Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
CALEB
She doesn’t come out of her room for three days.
Well. She goes to school. But then she vanishes upstairs immediately after.
I’ve been tracking it. Can’t help it.
Day one: She went upstairs at 3:47 p.m. Didn’t come down. I listened for sounds until 11:23 p.m. before forcing myself to sleep.
Day two: 3:51 p.m. Four minutes later than the day before. Is that significant? Does it mean she’s lingering downstairs longer? Does that mean she’s warming back up to us?
Day three: 3:44 p.m. Earlier. That’s bad. That’s worse.
I have the times written in my notebook. Three entries. Odd numbers are never lucky. I should wait for a fourth day to even it out, but—
No. Stop. This is not normal behavior. This is obsessive.
But I can’t stop checking.
She barely eats at all, from what I can tell. I don’t know where she spends lunch—not with my friends and me anymore. She basically stops talking on the rides to and from school, even to Marie. Just shoves her earbuds in and stares out the window like I’m an Uber driver.
It’s clear this is how she’s chosen to handle her last week here—complete withdrawal.
Like that night between us never happened.
I start leaving plates of food outside her door, and get ridiculously excited when they reappear empty.
Leave the plate at 6:00 p.m. exactly. Check at 7:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. Three checks. If the plate’s still there at 9:00 p.m., I leave it overnight and check at 6:00 a.m. before school.
Tuesday: Plate gone by 8:00 p.m. She ate. Good. Wednesday: Plate gone by 9:00 p.m. She ate. Good. Thursday: Plate still there at 9:00 p.m. Gone by 6:00 a.m. Friday. She ate. Eventually. Still good.
Is there a pattern? There’s not enough data yet to establish one.
Maybe it’s pathetic. But I don’t know how to turn off caring about someone, even if they’re trying to turn off their feelings.
Because I felt it that night. It’s not just me she wants. She wants all of it. This place. Our family. How we make her feel at home here. Yeah, it’s twisted that I’m her stepbrother, but I can worry about that later once I make sure she’s… well, once I make sure she’s okay.
I don’t think she is right now.
Sox has been spending more time in my room than Harper’s the past three days. The cat will scratch at Harper’s door, meow plaintively when she doesn’t get let in, then pad into my room through the bathroom like I’m the consolation prize.
I’ve been feeding Sox on Harper’s schedule—7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., exactly—because someone has to. Because if Harper really does leave in four days, Sox will be mine. Because if I maintain Sox’s routine, maybe it means Harper will be okay, too.
Rule #896: Taking care of someone’s cat is taking care of them by proxy.
That’s not a real rule. That’s me losing my mind.
But I wrote it down anyway.
Sox is curled on my bed right now, purring. I keep glancing at her, wondering if she knows something I don’t. If Harper fed her this morning. If Harper’s even okay in there.
The cat won’t tell me.
But I keep asking anyway.
I suspect she’s so die-hard for her friends, she feels like she has no choice except to go back and marry Z, no matter what. She’s stubborn as fuck. And she doesn’t see her own value, so she doesn’t care if her future gets thrown away in her mission to save her best friend.
She doesn’t care if it means she loses the father who’s trying to make amends, or the mother who wants to give her all the mothering and love she never had from the woman who actually gave birth to her.
She doesn’t care if it means losing… me.
Which I know deep down is what this is all about: I’m a selfish fuck who doesn’t want her to go.
At least this way I know she’s eating.
So at least there’s that.
But Friday night, Silas has apparently had enough.
I’m in my room, pretending to study, when I hear Silas’s boots on the stairs. Mom’s quick steps follow, her voice low and warning.
“Silas, please, maybe if we just find her therapist—”
“She’s pouting like a child, and I’ve had enough!” His voice hits like a hammer on steel.
I hear it then—the pounding on her door.
Thud. Thud. THUD.
“Harper! Open this door right now!”
I hear him rattling the door that’s clearly locked. “Harper!” he yells again, even louder.
