Epilogue
Okay. I’m done.
I hit send on the text message and roll off my bed. As I head out the back door, Valencia calls to me and I stop. She pokes
her head through the kitchen doorway.
“Still feeling up to . . .” She pauses. Tentative, as though she doesn’t want to say what she’s asking, and who could blame
her? She finally seems to settle on something and says, “This afternoon?”
“As long as you are.”
She sighs and it sounds like she isn’t, but still she nods. “Now or never, and never really isn’t an option.”
True. “I’m going to talk to Miles and then we can go.”
She gives me a loving smile and I head out to the fence where he’s already waiting for me, pulling anxiously at his fingers.
“So?” he asks before I even reach him. “Did you hate it? Do you hate me?”
I laugh and something twists in my stomach at the thought. Because I don’t think I could ever hate him.
“I did not and I do not.”
In fact, listening to his voice for seven hours has made me realize how much I missed him over the past few weeks.
Even after our house was no longer an active crime scene, Miles said we all shouldn’t be seen together until the cops stopped coming around.
And we definitely couldn’t text anything about what happened, in case they figured out our lies somehow and subpoenaed our phone records.
“You’re saying that to be polite.” He says it like he’s joking, but I can see in his face he thinks I really might be. So
I shake my head.
“I promise you I’m not. I mean, I did hate listening to myself.” The interview he did with me was the only time I’ve really
seen him since everything with Easton went down. But the interview for his podcast was fake. And so was the story we told.
Creating the lies that followed the fire was harder than actually selling them. Probably because Easton didn’t have a chance
to cover his tracks this time around. He’d left Agent Grant’s body in the kitchen. Easton had planned on framing me as the
psychopath, leaving no one alive to counter his version of events. Unfortunately for him, Valencia, Miles, and I all told
the same general story.
Miles told the police he was planning a true crime podcast about my kidnapping and had showed up to interview me when everything
went down. We told them that Easton confessed to killing JT, so his family knows the truth. We used that as the reason I contacted
Agent Grant. They did ask why Easton would kill Grant in front of me but not kill me and Miles right then and there. We said
it was because he planned to frame me for the murders, leaving himself as the only survivor.
From there, Valencia sold most of it. She confessed all the warning signs she ignored in Easton as a child. And how he learned to mask them as he got older. She also used Nate’s disappearance as an example of how he didn’t respond the way most kids would to such a situation.
But for the police investigating the deaths of Agent Grant, JT, and now Marcus Beaumont, that seemed to be enough. They stuck
around for a few weeks, returning on several occasions to ask us follow-up questions—with our lawyers present—and then, last
week, the case was closed.
That was it.
It almost felt too easy, but then Miles reminded us of how the police work. For them, it was a numbers game. They had an open
case, a dead suspect, and three eyewitnesses who gave the same story. Even if the story was batshit, it meant they could close
the case and be done with it. Then put a tally mark in their imaginary case-closed column. And it could become an interesting
story for them to tell at parties: the psycho kid who tried to kill his family. And let’s be honest—without us telling them
what to believe, they wouldn’t be able to do it on their own.
Who could blame them? Is it easier to believe that a ten-year-old killed his little brother, got away with it, and almost
ten years later, a queer homeless kid stole his brother’s identity? Or is it easier to believe that one kid with psychopathic
tendencies snapped and killed a few people after his missing brother returned, upending the life he’d had for the last ten
years?
I know which was easier for the police.
“No one likes their own voice,” Miles says. “But you promise you didn’t hate it?”
“Yes. Why are you so worried?” I know my relationship with Miles is new, but he isn’t the type to be modest or even feign modesty to get a compliment.
He bites his lip and shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess because . . . I might be having some second thoughts.”
“On?”
“Releasing the episodes. I’m not sure I want to.”
Okay, that actually surprises me. I scramble, trying to figure out the logic. “You spent all those hours recording and editing.
Why let it go to waste?”
“Because it’s not real?” He looks at me and I can see it again. The shell-shocked way he looked weeks ago, after we were free
of the boathouse. “I still have nightmares. All the things he did, what he tried to do to me—I think about it all the time.”
