“Lucas,” she lamented.
Mr. Decker gestured at the screen. “Dot here watched you open that box. She didn’t see you put the car back. Show me where it is out there and I’ll let you go. Can you do that for me?”
A tear rolled down Lucas’s face. He shook his head.
“Give me the toy, son.”
Lucas’s chest expanded with a large inhale. He reached into his swim shorts and took out a yellow Mustang. He hadn’t been lying. The car wasn’t in his pockets. He’d stuffed it into the netted underwear attached to his shorts.
“Dude.” Blaze cupped a hand over his mouth.
Mr. Decker didn’t call the police. He called Mr. Whitman, who picked them up in his minivan.
Olivia slammed her melted Drumstick into the trash and climbed into the rear seat of the van. Lucas started to follow her and she stretched her legs out on the bench seat. “You’re not sitting next to me.”
“I didn’t mean to take it,” he mumbled. He didn’t need her to tell him she was pissed.
“Don’t talk to me.” She crossed her arms and looked out the window, recalling the conversation between Harold and Rhonda she overheard last summer. This was it. Lucas finally screwed up big-time. The Whitmans would send them home. They’d never invite them back.
Dwight Carson arrived just before sunset. He declined Rhonda’s invitation to stay for dinner and packed his three kids’ luggage into the trunk of his Cadillac. Lucas had been quiet all afternoon. He knew he’d ruined summer and that everyone was upset with him. Dwight was going to ground him until school started. Good, Olivia thought. He deserved it.
She was in tears. Nothing she said could change Dwight’s mind to let her stay, even when the Whitmans offered to drive her home when he said he wasn’t making a second trip. Harold and Rhonda had only asked him to pick up Lucas. But Dwight and Charlotte worked. They needed Olivia to watch her younger siblings.
Lucas dropped into the back seat and slammed his door. Olivia was about to get into the front seat when she saw their dad block Lily from getting into the car. Arms folded over his chest, he towered over Olivia’s little sister. Lily backed up a step. He moved forward.
“Did you see Lucas stealing?” he asked, his tone stern.
“No.” Her face fell. “Yes,” she whispered after a moment. She looked at the ground.
“You should have stopped him.”
“He always puts the stuff back,” she said, near tears.
“It’s not her fault,” Lucas defended.
“You stay out of this. I don’t want to hear a word from you, young man.” Dwight turned back to Lily. “And you.” He dropped a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Lily winced. “You had a chance to stop him and you didn’t. This is as much your fault as his.”
“But I didn’t do anything. I was with Olivia.” Her sister’s eyes found Olivia’s over the roof of the car.
Olivia should have stood up for Lily. Their dad was being unfair. But she was too upset with Lucas. She shook her head and got into the car.
“You’re grounded when we get home,” Olivia heard their dad tell Lily. “And I’m cutting your allowance for the rest of summer. Now get into the car.”
Lily climbed into the back seat sobbing. Dwight slammed her door. He sank into the driver’s seat and started the car. Olivia pulled a tissue from the caddy and dried her eyes, blew her nose.
Dwight patted her knee. “This isn’t your fault, Princess.” Olivia shredded her tissue. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t Lily’s fault either, but tears clogged her throat. She was on the brink of being a blubbering mess and the Whitmans were watching them.
“Cheer up,” he encouraged. “I’ll take you to lunch this weekend.”
Olivia didn’t want to go to lunch with her dad. She wanted to grill hamburgers with the Whitmans and kayak with Blaze.
Dwight backed out of the driveway. It would be two weeks before she saw Blaze again. Olivia was going to miss him and swimming and campfires. She turned around and watched the cabin shrink in size as they drove away. In the back of her mind, she knew this would be the last time she’d visit the lake house.
CHAPTER 20
LUCAS
Glass shards crack under Lucas’s work boots. Typically, he’ll remove his shoes before entering his parents’ house, or any house, for that matter. They’re filthy, caked with sawdust and paint. Who knows what else his soles pick up when he’s mangling bushes and tromping flower beds while painting a home’s exterior? But Olivia left him a message several hours ago and their mom still hasn’t swept the mess.
That kid has an arm if he can break a window from slamming the door.
He’d make a great quarterback, Lucas thinks, reaching for the broom Charlotte left leaning against the wall. But he stops short of comparing Josh’s potential to the skills he let waste away.
Light from the chandelier overhead ricochets off the glass while he sweeps, making the scraps shimmer. They remind him of the broken window at the convenience store after the bullet he accidentally shot off shattered the glass. The shards refracted the market’s fluorescent lights like sunlight on the ocean’s surface when he was forced to his knees and handcuffed.
His jaw hardens and hands tighten on the broomstick. He hates how something as mundane as sweeping glass easily sends his mind there, to that night. How the handgun he wrangled from Tanner went off, blowing out the window and the front windshield of his car. How his football teammates ditched the place, and him, leaving him to take the fall.
Lucas sweeps the pieces into a dustpan and drops the shards into the pail Charlotte put by the door after Olivia and Josh left. He still hasn’t heard the full story from her. Only that Josh came unglued when he saw the picture of Dwight. What has his old man gotten himself into now?
Propping the broom against the wall, he reaches for the measuring tape he brought with him. He quickly measures the window frame, committing the numbers to memory, and leaves the house. He calls Dan at the local glass shop and puts in a rush order for a replacement. He then grabs a piece of scrap plywood leaning against the side of the garage from another project and saws a piece to cover the window. When he’s nailed the board in place, he finds Charlotte in the kitchen, scrolling through her iPad. Old photos rest on the table beside her elbow, their broken frames in the trash.
“You’re all set,” he announces, opening the fridge. “I put in an order for a replacement. Dan will bring it by in several days and install it.” He grabs one of Dwight’s Coors Light. Piss water. But he still pops the top and guzzles a third. “What happened?”
“Josh saw your father in a photo. He broke everything on his way out.”
“That’s what Livy said. Do you think Dad found Lily?” He knows Dwight hadn’t thought about Lily for years until that reporter came sniffing around a few months ago about her high school swim record.
“He must have.”
“I didn’t think he’d actually go looking for her.” The man put on a good show after Lily ran. He could barely speak his youngest’s name without tearing up. But Lucas knew it was an act.
“Neither did I.” She sorts the photos she salvaged from the broken frames, measures their sizes with a plastic ruler that has her real estate agency’s logo.