The sound makes my teeth hurt. I’m up before I even think about it, chair scraping across the floor. But I stop halfway to the bathroom because I know exactly what he’s about to do.
The Jack-and-Jill bathroom between our rooms—her side’s an old-fashioned, thumb-turn lock.
If he can’t get through her locked door, he’ll try to come through my room and get in through the bathroom with a coin or safety pin.
I mean, realistically, he could just shoulder the thing off its hinges.
And if he gets to her when she’s as upset as she obviously is and he’s still doing this bull-in-a-china-shop-schtick—
I move.
I rip open my bedroom door right as Silas reaches for the handle on the other side. He’s close enough that I can see the fear under his anger. And maybe that’s supposed to make how he’s acting okay, but it doesn’t.
“Move,” he says.
“Move,” he repeats.
“No.” It’s one word. Solid. My voice doesn’t shake.
My hands do, but I keep them fisted at my sides. Nails digging into palms. Four fingers curled, thumb pressed against the side. Even pressure. Even count. Even is more lucky than odd.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
The pain helps. Grounds me.
His head tilts, slow and predatory. “Excuse me?”
“Give her space.”
“Or what?” The words are almost calm. “You’ll stop me, boy?”
Boy.
I feel the sting in my gut, but I don’t move. “If I have to.”
Silas and I have gotten close over the past year, or I thought we had, weekends out working on the Mustang.
He’s confided in me about his past and the man he used to be, always with shame in his voice.
He said he had Harper when he was young and dumb and didn’t know any better.
And that he grew up like an animal, only focused on surviving the next day.
He called himself a “rabid dog” and that his first stint in jail only made it worse.
That he didn’t even learn how to be a man until he was thirty.
But this is the first time I’m getting a glimpse of that man he might have been before.
For a second, we just stare each other down in a stand-off. Mom is somewhere behind him in the hall. I can hear her breathing.
Then—something changes. The stiffness in his shoulders loosens. His mouth softens.
“You’re a good brother,” he says.
It hits me square in the chest. If he only knew. If he only had the faintest idea how un-brotherly my thoughts about Harper actually are. How only half a week ago, her body was tangled around mine with my hands all over her skin.
“She’ll be okay,” I tell him, though I don’t know if I believe it. “She just needs time.”
Silas nods again, then turns and walks back down the hallway. I hear him murmur something to Mom, their quiet footsteps retreating down the stairs, and the soft click of their bedroom door closing.
And then silence.
I lean against my doorway, adrenaline still fizzing in my blood. My hands are shaking, and my pulse won’t slow down.
I count my breaths. Four in, hold four, four out. Four in, hold four, four out.
It’s not working.
My hands find my pockets. Thumb to index, index to middle, middle to ring, ring to pinky.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I can’t believe I just did that—stood up to Silas Tucker. Broke one of my core rules about keeping the peace. About not causing conflict. About staying invisible and safe and—
Rule #7: Don’t disappoint Mom.
But I didn’t disappoint her. I protected Harper. That’s different.
Rule #898: Protect Harper at all costs.
New rule. I need to write it down. Need to document it. Need to make it official.
My hands are still shaking when I pick up the pen.
For once, I didn’t just keep my head down and play the role of the good son, watching mute from the sidelines. I stepped in. I protected someone who needed protecting.
Harper.
This is starting to become a pattern. The thought lands heavy and warm in my chest as I settle back in front of my desk and the YouTube video I was watching and my open Discord chat where everyone’s fucking around like we do on a Friday night—at least Kevin and Sara and Miles—until the quiet starts getting to me.
My eyes keep drifting to the shared wall between my and Harper’s rooms.
Is it... too quiet?
I check my watch. 8:15 p.m.
Last sound I heard from her room: 6:47 p.m. Footsteps. Bathroom door closing.
That’s one hour and twenty-eight minutes ago.
88 minutes.
5,280 seconds.
How long can someone go without making noise? What’s a normal amount of silence?
I try to remember my own patterns. How long do I go without making a sound when I’m studying? Ten minutes? Twenty?
But 88 minutes?
