Chapter 28
NICOLA
When I hear the rap on the door, I’m sure that it’s Lucas, that he’s found me.
Before I can rush to Avery and pick her up and try to run, I see it’s Cora—the second time today she’s almost given me a heart attack.
She lets herself in, and I sit at the edge of the bed and bend over, holding my chest, trying to regain my composure.
My ribs ache, as I try to calm and slow my breath.
“I’m sorry. God. I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t an emergency,” she says.
“Oh, my God. What? What’s going on? How did you even get in here?” I say in a loud whisper, so as not to wake Avery.
“I have a spare key to Paige’s house. I didn’t want to wake her, but I had to talk to you right now. There’s a video,” she says; she can barely catch her breath.
“Slow down. What—what do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“There’s a video of Caleb,” she says, and I feel like I’m supposed to know what that means. “Someone was there—they took a video after he got hit. It’s—He was dying. God,” she says, and tears spring to her eyes. “He had been hit, and there’s a video.”
“Wha—what are you saying? I don’t understand. Who was there? Who took a video—of what?”
“It was Mia. But that’s not the point right now.
I don’t know why she didn’t tell anyone, but that’s not.
.. She pulled up right after he was hit.
Someone in the car with her turned the camera on the whole thing, but the point is there is a car.
Just...look,” she says, and my palms go clammy, and I swallow hard, waiting to see what she’s going to show me.
She opens her phone, goes to her email, and pulls up a video.
I cup my mouth with my hand when I see him lying there.
I suck in my breath, wanting to turn away.
I see Mia come into the frame, and Cora pauses the video. I look at her, still not understanding.
“Look.” She points to something in the frame.
“There’s a car racing from the scene right when Mia pulls up, before she even knew it was a scene at all, obviously.
Look. It’s your car—it’s the BMW. Those are your plates!
” she says, with a mixture of horror and excitement.
She waits for a reaction, and I feel like my lungs have filled with water.
Bile rises in my throat, and an electric shock pulses through me.
Then the tears fall, and I have no way to stop them.
This is it. This is how it all ends. The evidence is right in front of me.
There is no way out of this anymore. I’m caught. It’s on video. Lying can’t help me now.
“Please. Please, Cora, you have to understand that it wasn’t intentional.
I never meant to kill him. That’s not what happened,” I say, and she stands frozen with her mouth open.
Her eyes narrow in confusion, and it feels like she stays that way for a very long time.
The silence in the room rings in my ears as I wait for her to speak.
“I said your car, but I—No, I meant—I was saying a general your family car, but I meant Lucas. I didn’t mean—Oh, my God. Nicola. What are you saying?”
I realize my mistake, but it’s too late to swallow the words back. It’s the most careless move I’ve made, but on the other hand, the relief of telling someone is profound. And it’s too late anyway.
“It’s not how it sounds,” I say, but Cora is watching the video again on her phone with fresh eyes, trying to understand.
“That’s you?” she asks, and I look down at my hands and try to think about how I could possibly explain what happened.
“Please, just please at least listen. Let me tell you what happened before you hate me,” I beg. She runs a nervous hand over her mouth and swallows. Her eyes are wide and fearful, but she sits at the very edge of the bed, giving me permission to try to explain.
“I told you once that I gave all my money to a guy in the neighborhood for an ID card, but he screwed me over and used it on drugs. That was Caleb. We knew each other.”
“H-how? How is that possible? Like, what? I feel like I’ve been fooled, like you aren’t who you’re saying, or—I thought you were being held. I thought—”
“Nothing that I told you has changed! I told you that when I first came here, there were a few months where I thought everything was normal. There was a time I had no idea what was about to happen. He was establishing me in the community in a certain way, grooming me. But in that time, I lived normally. He made me feel like I could make friends, take classes...all normal stuff. I met Caleb one night when I walked over to the park behind our house. I just wanted some fresh air after Lucas fell asleep. I sat on the swings, and he came over and offered me a pull of his joint.”
“All this time, all the... Paige getting involved...and she never even knew you knew him? I...” she says.
“I know. How could I tell her?”
“Because you just do, because she’s desperate for answers, and how can you—” But I cut her off to explain.
“Caleb and I became friends. I know that seems weird to you, but we are only five years apart in age. Lucas was becoming strange and controlling, and I already knew I wanted out, back when I still thought that was a choice. I was unhappy, and I told Caleb about it, that I wanted to go home. We became...close,” I say, and then I feel my face contort into an ugly cry, but I can’t let myself break down.
She needs to understand. I dig my nails into my palm to keep control.
“How close?” she asks with a judgment in her voice I haven’t heard before.
“Very close,” I say, quietly.
“Jesus,” she mumbles.
“He was a mess, though. You have to believe me. He was an addict. He was selling. It started out small, but he was a full-blown addict, and he did desperate things. I know you don’t believe me.
Paige thinks he was some honors student, that he was perfect, but he had dropped out of school months before.
Paige and Grant were clueless. He was selling their shit for drugs.
He was all in. You have to believe me. I swear to God, I’m telling you the truth,” I say, and I see in her eyes some sense of familiarity, like she isn’t shocked, like it isn’t the first time she’s heard this.
“I knew about the drugs,” she says, and I almost cry with relief. That’s something, at least.
