Chapter Six
SIX
Phoebe
I frown. “Hails?”
She should be fast asleep in my bed right now. Not only is she wide awake, but she’s carrying a stack of worn leather-bound books against her small frame. I’m not sure she even heard me since she’s not responding.
Struggling to hold the hardbacks, she blows a strand of platinum-blonde hair off her chapped lips and nearly loses the stack trying to shut the door.
I run over to her before Rocky can, and I gather several books in my arms.
“Thanks, Phoebe.” She’s on a mission, barely pausing as she plops her stack on our two-seater bistro table.
Too many alarmed questions zip through me at once, and I go with the most useless one (don’t come for me). “Who do these books belong to? A crypt keeper?” I pile my stack on top of hers.
“Jake.”
My eyes bug. “Excuse me? Jake, as in our landlord?” And soon to be fake ex-boyfriend , but I don’t want to say the words and remind everyone of my current fake relationship. Mostly for Rocky’s sake.
Hailey isn’t answering. She’s flipping open a book.
I swing back to Rocky, and his dark concern is palpable. Jaw locking, muscles tensing, eyes narrowing—Hailey sees none of her brother’s protective storm cloud. No, she’s reading these yellowed, crusty pages at a mile a minute.
“Hailey,” Rocky calls out.
“Huh?” She doesn’t look up.
Okay, this is way more serious than I realized. Her plum-colored lipstick is faded in certain spots. Has she been biting her lips? Bluish tint circles her eyes and appears like makeup, but now I’m seeing it’s not from an eyeshadow palette. It’s from being sleep deprived.
I scoot the second chair next to hers. Sitting, I hesitate to reach out a hand and disrupt her mental focus too much. “Have you slept, Hails?”
She flips a page.
“Hailey?” I ask again.
“Yeah.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s responding to,” Rocky tells me, coming over to us. It’s very clear Hailey is about one-tenth listening to me and zero-tenths listening to Rocky. She’s tuning out her surroundings to concentrate on these dusty texts.
Rocky grabs a faded gray book.
“St-stop,” Hailey stammers. “Put it back, Rocky. Please. ”
“Put it back,” I tell him. Her distress is like a knife in my gut, and I want to yank the blade out like right now.
Rocky gives me a sharp look. “I’m not hurting it.” He examines the title on the spine. “Why would Jake lend you a book on the history of Victoria’s seaports?”
“I-I can’t…Put the book back. Put it back.” She’s on the verge of shaking. “Phoebe.”
I stand. “Rocky.” I’m a second from tugging the novel out of his hands.
His gaze darkens. He passes me to set the novel on the stack. She relaxes, but he whisper-sneers against my ear, “You’re not helping her.”
“Neither are you,” I sneer back. We’re both hot blooded over how best to take care of her. There’ve been a few instances where I’ve seen Hailey spiral this way, but not enough that Rocky and I have a well-formulated mode of action to help her. And when she’s pleading for me, how can I not come to her aid? How can I not do what she asks?
His hand stays on the small of my back, and we both take a few silent breaths, trying to extinguish the heat. Being pent up with aggravation isn’t going to help her either.
Hailey muffles her ears with her hands. Not wanting to even hear us anymore. She’s just skimming the books at rapid-fire speed.
I lower back into the seat.
“We need to take the books away,” Rocky says.
“She’ll freak out.”
“She won’t stop reading.”
“You know she’ll just go grab her computer and do research.”
“Then we take her fucking computer.”
“I’m not locking her in a padded room!” I shout, and my throat swells painfully.
Rocky rakes two hands through his dyed-black hair. He’s torn up. “She’s not blinking.”
I know.
I know.
I manage to croak out, “We’re not doctors, Rocky. We don’t know what’s right.”
“You don’t leave a drug addict with a syringe and a vial.”
He’s not saying she’s addicted to books, but obviously she’s obsessing over them right now. My face twists at the idea of removing the subject of her hyperfixation. “What if it makes things worse? What if it’s not what you’re supposed to do in this situation?”
“Well, it’s not like she can go to a fucking psychologist and figure it out.” His bitterness drips off the words. Just another product of our criminal upbringings, really. We can’t unleash our history on a doctor without basically sending ourselves to jail.
