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“Okay,” she said easily. “So when you’re done up there, come home to me.”
He made a noise, a kind of assenting grunt. Thankfully she hung up so that he didn’t have to answer further. In the dark of the cab, his heart raced, shame heated his face. He thought that the cameras were his secret, his only way of connecting to, of understanding the confounding world of people. But she knew. She knew and she hadn’t judged him.
Something that had been constricted inside him loosened. His mother had died young. His dad was a hardworking man who didn’t have much time or patience for a kid. He’d been there, though—at school, at games. A silent, stoic presence that Bracken could never quite figure out. Even now, his dad was an old man living in a memory care facility the next town over. Bracken went to see him twice a week, spent an hour or two telling him things about the houses, about the people he saw on the cameras. His dad just stared, blank, empty, whatever he felt or thought about how his life had passed, about Bracken, locked up tight.Who are you?Bracken often wound up thinking in the inevitable silence that fell when Bracken stopped talking.Did you get what you wanted out of life?But he never asked that, and his dad couldn’t have answered anyway.
He thought about his dad, about May, about his guests as the house came into sight.
Even though everything was dark and quiet, there was the air of trouble about it. The cars were all parked; one of them, a black Infinity, was damaged in the back, trunk munched. The Tesla and the Volvo sat in the drive.
Bracken parked and sat a moment, observing—the stillness, the night.
Then he headed for the electrical box and generator, not even bothering to knock on the door. He was surprised that no one had come out, as amped up as they all were about the power out, the road blocked.
He saw it right away, that the main circuit had been cut. He smelled the faint odor of gasoline. On the ground, there was a collection of boot prints. There in the beam of his flashlight on the side of the house, the bloody impression of a hand.
What the hell was going on here?
He headed down the path toward the house.
42
Henry
June 2018
The beautiful house was dark and Henry was seized with doubt suddenly. It probably wasn’t a good idea to walk up and ring the bell at nearly midnight.
He still had Detective West in his head. They had spoken again, the day after Henry and Cat’s encounter on the fishing pier. He’d been processing all the dark and terrible things she’d told him, the things she’d said. He’d told Piper everything, just as he promised.
She wasn’t afraid, didn’t recoil from him as he’d feared.
“You have to let it go,” she’d said simply. “We don’t choose our origins. We choose our present. And you have to separate yourself from her darkness, from your father’s. It’s just the past. It can’t hurt us. I won’t let it.”
Piper was raw power, all love. He still remembered her on the soccer field—how she was faster than any boy, smarter, stronger in her tiny way. Now as his wife and Luke’s mother, she was an engine, a battery, the energy that kept them all moving forward together. She was pregnant again, another child on the way. Their family was growing.
Luke was an angelic child, calm and happy. There was no darkness in him. Henry knew that for a fact. Because whatever darkness Henry brought to the mix, Piper’s light was stronger.
“You stay with us,” she said. “Leave everything else behind.”
Piper was right. But Henry couldn’t stop thinking about Cat.
“It’s her, Henry,” Detective West had told him. “I have the footage. My pal in Miami shared the security tapes of the condo building. It shows her entering the building with him, and leaving a couple of hours later alone. They have not been able to identify her yet. But we know who she is and I have to tell them. It’s obstruction of justice if we don’t.”
“Give me a day to find her,” said Henry. “Let me convince her to turn herself in.”
Detective West had been quiet for a moment on the phone. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Not really, you know,” said West, not unkindly. “I mean, you share biology. But honestly, that’s it, right? Your family, your true family—that’s Piper and Luke. You owethemyour life. You have to protect yourself and stay safe, so that you can take care of them.”
That was true. Undeniably. But it wasn’t the whole truth.
“I want to help her.” It sounded weak, and that wasn’t the whole truth, either.
“She might be beyond that.”
Still Henry had convinced West to give him twenty-four hours, and then the next call he made was to his aunt Gemma, the best detective he knew.
