AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I thought that’s what he was doing, anyway, and if he wasn’t, that confirms the feeling I had at Jameson’s cabin—that there are other ways to help people.
The house sits steady and silent across the yard, as if it’s waiting for me. None of the curtains twitch. The sounds of Cobble Hill are cut by the leaves, rustling in the breeze.
This is where the facts are. I need them to move forward, wherever I decide to go.
Boughs sway gently over my head on the way to the front porch. Usually, I’d go in through the back. This is the way a visitor would approach the house. This might have been the way Jameson would’ve approached the house the night he was going to burn it down, and—
You know. Kidnapped me instead.
Maybe he’d have gone around to the side of the house, or the back, and it’s probably sick and wrong that I want to ask him for more specific details about the plan.
What’sreallysick and wrong is that I kept his phone number.
Not that I’m planning to call him.
I put him completely out of my mind, climb the stairs to the front porch, and press the code to open the lock. The buttons on the keypad flash green, the lockclicks, and I’m there.
I’m home.
Stepping inside feels like entering a library or a church. Some place I don’t want to disturb, which is bizarre. It hasn’t even been that long. Iknowthis place.
I close the door as silently as I can anyway.
“Grand—”
“—usual places?” His voice comes from the back of the house. The kitchen. That’s where I’d have walked in, if I’d driven here. “It’s my impression that the requirements of the job have slipped your mind. No? Then explain to me how your team hasn’t finished questioning every member of that godforsaken place.”
My body goes cold, every inch of me freezing before the meaning sinks in.
That godforsaken placeisn’t anywhere I’d attend a study group, or Columbia Law, or this house.
He can’t mean anywhere but The Membership, and that was supposed to be a secret. I went tolengthsto keep it a secret.
“I want it finished by six o’clock. Do we understand each other? I’ve indulged this—thisfantasyof hers for too long.”
I hardly recognize his voice. This isn’t the way he sounded on the phone with the police a few days ago, asking about my mother, and I know—Ithought—that his feelings about her were more complicated than his feelings about me. I had no idea he knew about The Membership, and I had no idea he’d talk about anything I was interested in with this much disdain.
The urge to slip out through the door and run is strong.
But I’ve spent a lot of time practicing multiple-choice tests with tricky answers, and all my options hang there in my mind next to fillable circles. My grandpapa has people looking for me. He has people interviewing members of the club where I dance—danced—and that has to stop. If I disappear, I need to be prepared to lose myself in the world forever, and I’mnotprepared.
Running won’t work. Not yet.
I reach behind me instead, open the door, and push it closed again. “Grandpapa?”
He appears at the threshold of the kitchen, eyes wide. “Lily. It’s her. She just walked in. Thank you for all your help.”
The harsh edge of his voice is gone, like it was never there.
If I wanted to, I could convince myself that it hadn’t happened at all. That I’d misinterpreted the conversation. That he was worried, and it was understandable.
“Hi, Grandpapa.” I smile at him, then let the smile fall away, let my eyes get huge and concerned. “Are you okay?”
“You didn’t come home.” He drops the hand holding his phone to his side and fumbles it into his pocket. “I got your note, but you didn’t come back. Your phone was off.”
The note. Thenote. I’d written him a note about a late-night study group, intending to be back well before dawn.
“Oh, no.” I go across the house to him, rushing a little, the way I did when I was younger. “Grandpapa, I’m so sorry, I—” In mid-sentence, I crash into him and wrap my arms around his waist. My grandfather hugs me so hard it almost feels like a blow. “I’msosorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. We got into some—” He raises his free hand and strokes my hair. “We got carried away. You know how I can get about jurisprudence.”
