Chapter 57
Luke
I pull my bike into Allison’s driveway and skid to a halt, sweaty and out of breath. I open her garage door with the key code and bring my bike inside. I’m heading for the door to the house when she startles me.
“I’m here,” she says, on her knees in the garage, holding her SUV’s front license plate.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it. Forget you saw it.” She places the license plate on the front seat of the car.
“What’s in the bag?” I ask, nodding to Finley’s old gym bag, if memory serves.
“Same answer.” She turns and looks at me.
I’ve seen that expression before. At my detention hearing, my preliminary hearing, other times I’ve watched her in action. All business. Focused. That’s her game face. Her trial face.
Her eyes are rimmed red, not from crying but from holding it back, containing her emotions.
“Did Grayson…do this?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “I can’t imagine…”
She throws the bag in the passenger seat of her car. “Grayson did not kill his father,” she says, as if it were an absolute truth, beyond debate. She pushes me toward the door that leads into the house.
We take the stairs up through the mudroom into the family room.
“Gray called me last night,” I tell her.
“He saw Finley with another woman in a restaurant. He asked me what was going on between you two. I told him to call you. He said he would. He told me not to get involved. So I didn’t.
But I should have called you. I could have prevented this. ”
She takes that in, a slight flicker of exasperation in her expression, but she’s laser-focused right now. There is business at hand. “Did you do as I asked?”
“Yes,” I say. “I rode my bike here and left my phone at home. Why did I do that?”
“Because you were never here,” she says. “They can track your phone. If your phone was home all night, then so were you. And there are cameras all over the place recording license plates. They don’t record bicycles. As far as anyone would know, you never left your house.”
“I was home all night. That’s important?”
Her chin lowers slightly. She stares directly into my eyes.
“If you’re not willing to say that, Luke, and that includes to the police some time down the road, then leave right now.
” Her voice is low, but it vibrates with something fierce, unshakable.
“You may have to lie to the police. Tell me now if you can’t do it. ”
“You think Grayson did this, don’t you?”
“That…” She holds up a hand. “That is not an option. Listen up.” She hands me her phone.
“You call Grayson on my phone and keep him calm while I drive to the condo. When I get there, I’ll take Gray’s phone, and you and I can talk.
There are a few more things I’ll need from you, but you’ll just be using my phone, sitting right here in my house. ”
“Wait—you’re not taking your phone? Why not?”
“Because just like you were at your house all night, I was at mine all night.”
And that’s also why she unscrewed the front license plate of her car. She leaves her phone here in Grace Village, she drives down to the city without being detected by the license-plate cameras.
She’s planning a cover-up. There’s only one reason she’d do that.
“You do think Grayson did this,” I say.
“Luke, enough—”
“Not some intentional thing. Gray would never. But maybe a…an accident. They started arguing. It turned violent. Grayson was pretty pissed off. Maybe it wasn’t planned. Maybe it was self-defense—”
“Maybe I killed him,” she says.
The words drop between us with a thud. For a long beat, I just stare at her.
“I was at the condo this afternoon,” she says. “That’s fact. Lobby cameras captured me. Maybe I killed him and left in a panic. Then Gray found him, so now I’m doing the right thing.”
Her face is pale, her lips pressed tight, but her eyes—her eyes don’t match the words.
I’ve seen her in court enough times. I’ve seen her bluff a jury, seen her peel truth from a hostile witness, seen her weave and bob and, through the sheer force of will, bend people to her truth.
But this—this is something else. Her eyes hold steady, but there is tension at the corners of her mouth.
Desperation, yes. Fear, no doubt. But guilt?
“Bullshit,” I say. “I don’t believe it.”
“But the police would.” Her eyebrows rise. “A bitter breakup. Fights over money. Adultery and betrayal and jealousy and hurt. The story practically writes itself.”
“So you’re gonna…make sure the evidence points to you?”
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “I won’t know until I see how bad it looks for him. Once I have the facts, I’ll create the narrative. Now I have to go.”
I grab her arm as she leaves. “You can’t do this, Allison. Don’t do this.”
She rips her arm free, her eyes lit up. “This is my son. He is the only priority here. The only priority. Tell me you understand. Tell me you accept those terms. Or walk away now, and I’ll figure out some way to do this myself.
I know how pissed off you are at me. I know I’ve disappointed you.
But this is family. This is life or death. So decide right now, Luke. In or out?”
It doesn’t take me long to answer. And part of it, yes, is that I blame myself for not talking to Allison last night after Gray called me, for not nipping this problem in the bud before it got this far.
But it’s more than that. No matter what we’ve done to each other.
No matter how much we’ve hurt each other.
We are blood. When the ground drops out, we show up without being asked, we sit together in silence, we wrap our arms around each other, we do whatever it takes.
It’s messy, imperfect, but when it matters, we close ranks.
We choose each other, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
“I’m in,” I say.