"Oh God." Her hand goes to her mouth. "Oh God, Max. They were—theywerehurting you. I knew it. I knew something was—the way you flinched when Atlas touched your shoulder at dinner last month, the way you stopped coming downstairs in the mornings—I thought I was imagining it but I wasn't, was I? They were—"
"Mom, that's not—"
"—they were doing something to you and I didn't see it, I was in that house and I didn't see it, I was sleeping next to their father and my son was down the hall being—"
Her face goes white. Not pale. White. The color leaves her skin like someone pulled a plug.
"I–I'm going to be sick."
She stands. Knocks her phone off the bed. Doesn't pick it up. She makes it three steps toward the bathroom before her hand clamps over her mouth and she's running—the door swings shut behind her and I hear her hit the tile, hear the sound of retching, hear the faucet turn on.
The bathroom door is closed.
The hotel phone is on the nightstand.
I should go to her. I should knock on the door and kneel beside her on the tile and tell her the truth—that they weren't hurting me, that no one was hurting me, that what she saw in the driveway was love, not damage. I should correct the story she just built in her head because it's wrong and she's in there right now vomiting over a version of events that didn't happen and I am the only person who can fix it.
I pick up the hotel phone.
I am a terrible son.
I dial Wren's number from memory. My hands are shaking. The bathroom faucet is still running. Through the door I can hear Margot coughing, spitting, the sound of a woman trying to pull herself together on her knees on hotel tile.
She’s losing the battle.
The phone rings twice.
"Max?" Sleep in her voice. Alarm underneath it. Wren answers every call, every time, because we made a deal that we would always be there for each other. "Max, it's six in the morning—"
"I need you to come get me. There's a–there’s a gas station on the corner of Ridgeway and Fourth, half a block south. Can you meet me there?"
She goes quiet. One beat. She hears the shake in my voice and the urgency underneath it and she doesn't ask why and she doesn't ask what happened.
"Uh–yeah. Twenty minutes," she says.
"Fifteen. Please."
"Put on shoes. I'm coming."
She hangs up.
The bathroom faucet turns off.
I set the phone down. I look at the bathroom door. Behind it, Margot is rinsing her mouth. Pressing a wet washcloth to her face. Rebuilding. Any second she's going to come out and she's going to have a new plan—a plan that involves police reports and restraining orders and the wrong crime, the wrong brothers, the wrong story entirely—and if I'm still standing here when that door opens I will never leave this room.
I grab my jacket. My shoes are already on.
I cross to the desk. The leather folder nobody will ever open. There's a pen inside it. A notepad with the hotel crest.
I write fast. My handwriting is terrible. Zero would make fun of it.
Mom—
They didn't hurt me. I promise. I'll explain everything. Please don't call the police about the brothers. Please. Trust me.
I love you. I'll call you today.
—Max
