“I thought he was,” Brett whispered.
I reached for him—his hand, his arm, anything. I latched on. Tight. I knew what it felt like to drown without water. It was worse when no one was there to bring you back to shore.
I held his hand. Squeezed it really tight.
“Are you sure that was him?” I asked because it was dark out and I was desperate for this look to leave Brett’s face.
Brett didn’t say anything. We sat there, parked on the side of the road while cars rushed by. I didn’t know what to say. Hell, I’d been through this too. Well, a different version, but it was still the same. And if that really was his dad, I knew there were no words to help. No “sorry” could fix this wound.
“Do you have a book?” Brett asked.
What? “Um. Yeah. Somewhere in here.” I pulled my bag onto my lap, rummaged through it.
“I need a distraction.”
Right. That made sense. Mom’s baking. My reading. They were both distractions.
“Do you have it?” he asked again, sounding panicked.
I pulled out the book. Brett sighed, undid his seat belt, and reclined his chair back. He wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes. He looked so different than he had earlier. Smaller. Sadder.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, wanting to reach out and hold him.
“Read to me” was all he said.
“I don’t think you’ll like this book.” It was romantic. Like, embarrassingly so.
“Please, Becca.”
I flipped open to the page I had bookmarked and began to read. My voice sounded weird at first, more high-pitched, but then it evened out and I started to sound like me again.
Reading out loud was weird. I was so used to occupying this fictional world alone that having Brett there with me felt different. Not a bad different. Just different. I wasn’t sure if he was even listening. He kind of looked like he was sleeping. I kept pausing after each paragraph, sneaking a peek at him.
After I finished the first chapter, our eyes met. He said, “Keep going.”
So I kept reading.
That was the first time I missed curfew.
Brett
HE WASN’T IN OHIO.
That was his car. His suit. Those were his hands holding someone else’s.
That was my dad.
But it wasn’t my mom.
It didn’t make any sense, because my dad would never . . .
I couldn’t even think the word. It all felt wrong. A never-ending nightmare.
He was supposed to be on a business trip. In Ohio. At a hotel. He was supposed to be in meetings and talking to staff and dealing with financial stuff. He wasn’t supposed to be at diners in the middle of the night with a woman I’d never seen before. And he was not supposed to be holding her hand like that.
Like Becca had said, it was dark. And even though I knew it was my dad, there was this voice in my head that kept saying but what if it wasn’t? I clung to that voice because it was easier to be confused than to be angry. With confusion there were still possibilities; it wasn’t black and white just yet. And there was a shred of hope somewhere in the gray that I needed right now.
It was better than the opposite: convincing myself it really was my dad. What would that mean? Were all those business trips a lie? They couldn’t be. He brought back souvenirs from each state. But what else was he doing while he was away? What was he doing when he wasn’t working?
Then I remembered when he came home from New York last weekend and didn’t bring me anything. Was he even in New York? Probably not. He was here the whole time. Wasn’t he?
But maybe it wasn’t him.
It was, though.
It was him.
The next morning my head felt like it had been put in a blender. I woke up to a text from my mom. She was at yoga, then going for lunch. She wouldn’t be home for a few hours. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. My mom. My mom, who was in love with my dad. My mom, who had spent nearly twenty years of her life with him. I realized that this wasn’t just about me. This could ruin her too.
I decided then that I couldn’t tell her what I had seen. Not until I knew for sure.
I needed answers.
I took a shower and called Becca. She picked up right away, probably still worried about me. I remembered her voice in the darkness last night, reading to me. I needed that again right now. That small sense of peace. That certainty.
“Can you come over?” I asked.
A half hour later my doorbell rang. Becca was standing on the porch, hunched over. “Hi,” she said, out of breath.
“Becca—did you run here?”
She stepped inside, chest heaving. “Y-Yeah. It sounded urgent. Didn’t have a ride. You good?”
I stared at her: hair sticking to her forehead, bent over like she was about to pass out, mouth hanging open as she tried to catch her breath. This girl had literally run across town to my house. She looked like she needed an ambulance, yet the only thing she seemed to be worrying about was me. I hugged her, wrapped her into my chest until my chin was resting on the top of her head. I felt it then, the same feeling as last night, when she was reading to me. That stillness. A break in the storm.
“Thank you,” I said.
I let go. She fixed her hair, cheeks flushed. “Yeah. Of course. What’s up?” I led her to the kitchen. She kept glancing around. I thought she was admiring the house at first—my mom went overboard with the decorating—but then I saw her peeking through doorways and trying to look upstairs.
“No one’s home,” I told her.
She visibly relaxed.
We took a seat at the kitchen table. I got her two water bottles, just in case. “I need your help,” I said when she’d nearly finished the first.
“Does this have to do with your dad?”
I nodded. “Read any books about detectives?”
Turned out that yeah, she had.
We started in his office. It felt weird being in there—my dad was pretty strict on no one going inside. I looked around the room. Everything was organized. The books in the shelves were in alphabetical order; the papers on the desk were stacked in neat-edged piles. Everything looked polished and shiny. Becca went right to his computer, saying something about checking his credit card history. “The computer has a password,” she said, staring at the screen with her eyes narrowed. “Any ideas?”
She was going all Nancy Drew. I was kind of into it.
I walked over and stood beside her. “Try my name.” She typed it in. The password box shook and turned red. It was wrong. “Try Willa, my mom’s name.” Again, no luck. We tried birthdays, anniversaries, names of pets my parents used to have—nothing worked.
It was a dead end.
“What now?” I asked.
Becca rubbed her hands together, placed her chin on top. She was thinking hard, chewing on her lips. I realized she did that a lot when she was deep in thought. Even sometimes when she read.
I was staring at her mouth, kind of mesmerized, when she said, “We need to check something that’s not on his computer. Do you know what time his flight left yesterday? Brett?”
I cleared my throat. “Ten thirty.” She typed something into her phone. “Hey, let me see,” I said, crouching to peer over her shoulder. She was on the airport’s website, checking the flight records for anything out of Atlanta, Georgia, to Columbus, Ohio. She kept tapping. Every time the screen reloaded, my chest constricted. I couldn’t look anymore. I walked to the other side of the room and sat on the couch, fingers crossed.