The media circus around the school had dispersed, so I was able to go back with no issues. I sat with Ren at lunch, and we talked about Miranda’s recent bout of amnesia. I think I smiled the entire time, even though there was a sharp ache growing inside of me with each passing moment because I knew this couldn’t last. One way or another, no matter what I did to delay it, I was going to have to leave this place and these people. The only question was whether I’d be leaving them to go on the run or to prison.
After the final bell rang, I met Nicholas at the student parking lot as usual. When I was opening the passenger’s door of his car, he said, “We’re going to Patrick’s.”
I stopped. “What?”
“It’s time to look for those files,” he said.
Finding the file on Patrick from Robert’s filing cabinet was the last concrete item on Nicholas’s to-do list. He was hoping to find out what kind of trouble Patrick had been in as a teenager, in case it could be connected to what happened to Danny. But I knew it wasn’t, and what would Nicholas do when the last straw he had to grasp at was gone? How long would I last?
“Are you sure you want to do that today?” I asked over the roof of the car.
“I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tomorrow?” I said. “Ditch school and go in the morning when it’s less likely that Patrick will catch us?”
“No, I want to get this done,” Nicholas said.
“But traffic—”
“Patrick always works late on Wednesdays. Even after traffic we’ll have a solid hour or two to look around his apartment. That’s plenty of time. I already texted Lex that we’re going to the library.”
I looked back at the school. “Then I should get one of my textbooks so it looks like we were studying. I left them in my locker—”
“Just get in the car,” he said, 100 percent not buying my bullshit.
I had no choice. I got in the car, and Nicholas turned east out of the parking lot, away from Hidden Hills and toward Los Angeles.
Patrick’s apartment was in a brand-new building downtown. Nicholas admitted as we rode up in the elevator that he’d never been there before.
“He always comes to see us,” he said with a shrug. “He’s weird about his privacy.”
We found Patrick’s apartment on the top floor, at the end of the hall. Nicholas knocked first just to make sure he wasn’t home and then opened the door with the spare key he’d swiped from Lex’s key ring that morning. We crept inside like criminals, although this was pretty much the least criminal thing I’d done so far.
The apartment was nice. It was open and expensively finished, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the L.A. skyline and thoughtful touches to the decor that suggested someone with an eye for nice things had helped him put the place together. But it felt neglected and cold. There were a used bowl and spoon in the sink and a pile of mail and other bits and pieces scattered around that stood as evidence that Patrick did, in fact, live here, but somehow it felt empty and devoid of life.
“Brr,” Nicholas said. Whatever it was, he felt it too.
We started opening doors, looking for a likely place for Patrick to keep his files, and quickly found the home office. I looked through the drawers in the desk while Nicholas rummaged in the filing cabinet in the corner.
“There’s nothing here,” I said after a few minutes. “Just office supplies and work stuff.”
Nicholas slid closed the door of the filing cabinet. “Same here.” He opened the doors to the closet. “Oh, bingo.”
I joined him and looked down at the safe on the floor of the closet.
“Don’t suppose you know how to crack a safe?” he asked.
“Can’t say that’s in my skill set, no.”
“Well.” He sat down cross-legged in front of the safe. “I’ll just have to guess, then.”
Nicholas started entering numbers, and I went back to the desk.
“He may have written the combination down somewhere,” I said, rifling through the papers and Post-its on top of the desk. Maybe if I found the combination first, I could pocket it without Nicholas noticing.
Nicholas shook his head. “He would have picked something he could remember. Something with some kind of significance.”
Nicholas continued entering different combinations with serene patience. Whenever he pulled on the lever and it didn’t budge, he just moved on to a different set of numbers. Eventually, I got bored of watching and started to explore the rest of the apartment. I read the spines of the books on his shelves in the living room, mostly reference books and other lawyerly things but with a fair number of spy thrillers mixed in. There were lots of framed pictures of the family on the bookshelves as well. Mia blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Lex lying on a beach with Nicholas and Mia playing in the background. Nicholas and Jessica standing in front of what looked like a cathedral in some European city. A kind eyed man with two small children, which had to be Patrick and Lex with their father Ben McConnell. A teenage Lex with pink streaks in her hair, blowing a kiss at the camera.
No pictures of Danny.
I stuck my head back into the office. “How’s it going?”
“I’m gonna get it,” Nicholas said.
“It’s getting late.”
“We’ve got time.”
I wandered into Patrick’s bedroom. If the rest of the apartment felt neglected, this room was downright spartan. The only nod toward decoration was a couple of throw pillows that were piled in a corner where I’m betting they always stayed. The walls were a light gray. The bedspread was dark gray. There was a television on the wall, a lamp on the bedside table, and nothing else except for a silver picture frame that looked oddly out of place in such a stripped-down space. I turned the frame toward me to see what was inside.
It was a picture of Lex, lying with her cheek in the grass.
“Got it!” Nicholas cried from the other room.
Damn.
