Blair:I’m sorry, too.
Jack:My dad was the leak.
Blair:What?!
Blair:I didn’t see that one coming.
Jack:Neither did I, but I should have.
Blair:But how did he even do it?
Jack:I have a crazy proposition. What if we don’t have this conversation over text?
Blair FaceTimed him.
He answered with audio only, which was a bit disappointing. “Hi.”
But oh, his voice. Something lurched in her chest. She had missed him so. “Hi.”
“I’d like to say that while I paddled over to my dad’s that night, the night you left Allie’s, I came to my senses and figured out that you were right about everything.”
She pushed her plate away and leaned back in her chair, enjoying the familiar unkinking of her insides that he always inspired. “But?”
“But I just went over there and tried to calm him down. Tried to calm myself down. Acted like I always did with him—deferential.” He blew out a breath. “Until he told me he was the one who’d leaked the pages.”
“That iswild. Why did he even tell you?”
“He held it up as an example of him doing something on my behalf. He knew better, and he was doing it for my own good. He was trying to make an analogy between having done that, which I guess he thought I would appreciate or at least not mind, given that it madeAmerican Crowbetter, and defending the fact that he never told me about Ed’s death. And of course between that and the fact that he ‘rescued’ me from you.”
“How did he even get the pages to leak them?”
“He was at my place last fall for a brief visit. He saw the file open on my computer while I was in the bathroom and e-mailed it to himself. He thought the pages were bad and that I was on the wrong track.”
“So instead of telling you that, he leaked them? What a monster.”
“Right. But that was always true. Why did it take that for me to finally see it? Why did I take everything out on you and let you leave just because you said some things I didn’t want to hear?”
“Why did I do the same to you?”
“Because you were scared. Because sometimes confronting the truth is too much, and your brain shuts down and you lash out.”
That was exactly right. That was what had happened to her, before Christmas, and what had happened to him. “I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered that your dad thought I was enough of a threat that he needed to save you from me.”
“Flattered, I think. He knew how powerful you were.”
“Why didn’t you text me? Not that I’m complaining about the book.”
“Because that’s what we always do, isn’t it? We text. We smooth things over. Then we…”
“Have sex and yell at each other?”
“Right. I didn’t want to do that again.”
“Which is why you wanted to talk on the phone this time.”
“No.” The gate on the side of the house beeped. “I wanted to see you.”
Wait. Was hehere? Blair tried to push back from the table, but her limbs weren’t working.
