She looks at me with a mixture of relief and guilt on her face. I shake my head at her. “Don’t. Do not feel guilty. We didn’t do this. I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t do it.”
“I think your dad did it,” Cadee says.
“What?” I say.
Ax ends his call. “Lars said he’ll be by later.”
“I mean, I know that’s stupid,” Cadee continues. “But he…” She looks at me, then Ax. “I glanced over at him while it was all happening. And he lifted his glass to me and said, ‘Cheers, Cadee Hunter.’”
“No,” I say.
“No shit,” Ax says.
“I swear,” Cadee insists.
“My father did not kill my brother. That’s crazy.”
Isn’t it?
The three of us just stare at each other. Then Cadee gets up and says, “I’m going upstairs. I think I need to lie down or I might pass out.”
“Sure,” I say, getting up to give her a kiss before she can escape. “Don’t think too hard about this, Cadee. He… I mean, I know he was my brother, but he…”
“Deserved it,” Ax says, finishing my sentence. “No one is sad that Dane Valcourt is dead today.”
“Elizabeth sure looked sad,” Cadee counters.
“She’s sick,” I say. “She doesn’t count. I think she might’ve known about Dane. Maybe even helped him cover it all up.”
“I think she knew about me too,” Cadee says. “He said some weird things to me before you guys showed up in the bursar’s office.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“No,” Ax says, pushing Cadee towards the stairs. “Go upstairs and rest. We have all the time in the world to talk about this now. The main threat is gone.”
She looks at me and I nod. “Yeah. Go upstairs and rest. Don’t think about it. None of us had anything to do with what just happened. And we should not feel guilty that the world has one less sexual predator.”
She nods and then turns away and goes upstairs.
Both Ax and I watch her, staying silent until we hear the bedroom door close and her feet squeak the floorboards above our heads.
“What the fuck?” Ax says.
I flop back down into a chair, just trying to process the day. It’s not even two o’clock yet and the world has changed.
Dane is dead.
My brother. Cadee’s rapist. The villain in this story.
Dead.
“Now what?”
Ax narrows his eyes at me. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t get it.”
Ax sighs and throws up his hands, then walks over to the couch and sinks down into it. “I don’t get it either. Seems pretty convenient.”
“Yes,” I say, pointing my finger at him. “Convenient.”
“And what about that shit your father spewed today about the building? Do you really think it’s been in the works for three years?”
“How could it not, Ax? You don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I think I’ll put a four-story glass building in the woods.’”
“So…” I know what he’s going to say. Because that’s exactly how I feel about it. “Did we misread him?”
“Do you think we misread him?”
Ax doesn’t answer.
“Look, I lived with the man my whole life. He’s not this guy. He just isn’t.”
Ax doesn’t look convinced.
“He’s plotting something. He has to be.”
The sound of tires on gravel makes us both turn our heads and look out the front window.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Ax says. “Looks like Lars got his car back.”
I huff at this. “Lars is getting a lot of things out of this deal, isn’t he?”
We both get to our feet and push through the screen door to meet him outside. He gets out of his black BMW and walks towards us, stopping at the bottom of the porch steps like he has no intention of coming inside.
“What’s up?” Ax asks.
But Lars is looking at me. “Just thought we should clear the air.”
“Interesting,” I say, hopping down the steps and walking past him. “I see you got your car back. Money too? New place to live.” I stop just short of his car and pivot to look at him. “I cannot fucking believe you, Lars.”
“Look, I’m not interested in fighting your wars, Cooper. I have worked my ass off all my life trying to get where I am. We have one year and then we’re all going our separate ways.”
“So you figured… you’d what? Get a head start?”
“Dude,” Ax says, following me down the stairs. “It’s betrayal. We had a deal. We were all moving out—”
“That was Cooper’s idea. This is his fight, Ax.”
“Have you conveniently forgotten that I can’t go home?”
Lars and Ax have a serious staring contest for a few moments. Lars breaks away first and starts pacing back and forth in front of the dead planter beds that line the porch.
“I guess you did,” Ax says. “Hey, look. I’m glad you got lucky. I really am.”
“It’s not about luck, Ax,” Lars snaps. “You’re an asshole.”
“I’m an asshole?” He laughs. “I didn’t ask to be in that family.”
“And I didn’t ask to be in mine,” Lars counters. “It just shook out that way.”
“No,” Ax says, his voice low and deep. “No, it didn’t just shake out that way. We all know that what happened to me was a plan.”
“You guys,” I say. “I don’t think we should get into this now. OK? There’s enough going on right now. We don’t need to dredge up the past.”
“You always say that,” Ax says. And now his anger is directed at me. “You always say that, Cooper. Because your situation has always been easy. Both of you got off easy compared to me. And none of this is my fault.”
“Well, it’s not our fault, either, Ax,” Lars says.
We’re silent for a little bit after that. And I don’t know what they’re thinking about, but it can’t be far off from where I’m at.
We were fifteen when we stumbled into some of the truth about what’s going on here at High Court. Because not everything is as it seems. We could feel it. And at first it felt a little bit like luck.
Lars really got lucky. For all intents and purposes, the Mayor’s family is normal. Lars has two much younger twin sisters. They still have three more years of Prep before they’ll have to face any of this. And aside from wanting to get out of here and start a life in the city, they are what motivate him. He truly is a good brother and son. And if I had his family—mother still there cooking dinner every night, a father who liked doing things with them—they have a yearly fishing trip to Alaska and the end-of-summer family reunion—hell, I might’ve slipped into my father’s expectations willingly.
But that’s not how I had it. My mother died in a car crash when I was five. Her side of the family is totally estranged. She was not from here. Didn’t even go to High Court. Not the prep school or the college. In fact, I don’t actually know how my parents met. My point is, I didn’t have a family like Lars.