I reach over the fence and take his hand, because I know what he means. I think about it, too. So does Valencia. The constant
thoughts of What if the gun wasn’t loaded? What if he didn’t want to brag about killing Nate to his parents and killed us all instead of gloating? What if I didn’t
have the house key in my pocket or couldn’t get free?
But none of that is helpful because the gun was loaded. We did get free, and Easton’s own pride really was his downfall.
The verse from Proverbs echoes in my mind: Be assured, he will not go unpunished.
“Do you want to know what helps me when I start to freak out about all that?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer but gives me a
curious look that tells me to go on. “How lucky I am to still be here. And yes, like your podcast, there are parts of my life
that aren’t real. But the important parts are. Valencia loves me, and that’s nice to have.”
Miles looks . . . almost impressed? And when he smiles at me, it’s genuine. “Well, that settles it. I’m deleting the episodes.”
I flinch, and my jaw hangs open as I try to understand him. “Wait, why?”
He takes my other hand and pulls me closer to the fence. “Because you’re right. The important parts are real, like Valencia
and . . . also you.”
“Obviously that’s not true.”
“It is.” He stares at me, and it takes me a second to realize what he’s saying. “I know you came here as Nate and . . . well,
yeah, technically you’re still Nate.”
“My real name—”
“Doesn’t matter anymore. You said the important parts are real, but what’s the point in telling the story if it’s not all
true?”
“That’s some strong journalistic integrity you got there.”
“I know, I should get a Pulitzer. Too bad no one will ever know.” He looks down. “Except me, because I know who you are. Who
you really are, Nate. And I’m glad you’re here.”
His eyes meet mine. Maybe I am happy I’m here, too. Miles leans forward and I meet him. Our lips touch, gently at first, like
we both aren’t sure if we should be doing this. But then it’s like our bodies have been wanting this our whole lives. And
Miles is the first boy I’ve ever kissed, so yes. For me, I have been wanting this my whole life.
His hands go to my cheek and my neck. I reach around to the small of his back and pull him against the fence separating us.
Our lips open to each other. At first, Miles’s body is tense and taut, but as our kiss continues, he relaxes into me.
And me into him. The nervous energy is eventually pushed aside and all I feel is the explosion of excitement in my stomach, the beat of my heart, and every amazing thing all at once.
Because yeah, when I wake up from those nightmares about Easton where the gun isn’t loaded or I can’t free myself—in the darkest
parts of the night—I think maybe I should have just stayed with my real family, and we would have avoided all that trauma.
But in moments like this, where I’m being more myself than ever before, it’s worth it. Despite every awful thing, I can finally
be who I really am.
Valencia and I beach the kayak on the island and hop out. This time, we brought backpacks with water and tied the shovels
to them. I untie the shovel on my pack and lead her into the woods in silence.
We reach the clearing with the felled tree, and it’s kind of a mess. The holes Miles and I dug six weeks ago are still there,
and the broken fort is shoved against the tree.
Valencia looks back at me, and I take her to the hole where Nate still lies.
I expect her to react like Miles did. Knowing Nate is out here is one thing, but seeing what’s left of Nate makes it all so much more real. But all she does is sigh and crouch down at the edge of the hole. She
reaches out carefully to put a hand on the center of Nate’s chest.
Then she closes her eyes and holds it there.
This feels like a private moment, like I shouldn’t be here. But I am Nate now. We’re brothers. So I stay.
“Okay,” Valencia says. “Let’s get him buried.
” I help her lift what remains of Nate’s small, nearly weightless body out of the hole, and Valencia wraps him in the baby blanket she brought him home from the hospital in.
We carry it back to the clearing, where we gently set him down.
Valencia points to the hole by the tree where the fort originally stood, and we start digging deeper.
It takes a few hours to make the hole wider—and we don’t go a full six feet down—but we get a decent-sized grave dug for Nate
and then lean the shovels against the tree. We carefully move him again, placing him in a grave that feels more purposeful
than the one Easton left him in.
“What if someone finds him?” I say. We talked about what to do several times over the last few weeks, but this was the only
solution we came up with. We thought about cremating him ourselves and mixing his and Marcus’s ashes together, but Miles told
us how hot the flame would need to be and that there would still be bones left without a crematorium doing the work.