I replaced the photo and rushed into the office, where he was combing through the contents of the now open safe.
“What was it?” I asked.
“Lex’s birthday.” He handed me a folder. “Look familiar?”
It was a filing folder like the ones Robert had on all the kids. The handwritten label said PATRICK—LEGAL.
Damn damn damn.
There wasn’t much inside. Nothing like the stacks of papers that had been in Mia’s medical folder or Lex’s addiction folder. There was just one collection of a few sheets stapled together, verifying that the juvenile arrest records of Patrick Calvin McConnell had been sealed and expunged, along with a list of said arrests.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“What?” Nicholas leaned over my shoulder to read.
July 11, 2007—Possession of a controlled substance
February 4, 2008—Possession of a controlled substance
January 25, 2009—Criminal vandalism
November 2, 2009—Possession of a controlled substance
November 11, 2009—Assault and battery
December 23, 2009—Assault and battery
January 14, 2010—Trafficking of narcotics
March 18, 2010—Assault and battery
“Trafficking?” Nicholas said.
“And three assault arrests,” I said. I felt a little better. This would give Nicholas plenty of new things to investigate, all of them leading him away from the truth.
“We don’t know what that means though,” he said. “I mean, just touching someone is technically assault, right? Maybe there was—”
“There’s three of them,” I said, remembering the way Patrick had slapped Jessica. It had seemed so out of character at the time, but apparently it wasn’t. “This is exactly the kind of thing you wanted to look for here.”
Nicholas raked a hand through his hair. “I know. Shit. It’s one thing to want to know the truth and another thing . . .”
This looked bad for Patrick. If I had
n’t already known Jessica was the one responsible for Danny’s death, he would have gone straight to the top of my list of suspects. It was more than I could have hoped for.
“Maybe Patrick was up to something—doing drugs, dealing—and Danny found out,” I said. “Maybe he tried to blackmail him the same way he did you.”
Nicholas swallowed. “He did have a bad temper when he was younger. And he was a big guy, even at eighteen, and—and Danny was so small . . .”
I remembered the half-hysterical way Lex had insisted that Patrick wasn’t violent and would never hurt any of us the night he’d slapped Jessica, and Kai had told me Patrick used to get him pot. If Jessica hadn’t confessed, I’d buy this theory.
• • •
It’s funny how naive a person can be when they want to believe the lie they’re being fed. Even a liar like me, who should really know better.
Nicholas took pictures of all the documents in Patrick’s file and locked it back in the safe, and then we headed home to Hidden Hills. We were both quiet. We usually were, but the texture of it felt different this time. We were quiet because we were both too busy thinking, not because he didn’t want to talk to me. An hour later we arrived home, and Patrick’s car was in the driveway.
“Dammit,” Nicholas said. “What’s he doing here?”
We entered the house on tiptoe, and Nicholas immediately went for the stairs. Before he was halfway up though, Lex poked her head into the foyer.
“Hey, guys!” she said. “How was the library?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Well, come in here. Patrick skipped out on work to come over,” she said. “We’re just about to start dinner.”
Nicholas’s hand tightened around the banister. “I’m not really hungry—”
“Don’t be silly. We got your favorite.”
Nicholas shot me a look, and I shrugged faintly. He couldn’t hide forever, and trying to would only make them suspicious.
The two of us followed Lex into the dining room, where Mia, Patrick, and Jessica were already seated with containers of Thai takeout in the center of the table. The whole family.
Maybe Nicholas had had the right idea after all.
It wasn’t unprecedented for Jessica to join us for a meal, but it was rare. Our eyes met, and I forced myself to give her a small smile. If I wanted her on my side, I needed her to understand that I was here to protect her and her children, not threaten them. She looked away.
Nicholas sat down stiffly in his usual chair, which was next to Patrick, who sat at the head of the table. I sat beside Lex, who passed me a container of green chicken curry, and dinner began. I was more acutely aware than ever of what a farce it all was. I was an impostor who didn’t belong here at all, something most of the people around this table knew but pretended not to. Across from me was Nicholas, who was keeping my secret as well as his own, that he was leaving in just a few shorts months with no intention of coming back. Then there was Lex, the consummate actress and drug addict, and Patrick, the apparently upstanding lawyer with the history of violence. And of course Jessica, the alcoholic and the drunken driver who’d killed her own child. Even Mia, through no fault of her own, was the child of secrets and lies.
But on the outside we looked so perfect. When Mia told a story, our smiles all seemed genuine. When Lex shot me an affectionate wink as she passed me the rice, the warmth in my chest felt real. How could it feel so true when it was all built on bullshit?
I watched Jessica closely. Out of nowhere a thought occured to me. She was drinking a sparkling water instead of her usual glass of wine. Why had I believed her when she told me she’d killed Danny? It was the first time I’d asked myself the question, and I could hardly believe it. Jessica had done nothing but lie since I stepped foot in this house, but on this point I believed her unquestioningly? How I could I be so stupid? Maybe she was still trying to protect Danny’s real killer, another son she could save, one with a criminal past and a promising future. That’s what she’d been doing ever since I’d gotten here, wasn’t it? Protecting Danny’s killer by pretending to believe my act? Maybe her confession was just one more façade.