I check my watch again. 8:16 p.m.
89 minutes now.
The feeling that something’s wrong crawls up my spine in cold little increments, until I can’t sit still anymore.
Sox appears in my doorway, meowing. Not her normal meow—the plaintive one. The one that means something’s wrong.
She pads to the bathroom door. Sits. Meows again at Harper’s side.
No response.
Sox looks back at me, tail swishing in agitation.
Even the cat knows something’s wrong.
That’s what tips me over the edge. If Sox is worried—
Sox winds between my ankles, still meowing.
“Shh,” I whisper. “I know. I’m checking.”
I cross to the bathroom we share, cool tile under my bare feet. Her door is closed, but that’s normal.
But the lack of light from the line beneath the doorway isn’t. And the fact that there are no noises. Of any kind.
It’s eight-eighteen. She’s never asleep this early.
“Harper?” My voice is barely above a whisper, ear pressed to the wood. “They’re gone. It’s just me.”
Nothing.
I press my ear harder against the door. Listen for breathing. Footsteps. The rustle of sheets. Anything.
Silence.
I knock. Three times. “Harper?”
Count to ten. Nothing.
Knock again. Four times this time. Even number. Better.
Count to ten again. Still nothing.
My heart is hammering now. Four beats, eight beats, twelve, sixteen.
“Harper, please.”
Sox meows again, louder. Insistent.
Nothing.
“Harper, please. We could just… Look, we don’t have to talk. We could just watch some YouTube. Or a movie. Or…” My eyes flick toward the French doors to the balcony I can’t see from here. “We could climb down the tree and go for a walk. Mom and Da—Mom and Silas don’t have to know.”
I freeze mid-sentence.
And frown.
The tree.
That massive oak outside the balcony with thick limbs like a ladder. I noticed it the day we moved in. Twelve major branches. Intervals of roughly eighteen inches between them. Perfectly climbable. I made a mental note without even thinking—escape route, emergency access, structural integrity good.
It’s the perfect escape route. I’m just such a… I roll my eyes… such a Boy Scout, I’ve never dared sneak out.
But Harper…
Oh, fuck.
My hands are clumsy as I dig through the jumble in her side of the drawer—hair ties (seven), mascara (two), a half-empty lip gloss (one)—until my fingers close around what I need.
A bobby pin.
Rule #123: Don’t invade people’s privacy.
But I’m about to break it anyway.
My hands shake as I work the pin into the slot. Feel for the give. The metal scrapes. Once. Twice. Three times before—
Click.
I pause, my stomach knotting.
Rule #7: Don’t disappoint Mom.
Rule #123: Don’t invade people’s privacy.
Rule #898: Protect Harper at all costs.
The rules are contradicting themselves. My notebook is filled with contradictions now. Nothing makes sense anymore. The whole system is breaking down.
A better person would stop now. I thought it was a dick move when Silas tried busting into her room; it’s still a dick move now. I don’t care if I’m being hypocritical.
Because the pit in my stomach says I’m already too late.
I ease the door open an inch, arm braced in case she tries to slam it in my face. “Harper?”
Silence.
Another inch. “Harper?”
No explosion. No curses. No projectile aimed at my head.
By the time the gap is wide enough, my breath is stuck somewhere in my chest.
I step inside.
And absence hits me harder than the baseball bat I was expecting.
The bed is neatly made. There are no clothes on the floor.
And no Harper.
Sox darts past me into the room, jumps on the bed, and meows plaintively at the empty pillow.
The French door didn’t latch all the way, and one door has been pulled wide open by the wind. November air floods in—cold and accusing. The curtains twist in the breeze.
I hurry over to close the doors before the cat can get out. Count the branches visible from here. Twelve. Same as I cataloged before.
When did she leave? It’s two days until her birthday. I was supposed to have 2,880 more minutes.
But she doesn’t give a shit about numbers.
How long has she already been gone?
I check my watch. 8:23 p.m.
Last sound: 6:47 p.m.
96 minutes ago.
She could be anywhere by now.