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I guess that’s why my guilt is so huge even now.
Because they’re all so wonderful and amazing. They still treat me as their baby sister before I betrayed them.
Except Conrad.
He was mad at the time. Madder than all three of my other brothers. More disappointed too. He could barely stand to be in the same room as me.
He still feels the same.
And so when he calls, he’s the one who talks the least. Which wouldn’t be too atypical because my oldest brother doesn’t talk a lot to begin with, but his silence these days is laced with disappointment and anger at me.
I know that. I can feel it.
But still, I need to know.
I need to know what deal Reed was talking about back at Buttery Blossoms this morning and in order to do that, I’m breaking the norm.
Instead of waiting for Con’s call, I’m calling him. I need to get him alone to talk about this.
Unlike many girls at St. Mary’s, I do have the privilege of making my own phone calls. It’s one of those difficult privileges to have that I’ve earned after a lot of good girl behavior and excellent grades.
And tonight, I’m going to use it.
I’m in the phone room, inside a mustard-colored booth, with the black headset of a rotary phone pressed to my ear. I’ve already dialed the number and my brother picks up after the first ring.
From the tone of his voice, it sounds like Conrad must’ve jumped to answer the phone. “Callie?”
“Yes. Hi, I —”
He doesn’t let me speak. “Are you okay?”
Oh!
Crap.
He probably thinks that something is wrong with me. That’s why I’m calling instead of waiting for him to call.
I grab the receiver with the other hand as well, as I reply, “Yes, I am. I just –”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, not at all. I’m not hurt. Everything is fine, Con. I just –”
“Then what the hell is going on? Did you do something?”
“What?”
“What the fuck did you do, Callie?” he booms into the phone.
I flinch. “Nothing. I did nothing. Why would you assume that I did something?”
His voice is sharp as ever when he replies, “You’re calling me out of the blue, ten minutes before I’m supposed to call you. What else would I think?”
Right.
I get it. I understand his point.
It’s not as if he’s wrong to think that.
I did screw up once, and well, I did it in such a massive way that only once was enough.
Swallowing, I say, “I didn’t do anything, Con, and I’m sorry I worried you. I just… I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
I wince slightly at his curt tone.
Okay, do it.
Ask him.
Ask the question, Callie.
“When I was… when everything happened and they arrested me. And they told us that there’d be a hearing and they’d most probably send me to a juvenile detention center. How come… why didn’t they? Why did they reduce my charges so I only ended up at St. Mary’s?”
They did.
They reduced the charges against me.
The cops came to the house the very next day in the afternoon and since I was a minor, Conrad had to go into the station with me. Even though I’d told him everything — I confessed about lying and falling in love and then stealing his car the night before — it still came as a shock.
It still jarred my brothers that I was being taken into custody and the charges against me were such that I could actually end up in a juvenile detention center.
At least the cop who took me in was nice. He used to be Con’s friend from Bardstown High and he kept reassuring us that even though things looked bleak just then, we could hire a lawyer who could turn this all around.
And then I remember Con stepping out of the room.
I remember hearing his loud, booming voice, demanding to talk to someone in charge, someone with a fucking brain who knew this charge was bullshit, and that he would get a lawyer and sue every single one of them including that son of a bitch who pressed charges against me.
I also remember crying in the interrogation room before Con came back in and said that it was settled.
That they were reducing my charges and that I was free to go now. But as my punishment, I’d have to attend St. Mary’s come that fall.
When I asked him what happened, he said that it was none of my concern and that he’d taken care of everything because the charges were bullshit to begin with.
That was all.
That was all he said and I was too embarrassed, too scared to ask anything else, to be anything else other than relieved, so I never ever broached the question again.
I was just grateful that I wasn’t going to juvie. I was grateful that I had a brother who loved me enough — even though I embarrassed him so brutally — to have my back like that.
