Callie could be brave, so could I.
It was a beautiful room with high ceilings, a huge bed, and an on suite bathroom with a jacuzzi tub. There were picture frames absolutely everywhere. There were pictures of Chase playing baseball, of Emma sitting on a swing set, and of Callie getting ready for school dances. One picture in particular caught my eye. There were two dressers next to the bed, one on each side. One was clearly Linda’s, and the other held only a Bible and a picture of a little girl with long red hair standing in front of a boat. I touched it and dust came off on my fingers. I brushed it more so I could see the image more clearly. The boat behind the little girl read Annabelle, and this picture looked oddly familiar. Where had I seen it before?
My breath caught and I studied the little girl more closely.
No.
Why would Linda let a picture of me stay there? She always hated me.
I turned to see Callie running her hands over her mother’s vanity. She was sampling the perfume bottles kept there, no doubt remembering what her mom had worn on certain occasions.
I felt a sudden pang of jealousy. Although I had a mom and Callie didn’t, mine didn’t want me. She talked to Tucker, not me. She never once checked in on me when I was hurt, or wanted to wish me a happy New Year’s. My mom didn’t care.
There was an enormous dresser that I remembered my dad had when I was little. There were carvings of bears catching fish in a river on the top. I opened it slowly and saw that everything was still left inside. Much like Callie left her mom’s belongings, Linda had left my dad’s. All of his shirts still hung ironed and in their places, as though he was going to step out of the shower and put one on at any moment. Not only that, but they smelled like him. My eyes welled up remembering how he smelled when I hugged him, and how he returned covered in soot from the mine.
I pulled open the watch drawer. Inside were all of his most beloved trinkets, from his father’s watch to his fraternity pledge pin. There was a stack of pictures on one side, and I pulled them out to look at. They were all of me when I was little. Me coming down a slide on a playground, me fishing, me sitting on a rock by a river. When I got to the bottom picture, my heart flopped yet again. It wasn’t of me. It was of my father and a teenage boy who looked about sixteen. The boy had cuts all over his face and one of his eyes was blackened. He was smiling, but he was scared. He looked so familiar but I couldn’t place him. I put the pictures back, wondering who the boy was. It obviously wasn’t Tucker, because his hair was too dark. I pulled the picture out of the stack and tucked it into my pocket.
Callie had started going through Linda’s lipsticks when I moved on to another drawer.
There were a ton of different documents that I recognized. He always kept copies of things. His birth certificate, Tucker’s birth certificate, our social security card numbers, my birth certificate, and then another shock to the system. This was enough to send me to my knees.
“Lauren, what is it?” Callie saw me holding the piece of paper in my hand as I dropped to the ground staring at it. She rushed to my side.
“Callie,” I asked shakily. “What is your last name?”
I knew very well that it was Barlow.
“Barlow,” she said quickly. “Why?”
“What’s Chase’s last name?”
“Barlow,” she said. “I don’t get…oh.”
She trailed of
f when she saw what I had in my hand.
“What’s Emma’s last name?” I whispered, shaking.
Callie sighed.
“Lindsay.”
Tears fell from my eyes.
“You didn’t know,” she said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I shook my head and sat there crying. Callie pulled the birth certificate out of my hand so I wouldn’t get tears on it.
A few minutes later, I took it back.
Emmeline Rose Lindsay.
“Is Emma my sister?”
Callie nodded. “She’s our sister.”
“I thought Dean had told you,” Callie said softly.
I felt like I was going to throw up.
Dean?
“Wait,” I said, turning to Callie. “Why would Dean know about this?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know, because Dean was closer to your dad than anyone.”
My heart stopped, and then broke in half. This should have been welcome news, but he didn’t say anything. He’d just let me fall in love with him, and he didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure what this meant for us, but it was monumental.
I stood up and shoved Emma’s birth certificate at Callie.
“Was this some kind of joke that everyone was in on but me?”
Callie shook her head.
“No! Of course not! I hated you at the beginning, remember?”
I did. All too well.
“But no one said anything! Not you, not Jed, not Kenzie, not Dean!”
“I thought you knew!” Callie exclaimed, following me down the stairway.
“No,” I said, turning to her. “I had no idea. And now I feel like everything I’ve experienced while I’ve been here is a complete and total lie. You don’t just do that to someone.”
She put her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sure he just didn’t know how to tell you,” she said in his defense.
I scoffed.
“Oh right. I’m sure he did this on purpose, like it was some kind of game to him.”
“Lauren, I don’t think it’s like that at all,” Callie said. “I think he really does love you.”
I wanted to scream.
“I can’t do this,” I said, collapsing on the bottom stair as the tears came again. I had never felt so betrayed in my life. “I can’t do this.”
CALLIE AND I sat on the stairway trying to mend our broken hearts when Chase came by with a bowl of popcorn.
“We’re watching a movie now,” he said. “Are you guys okay?”
We nodded, both bleary eyed and sniffling.
“Okay then,” Chase said as he scooped another handful of popcorn out of the bowl in his hands. “By the way, Dean came by earlier. He was looking for Lauren.”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to talk to the traitor.
“Thanks Buddy,” I said. “Bedtime after the movie is over, okay?”
He nodded and went back to the other room.
“I just don’t understand,” I said. “Why wouldn’t he say anything? He had so many opportunities to tell me.”
A realization dawned on me.
“Callie, how long did he know my dad for?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know, a while. For as long as I knew them both.”
I pulled the picture from my dad’s dresser out of the pocket of my jeans.
