After darting past the open doors of the den, I make a beeline for my father’s office. I have the handle lowered halfway when the flush of a toilet across the hallway freezes my hand. I breathe out a sigh of relief when Madden exits the washroom a few seconds later. It’s weird he’s using the guest bathroom instead of the one in his room, but I guess a walk up a set of stairs is too much for someone as grief-stricken as him. He’s so out of sorts, he shaved off the beard that took him a year to grow the night Joey died.
“Hey.” He adds a head jerk to his greeting before joining me near our father’s office. “What are you doing?”
I say the first thought that pops into my head. “Melody isn’t answering my texts, so I’m going to call her dorm on the TTY phone Mom had installed for her when we moved in. You?”
He swipes his hand under his nose before shrugging. “Nothing. Just needed to get away for a bit.”
“So, you went to the bathroom?”
He gives me a look that says he doesn’t appreciate the snappiness of my tone. Twelve months ago, I wouldn’t have cared about hurting his feelings. Now, five days after fruitlessly trying to resuscitate our dead brother, I care.
“Sorry. That was uncalled for.” I slap his shoulder in a man-hug type of way before pulling him into my chest. “If you need me, reach out. I’ll be right there.”
“Yeah. Ah… thanks.” He ends my half-hearted embrace as awkwardly as I started it before inching back. “Same to you.”
Eager to take him up on his offer, I start my investigation five minutes earlier than planned. “Did you happen to see Melody or Joey Saturday night? Joey said he invited you to his party, but he didn’t know if you’d be back from boot camp in time.”
“Umm… no. I had only turned up when… you know… you were working on Joey.” He gives off the signs that he’s lying, but since it’s a touchy subject, I give him a bit of leeway. I can’t wipe the images from my head, and I wasn’t watching it from afar like him.
“What about Melody?”
Madden scrubs at the stubble on his chin. Unlike the rest of the family, he didn’t shave for Joey’s funeral. “Why are you asking me about her whereabouts? She’s your girlfriend, so shouldn’t you know where she’s at?”
“I’m not asking where she is now. I’m asking if you saw her at Joey’s party.” I lower the anger in my voice by just a smidge before saying, “She was upset Saturday night. I figured since you called me, maybe you knew what was wrong.”
“Nah, I have no clue what her problem is. I was just reaching out, that’s all. Seeing how you were.” Now I know without a doubt he’s lying. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself, so there’s no chance in hell he asked me to call him just to say hello. “If you ever find out what her issue is, give me a heads up. I’ll back you up.” He speaks his offer as if it were a person who upset Melody, not a thing or a reason.
“Yeah, thanks.” I have no intention of accepting his offer, but if it gets him away from me quicker, I’m down with pretending I’m open to the idea.
Confident I’m falling for his helpful-big-brother ruse, he lifts his chin for the second time before joining Phoenix in the den. I slip into my father’s office just as quietly. After switching on the antique lamp, I ruffle through the papers covering his old-style desk. When they appear to be nothing but endorsement sheets and campaign funding requests, I shift my focus to his laptop. It is password protected. The hint states it’s a birthday. Naturally, I try my mother’s birthdate first. When it comes back as incorrect, I try Phoenix’s and then Madden’s. Both fail.
Desperate, I give my father one last attempt to prove he loves all his children. That ends as disastrously as suspected. Neither mine nor Joey’s dates of birth work. With the laptop warning, I have one final chance to input the correct code, I stray my eyes around my father’s office, seeking any hints as to what his passcode would be.
I find several clues a few seconds later. They are a dozen crystal picture frames scattered amongst the law books on his shelves. They’re all filled with photographs of one person. My father.
With my back molars grinding, I punch his birthdate into his laptop. I curse myself when it brings up the home screen a few seconds later. After closing down an acquisitions sheet for a Kirill Bobrov, I sign into his banking site. Mercifully, it doesn’t require me to sign in because it’s still logged in from an earlier access.
While flicking my eyes between the office door and the laptop’s screen, I scroll through several deposits from idiots endorsing my father’s run for office even this far out from the elections. The amounts reflected range from low three figures to some as high as six, notching toward seven digits.
One completely stops me. It isn’t to Mr. Darcy as I was seeking, but the payee name is odd, considering my father drives an AUDI.
BMW Coastal Pty Ltd.
The sixty-three thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight-dollar transaction was right around the time Melody and I sent a second admission request to Browns. My application was granted. Hers was denied.
“I’ve got you now, you condescending prick,” I mutter under my breath while hitting Control P to print out proof of my father’s scheming ways.
The inkjet printer working overtime almost drowns the soundless buzz of my cell phone. I must have forgotten to turn the sound back on after Joey’s funeral.
While digging my phone out of the pocket of my dress pants, praying it’s a call from Melody, I recall the way she squirms when I talk against her skin. She can’t hear the praise I bombard her with every time we make love, but she can sense the sentiment in the vibrations of my lips. It adds to our lovemaking and gives us another form of communication only we know.
My lips twist when I peer down at the screen. It isn’t who I am hoping, but in a way, it kind of is. I’m not able to track down Melody’s exact whereabouts, but a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sure does. I reached out to Grayson long before I sought advice from my father on tracking down a missing person. Although Grayson couldn’t tell me where Melody was, he assured me she was safe and that he’d advise me if anything changed. My father told me anyone who hides from their responsibilities isn’t worth finding. Excluding the three words I shouted at him ten minutes ago, I haven’t spoken to him since then.
After sliding my finger across the screen of my phone, I squash it to my ear. I don’t get to issue a greeting before Grayson says, “Planning a trip without me, punk?”
My eyes float over the screen of my father’s laptop before they drift to the window. The standard cars are in the driveway, and the laptop is still open on the print screen. I can’t see any signs of Grayson’s watch.
“A trip?” I ask, feeling lost. I thought he meant his plan to follow my lead through my father’s servers, but a lack of evidence has me moving away from that theory.