It sort of feels like the six of us live in a Middle Ages fantasy world like Westeros, where physicians wouldn’t have a modern diagnosis. They’d probably just think Hailey lost her mind.
“Phoebe,” Rocky says, trying to sound gentle (he sucks at it). “We’ll never know if it’s the wrong or right thing unless we try.”
“Okay, okay,” I agree, but my ribs are squeezing around my lungs. Together, Rocky and I swoop in and scoop up the hardbacks.
“N-no, no , please. Phoebe.” Her breathing pattern sounds hoarse and awful . Like she’s sucking in a plastic bag.
“Rocky, I can’t.” It hurts. My entire body is being crushed, and I immediately place the books within his sister’s reach. “I’m sorry.” I can’t even look at him. Defeated, I take a stiff seat beside Hailey and do my best not to cause her more panic.
Rocky lets out a deep sigh. When his hand suddenly warms the back of my neck, I ease at the unexpected comfort. I look up at him, but his gaze is planted on his sister.
“You might be right,” he says.
I shake my head, feeling like I’m making this worse.
“Just try talking to her, Phebs.”
I swallow a lump in my throat and shift closer to my friend. “Hailey? How long have you been awake?”
She mutters to herself. I think she’s reading out loud.
“When did you go see Jake?” I ask.
Nothing.
Rocky is a rigid tower beside me.
She’s not covering her ears again, so I take this as a sign we’re making progress. Baby steps. “Hey, can you tell me what you’re reading?”
“St-stuff about Connecticut. The history…” She scoots farther into the table, practically pressing her face into the book. The chain on her black cargo pants jingles while her leg jostles. “I’m-I’m figuring it out.” She rubs at her watery eye and flips another page. “I’m going to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?” I ask.
“Who we are.”
The bottom of my stomach drops.
Rocky shifts his weight. “What does Connecticut have to do with that?”
“I-I don’t know yet.” She blinks a few times. Good. Yes! Keep blinking, you beautiful genius. “We can’t trust…we can’t believe anything. She-she might’ve even lied about her blood type, and then who knows what anymore? We know nothing. We know nothing.” Her eyes are glazed, staring off into the middle of the room.
She must be her mom. Addison.
“You need sleep,” I say so softly to Hailey, and somehow this draws her gray eyes to mine. “Real sleep, Hails. Can you go to bed? Please? For me?”
Her eyelashes flutter, and very zombielike, she rises and spins three sixty. Rocky reaches out to steady her, but she’s not in danger of falling. She’s just lost. Like she’s searching for something.
“Where’s Olly?” she whispers.
“It’s late. Oliver and Nova are back at the boathouse,” I tell her. “Trevor is asleep in your bed. You’re going to crash in mine, okay?”
Hailey nods slowly. “Yeah…yeah.” I guide her into my bedroom, and Rocky pours his sister a water while I help her take off her Converse sneakers and climb beneath the fluffy marshmallow comforter.
Rocky places the water on the nightstand. “You need to drink something.”
She takes a few sips, and when she looks up at her brother, her round eyes go glassy, like snow globes pooled with water. “We-we might not be…”
“You will always be my sister,” Rocky professes. “There is nothing in my lifetime that could change that, Hailey. Not one fucking thing.”
This eases her enough that she lies back.
I tuck her in. “Just shut your eyes and brain. Don’t think about anything except your body sinking into the mattress.”
She shuts her eyes, and I wipe the involuntary tears from the corners with my thumb. My heart is aching, especially as she croaks out, “Thanks, Phoebe.”
“No thanks . Just sleep.”
Before we leave, she mutters one thing. “He-he once told me about his family’s library. I asked if I could borrow the books…”
Jake , she means.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Sleep.”
Once we switch off the lights and quietly exit, Rocky checks on Trevor and says, “Asleep.” At least his little brother didn’t sneak out.
I release the tensest breath of my life, and Rocky’s concern is on me. “You okay?”
I nod a lot. Yeah. The word sticks to the back of my throat. I just want Hailey to be okay.
Rocky threads his fingers behind his stiff neck. His glare is lethal, and he’s doing everything not to place it on me.
“I’m going to kill him,” he fumes. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Jake?”
“Who else?”