“Is that Dean?” I said, pointing to the beat-up boy next to him.
Callie took the picture from me and gasped.
“Oh my god,” she said. “It’s totally him.” She handed it back to me. “Alright, that’s a little creepy, I’m not going to lie.”
“Thank you,” I said, putting it back in my pocket. “It’s seriously creepy.”
The letter was still in my back pocket, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it now that I knew Emma was my sister, and Dean had a friendship with my dad. Suddenly, everything made sense.
Emma. The money. Everything.
I thought back to when Dean and I were on his boat. The Annabelle. It was my father’s boat. Now it was Dean’s boat. My father had passed down the land onto Dean, and that’s why they were both so rich. They were the only ones who knew about the gold at the bottom of the lake. The house up there must be his, too. I felt so stupid. How had I not realized any of it before? They say every girl falls in love with the man who reminds her of her father, but this was taking it to another level.
I had to go confront him. My palms were sweaty at the thought, but it was the only way to find out why he didn’t say anything after all this time.
“Callie, I have to go find him.”
She nodded. “You go, girl.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. “I’m sorry I made this about me.”
She stood up.
“No, it’s okay. I feel better after going into her room.”
“Good,” I said as I hugged her tightly.
“Love you sis,” she whispered. I wanted to cry again at the fact that she said that. I pulled back and beamed at her.
“Love you too. I’ll be back in a little bit,” I told her.
I knocked on the door of Dean’s house only to find a panicked looking Jenny on the other side.
“Thank God, Lauren!” She said. “I can’t find Dean! Do you know where he is?”
I shook my head.
“No, I was looking for him actually. He hasn’t been around?”
“No!” She looked around wildly. I haven’t seen him since last night. He was acting really weird and saying something about a letter. He left all the lights on last night so I don’t think he really slept at all.
I instantly felt terrible.
“Oh god, this is all my fault.”
“Why is it your fault?” She pulled me inside out of the cold.
“I got mad at him because I didn’t understand why my dad would write Dean a letter like he wrote me. Well, it turns out that my dad and Dean were really close.”
She didn’t look surprised.
“Yeah, we all knew that.”
I threw my hands up in frustration.
“See, but I didn’t know that! I also didn’t know that Emma was my sister.”
“Woah, Emma’s your sister? Like for real?”
I nodded.
“I’ve had a lot of bombs dropped on me in the past few days. It’s been a little stressful. Anyway, we need to find Dean.”
“I’ve called him literally a hundred times,” she said, scrolling through her call log.
I pulled out my phone. I had four missed calls from him. I called him back but it didn’t help.
“Straight to voicemail,” I told her.
“No,” she said, starting to freak out. “If I lose him, I’m going to be all by myself again. I can’t do it, I can’t.” I could see the tears welling up in her eyes and I put my hands on her shoulders.
“First of all, you aren’t going to lose him. I’m sure his phone just died. Second, I would never let that happen to you, ever.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. Chase said that Dean came by my house earlier while Callie and I were talking. That was within the past few hours, so he can’t be far.”
She took a deep breath.
“The Range Rover is still parked in the garage, so he took the truck.”
“Okay,” I said, “Let’s get in the car.”
We drove around town for an hour, but we had no luck. Jenny said that once she found him at a bar, but that was all she knew of.
“Okay, if you were in his shoes, where would you go?” Jenny mused.
Where would he go? Then it dawned on me.
“Palmer Lake,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Palmer Lake,” I told her as I threw the car into gear.
“No! That’s so sketchy,” Jenny protested. “Especially at night! It’s haunted up there!”
“No,” I told her, speeding up the road. “It’s not haunted. That’s just
what they want you to think.”
“Who’s they?” Jenny asked.
“My dad and Dean.”
She looked perplexed. “Well, I hope you’re right. Because this is really weird.”
His car wasn’t anywhere at the Lake, and all of the lights in the house were off. After calling his name for a few minutes, I realized where we needed to go.
“Jenny,” I said as we got back in the car. “We have to go to the mine.”
Her face paled.
“Lauren, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Do you want to find your brother?”
She nodded frantically.
“Then we have to.”
I tried to be brave as I drove toward my least favorite place in the middle of the night.
By the time I pulled around the last bend on the road that led to the mine, my headlights flashed on another car.
“That’s his truck!” Jenny shouted, pulling on the door handle before I’d even turned off the engine. Her fear disappeared as she flung herself out of the car and ran toward it.
I followed and pulled my phone out for light.
“He’s not here,” she said, opening up the cab of the truck. “He’s not here!”
My heart beat faster.
“If he’s not in his truck, where is he?”
We both looked at the mouth of the mine.
“No,” I breathed. “He wouldn’t.”
Jenny started crying.
“He said he came up here sometimes to think,” she said. “Why would he go in there? Why?”
I hugged her and tried to calm her down even though I was on the edge of hyperventilating myself.
“Okay,” I said. “He’s fine. He goes in there all the time.”
“Yeah,” she said shrilly. “With other people when it’s light out.”
“But the mine is underground,” I said. “He’s used to it being dark.”
“But he doesn’t have any of his equipment,” she said desperately. “It’s all still in the closet at home. I would know if he took it out. Plus, he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t just go mining in the middle of the night all by himself!”
She was right. He was a boy scout to the core. He wouldn’t go in unprepared.
“Okay,” I told her. “I’m going to go call for him.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said, gripping my hand in the dark as we made our way toward the entrance.
I mustered every ounce of courage I’d ever had in my entire body and shouted.
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