Thirty Four
Brynn Levine wanders the grocery store. She wishes she didn’t have to carry her loss alone. For a while, she wasn’t alone. She could always talk to Phil about her parents, and she did. She constantly invited him and Arielle to her dinner parties.
Now, Phil’s gone for good.
She fills her grocery cart with juice, cookies, and granola bars. Everything the perfect Arielle would never touch.
“Hey, Brynn,” someone says. Brynn plasters a smile on her face, happy and inviting, the face everyone sees and loves her for.
She’s startled to find Fox between her and the chocolate chip cookies.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Who’s with Jamie?”
“Arielle, Madeline and Damian.” Fox shrugs and Brynn squints back. She can’t believe he came to the store to look for her.
Fox rubs his neck. Brynn knows it’s from where his mask irritates his skin, making it constantly itchy. She tries to make him moisturize, but he never listens.
“I just wanted to talk to you about everything,” he says. “We haven’t caught up in the last couple days, and I had to get out of there.”
Fox is a talented liar—almost as good as she is.
She can trust him now that he’s hurting, though.
He needs her. Besides, he hadn’t known about their parents.
She’d thought maybe he had, after he started working with Phil, but as soon as he led Madeline and Arielle to hide in their house, it became obvious that he didn’t.
He was unknowingly fighting against everything their parents stood for.
He knows now. The entire world does.
“Let’s get coffee,” she says. Brynn and Fox wander to the cafe part of the store, which has a two-table sit down area and a bistro with hot drinks and yogurt parfaits. She purchases a hot chocolate for Fox and a bitter, scalding cappuccino for herself.
Fox is visibly unharmed from the battle, which Brynn chalks up to the strong Levine lineage. She and Fox and Jamie, all safe. Yet, she sighs, tired from it all.
“Did you know?” he asks, point blank.
She sips her coffee, which burns her lips. She’d known he’d ask this someday, but it amazes her that he could be so na?ve.
“That they were helping Phil.” She nods. “And that they were sabotaging Meredith.” Brynn steadies her voice, to keep her inflection sympathetic and sad. That hint of sadness is key.
“Did you know they killed her?”
“No.” Another note of sadness.
They are the only customers at the cafe, and the barista is busy on his phone. The store is quiet for the middle of the week and Brynn is thankful for it. She needs to hear herself think.
Fox seems to accept her answer. “I can’t believe they would do that. I just can’t figure it out.”
“They were weak people,” says Brynn. “I always believed it was an accident. But when Golden Ace found that lighter at the crime scene and the autopsy came back…”
“The lighter didn’t matter after all,” says Fox. “They hydroplaned.”
“I guess it didn’t.”
“Mom and Dad didn’t smoke.”
“You’re right.”
They sit with their drinks. Fox leaves his untouched as he glances around the store, fidgety. Brynn can tell he has more questions.
“You were home with them that night,” asks Fox. “And Jamie?”
Fox should have been there too, but he wasn’t home yet. That was lucky, for all of them. “I saw the three of them leave. Mom and Dad were livid.”
“Mom left her wedding ring behind.” Fox nods at her hands. Brynn twists the ruby around her knuckle. She had left it, luckily for Brynn. It helps to remember them.
“She always took it off when she was mad.”
“Why was she mad?” asks Fox. He’s stopped glancing about the store, now studying his shoes.
“They might have been arguing about Meredith. How they would kill her. If they were going to.” Another hint of sadness. Steady, steady.
“Jamie says he heard nothing that night.” Fox is quiet, and Brynn softens. She can’t imagine his sadness, a sadness different from hers.
“Maybe he didn’t,” says Brynn.
Fox fixates on her with an intensity she’s never seen. “But you did.” He reaches for her hand. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”
He’s a wonderful actor. Brynn knows this, and she looks him over. His solitude, his need to seek her out, his need to connect.
“Brynn,” Fox’s voice cuts her. “Please tell me.”
She’s told no one. Not even Phil knows the truth about that night.
“Please,” her brother says. She hears how much he needs to know.
The smile behind her pupils fades. She doesn’t enjoy remembering, but she’ll do anything for her brothers.
“Dad wanted to.” Brynn speaks low, so the barista won’t hear. “And Mom didn’t. That’s why she took off her ring.”
“Didn’t want to what?” asks Fox. “Kill Mrs. Roberts?”
Hearing him say it strikes Brynn like a slap. Of course their dad didn’t want to kill Meredith. Both of their parents idolized her, but Phil had told them to, and they could never say no to Phil. Not when he was so powerful. Not when they were so weak.
“They didn’t kill her, did they?” It’s not a question. “Brynn,” he pleads. “Please tell me.”
She’s never seen Fox beg like this. It breaks her heart, how he never guessed, and how different they turned out to be.
“No,” she finally says, the coffee cold against her tongue. “They didn’t.” In the end, they couldn’t. They loved Meredith too much.
The memory comes flooding back to her, a river of regret and something else. Triumph.
“I was with Jamie,” she begins. She looks at Fox but doesn’t see him, only a silhouette begging for truth. “I heard them arguing in the driveway. I went to find out what happened, but they had already stormed inside the house, Dad comforting Mom. You know how it went.”
“Yeah.”
Brynn wishes she didn’t have to remember, but Fox needs her to, and she swallows the part that she wants to forget.
As the door to her parents’ room slams, the anger behind it shaking every wall in the house, Brynn jumps from her bed to find what caused it.
Through the hallway window, she sees Meredith Roberts pacing back and forth in the driveway.
Why aren’t they leaving for Phil’s speech?
Gosh, he would be amazing tonight. Brynn knew Phil well.
