According to Grant’s chart, almost every line connects to either Brendan or Niall. The two people I’ve been told I can trust are the people with the most secrets.
After dissecting everything we do know, Grant and I are somehow able to whittle down the thousand things we don’t know to come up with five questions. Now, I wait for Brendan to make one of his invasive, creepy appearances, so I can ask them.
I go through the entire next day without seeing Brendan once. I’m not sure if I’m annoyed or relieved by the time I go to bed. Grant’s concerned, afraid Brendan’s up to something.
“But that’s just Brendan,” I try to reassure him while stealing a few minutes with him before his tutoring session. “He’s always up to something. He’ll do one of his stalker moves eventually.”
That doesn’t ease Grant’s worry.
I’m woken by popcorn bouncing off my head in the middle of the night.
“What the hell?” I holler, sitting up abruptly, my heart pounding. I find Brendan leisurely sprawled on my couch. “How did you get in here?”
“Keep your voice down,” Brendan scolds me. “I was going to knock, but your neighbor’s door was open, so I snuck in through the bathroom.”
“What are you talking about?” I pull the covers up over my chest, feeling way too vulnerable, being woken to Brendan making himself at home in my room at … I glance at the clock … three o’clock in the morning.
“I think I’ve figured out how the psycho’s been getting in. They taped the room next door’s latch open. And you haven’t been locking the bathroom door that connects the rooms, so … that’s how they get in.”
“You just happened to try the neighbor’s door?” I accuse, not buying it.
“It wasn’t closed all the way. I guess they weren’t careful when they snuck in today. Did you get another message?”
They were in here today? I sit up straighter, scanning the room for anything out of place. “No.”
“Not that you’ve found anyway,” he says with a conspiratorial slant of a brow.
“Why are you here? It’s the middle of the fricken night. You couldn’t have found me during the day?” I question, beyond irritated … and tired.
“I want to be sure we’re not overheard. Had to take some precautionary measures.”
I click the bedside lamp on. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He pats the cushion next to him on the couch. “Time to talk.”
I slip out of bed, grabbing the hoodie off the back of my desk chair, and yawn. “Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
It’s obvious he strategically chose now, convinced I’d be too tired to ask the right questions. Good thing Grant is the most prepared person in existence.
“You first,” he proposes. I sit on the end of the couch to avoid touching him. “Ask away.”
I chase the weariness from my head with a deep inhale and draw my first question to the surface of my sleepy brain. “How do you know Kaden Harrison?”
I’ve caught him off guard. I can see it in his forced closed-mouth smile. “I’ve always known him. He and my mother were friends. I called him Uncle Kaden, growing up, when he visited the island. They were close, and so now, we are too. Spent last summer with him in London.”
His answer corroborates what we discovered in his room, but it doesn’t reveal anything useful. Like if Kaden’s his father. Or if his mother came between him and my mother. I press my lips together to restrain myself from asking more, not wanting to waste a question that’s not on our list. “Your turn.”
“I’m going to ask you a question that you don’t know the answer to. But I want you to find out.”
I tilt my head. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m not answering another of your questions until you do.”
My mouth rounds in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”
“No. I told you I need answers and that you’d be able to get them. So that’s what I need you to do.”
I roll my eyes, exasperated. “What’s the question?”
“What happened between our mothers? Why did they stop being friends?”
“And what? I’m just supposed to ask my mother randomly about a friend from eighteen years ago she never told me about?”
“Show her this.” Brendan holds up the picture of them on the sailboat. “Tell her you met Maggie’s son and that he had this picture. Go from there. Pay attention to how she reacts, even more than what she says.”
“I know how to question my own mother, thank you very much.” I snatch the picture from between his fingers. “That’s it then?”
“For now,” he answers smoothly.
“Then get out,” I demand, standing with my arms crossed. “And don’t come back—ever.”
He flashes an obnoxious smirk. “You can’t stay mad at me forever. I’m your brother. We need to look out for each other.”
I shoot daggers at him, currently feeling stubborn enough to hold this grudge an entire lifetime. “You don’t know that. Lily could be your sister.” But in my gut, I know she’s not.
“We have a connection, you and me. I’ve come to terms with it. It’s time you do too.”
I grumble incoherently and then repeat, “Get out.”
Brendan slips out silently. As soon as he leaves, I secure the dead bolt on the bathroom and double-check my door.
When I turn, I search the room again. “What were you doing in here?” I ask the psycho.
Then I see it. One of the frames on the bookshelf. The picture of me and my mother. Our eyes are scratched out. I shiver. So disturbing. I’m starting to wonder if the psycho could actually be dangerous.
When I remove the photo from the frame, there’s a loving message written on the back in big black letters.
I shove the picture in my desk drawer and collapse on my bed, flinging an arm across my eyes. The message isn’t very original, but it’s the anger that bothers me most. This chick, or maybe dude, really doesn’t like me, which is the understatement of the century. Except this time, it’s directed at both me and my mother. And now I know exactly what this is all about.
To make you hurt the way you hurt him. You cut out his heart and left him to die.
Why do you think he wants to know?” Grant asks when I tell him about Brendan’s question … after he finished going off about Brendan’s lack of respect and boundaries. He knows I wouldn’t hesitate to defend myself, but he wasn’t happy to hear Brendan had snuck in at three in the morning. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him. But truth always finds Grant, slipping out much too freely. “Do you think he blames your mother for his mother’s death?”
“That’s if she’s dead,” I counter, pulling my legs up and draping them across Grant’s lap.
We’re hidden away in a swing-hammock thing suspended from a branch of the majestic tree in the middle of the Court.
“I ran a search on her last night,” Grant admits. I sit up straighter. “I found her obituary. She didn’t die when he was four. She took her life a couple years ago, when Brendan was fourteen.”