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When everything was finished, we all sat in the living room with plates on our laps and plastic cups of cheap booze to sip on, with the TV playing Christmas movies in the background.
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas were the only two movies they’d watched in foster care at Christmas-time, Bishop explained to me in a quiet voice, making it the only Christmas tradition that any of them truly stuck with.
Bellies full, and booze settling warm in our stomachs, we lounged in the living room with the mess of our dinner around us. Jessica and Liam cuddled up together on the floor in front of where Misael, Bishop, Kace, and I piled together on the couch, a warm bundle of mildly drunk contentedness.
There were no servants. No fancy food or drinks. We didn’t even have presents.
Our dinner was self-served on paper plates, and instead of a hired orchestra, we listened to radio music and watched old Christmas cartoons.
But as far as I was concerned?
This was the best damn Christmas I’d ever had.
Sixteen
My house, over the course of winter break, became the go-to place for the Lost Boys.
If there was one good thing to come out of my mom being gone for the holiday break, it was that the three boys could come and go as they pleased, without needing to worry about what Mom would say. I even gave Bish a spare key so they could come in late at night after jobs without having to crawl in through the window.
In my old life, I’d been used to a pristine house, with nothing left out of place and everything unsightly tucked away where no one could see it.
But there was something… nice about a house that felt lived in. There was evidence of the three boys everywhere, signs that the four of us shared the space, practically living together by now.
Ever since Christmas, I felt like I’d gained a bit of clarity.
I couldn’t pretend that my family was ever going to go back to normal—especially not after learning what my mom was up to in her spare time.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to patch things up. That I shouldn’t try to patch things up. I wanted my father out of jail. No matter how fucked up the rest of this was, he didn’t deserve to be there, stuck behind bars while his wife cheated on him.
I hadn’t given up on my quest to figure out what had put my father in jail in the first place. When I’d last visited him, he’d still insisted he had been set up, and I was sure if I could find out who was behind it, I could prove his innocence.
Nathaniel wasn’t the person who’d framed my dad. I was sure of it. If the Lost Boys had been responsible for planting evidence for the Feds to find when they investigated my dad, I was sure they would’ve told me about it by now. Maybe not at first, when they’d hated me, but things had changed so much since then.
Still, I was convinced that whoever had gone after my dad was someone who existed in the same world as Nathaniel. And that meant Nathaniel was my best lead.
I couldn’t go to the man himself. It would be way too risky. Not because I thought he would attack me like Flint had, but because I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to take me out if I presented any threat to his organization.
It would be almost as risky to try asking Josephine, although I considered calling her and trying to subtly shift the conversation to my father and his arrest. Ultimately, I decided against it though. She had seemed open and kind, but she obviously loved her husband. She would do whatever she had to in order to protect him, just like I would for the Lost Boys. I admired that, but it meant I could never completely trust her.
The one thing I could do, however, was snoop.
A week before school was scheduled to start back up, the Lost Boys left in the early afternoon to meet up with Nathaniel. I kissed them all goodbye, and as soon as the front door closed, I glanced quickly around the living room.
They’d been spending so much time here that most of their personal effects had ended up here too. Misael’s backpack leaned against the couch, and I started there, digging through it carefully to see if I could find anything useful.
Guilt rose up in my chest—how could I say I was falling in love with these boys and sneak around behind their backs, rifle through their things? How could I violate their trust like this?
But I couldn’t just let Dad languish in prison without trying to help. And I knew the Lost Boys wouldn’t stand for even the mention of me wanting to poke my nose into this any further. Bishop had made it perfectly clear how he felt, and I couldn’t blame him for hating my father.
So I would keep my search from them for a little while longer.
There was a note stuffed into one of Misael’s textbooks with an address, a name, and a small “N” written in the corner. Probably the details of some job they’d had for Nathaniel.
Grabbing the notes, I hopped up and darted into the bedroom, reaching under my mattress for the small notebook I kept hidden there. With the boys almost always in close proximity to me, I picked up bits and pieces about what they were doing. Names that sounded familiar, I jotted down. If something sounded like it could be a lead, I jotted that down too.
I flipped the little book open to a blank page and copied down the information, then returned to the living room to put the note back where I’d found it.
As I began to stuff the books back into the backpack, a noise outside the house caught my attention. A car engine cutting off.