He sometimes came to speak at the local school where she was taking graduate classes, and afterwards they would talk about her hospitality degree and his ambivalence toward his family’s business.
She couldn’t be prouder of him for pursuing his political ambitions.
It had stung, when Arielle had gotten her hooks in him before she could, and he hadn’t returned Brynn’s affections.
It still stung. Meredith must have helped Arielle in a way Brynn’s parents hadn’t.
“Brynn,” Meredith calls through the door. She’s more disheveled than Brynn has ever seen her before, with her black blazer crumpled at the collar and thick red hair falling out of a wide barrette. “Where are Fox and Jamie? You all need to get out of here. Quickly.”
“Jamie’s here. Why, what’s going on?” asks Brynn. Their empty street stretches through the neighborhood, under a foggy sky. A storm would be there soon, but Brynn couldn’t see anything else that was wrong.
“It’s Phil,” says Meredith. “He’s blackmailed your parents. They’ll be okay, but not right now. It’s not safe for you to be here.”
“What?” Phil would never hurt her parents. She steps back from Meredith, who tucks a strand of hair away from her face. Mrs. Roberts was used to being in control, same as Arielle. Brynn moves another step back.
Meredith pushes her lapels to the side, exposing a harsh red mark around her neck. They aren’t quite bruises and would fade soon enough, but any police officer would certainly see signs of a fight.
“Phil told your father to do this,” Meredith says. “It’s not your father’s fault. Phil has powers, Brynn. He’s dangerous. We have to get you and Jamie out of here until we can figure out how to get your parents out of whatever trap he’s set.”
Fire ignites in Brynn’s bones. Meredith has to be lying. If Phil had powers, he would only use them for good. How dare Meredith threaten Brynn’s family after everything they’d done for her?
Brynn takes another sip of coffee. “I told her I’d get Jamie, but when I went back inside, Mom and Dad were still arguing.
They weren’t going to kill Meredith, even if Phil was blackmailing them.
You should have seen Meredith. She looked deranged.
It horrified me that she might lie to the police, if it came to that.
” Brynn waits for a sign from her brother that he wants to hear this.
Fox lifts his hot chocolate, signaling her to continue.
Instead of finding Jamie, Brynn races into Fox’s room, looking for something she can use, like a baseball bat.
There. A meter-high trophy sits by his closet, which she grabs and runs with outside.
She doesn’t have much time. Brynn’s hospitality classes had taught her how to clean up after a messy guest, and how to de-escalate a scene.
Before Meredith can register why Brynn would have the trophy, Brynn brings it down over her head.
It was easier than she thought it would be, and Meredith hits the ground in a second.
There’s no blood on the driveway. All the bleeding is internal.
“The trunk was full of your swimming gear,” Brynn whispers.
“So I put her in the back of Mom and Dad’s minivan, under a blanket.
Dad had all that extra gas in the garage, and I filled a few water bottles with it and put them in the backseat.
Water bottles wouldn’t seem suspicious while Mom and Dad drove.
I would meet them at the event, put Meredith in the driver’s seat, and stage it like she’d crashed their minivan.
It would check out, given how unhinged she was.
The woman was in no state to be driving. ”
“That’s why the accident smelled like gasoline,” says Fox.
“Yes.” Telling him makes her feel weightless and free, and he could see what she’d done to protect them.
“I put a lighter in the back seat so it would be ready too, and planned to leave right after them. I’d fix everything for them.
When they stopped arguing, I told them Meredith had left.
They were frazzled and late and mad at each other. ”
“The lighter that Gold found. It was relevant.”
Brynn stops, sadness threatening to break through. “What I didn’t realize was that the storm would mess things up. Dad was so angry, the car slipped and spun off the road, and they crashed into the guardrail, right on the side of the van where the water bottles were.”
“And that little spark, with the extra gasoline, made it all explode.” He sets his cup back on the table. He seems far away from her.
“Boom.” Brynn watches him closely. Can he handle this?
Brynn climbs into her own car, when her cellphone rings. “This is the Capital City Police Department. I’m sorry to say this, but there’s been an accident.” That one sentence will haunt her for the rest of her life.
“They weren’t supposed to die. Promise. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Brynn always thought he would forgive her when she told him.
That’s how it had played out in her head, but as he sits across from her, after hearing the end, his expression hardens.
Brynn shivers as uncertainty builds between them.
The store dissolves until the outline of her brother is the only thing she can comprehend.
Please, Fox, she thinks. Does he understand?
Her hands tremble as she sips the last of her coffee.
After a minute, he asks, “Do you regret it?”
Brynn hesitates. Meredith was incredibly influential in Capital City. If she hadn’t died, who knows what she could have ruined for Brynn’s parents, Phil, or even Arielle.
“I wish it had happened differently,” she admits. “I wish that Mom and Dad were here. I miss them all the time, Fox. I swear.”
They were still her parents, even if they couldn’t say no to Phil.
She could say no, though she never wanted to, not when she had the opportunity three years ago and certainly not a few evenings ago, when Madeline and Arielle had invited her to visit Mr. Roberts, and provided her with an opportunity to hand him to Phil.
As far as anyone would know, her hands were clean.
Fox sits quietly. With no warning, he slams his cup down on the table. “You know who misses them more than you do?” he shouts. Anyone left in the store stares at them. “Jamie. He was only nine years old. Nine. When you took away the people we all loved the most.”
He stands, lightning raging behind his tears.
“You absolute monster.”
Thunder crashes outside the store, and Brynn faintly hears the sirens pulling into the parking lot. She wants to hold him, to make everything okay, but Fox moves back before she can.
She sniffs, breathing his dusky, electric scent for the last time. The walls flash red and blue, the sirens growing and screaming when her brother pushes open the door and leaves her behind.