"Then he’ll ask questions."
The kind that have no clean answers. I sink into the chair, the weight of it all pressing down—my father’s confession, spoken calm as a weather report; a man dead in a Kihei kitchen, no remorse, no hesitation. And Richard? That twisted bastard, dangling it over him like a sword, evidence tucked into the foundation of everything my father clawed into existence. Forher.
I grab the whiskey. Burn it down.
"James," I say. "What’s the play?"
"Tell him." No hesitation. "Before Richard does. He’s earned that much." He pauses. "And I need to know if he’ll break."
"Will he?"
"James Dupree has been holding this for fifteen years. He went through an FBI investigation and sat across from federal prosecutors and said nothing because he believed it was the right thing to do." He picks up his own glass. "Whether he stillbelieves that when he understands the full picture … I don't know."
I rise, snap my jacket closed. Look down at him, all that golden light spilling over his desk, the decades of control, the single damn thing he can’t rein in.
"Tell him soon,"I say. "Before Jade finds out from somewhere else. She's already thinking about Torres.”
My father looks up sharply. "What does she know?"
"Nothing she can prove. But she's thinking." I move toward the door. "She's perceptive too."
He nods once. I leave.
16
JADE
Icome downstairs for water at ten and Phoenix is on the deck.
His back is to the glass, phone pressed to his ear, and I can see the set of his shoulders from the kitchen—that particular angle, the one that means whatever he's hearing is serious and he's decided not to let it show. I fill my glass at the tap. I'm not trying to listen. But the deck door isn't fully closed and I catch pieces of it anyway.
Nicholas's name. Hawaii. A pause where Phoenix says nothing for a long time, just stands there looking out at the dark water, and then that flat controlled voice I've learned to read like a second language:I understand. Tonight.
I take my water and go back upstairs.
He doesn't know I was there. I didn't make a sound.
I liein bed and fit what I heard alongside everything else I've been quietly putting together for weeks like you do when you're living inside a story that nobody is fully telling you. Nicholas. Hawaii. The detective from this morning—Phoenix mentionedit briefly over dinner, a preliminary conversation, nothing to worry about, his father's lawyer handled it. He saidnothing to worry aboutin exactly the tone that means there is something to worry about and he's decided I don't need to know what it is yet.
Theyetdoesn’t gnaw at me anymore. I’m used to the waiting. What curdles in my gut is the rhythm of it; facts doled out in portions, measured against some invisible scale of what he thinks I can stomach. Not malice. Not even control, not the jagged kind my mother warned about when she’d rage over Olive’s choices. This is quieter. Thirty years of watching his father spin silences into strategy left marks. Phoenix doesn’t wield information; he allocates it, like a trustee rationing trust funds.
I know the difference between Phoenix and Nicholas. I still believe that.
I'm just less certain than I was a month ago.
The thingabout Phoenix is that he's still here. That's what I keep coming back to when the other thoughts get too loud. He still reaches for me at night. He still comes home, even when home means arriving at midnight with files under his arm and eating reheated dinner standing at the counter. He's not gone. He's just somewhere else, somewhere behind himself, and every time I reach for the real him, the phone goes off or the email comes in and he's back behind the glass.
On the beach he was completely present. I keep thinking about that. The way we were together.
Tonight, after dinner, he's at the counter reading something on his phone. It's always Crawford Group correspondence, hasbeen for weeks, the phone a permanent extension of his hand. I'm putting away the dishes and I watch him from across the kitchen and I think about saying it. Not everything, just the small version.I heard you on the deck. Hawaii. Tell me what's happening.
He looks up, but I say nothing and he goes back to his phone.
I stand there with the coffee pot in my hand and I think about my mom. About Olive. About the specific way my mother described what happened to her best friend — not that Nicholas was cruel, not that he demanded anything, just that Olive gradually became someone who existed in the space Nicholas left available for her. And by the time she understood what had happened she'd been inside it for so long that getting out would have meant dismantling everything.
Phoenix isn't Nicholas. I know that. The comparison isn't fair and I'm making it anyway because when you're scared you reach for the pattern that fits.
What's actually happening is simpler. Phoenix is under a lot of pressure. When he’s like that, he goes quiet and seals himself away. I’ve been letting him because I know him well enough to understand that pushing closes him down faster than anything else. So, I wait. We move through the house like two people who love each other and are both being very careful.
