Sometimes he cries. He says he never meant for this to happen, and he’s worried about what he’ll lose if anyone finds out.
—Page 21 of Tessa Waye’s diary
First comes the shouting. It’s loud, indignant, and definitively male. Mr. Waye says Todd should get the hell out of his house, and Mrs. Waye is begging them to stop. Something crashes.
Then comes the smack of flesh on flesh.
Next to me, Tally jumps. Okay, if I’m being honest, we both jump. Someone just got punched, and inside, I’m totally set to run.
Except it’s Todd who flings open the front door.
“Remember,” Tally says.
Like this shit is something I’m going to forget. I follow Todd to his Range Rover, and when I look behind me, Tally’s gone.
Todd shifts us into drive and we pull away from the curb, swinging around Carson like he doesn’t even exist. Maybe to people like Todd and Bren, Carson doesn’t.
I study Todd from the corner of my vision. His breathing is shallow, and the hand curled around the steering wheel is swelling.
“They teach you how to punch in therapy?”
Todd looks down at his right knuckles, tucks his hand under his leg. “Not exactly.”
“But you did it anyway.”
Todd shoots me a quick look, something wordless clouding up his eyes. He’s trying to make a decision, and after another beat, he decides. “I did it because he was going after Becky again. Jim’s absolutely unhinged. He’s upset because she told Jenna without asking him first. He’s more upset about how Tessa’s death reflects on him than he is about the loss of his daughter. I punched him because . . . it needed to be done.”
I nod. Now there’s something I can understand, though I wouldn’t have thought Todd would understand it too. He did what needed to be done, and so will I. Tessa’s stalker will never touch my sister.
“Jim Waye has bullied his family—his daughters—for years,” Todd continues. “Tessa was afraid of him.”
Afraid enough to jump off a building to get away?
We come to a red light, and Todd spends a moment examining his hand. “I knew Tessa was afraid. . . . Maybe I should have done something. Maybe I could have saved her.”
I look out the window. It’s understandable. Everybody thinks that after a suicide. Believe me, I know all about the doubts and blame. I feel terrible that Tally and Mrs. Waye are going through it, though. I also feel bad for Todd. The guilt looks like it’s eating him from the inside. He looks like he might cry.
I really hope he doesn’t. Oh my God, I so hope he doesn’t. I would have no idea what to say. I would have no idea what to do. People aren’t like computers. You can’t fix them. They’re too messy.
“Hey, Wicket, let’s keep this between us, okay?”
The question shoots out of Todd like it’s greased. He’s so earnest, it surprises—no, shocks the hell out of—me and then . . . I feel kind of good about it. Bren would have an epic shit fit if she knew about this, and he’s trusting me not to tell. He’s trusting me. The juvenile delinquent. The girl no one trusts with anything.
“Sure thing,” I say, sounding awfully calm for someone whose heart is doing a funny leap. If he can trust me, maybe I could trust him. Maybe I could tell him about the diary.
But I don’t.
I roll down the window and thread my fingers through the fast-moving air. This is enough. I won’t tell him, but maybe I don’t really have to. Maybe it’s enough to know I’m not the only one with secrets.
By the time Todd gets us home, Bren has dinner ready. The moment we open the door, I can smell warm tomatoes and chopped-up garlic.
“Bren’s making spaghetti.” Lily meets us in the hallway, and she sounds almost reverent. I can’t really blame her—it does smell pretty amazing. The last time we had spaghetti it was microwaved noodles with ketchup on them. Dad said it was basically the same thing, but it’s not.
It’s so not.
“She’s already thrown away two batches,” Lily continues. “They weren’t perfect.”
No idea how that would be possible. Bren is the most exact cook I know. Directions exist so we can follow them. Todd says she approaches their business contracts the same way.
“Hi, honey.” Bren’s fiddling with the garlic bread, carefully pulling it away from the pan’s hot edges. “How are you holding up?”
“How do you think?” Todd blows through the kitchen and slams his office door behind him. Briefly we’re all quiet; then Bren turns around with an incandescent smile.
Too bad it isn’t quick enough to hide the hurt.
Or maybe it’s just that I recognize it. In that moment, she looks crushed that he won’t confide in her. The disappointment reminds me of my mom.
I feel terrible for her.
“It smells really great, Bren,” I offer, and she rewards me with another too-bright smile. It doesn’t make me feel better so much as . . . relieved, like a crisis has been averted, even though Bren isn’t like that.
And I don’t want to say it, but here’s the thing: Bren isn’t like my mom.
Having a parent with depression kind of forces you to play psychic. You don’t know what’s going to make her angry. You don’t know what’s going to make her cry. You don’t know. Period. But you better try to anticipate, because you’ll feel the fallout. My dad made it worse. He got off on it.
“It smells great because it’s going to be great.” Lily is already sitting at the kitchen table with a fork in one hand. “Wash up, Wick.”
I should say no, but I’m hungry—starved, actually. After scrubbing my hands with the vanilla soap that makes Bren always smell like cookies, I flop into the closest chair and watch Bren add tiny sausages to the meat sauce.
“I ran into your friend’s mom today,” she says after a moment.
As in a friend other than Lauren? Bren hands me my plate, and I check the size of her pupils. They’re normal-looking, but she’s talking like she’s high on Windex. Interesting—mostly because I don’t have friends. I have Lauren, and Bren knows Lauren’s mom.
Could she mean Griff’s mom? I hope not. I don’t think Griff qualifies as a friend . . . although I’m not sure what that makes him.
“She was really nice,” Bren continues, passing Lily a plate full enough to feed a football team. She looks at me. “Wick, sweetheart, please sit up. Posture conveys how you feel about yourself.”
Dutifully, I scoot up in my chair, and Bren smiles like I’ve just done the cutest trick. “Anyway, she said you had physics with her Ronald.”
My breath dries up. On the other side of the table, Lily stiffens.
“Ronald?” I put down my fork and focus on not shaking. “You’re sure she said Ronald?”
Bren’s studying the progress of her garlic bread, but hearing my questions, her head whips around. “Of course I’m sure. Why? What’s going on?”
What’s going on is I am dangerously close to blowing my cool. Get a grip, Wicket.
I pull my mouth to one side, try to look like I’m thinking. “Oh yeah, Ronald. He sits a couple rows away from me.”
“So you do know him.” The muscles in Bren’s neck relax.
“Yeah, I just forgot about his real name.” I push my food around. So much for my appetite. At this rate, I doubt I’ll ever eat again. “We call him Ron.”
We also call him Joe, my dad’s best friend. The message is one Lily and I were told to expect. It goes down like this: Joe sends his girlfriend—although girlfriend is kind of stretching it. Flavor of the week is more accurate. Anyway, Joe’s girlfriend is supposed to contact us by posing as Ronald White’s mother. She would ask Bren to say hello to us for her. Bren, thinking she was speaking to a nice Peachtree City mom and not a meth-head, would pass on the story.
And I would know my dad’s back and I need to make my way to Joe’s place.
I focus on my plate, but inside my ears, my blood is rushing. My dad’s home. He’s back. And he wants us back too.