Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29
CARLIE
Caleb tries to talk about Law keeping things from me when I get back, but I immediately move to sidetrack him. I do not want to think about the things Law just accused me of—only thinking the worst of him. He lied to me. Yeah, it was by omission, but it’s still a lie. Maybe not a big one, but it’s the fact that he lied in the first place.
“You just got dumped,” I point out.
“Wow. Thanks for reminding me.” Caleb shakes his head and sighs, flopping his head back onto the arm of the couch.
“What I mean is, let’s focus on comforting you.”
He tilts his head back up to look at me, squinting like his twin ESP is telling him that something like that might have happened to me.
Did it? Did I just get dumped? I quickly shove the thoughts away. This is about Caleb.
“Space,” he says. “She said she needed space.” His voice still holds hope, and I almost rush him and hug him. Maybe more for me than for him.
Instead, I arch an eyebrow and nod toward the screen. “You’re watching Northanger Abbey. ” I sit on the couch next to him. “Caleb.” I can’t help what’s coming out next. Maybe if I let it spill out, it will stop pounding through my brain. “What were you thinking?”
He shakes his head. “Stop, Carlie. It wasn’t like you and Xavier. Not at all. We told each other everything.”
“I thought Xavier and I were saying everything. Although I can see how it might be hard to slip your drug deals into casual conversation.” I give a faux-chill shrug, and it works to make Caleb snort with laughter. “You knew about Malcolm?”
He nods. “I knew about Malcolm. I knew that they dated for three years, that she pushed him hard for more commitment the last year they were together, and she finally walked away. She always thought it was their mom, that she wanted Malcolm to marry someone who could help him politically.”
“I’m sorry.” I put my arms around him. A voice keeps trying to whisper that two weeks, two years, three years, none of it makes a difference. Knowing someone is outside of time.
Caleb puts his face into my shoulder and breathes deeply, and then he shudders. He gulps and holds his breath. I have to hold my own too. I tighten my hold on him.
What if Law had told me about Ivy and Malcolm? He’s right. Caleb already knew, and all I would have done was harp on my brother more, push him away so that he didn’t come here in this moment.
Thought the worst of Law, maybe?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again. Jenna kept saying that after Xavier. When I called her, panicking about the FBI arresting him. How it had to be a mistake. With everything we found out, she just kept hugging me and whispering she was sorry. That’s all I can do for Caleb. Strange as it feels to me, I’ve been here, shattered when everything I thought was real turns out to not be real at all. He was going to marry Ivy. I was going to marry Xavier.
Two weeks.
Two years.
In the end, a heart is just as broken.
The fact that Chad doesn’t get called in tonight is a blessing and a curse. Ever since our conversation earlier, I’m even more worried about the girls. Which is how the whole story comes out to Caleb, and I convince him to hack into the cameras in Chad’s house.
He’s resistant at first, probably for good reason. “That’s a bad idea, Car. Like, illegal kind of bad idea.”
I put my hands on his shoulders. “I have to protect those girls. I have to. If something were to happen to them—” I swallow. The idea of it makes me physically sick and tightens my throat uncomfortably. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself,” I finish in a quieter voice.
Caleb squints at me. “You really think Chad might have killed her?” He pulls my laptop into his lap but doesn’t open it yet.
I might be taking advantage of my brother’s vulnerable state right now. He’s just been dumped, and this is right up his alley to prove something to himself, like he did with the TA or when he felt helpless in the wake of Xavier’s crimes. He’s been over to Jenna’s GetAwayHome too, installing fancy Bluetooth locks on all the doors and a monitoring system he wouldn’t let her pay for. She complained to me over text that she didn’t need her family’s charity all the time. I was unsympathetic. I might have even sent $10 via Venmo and told her to go buy some fancy cookies. (My bossy older sister used it to have them delivered to me.)
But I can see the wheels turning in Caleb’s head with worry for me too, just like with Law. I can’t really blame my friends and family for second-guessing my judgment when I’ve got something like Xavier in my past, but I need them to trust me on this. Yeah, hacking into someone’s security cameras is a huge breach of privacy, but if it saves Scarlett and Zoey, even the chance that something could happen to them, is it so wrong? This isn’t about thinking the worst of Chad. It’s just better safe than sorry. Why can’t Law understand that?
“Probably not?” I raise my voice in question. I can’t even decide anymore if Chad’s really capable of it, and I feel like I should give him the benefit of the doubt while still being cautious, if that makes sense. I’m not just thinking the worst of him. I see that he’s a good father. “But it’s a lot of weird, sketchy stuff, right?” I say anyway. Law has already confirmed this for me, but if my brother is on board, then I can feel justified even if Law doesn’t think Chad did anything.
“Let’s just go dig up the body,” he murmurs. He stares at me a moment longer, then presses his lips together and slowly opens the laptop.
I shudder. “Law said that too.”
Caleb glances up at me but doesn’t ask what Law and I talked about. I don’t want to go into this with Caleb yet. Every time I think about my fight with Law, my stomach gets all squirmy.
“I can’t dig up the body while Chad is home or he’ll see me, and I can’t while I’m with the girls because that’s traumatizing. So I’ll eventually tip off the police and let them do the digging.” I lean over Caleb to see how he’s doing, expecting that since he just opened up the program a couple moments ago, getting into the camera feeds will still take some time. But he’s already scrolling through half a dozen feeds of Chad’s house.
“He should really use more secure passwords,” Caleb says. He hands me my laptop.
I scan through them—one of the hallway outside the girls’ room, the entryway, the kitchen and family room area, and then a few of the exterior of the house.
The girls’ bedroom doors are closed, of course. It’s late. It shows Chad sitting in the family room, watching TV. I set the laptop on the coffee table but don’t close it.
I’m going to be watching him like a hawk.