Page 83 of The Fool

KEENE

I didn’t know how I knew something was wrong.

But by the time I got out of the courtroom—with the promise that the state of Florida wouldn’t be contacting me about my mother ever again—it was well past three.

I had just enough time to get on the plane and head back to Texas.

Only, when I got on the plane, it was to find Winston already on it, looking grim.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something bad.” He looked haunted.

“What is it?” I repeated. “Is it Ande?”

He grimaced. “She’s fine. But this is about her.”

“What?” I asked, already reaching for my phone.

“When you were in court, Ande called your sisters. She found something at her sister’s house,” he said.

I pulled out my phone and called her, needing to hear her voice.

She answered on the first ring, and within seconds, I could tell that she’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, a sick sort of dread filling my gut.

“H-hey.” She sniffled. “Did Winston tell you?”

“Not yet,” I said. “What happened?”

“I found a journal.” She sniffled again. “It was written in code. Addison and I used to do that a lot. Talk in our own code. So, when I got to this journal written in it, I started reading it. Keene… my sister was hurt.”

“Hurt,” I said. “It wasn’t a suicide?”

She made a mewling sound, and I could hear a male voice in the background, then Tony’s voice say, “Shhhh.”

Instant relief hit me.

She wasn’t there alone.

“Tell me,” I urged.

She cried harder. “I can’t. I can’t say it again.”

The phone was jostled, and then Tony said in a really soft voice, “Have Winston tell you everything.”

I looked at Winston. “Tell me.”

So he did.

Giving me the condensed version.

Yet the condensed version still made me utterly sick.

“Ande started reading a diary that was written in code. Some language she and Addison started when they were around thirteen to hide stuff from their brothers. Well, she’s going through her sister’s books out of the boxes that came from Germany. There was a book in there, To Kill a Mockingbird. And long story short, Addison couldn’t stand that book, so it stood out. Ande opens it and finds a journal that was written in this code,” Winston said.

I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like where this was going.

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