“That’s why he screwed me on the ID. He needed drug money.
He kept trying to get me to give him money, but I couldn’t.
And then—” I start, but then stop. I want to tell her the worst part—the part she’ll never forgive me for—but I don’t know how.
I go to the small refrigerator and pull out the open bottle of wine and lift it up, looking to her.
“Sure,” she says, softening around the edges just a little. I pour two large glasses and take a sip, then sit again.
“This isn’t easy to say, but I trust you. I really pray to God you trust me,” I say, and I don’t look at her because I don’t want to see doubt in her eyes, and I need to say this.
“He was strung out all the time. He stayed away from Paige and Grant when he was like that. He was a master at hiding it from them, but he didn’t hide it from me. We met all the time when Lucas worked late, but finally, I needed out. It was toxic. He needed rehab. But he wouldn’t let it go.”
“Let what go? What?” she asks.
“He wanted money from me. I stole as much as I could from Lucas to give it to him, because Caleb threatened me. I gave him the last of the small amount I had myself, then I started selling things, pawning things from around the house that Lucas wouldn’t miss, but I was tapped out.”
“What do you mean threatened you? How? Like threatening your life? What do you mean?”
“Sort of. He didn’t know he was threatening my life. I didn’t know it at the time either,” I say, knowing how evasive that sounds.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“He threatened to tell Lucas that the baby I was pregnant with wasn’t his,” I say, so quietly I’m not sure I actually said it. I hear her sharp intake of breath and see her hand flutter to her lips.
“Oh, my God in heaven. Is that true?” She stands and paces a few steps, then stops and sits, then gets back up. She stares at me, waiting for something, and then points at Avery. “Is she...Caleb’s?” she asks, in a strange, high-pitched voice.
I want to scream and run out the door. I want to throw up. It’s all imploding, and I can’t escape the truth any longer. I nod.
“That’s how he was threatening my life. If Lucas found out that Avery wasn’t his baby, he’d kill me, but Caleb didn’t know that,” I say, and Cora sits down again.
Her face crumples. I see her eyes well, and she shakes her head quickly and then nods and stands again.
I don’t know what’s happening. She sits again.
I feel dizzy with her anxious movements. She looks me in the eye.
“That’s Paige’s granddaughter,” she says in the same high-pitched, emotional squeak.
“She can’t know that,” I say, much louder than I mean to, and we both look at Avery, who, thankfully, doesn’t stir. Cora doesn’t rebut this right away. She regroups and tries to stay calm.
“I don’t understand. Why—What happened to Caleb? What did you do?”
“He thought I had money just because Lucas does. He wouldn’t believe me when I told him I couldn’t access it.
He wanted more. I was just driving home that night.
Lucas was out with Finn, having drinks or whatever, so I went out, too.
Nothing interesting—I saw a movie—and then when I drove in, he was there.
He flagged me down,” I say, and the memory of it steals my breath.
I remember seeing him and feeling a longing: I wanted him to be clean.
I hoped we’d sit on the swings and talk the way we used to.
I just wanted him to be okay, to be stable, to be the person I could run away with.
He was so amazing when he wasn’t high, but he was that night.
“I saw him there,” I say, “standing in the rain. He was crying, he was totally fucked up—higher than I’d ever seen him.
I rolled down the window and asked if he was okay.
He was angry. He was apologizing, saying he just wanted to talk, but when I realized the state he was in, I said I needed to get home.
He demanded money. I said again that I didn’t have any.
And that’s when he pulled a gun,” I say, and I start to shake.
Cora puts her hands on top of mine to steady them.
“The gun at the scene they never figured out. That was his?” she asks.
“I don’t know where he got it. It was untraceable, I read in the paper.
No prints, probably because he was wearing gloves.
It was winter, it was cold, and with the people he ran with, keeping his prints off an illegal gun was probably something he knew to do.
They never figured out what the gun and the hit-and-run had to do with each other. It never made sense,” I say.
“But it never was a hit-and-run,” Cora says in stunned disbelief.
“He pointed it at me,” I say. “He even cocked it. He was high as a kite and ready to shoot. He wasn’t the real Caleb, he was the high-on-coke Caleb.
He was screaming at me, demanding I give him money or he’d kill me.
He’d been on a bender for a few days. He was out of his mind.
Then—I couldn’t believe it—but he fired.
He was so shaky and messed up, he missed by a mile, but then he cocked the gun again and used both hands to position it, aimed at me, so I just..
.” I can’t stop the wail creeping up my throat.
“I just pushed on the gas!” I cry. “I thought about the baby. I knew he wasn’t himself, and he was ready to kill me.
Cora, you have to believe that I did the only thing I could.
There was no reasoning with him. There was nowhere to run.
He had the gun cocked and pointed at my head.
I never thought the impact would kill him.
I was just trying to protect us. That’s all I’ve done since I’ve been in this fucking country—I was just trying to stay alive,” I say and then double over, sobbing.
I don’t know what to expect from her. If she hadn’t already had the shock of her life, now she has. She clasps her hands together in fists and rests her forehead on them. She stays that way for some time.
“I need to think,” she finally says, and without another word, without making eye contact or giving any indication of what she’s thinking and what she plans to do, she’s gone.