“You okay?” Lex asked me softly while Patrick told the table about something that had happened at work that day.
I nodded.
She smiled and reached for my hand under the table, giving it an affectionate squeeze. My stomach turned over at the touch. Because it was fake and because I was so, so scared of the moment when I would lose it.
As soon as dinner was over, I ran up to Danny’s room, hands trembling as I locked the door behind me. I wanted it to be real. This stupid sham of a family. I wanted it to be real and to be a part of it more than I’d ever wanted anything, and it was killing me.
I saw Jessica smiling at me from across the table at Mélisse, and then I blinked and saw her crumpled car smoking from its collision with the planter in the driveway, its collision with a red and gold bicycle, its collision with the body of a little boy. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Saw Patrick’s hand fisted around the gearshift of the Jag as he took us for a joyride down the Pacific Coast Highway and saw his fist slamming into someone’s face. Danny’s face, maybe. Just a little boy who could never deserve something like that. A little boy who’d been hit before, so many times that he flinched whenever he heard a loud noise. A little boy hidden in the back of a closet, biting his lip to try to stop himself from crying, because he knew crying would only make it worse . . .
I was shaking all over. My arms prickled with gooseflesh. It was always so fucking cold in this house with this goddamn air-conditioning. I’d grown up in the snow, and my blood and bones were cold enough without it. I couldn’t remember ever having been warm.
There was a knock at my door.
“It’s me,” Nicholas said. “Open the door.”
“Go away,” I said.
“Open the door!”
I opened the door.
“You okay?” Nicholas asked. “You rushed off pretty suddenly.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well then let me in,” he said, pushing his way into the room, “because I’m freaking out a little here, and you’re the only one I can talk to about it.”
He must have been freaking out more than a little if he wanted to talk to me. He went to the window and then the desk and then the bed, like he was looking for something but couldn’t remember what it was.
“That dinner was extra weird, right?” he said. “I’m sitting there and everyone’s being nice and getting along for once, and all I can think about is how they’re all liars and one of them killed my brother. I’m, like, mesmerized watching Patrick cut his chicken, and for some reason I keep thinking about the time Dad took us boys camping and Danny and Patrick spent hours building a raft to send down the river and wanting so bad to join them but being afraid to let them see it.” He sat down on Danny’s bed and buried his hands in his hair. “Maybe you were right before. Maybe I don’t want to know what really happened.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor, facing him. This was an opportunity. Nicholas was usually so calm, so certain, nothing like the half-wild boy on the bed. With his walls in ruins at his feet, I could convince him to give up on his search for the truth of Danny’s fate or to search twice as hard. Whichever would keep me here longer, if I only knew which one that was.
But I was just . . . too tired. Too weary of games and of having nothing real to hold on to. Of bracing myself to lose everything when the truth was I didn’t really have any of it in the first place.
“It’s up to you,” I said, “but I think you know what you want.”
He sighed heavily. “I need to find the truth. For Danny.”
“You’re a good brother,” I said. If I’d had a brother, would he be trying to find out what had happened to me? Would he have kept watching TV when he heard I’d died?
Nicholas’s smile was bitter. “Try to convince Patrick of that.”
“You’r
e only doing what you have to.”
“I guess,” he said. “It’s nice of you to say, at least.”
“I’m never nice,” I said.
“You’re not that bad,” he said. “Not always.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked. “You’ve been totally civil to me lately, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
He lay back on the bed. “I guess I just don’t have the energy to hate you right now, not when I need your help. I mean, don’t get me wrong. What you did was fucked up and I can never forgive it, but . . . it just pales in comparison to what they did.”
I looked down at the rug.
“Plus . . .” He continued, propping himself up on one hand and looking down at me. “I think, deep down, you’re probably not a completely terrible person. I might have even liked you if we’d met a different way.”
There was a brutal burning in that spot in my chest that used to be a wonderfully numb hole that never pained me.
Maybe if I wanted this to be real—for anything in my life to be real—I had to do something about it.
“Nicholas,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I want to be honest with you,” I said.
That laugh again, the humorless little huff of air. “Really?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He looked at my face and then sat up. “Shit. What is it?”
“Your mom told me something,” I said. “She was wasted and she thought I was Danny and she . . . apologized.”
His face was like something breaking in slow motion. “For what?”
I took a breath. “For hitting me with her car.”
Nicholas slowly curled in on himself, resting his forehead on his knees until his face was hidden from me. I told him every word Jessica had said to me about how she’d warned Danny not to ride his bike in the driveway after dark, and for a minute the room was still and silent except for his harsh breathing. Then he looked up, something fierce and fragile in his expression.
“So it was an accident,” he said. “No one murdered Danny. It was just a terrible accident.”