Dani stared at the girls, completely astonished. She had always thought them such nice girls. They had been kind to Silver since they moved to Haven Point, the two girls Dani had considered Silver’s closest friends.
Why would they do something like this?
She looked over at Silver and was further shocked to realize her daughter didn’t seem particularly surprised, almost as if she had been expecting something like this.
“How did you know my combination?”
Emma spoke up. “You gave it to me that time when I needed extra space to put all that stuff for my country presentation in Spanish class about Mexico, remember? The piñata and the sombrero and the sodas we bought at the market.”
“She still had the combination on her phone,” Ella confessed. “We just opened your locker before third hour and stuck it in there.”
“And then I called Vice Principal Andrews with the anonymous tip,” Emma said, her voice breaking a little. “It was a dumb thing to do and we’re really sorry.”
“Super sorry,” Ella said. She looked at her sister’s distress and tears began to leak out of her eyes, too. Their reactions appeared genuine, but Dani was still so stunned, she couldn’t be quite sure.
“We thought maybe you would get detention and that’s all.”
“We never thought you’d be suspended,” Ella said. “When I heard Vice Principal Andrews telling the secretaries this morning that you would probably have to go to juvie after the New Year, I thought I was going to throw up.”
“Is that when you decided to tell the truth?” Dani asked, still reeling.
The girls looked at each other, then at Ruben. “N-not exactly,” Ella admitted.
“But we probably would have told the truth, even if Officer Morales hadn’t pulled us out of class after lunch and took us into the office so he could tell us he knew we did it.”
“He gave us a big lecture about how bad it was to let somebody else suffer for something we did. It was really scary.”
“He said how disappointed our mom would be in us to know that while she is fighting for her life, we are doing bad stuff with the life we’ve been given and blaming other people.” Emma started to cry again and her twin squeezed her fingers.
“He said how, if we had any character at all, we would tell the truth about stealing the money jar and...and everything else.”
“Everything else?” Silver looked stunned and, if Dani wasn’t mistaken, guilty.
Emma sniffled. “Yeah. He said we should tell him everything. We had to, if we wanted to make things right.”
“We didn’t want to but...but it was the right thing to do. So we told him we were with you that night with the spray paint and that it was our idea in the first place.”
Dani sat back, not sure she could take any more surprises. “Ella and Emma were the girls out with you that night.”
Of course. She should have realized. She remembered Silver telling her they weren’t hanging out anymore. Maybe they felt guilty that Silver had been caught while they had gotten off scot-free.
“It was all our fault, Dr. Capelli,” Ella said.
“Sil didn’t want to go, but we made her. We told her she was a baby if she didn’t and we...we were going to tell everyone at school about her dad.”
Her dad. Silver had told them about Tommy and the girls had used the truth about his crimes as a weapon against her.
Dani closed her eyes and cursed a blue streak in her head, the words she didn’t say anymore. This was worse than she could have imagined. Far worse.
She opened her eyes and realized Mia was sitting on the chair closest to the Christmas tree, watching the whole proceeding with a kind of baffled interest.
Dani didn’t want her here for this discussion. She was only six years old, an innocent who still believed in Santa Claus and Christmas miracles and happy endings. She didn’t need this kind of ugliness in her world.
“Mia, honey, would you go in your room and play with Wink and Pia for a little while?”
Her chin jutted out. “But I want to talk to Ruben.”
“I really need you to watch Wink. Just for a minute, pumpkin, okay?”
She huffed out a breath but picked up her doll. “Come on, Winky,” she said, and dragged both doll and dog to her room, where she closed the door.
When Mia was out of earshot, Dani turned to her older daughter. “You told them about your father.”
Silver’s chin trembled and her eyes looked guilty. “I know you told me I shouldn’t tell anyone, but I was at their house one day and the TV news was on and they did a story about one of the kids whose dad was killed going back to school and...and I felt so awful and...and sad it all slipped out. But they promised not to tell.”
“We didn’t,” Emma assured her. “We only said that so she would come with us that night, but we would never tell, I promise, Dr. Capelli.”
The word would get out. They might think they weren’t breaking a confidence by telling one girl. And then that girl would tell another and that girl would tell another, and in a flash the entire school would know the horrible truth.
Dani tried not to panic. This wasn’t the time for it.
Some part of her wondered if it would be better to come clean with everyone in town about Tommy and take their chances about how people might react. Getting in front of the truth might be better than this constant fear of exposure.
She suspected Ruben was right. There would certainly be people in town who would inevitably think less of her, who would lump her and her daughters in with Tommy and his horrible final acts. To certain people, like perhaps the vice principal at the middle school and others like him, Silver would always be considered poisoned fruit dangling from a criminally inclined tree.
Dani accepted her own culpability in ever hooking up with Tommy in the first place when she was a needy, starved-for-love teenager, but she absolutely hated the idea of anyone thinking less of her daughters, who were truly innocent of the entire situation.
