Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
As Finn walks beside Caren through the neighborhood, he keeps his mouth shut, sensing the tension rising from her.
He learned a lot from Yumi. He didn’t mean to burst out with the truth like that, but keeping it bottled up was torture.
Turns out, sharing a truth can elicit a truth in return.
He’s sure that Yumi knows more than she admitted, but at least he had a date to check on now, the Saturday before July Fourth of last year, when Yumi saw someone, a man, go to the house.
He knows in his gut that it wasn’t Autumn that visitor was coming to see.
He just needs to double-check the dates.
And if he’s right, then that means Tori Price had a regular visitor.
One who might have mistaken Autumn for Tori the night of the murder.
It’s more than he’s learned in the past year, and he wonders if it is more than the police know.
He saw Yumi’s name in the files Aziz shared with him. Nothing of note or interest.
But he knows Aziz doesn’t share everything.
He doesn’t have to, not just because it’s an ongoing investigation, but because Finn’s not a blood relative.
The questions come to him fast, but he’s getting ahead of himself.
First things first. Like revisiting the Prison House.
What was Caren doing there Sunday morning, disoriented and confused?
He steals a glance at her profile—the determined set of her jaw, the slight furrow between her brows.
There’s something about her that reminds him of his mom.
Not physically, but that same core of stubborn resilience.
She catches him looking at her.
“I’m really sorry about your friend,” she says. “It’s so horrible what happened to her.”
He makes a noncommittal noise.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently.
The question pierces him like a hot needle. He does want to talk about it. He longs for someone with whom to discuss it. But over the past year he has learned to keep his thoughts to himself. His mom, his friends, Detective Aziz, they all think he has an unhealthy obsession with Autumn’s death.
“I don’t know.”
“What was she like?”
“She was loyal and empathic. Very creative, spiritual.” His fingers instinctively reach for the worn tarot card in his back pocket.
“She kind of believed in magic,” he continues, his thumb tracing the edge of the card before carefully tucking it away again.
“She loved anything to do with alternate worlds and dragons.” A half smile tugs at his lips, remembering the elaborate fantasy novels stacked beside her bed, the dragon figurines that lined her windowsill.
“She would have been a great child psychologist. A great mom.” His voice catches on the last word, at the mention of the future that was stolen from her.
“How did you two meet?”
“In college.” Finn focuses on his breathing, on the rhythm of their footsteps against the concrete.
The scent of freshly cut grass fills the air, incongruously cheerful.
“Freshman year, we were on the same floor.” He can still picture the narrow hallway, the corkboard covered in flyers for campus events, the smell of burnt popcorn perpetually lingering in the common room.
“We were both from North Carolina, so we kind of bonded over that. But it was so much more than that.”
He doesn’t say aloud how Autumn filled the gaping void left by those who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—accept him.
How his aunt’s words had sliced through him like razors: “You’ll always be our little girl, no matter what you do to your body.
” How his cousins’ silence had felt like its own kind of violence.
The memory makes his shoulders tense, his jaw clench momentarily.
College was his salvation. Walking onto campus that first day, heart hammering with terror and hope, he was prepared for rejection. Instead, he found Autumn—and others like her—who saw him completely and loved him anyway. The memory floods him with warmth even now, years later.
“I’m still close with some of my best friends from college,” Caren offers. “But they live far away, one in London and one in LA, so it makes it hard to see them. But if anything happened to them, I’d do what you’re doing. Find the truth.”
There’s something in her tone—an openness, a genuine warmth—that catches Finn off guard.
Tension he has been carrying eases from his shoulders.
They pass beneath the dappled shade of a massive oak tree, sunlight filtering through the leaves and dancing across the sidewalk.
In that moment, he feels the sudden, unexpected urge to tell her everything.
Usually, he keeps his history close, a private truth he shares only when necessary. But Caren doesn’t feel quite like a stranger anymore, not really. Not after she trusted him with her vulnerability, her fear about what happened to her that night.
He walks in silence for several heartbeats, weighing his words carefully.
Memories of Autumn flood his mind—how she knew him before.
Before the surgery, when each breath was a battle against the constriction of his binder, lungs never quite filling completely, ribs aching constantly.
Before, when he used to hunch his shoulders forward, trying to disappear inside oversized hoodies, when speaking above a whisper felt like betrayal, his high voice a constant reminder of what didn’t match.
He remembers the bone-deep exhaustion of those days, the mental gymnastics required just to get through each hour. And he remembers Autumn, sprawled on the thin dorm carpet beside him, making him laugh so hard he’d snort—a sound of pure, unguarded joy he’d only ever let slip around Mom back home.
The memory gives him courage. He takes a deep breath, the air sweet with the scent of someone’s flowering roses.
“She’s more than a friend. She’s like family to me.
I’m trans,” he says, the words coming out steadier than he’d expected.
“And Autumn was there for me every step of the way.” He casts a sideways glance at Caren, his heart quickening despite himself.