I make a face like he’s scaling Mount Everest when we should be climbing K2. “Jake was only trying to help her. They both like books. It’s been a commonality between them since we moved here, Rocky. Can’t you picture a scenario where Hailey reaches out to Jake, asks for a favor, and Jake gladly abides because he’s nice ? Because I can.”
“This was a face-to-face meetup. Face-to-face. ” He manages to keep his voice down. “He physically handed her the books, and he didn’t think to shoot you or me a text about it? He didn’t think to tell us Hailey looks a little fucked up? He didn’t see her and go, Gee, maybe this girl is an insomniac ? Is he really that dense, Phoebe, or are we being played?”
I frown. “Hailey probably brushed it off or told him not to alarm us. Because I can’t see a situation where Jake doesn’t care about her. He cares about people he doesn’t even know, and he knows Hailey. It’d be cruel, and he’s so far from that.”
“That we know of.”
“He would be a sociopath.”
Rocky outstretches his arms. “Maybe he is one.”
“If you really believed that, then all of our bags would be packed, and Victoria would be in our rearview mirror.” Jake has never been a real threat to Rocky.
He smears a hand down his face, then breathes out the coarse grit in his throat. “Fine.”
“Fine…” There’s one thing about Jake that I’ve just learned today. That I need to share, but Rocky reclaims his seat on the sofa.
I follow and pick up my bowl of cereal. The Froot Loops are mushy, but I swallow a scoop anyway. Is Toucan Sam courage a thing? Because I could use some right now. I just don’t want another reason for Rocky to doubt Jake when he’s been an ally, but the seed is already planted. It’s sprouted into a beanstalk, and I’m not capable of chopping it down.
He reaches over and shuts off the lamp for the movie. Light from the TV brightens the dark living room, and we decide on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 2003. I’d rather just watch the slasher flick, but he’s too good at reading body language.
“We can forget about Jake. He’s breaking up with you within a week, and what I feel about him doesn’t matter anyway. Right?”
“Yeah.” I nod tensely.
He nods back, seeing. “What’s wrong?”
Rotating more to him, I lift my legs up, and before I can tuck them under my butt, he seizes them, letting me stretch out over his lap. His hand stays protectively, comfortingly, territorially over my calves.
It’s such an intimate gesture. It reminds me of how we are on jobs, not in real life, and knowing this is now my every day, I almost melt into the side of the couch cushion.
Maintain composure.
I can do that. I’m a fucking professional.
“Remember how I didn’t eat much today?” I start off.
“Yeah?”
“It’s also why I didn’t see Hailey until…like right now. It’s because work was hectic, and by the time Jake convinced Katherine to let me go early, my shift was thirty minutes from ending.”
“Jesus Christ.” He rolls his eyes into a heated glare. “What does she have on him?”
“Nothing. He just respects her, I think, and apparently, she’s his godmother.”
His brows jump. “Come again?”
“She was first his nanny. That’s what Jake told me, at least. His family loved her enough that they wanted her to stick around after their youngest was grown, so they hired her to manage the country club.”
I explain further how I’ve noticed that Jake has mannerisms eerily similar to Katherine’s. The sharp side-eyes, the disappointed parental expressions. I believe she helped raise him.
Rocky pinches his eyes, then rests his arm on the back of the sofa. “He’s hiding too much.”
“ We’re hiding more.”
“If he’s anything like us, then it really isn’t safe to be here.”
I watch him fixate on the paused intro of Chainsaw Massacre , and I tell him, “I don’t see you preparing for a big move.”
“That’s because I’m on a date with my girlfriend.”
My lips turn up. “I’d think you were flirting with me if you didn’t have a sarcastic fucking smile while you said it.” I use some of his words from much earlier in the night, and he must remember.
Because he laughs for real.
After abandoning the cereal on the coffee table, I sink against his chest, feeling the rumble of the last bits of laughter, and with his arm around me, he presses play on the remote. Not even three minutes in and his phone rings.
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, digging it out of his pocket. There’s only a handful of people who’d contact us at this hour. He flashes the random number to me. “It might be someone calling from a burner phone.”
I worry about my brothers. Until Rocky answers the call on speaker and his father’s stringent voice floods the room.
“Brayden? Are you alone?”
We’ve all been screening our parents’ incessant calls and texts, but we’ve known we’d need to confront them soon. I just didn’t think it’d be tonight .
He pries his bicep off my shoulder, then sits forward. “Yeah, I’m alone,” he lies. “It’s late, Dad.”