She wanted to think most people would be like Frank and Myra Morales. They wouldn’t blame her or her girls for the actions of a man who hadn’t been part of their lives in years.
It wouldn’t be a universally held position, she knew, but maybe they were tough enough to handle the whispers and gossip of the few.
She could worry about that later. Right now, she needed to hear what these girls had come here with Ruben to tell them.
“All right. So you were there that night on the little graffiti spree. I still don’t understand why you stole the money jar and tried to pin it on Silver.”
The girls started to cry again, so hard that Ruben placed a hand on each shoulder. Just as it did for Dani, his presence seemed to steady them, even when he was being stern and forbidding.
“It was so stupid and mean and wrong and we should never have done it,” Ella said through her sobs.
“We thought she had told on us for the vandalism, especially when we saw your family with Deputy Morales at the boat parade.”
“We kept thinking you were going to come and arrest us,” Ella said with another sniffle.
“We...we thought that if Silver got in trouble for something else, nobody would believe her if she said the graffiti was our idea.”
“We just didn’t want our mom to know we did such a bad thing. Dad made us promise we wouldn’t do anything to upset our mom, so we could have the best Christmas for her.”
“It might be our last one with her and we...we didn’t want to get caught,” Emma said. “But we just made everything worse.”
Dani swallowed. Their convoluted reasoning made no sense, but then, she wasn’t thirteen years old, dealing with a seriously ill parent.
She wanted to be furious with the girls, and some part of her was, but she couldn’t help a deep sense of sorrow for the hard times their family
was going through. She had been younger than Emma and Ella but she vividly remembered that terrible, helpless feeling as her mother grew more and more ill.
“Here’s the thing, girls,” Ruben said, his voice solemn. “Silver never once told me who was with her the night of the vandalism. She took all the blame and did all the cleanup by herself.”
If possible, the girls looked even more guilty.
“I asked her a dozen times and she would never say a word,” he continued. “She protected you. She insisted she was by herself, even though I heard you guys that night and knew she wasn’t alone.”
“We’re so sorry, Sil,” Emma said.
“Really, really sorry,” her sister added.
“We shouldn’t have said that about your dad, that we would tell people. We would never do that, I swear.”
“I still don’t know why you care if people know, though,” Ella said. “It’s not like what he did is your fault. I mean, you’re just a kid and you barely knew him. How can anybody blame you?”
“It’s not your fault, any more than it’s our fault our mom has cancer. It might make you sad and stuff, and that’s okay, but it’s not your fault.”
Dani felt as if Emma’s words suddenly unlocked a door in front of her, showing her something profound and simple on the other side.
Ruben had tried to tell her but she hadn’t let the truth seep in. Somehow hearing it from these young girls made her see the situation with stronger clarity.
Tommy’s choices were not her fault and they weren’t Silver’s. She didn’t want her daughters to carry guilt over them for the rest of their lives, to forever feel as if they were somehow tarnished because of their father’s actions.
She didn’t want it for her daughters and she didn’t want it for herself.
And if she wanted them to be free of Tommy forever, she couldn’t hide in fear from the things he had done as if she—or they—were somehow responsible.
She wasn’t.
Silver wasn’t.
Mia certainly wasn’t.
Part of being free of the past meant owning it. Not hiding in fear but being open with those who cared about them, trusting that they would accept that inviolable truth as well.
Since coming to Haven Point, Dani had been so afraid to trust anyone. She could blame it on her insecure foster care upbringing or her own bad choice in relationships, but the result was isolation and loneliness.
At some point, she would have to take that leap, as much as it scared her.
“We’re really sorry,” Emma said. “After we told Deputy Morales the truth, we told Vice Principal Andrews. He didn’t want to believe us at first.”
“Yeah, he said we were only covering up for our friend.”
Emma grinned a little through her tears. “But then Deputy Morales yelled at him and told him he was a small-minded swear word and if he didn’t do everything possible to clear your name, Deputy Morales would personally see to it that he was demoted back to teaching health class.”
“You did that?” Silver looked stunned.
Ruben shifted. “You were innocent and he refused to accept it. I couldn’t allow him to continue smearing your reputation at school.”
“Wow. Thanks.” Silver smiled at him with the same kind of adoration her sister might have offered.
Ruben cleared his throat. “Okay, girls. You’ve apologized. Your dad is waiting out in the car for you.”
“What’s going to happen now?” Silver asked.
“It’s a little too early to say for sure. I don’t believe the county attorney will want to charge them with anything, especially because the money was all accounted for and has already been sent to the charity for hurricane relief. I’ll talk to him and see if we can avoid charges, as long as you girls agree to community service for the vandalism, the theft of the donation jar and your attempts to pin it on an innocent friend.”
“Yes, sir,” they both said together. The girls appeared contrite, chastened by the reality of what they had done. Dani hoped they were.
