Chapter Twenty
Sasha
She waits until morning. Tom will be back in town midday and Chloe can take the bus today, and Sasha can watch her son pretend
to get ready for school, but this time she has a plan. She tells him not to be late and that she has a coffee date with Regan
in town, and then she waits. She tosses his backpack, which he apparently doesn’t miss enough to mention or to go back to
his dad’s to get, into her passenger seat, and then she goes out to the toolshed in the back of the property and takes a small
pistol out of the lockbox under the workbench. She shoves it into the bottom of her handbag, then pulls out of the drive and
parks a few blocks down, masked by a thicket of trees, until she sees Drew’s car fly past her and she follows.
She grips the steering wheel with one hand, fury boiling inside her, and she stays a few car lengths behind him and starts to realize where he is going.
So it’s no surprise when he pulls into the parking lot of the same smoke shop she thought she would take her last breath in just the night before, but she still radiates with fear as she pulls in behind him.
She screeches her brakes on and slides into the gravel lot, and she gets his attention.
Just as Drew steps out of his car parked near the front door, he freezes as he looks at her.
He doesn’t seem to know whether to run or get back in his car and speed away. He’s caught.
“Jesus,” he says with a mixture of confusion and anger across his face. “What are you doing here?”
Sasha steps out and starts to walk toward him.
“No. Mom, stop. Let’s go.”
“Don’t even think about . . .”
“You can’t be here. There’s a diner down the street. I’ll meet you . . .”
“Are you out of your mind? You don’t call the shots anymore, Drew. You’re in deep shit. Get in.”
“Mom,” he says, looking back at the doors and then to her. “Go. Now. I’m right behind you.” He jumps in his car and starts
to pull away, then stops and watches to make sure she does the same. That little shit just drove away. She can’t believe it,
but although she’s shocked, she does what he tells her, with her heart racing and hands trembling as she fumbles with the
car door.
When she sees him pull into Murray’s Diner and go inside, she parks and follows him, so completely bewildered by his behavior but also ready to finally confront all the evidence she’s been collecting against him.
She decides maybe a public place will be the best option since he can’t make a scene or run away.
To her surprise, he’s sitting in a booth with a pensive look on his face when she gets in the door.
He looks out the window and behind him with obvious paranoia.
She sits across from him, and they don’t speak for a moment.
She can’t even figure out where to begin—all the facts are swirling in her mind.
Instead of words, she just plunks his backpack on the table. He stares at it but doesn’t put it together right away.
“You left it at your dad’s.”
“I can explain that,” he says too quickly. The waitress comes over. Her name tag reads Kimmi and her chipperness is incongruous to the weight of whatever is happening, although Sasha still doesn’t know what that is.
Drew orders two cups of coffee while Sasha sits in a dazed silence.
“You’ve been seeing your dad. But I don’t even think that’s the place to start since you’ve been lying about so many things,
so you tell me where to start.”
“I thought he could help me with something. Roxie and I—we’re working on a research project, sort of, and I had questions . . .”
“Stop. Start from the beginning. You were not getting concert tickets that night, and you weren’t getting vapes at the smoke
shop. How much trouble are you in? Just tell me what is going on.”
“Mom . . .”
“You’re caught. I’ve been following you.
I know you’re suspended. I know where you’ve been going.
I wanted to see if I could understand it—I don’t know—to try to help you, but you have to tell me what the fuck is happening,” she says.
She’s never sworn in front of her kids before, so she instinctively covers her mouth as if pushing the words back in, but Drew doesn’t even seem to notice.
He has a look of resignation across his face because he is, clearly, caught.
“I can’t tell you everything,” he starts, and then the waitress places their coffee in front of them and asks if they’d like
anything else. Neither answers and the waitress makes a face and walks away.
“I’m not in trouble,” he says.
“What were you doing at the smoke shop today? I’ve already met the gentlemen who run whatever is going on out of the basement,
so just tell me the truth.” Drew blinks at her. His eyes move from her broken hand back to her face and she can tell he registers
it. Something like protective rage mixed with fear flits across his face.
“They find people—find . . . things. They run a sort of business like a private investigator, except they don’t worry about
stuff like laws—an ‘any means necessary’ type thing. I paid them to get me some information. You’re right. I wasn’t buying
concert tickets when you saw me at that closed-down Hefty’s. Some guys I know hack computers and you can pay them for info . . .
but they couldn’t help me. Probably because you have to know what you’re looking for if you want them to do much . . . and
so I thought I’d get further with those guys at the smoke shop.”
“What are you looking for?” she asks flatly, trying to stay in control.
