“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.
Is it any wonder then, that he’s still mad at me?
“Why?” my brother asks curtly, pulling me out of my thoughts, pulling me out of those few hours that were the scariest of my life.
“Because I need to know,” I say with almost a strangled voice. “Because I… I need to know what you did, Con. H-how you took care of it. I’m sorry I never asked before. I was too scared. Too embarrassed to ask you. But I should have. I should have been a good sister like you were a good brother. I should’ve asked what you went through to… to get me off. What you did to get me free.”
Or almost free.
He’s silent for a few seconds.
And my heart is thudding in my chest. My heart that’s broken and beaten and so painful to live with is pounding and pounding as I wait for my brother to say something.
Anything.
As I hear his words over and over.
I didn’t bring your brother that deal…
“Nothing,” Conrad clips.
“What?”
“I did nothing.”
“I don’t understand.”
His exhale is sharp and short. “I didn’t have to do anything. It was him.”
The way my brother says him, I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about. His tone is all harsh and clipped and self-explanatory.
“W-what do you mean?” I ask.
“It means that I was all ready to go to court and fight this thing. I was all ready to hire a lawyer and teach that rich prick a lesson. But he called me and he said that he’d gotten all the charges reduced and all you had to do was attend St. Mary’s. I was opposed to it. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like his fucking face. And I told him that. I told him that I’d go to court and fight his bullshit charge. And that fucking punk reminded me that even if I did go to court, I would never win. Because the Jacksons own the town. They own the police, the judges, the lawyers. And so this was the only way. And when I told him that I was going to break his fucking face for what he did to you, he was generous enough to say that I was welcome to it. Only I’d have to take a fucking number because Ledger wanted to get there first.”
Conrad has never ever spoken so many words together, in one conversation.
And the fact that he did it now convinces me that he still has a lot of anger inside of him. At me, at him.
At his old star player.
Con has always hated the rivalry between Ledger and Reed. But he’s especially hated Reed for being reckless and selfish on the field.
But I don’t get it.
Why have me arrested in the first place and then have the charges reduced? Just like that.
“W-why would he bring you the deal when he was the one who pressed charges?”
A moment passes.
Then two, and I’m about to prod him because I can’t take it anymore, but Conrad breaks his silence. “It wasn’t him.”
“What?”
“It was his father.”
“His father?”
“Yes.”
“B-but they said Mr. Jackson and…”
“He’s not the only Mr. Jackson, is he?”
He isn’t, no.
He’s not the only Mr. Jackson.
But for the life of me it never ever occurred to me that his dad would be involved. The man I’d never even seen. Not once in all the times that I’d been to their house.
He was always either away for business or at the office.
I saw their mom once though.
She was on the balcony, looking so small and beautiful with her blonde hair fluttering in the wind. I guess Tempest and Reed both get their dark hair from their father.
The man who had me arrested for stealing his son’s car.
“So you… knew this the whole time?”
“Yes.”
Oh my God.
I press a hand on my stomach and lean against the booth.
All this time, I thought it was him.
Because it was his car, the thing that he loved the most. So it made sense that he’d want to punish me for stealing it. And strangely, those charges hurt me even more.