Page 41 of You, Only You

"Because they ran her car off the road and I couldn't stop seeing it. Every time I closed my eyes. The SUV hitting her, the spin, her blood on my..." I pressed my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. "I needed to know where she was. At all times. I needed the thirty seconds of warning that would let me get to her if..."

"If something happened."

"Yes."

"And you didn't think to, I don't know, tell her? Ask her if she'd be okay with it?"

"I knew she wouldn't be okay with it. That's why I didn't ask."

Another silence. This one was heavier. I could hear Nicole processing, the way she always did, taking the information apart and looking at the pieces before she responded.

"She found it," Nicole said. Not a question.

"In four days. She's a forensic accountant. She finds things for a living. I don't know what I thought would happen."

"You didn't think. That's the point." Her voice wasn't angry. It was something worse: disappointed. The same tone she'd used three years ago when she'd figured out what I was really doing with the firm's resources. Not fury. Just a bone-deep weariness with my particular brand of self-destruction. "You panicked, and when you panic, you control. It's your whole thing, Will. It's been your whole thing since Mom died."

The words landed with the blunt precision of a hammer. I opened my mouth to argue, to explain, to contextualize.

Nothing came out.

"Tell me what she said," Nicole continued.

So I told her. Not the cleaned-up version. Not the strategic summary. The real version: Lindsey's cold calm. The bank statement comparison. The way she'd said "there isn't going to be a third" without raising her voice, which had been worse than any shouting. The word she'd almost said and then swallowed.The way she'd asked for space and I'd left the room and stood at the window for an hour doing nothing because there was nothing to do.

"The word she almost said," Nicole said carefully. "What word?"

"I think... I think she was going to say she can't be with someone she loves if she has to..." I stopped. The sentence stalled in my throat like a car with a dead engine. "She didn't say it. She stopped herself."

"But you heard it."

"Yeah. I heard it."

Nicole was quiet for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler, but not soft. Nicole didn't do soft when I needed hard truths. It was one of the things I relied on.

"Do you remember, when I was twenty-four, the thing with Derek Morrison?"

"Prom. I ran a background check on him."

"You ran a background check, you talked to his teachers, you found out about a shoplifting incident when he was fourteen, and you told me I wasn't allowed to go with him."

"He had a record."

"He stole a candy bar from a gas station when he was in eighth grade, Will. He was a nice kid who was terrified of you, and I missed my junior prom because you decided he was dangerous." A pause. "Do you remember what I said to you after?"

I did. I'd never forgotten it. But I didn't say it, so she said it for me.

"I said, 'You can't protect me from everything, and trying to is going to make me hate you.' And you looked at me like I'd slapped you, and you said..."

"'I'd rather you hate me than get hurt.'"

"Yeah. That." Her voice cracked slightly. "You said that when I was sixteen. You're still saying it. Just to a different person now."

The scotch was still on the counter, untouched. The city was still doing its thing. And my sister was three thousand miles away, reaching through a phone line to show me something I'd been looking at for twenty years without seeing it.

"It's the same pattern," I said slowly.

"It's always been the same pattern. Mom dies, and you decide the world is dangerous, and you start trying to control everything around you so nothing bad can happen to the people you love. And when it doesn't work, when Nicole gets hurt anyway, when the system fails, you just... double down. More control. More surveillance. More walls."