“Ally Whitlock. The car bomb. It started there. I saw something that day and I didn’t tell because I’m still not sure what
it means.”
“What? What did you see?” she asks impatiently, cupping her mug with both hands.
“Do you think it could have been meant for you? The explosion?” he asks. She leans back and takes in his question.
“What would make you say that?” She feels like the wind was knocked out of her with the question, so out of left field.
“You both drive white BMWs, and were at the same place. I mean, did it even cross your mind? You’re the one with the criminal
history. Not Ally or Regan Hoffman. You never even thought that once?”
Sasha holds her heart with one hand and has to remind herself to breathe. How does he know this? She spent her whole life
making absolute certain he never found out—never knew about Raffy in prison or their arrest. How the hell has he unpicked
all of this?
“Criminal record?” she says, thinking, for a fleeting moment, that maybe he’s just being dramatic and doesn’t really know.
“Jesus, Mom. You’re the one who’s caught. It’s all out on the table. I’m not the one hiding from something and lying. You
smuggled drugs on a plane in Mexico—both of you—and Dad went to prison.”
“How do you know this?”
“I found the records, and then I visited Dad because I didn’t think I’d get the truth from you. He told me everything.”
“Well,” she says, feeling the red blotches bloom across her chest, “that was a long time ago . . . and your dad pays for it
every single day.”
“But did you pay for it?”
“What?” she snaps. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but from the perspective of those drug dealers, it sounds like they think you owe them. Maybe someone is making you pay. I’ve been trying to protect you—both of you. Some shit’s just not adding up, though.”
Sasha feels pricks of heat climb her back, and her throat closes up. She doesn’t know how to respond.
Drew continues. “Dad told me that he was threatened by someone—an anonymous person—when he got out of prison. They were gonna
get rid of both of you unless you paid back the money they lost on the confiscated cocaine—like almost three hundred thousand
dollars.”
“No. No, that’s not true. He paid his debt in prison time. That’s . . .”
“Why would these people care if he went to prison? He lost their money. Prison does them no good, does it?” She knows this
is probably true, but she’s just so shocked at the words coming out of his mouth she can’t quite make all the pieces fit—she
can’t understand how he knows this much, more than her, and now she’s wondering if she was a target. Drew was supposed to
be the one in trouble. How has this flipped so incredibly?
“He said he’s been paying this anonymous person for years. Wired money every month to some untraceable account. Then, a few
years back, he stopped. He expected someone to come for him, but he said he didn’t care if he died anymore so it was fine.
But nobody ever came.” Drew runs his hands through his hair and pours another cup of coffee from the pot on the table.
“Nobody came because he lives in a fantasy world. He’s delusional sometimes. He probably got things mixed up in his head—it
was over a long time ago.”
“He showed me all of the outgoing transfers. Years’ worth.” At this, Sasha feels like she can’t breathe. She takes a deliberate deep breath and looks up at the ceiling, trying to absorb what all this means.
“He would have told me that—he would have asked for help and I could have helped him,” she says. “No.”
“How would you have explained to Tom that you needed a few hundred grand? How could you help Dad?”
“Goddammit. What does this have to do with anything—with you being suspended, the school bomb threat? I don’t . . .”
“I think all of it ties together. What I’m telling you isn’t even really the point. It’s just how all of this started. Once
I found out about your arrests and all that, I started doing more digging. One thing kept leading to another. Tia, the car
explosion, Dad . . . It’s all linked. I just can’t prove it yet. But I have a pretty good idea.”
“Tia? I just—I don’t understand what you’re telling me. How is that possible?”
“I have to show you. Me and Rox keep all of it in her desk in her room. Her mom never goes in there, and since you come in
mine all the time, we thought it was the safest thing. We have most of the evidence—a lot of proof that there is one person
behind it all—but we’re still missing something. And it would make things worse if I started making accusations before we
had all the proof. You think anyone would listen when the weird new kid starts saying something about some crazy conspiracy?
I’m trying to protect you. Us. But the only way I know how is to figure out how it’s all linked. I’m close.”
“Show me,” Sasha says firmly.
“I have to text Rox. I messaged her this morning to fake sick and get out of school and meet me at Dad’s, so she might already
be on the way.”
“Why? What were you going there for?”
“I told you. I have to show you. I’ll have to message her and tell her to meet me at her house instead.”
“Do it,” Sasha says, pulling on her coat and waving to get the waitress’s attention.
“You really think we’re in danger?” she asks him, looking right into his eyes—feeling maternal and protective and also so
confused and in the dark as he is somehow leading the way and knows more than anyone else, it turns out.
“Yes,” Drew responds. “And I don’t think we have much time.”