“Will...will you ever forgive us, Silver?” Emma asked.
Beside Dani, her daughter gave a little shrug. “Probably. For now, I still want to be mad and hurt for a couple of days.”
Ruben’s gaze met hers and Dani saw an amusement that matched her own over Silver’s honesty. His amusement quickly faded, replaced by something stark and unbearably sad.
She ached, knowing she had caused that look.
“Our dad took our phones for, like, ever when he had to pick us up at the school,” Ella said. “We can’t call you, but maybe we could come over during Christmas break and hang out and stuff. We can try to borrow our dad’s phone and call you.”
“Maybe,” Silver said, with little enthusiasm.
The girls seemed to accept that. “Okay,” Emma said. “I guess we’ll see you later.”
Ruben walked them to the door and watched as they climbed into a waiting vehicle in the driveway before turning back to Silver and Dani.
“How did you finally figure out it wasn’t me?” Silver asked after the door closed behind the Larkin twins.
“I never thought it was you. Not for a single second,” Ruben said. “You told me yesterday you didn’t do it and I believed you. That’s what I said on the way to the vet clinic, remember?”
“I thought you were just saying that.” Silver looked as if reality still hadn’t sunk in.
“I wish you had trusted me. It’s kind of my job to get to the bottom of things, remember? I told you I would figure out who really stole the jar.”
Dani felt sick inside all over again, remembering how she had accused Ruben of jumping to conclusions because of Tommy.
“I should have believed you,” Silver said.
“You should have. It’s never a sign of weakness to trust somebody to help you out when you need it.”
Silver reached out and hugged him tightly. “Thanks.”
He hugged her back, eyes soft. “You’re welcome, kiddo.”
“Seriously. How did you know it was them?” Silver asked.
Ruben gave a rough-sounding laugh. “If you want the truth, I didn’t have any idea who was behind it yesterday, I only knew it wasn’t you. Then something happened last night.”
“What was it?” Dani had to ask.
He gazed at her, his expression guarded. “Because somebody was mad at me, I had to do the Secret Santa delivery by myself. While I was out there lurking about, I happened to notice that the Larkin’s mailbox was spray painted red. The exact shade of red I cleaned off The Wonder a few weeks ago. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before, but maybe it was because I wasn’t the one doing the deliveries this year.”
“I never even noticed that,” Silver admitted.
“Again, it’s my job to notice things. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. I guessed that they were the ones who provided the spray paint. I imagine they found it in their garage or something.”
Silver flushed a little. “I didn’t want to do the graffiti. I thought it was dumb but they really wanted to, for some reason. They were mad at Miss Grimes because she sent Ella to detention. I thought that’s all we were going to do, then they wanted to do the other places and I...I didn’t say no. So that makes it my fault as much as theirs. My mom always says going along is the same as saying yes.”
“Your mom is right about that,” Ruben said gruffly. “I also remembered your strange reaction when I told you the Larkins would be the family we planned to help with the twelve days of Christmas. You mentioned something about how you weren’t really hanging out with the twins anymore. With that kind of response, I had to suspect something must have happened between you and them.”
“They were afraid I was going to tell on them, even though I didn’t. I thought they were just being wussies. I didn’t even think about how m
aybe they were worried about upsetting their mom.”
“Even though you guys were mad at each other, you stepped up to do the Secret Santa deliveries for them anyway. That took guts, kiddo.”
Dani thought she had been proud of her daughter for holding her head up against unjust accusations earlier, but that paled in comparison to this moment, knowing her daughter had been willing to do a kind thing for two girls who had treated her abominably.
Silver had taken the high road, focusing not on her own hurt feelings but on the tough time the Larkins were going through because of their mother’s illness.
Dani hugged her and for once, Silver didn’t pull away but leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“So you figured out Ella and Emma were likely involved with the graffiti. I still don’t understand how you were able to make the leap from the spray paint to them stealing the collection jar,” Dani said.
“Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I went over the list the school had given me of all the students who had been in the office around the time the money disappeared. I discovered Ella was an office aide the hour just before the disappearance, which gave her plenty of access and opportunity. I told you before, I don’t believe in coincidences. I couldn’t figure out a motive at that point, but I thought if I talked to the girls, I could maybe get there.”
He gave a slight chuckle. “For the record, Vice Principal Andrews was not in favor of me taking the girls out of class and questioning them, but I went ahead and did it anyway. I don’t think I’m going to be on his Christmas list this year.”
Silver and Ruben grinned at each other and Dani felt emotion swell up in her throat.
She wanted to throw her arms around him, to thank him from the bottom of her heart for believing in her child when he had every reason not to. They owed him so much. She couldn’t even hope to find the right words.
“Ruben, I...”
Before she could complete the sentence, she heard Winky’s claws on the hardwood floors of the hall and a moment later the dog came into the room, trying desperately to shake off the Santa hat Mia must have put on her.
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