“We need to talk about what’s going on.” The urgency in his tone pricks the hair on my arms.
“What’s going on?” Rocky spits out. “Mom and Elizabeth show up here, unannounced —”
“Shit happens,” Everett cuts in. “You’ve been taught to coast into a con, have you not?”
“We’re not riding a fucking Malibu wave—”
“This isn’t new,” he interjects again, and Rocky’s annoyance could sever the air. He swallows the feeling and listens as Everett continues. “Your mother and Elizabeth showing up out of the blue is something you all should be prepared for. You’re not little kids anymore. You don’t need your hand held.”
Usually, I’d agree. Yeah, he has a point. The shock and awe shouldn’t startle us, but that was before we knew they’ve been actively lying to us. Rage swarms me just hearing his condescending lecture, on top of the fact that he might not even be Rocky’s dad! He might’ve stolen him out of an orphanage, a bassinet—hopefully not a womb, or I will murder him myself.
“Thanks for the pro-tip,” Rocky says coarsely. “Why’d you even call?”
“The rainmaking job.” It’s what the matchmaking con is technically called.
Rainmaking.
It’s where we promise a mark that we’ll use our influence to “make it rain” for them. In this case, our moms are likely promising Claudia Waterford they can break me and Jake apart by matchmaking me with Rocky.
“It’s not happening,” Rocky says. “Phoebe already told Elizabeth.”
“It’s a short con. It’ll last a week, tops. You can convince her to do it.”
My mouth drops. What? I mouth to Rocky.
His nose flares. “That’s not fucking happening,” he whisper-sneers into the phone. “Pocket whatever Claudia paid you and call it off.”
Everett sounds exasperated. “Whatever job you’ve started, you need to end it.”
We’re not here to scam anyone.
Rocky conceals this card. “Why?” he asks.
“It’s not safe for your sister or your brother or the Graveses to be there. Understand? You either need to do the short rainmaking job with your mom or finish what you’re doing and get out. We don’t pull jobs in Connecticut.”
I blow back, and my head whirls in blistering confusion.
“Since when?” Rocky barks.
“Since forever .”
No, this is a rule we’ve never been told until now. If I forgot it, then Nova would’ve remembered, and my brother never said Connecticut was a danger zone.
The line is dead quiet, except for Everett’s labored breaths. I’d believe he was jogging around a track if I could hear his footfalls. “You have one job, son. The most important job of your life—”
“Protect them, I know,” Rocky says, glancing briefly, almost painfully, to me before dragging his harsh gaze across the coffee table and our soggy bowls of cereal. “We’ll all need to get together. Safe location. The six of us will pick the place. You can pick the time. We’ll talk more then.”
“Okay. I’ll confer with your mom and Elizabeth.” At this, they hang up, and neither of us releases any breaths this time.
There is no relief. Just a tsunami of uncertainty and doubt, and the wave is cresting over our heads, threatening to envelop us whole.
He taps the phone in his palm, thinking. “When we first drove here, I thought about how unfamiliar Connecticut is to me, but I couldn’t be sure. Now…I’m almost certain. We’ve never pulled a con in this state before.”
“But maybe our parents have,” I realize.
There are very few reasons to avoid an entire state like the plague, and one of the greatest is a con gone wrong or a job so big that you can never go back.
Only, Elizabeth and Addison showed their faces at the country club. They appeared there for the rainmaking job.
A short con.
In hopes of getting us to leave Connecticut faster? If they think we’re pulling some lengthy, drawn-out scam here without them, then yeah, it’d be a good ploy to draw us back and get us to pack our bags.
Rocky peers over his shoulder toward my bedroom, then to the deserted hardbacks on the bistro table. “Hailey is always five steps ahead of us, Phebs. If she’s digging into Connecticut, into Victoria, then she must believe it’s all connected. Who we are and why we’ve never pulled a con here.”
I scrunch my face. “Doesn’t it seem too coincidental? That out of everywhere, we just so happened to stumble on the one place that could tell us about our births?”
Rocky leans back beside me. “I don’t care if it is or isn’t. If this state has even a single answer to what our parents are hiding about us, then I want that truth.”
Clarity.
That sounds like real relief to me. I nod a few times. “Yeah, I do, too.”