“She was there when I had surgery, when I went to court to legally change my name. For everything.”
The knot in his chest tightens slightly at saying this aloud—not from shame, but from the weight of all Autumn had been to him, all he had lost when she died.
“Wow. I get that,” Caren says, her expression softening. A beat passes before her eyes widen slightly. “So, hold on, you’re trans? I had no idea.”
A familiar warmth spreads through Finn. He can’t help but smile, the tension in his body easing. “That’s kind of the goal. You could say I’m semi-stealth. It’s not a secret, but I don’t go around telling randos. And please, don’t call me brave. It’s the least interesting thing about me.”
“Cool,” she says, with refreshing casualness. “Well, you’re my first friend who’s trans.”
The word friend catches him off guard, a small spark of connection igniting in the midst of all his grief. “And you’re my first friend who’s a Karen,” he says, grinning at her.
“Watch it, buddy.” She waves a finger at him with mock seriousness. “That’s Caren with a ‘C,’ don’t ever forget that.”
His laughter comes easily, surprising him, relief in the moment of connection.
They round the corner, and the house appears before them—cold and gray. The Allards have not been keeping up with the lawn and it’s filled with weeds.
“There it is,” Caren says. “I remember regaining consciousness on the front lawn, but I don’t know how I got there.”
“You came from inside the house,” he says as they approach the front door. “I remember watching you stumble down those front steps.”
“So we’re actually going in?” Caren asks.
He shrugs. He’s always wanted to go inside, to see where Autumn was living, but now that the opportunity is here, he feels queasy.
“I can go in alone,” Caren says. “I don’t mind.”
“What? No. I want to.” He tries the handle, but it’s locked.
“We need the code. I don’t want to ask the Allards.” Caren makes a face.
“Hold on, let me try something.” Finn punches in Van’s birthday and smiles at the satisfying sound of the deadlock withdrawing. “Presto.”
“How did you know that?” Caren asks, following him inside.
“Jo told me she uses her son’s birthday for all her codes.”
“Typical boy mom,” Caren says.
They step inside, the musty air coating his mouth and nostrils. Dust motes dance in the shafts of sunlight that cut through the blinds. It’s obvious no one has lived here in a long time.
“I think I remember this.” Caren’s breath is coming in short rapid spurts.
“Yeah? You sure you want to do this?” he asks.
She nods, taking a few steps toward the kitchen. Finn follows close behind, his footsteps on the concrete floor making him hyperaware of every sound in the empty house.
Caren stops at a door that’s cracked open, her hand hesitating on the knob.
Finn walks to her side and gently opens the door, revealing a narrow set of carpeted steps leading to a lower floor.
“This must be the entrance to the basement apartment,” Finn says. “Where Autumn lived.”
The stairwell seems to swallow the light, a dark entry into the unknown. A waft of cool, damp air rises to meet them, carrying the familiar musty smell of dank basements.
“Maybe we should leave,” he says. This is starting to seem like a terrible idea. But Caren is already leading Kugel down the stairs.
Finn follows and when he gets to the bottom, he is relieved to see it is a normal suburban basement with a walk-out glass door to the backyard.
He looks around the empty room, trying to re-create the few images he gleaned from FaceTiming Autumn when she lived down here.
But without her posters on the wall, and all her crystals lined up by her bed, it’s just an empty soulless room.
A large camel cricket jumps past his leg, and Kugel barks, pulling at the leash, eager to chase the cricket. Finn flinches at the noise, his body tense as a bowstring. He walks to the glass door, which has a good view of the back patio and the edge, and even some of the Allard house beyond.
Caren pulls Kugel as she walks, almost transfixed, to the opposite corner of the room. Finn watches her move, unsettled by her certainty.
“Here,” she says, her voice sounding hollow. “I remember being here.”
She holds out her free hand and points, her finger trembling visibly even from where he stands.
“Is that mine?” she asks.
Finn follows her over to see what she is pointing at. A deep maroon stain on the carpet. He has to force himself not to step back in disgust.
The stain is dried to a rusty brown at the edges, but unmistakable in its nature. Blood. A lot of it. The kind of stain that comes from something serious, not a simple cut or scrape. His mind flashes to when he first found Caren and the fresh wound on the back of her head.
“You think that’s your blood?” he asks.
She looks up at him, her eyes wet with tears that catch the dim light. “I remember something,” she says, her voice breaking. “I remember waking up in this room.”
He nods, letting her words sink in. If Caren was in this basement, unconscious and bleeding, then this was no accident. This wasn’t just too much to drink. Someone did this to her. Someone brought her here, to the same house where Autumn was shot.
Two acts of violence in the same house—they had to be connected. He has no proof, no evidence, only his intuition. In that moment, Finn makes a silent promise—to Caren, to Autumn, to himself. He’ll help Caren find out what happened in this basement.
“You okay?” He reaches out, not quite touching Caren.
She nods. “What do we do now?”
“Now we call the police,” he says. “And this time they’ll have to listen. This time, we have proof.”