Page 39 of Defiant
I mean, who the hell liked talking on the phone nowadays? Didn’t people hate it? I knew I did. Texting was good enough for any situation. Calling was just gross. You had to put down what you were doing to answer the call. And in my case last night, there was no way to hide the fact that I was in a tub full of water. A text? That shit could’ve been hidden.
Oh, well, I guess. It wasn’t like Jacob and I would be working together forever. Vaughn had pretty much said outright that his family would retaliate if they found out Jacob was looking into them, and seeing Jacob get hurt explicitly because of me and what I was having him do was the last thing I wanted.
As much as I didn’t want to say goodbye to the private investigator, I had to. For his own good.
With everything going on with me, with what Jacob had told me about Ollie and his family, I was less worried about my mom being in danger here. From what it had sounded like, Jacob trusted Ollie, just not his sons.
Now, if his sons strolled back into town, then I’d have to sit back and rethink all that.
Mom must not have seen the envelope in her purse before I took it back, for she didn’t say anything to me about it. I had some homework to do, since I’d pretty much blown my Friday night practicing choir songs with Bobbi, planning what we would do at the next dance, and then taunting Jacob while I was in the bath. My Friday night had been busy.
I sat in my room, at my desk, my math textbook open and a pad of graph paper beside me. There was nothing worse than having to graph things out. I literally hated it, especially since every single part of the graph had to be labeled. Just awful. Who would need to do this shit after graduation? Not me. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life yet, but I knew I would never want a job that required me to graph shit out.
I know what you’re probably thinking. I was a senior. I should have my next four years planned out at whatever university I wanted to go to.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t. Yeah, I applied to a few, but that was before my entire life changed in the blink of an eye. Now I wasn’t sure what the hell I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, what I wanted to major in. Frankly, I was just taking it a day at a time. I didn’t want to think about a future right now, not when my current, day-to-day life was so shitty.
I sighed, closing my eyes and leaning my face against my hand. The door to my bedroom was cracked open; Mom was downstairs, cleaning the kitchen, last time I checked. Ollie had told her to choose two days off a week, but it was like my mom didn’t hear him. She worked pretty much all the time. In a house as big as this, there was always something to do, something to occupy her time.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was trying to keep herself busy, to purposefully avoid something.
Talking to me, maybe? Talking about my dad—who she’d lied about my entire life? Sooner or later Mom and I would sit down and have a long discussion about it. No yelling this time. No harsh words. Just truths, laid bare, as they always should’ve been.
She knew who he was. She’d told me I looked like him, and now, of course, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mom had uprooted our lives because of him. If she was on the run from him, if he’d finally found us.
I wasn’t one for conspiracy theories. I wasn’t one of those people who believed everything they read on the internet, but that was a theory that had some weight behind it.
Just as I got back to work, I heard my door open slightly, and I set down my pencil and looked up, thinking it was my mom. But it wasn’t.
Oliver Fitzpatrick stood, looking as if he wore the same wrinkled clothes he’d worn all day yesterday—like, after coming home late, he’d shut himself in his study and worked all night. Heavy bags rested under his eyes, his black hair looking more grey than anything. Salt and pepper stubble lined his face, the top button on his shirt undone.
Well, at least he took off his tie and his suit jacket, right? Made himself a little comfortable in his own home.
“Frank is saying someone’s here to see you,” Ollie spoke, his blue eyes looking watered-down and exhausted. He carried himself like a man who’d seen a lot. He didn’t radiate danger or uncertainty; he simply looked sad. So very sad.
This man had lost everything, and I had him under a magnifying glass of suspicion. It was only right then that I felt bad about it. Oliver had been nothing but kind to us. He didn’t ask for the world; sometimes I just wondered if he wanted other people in the house, so he wouldn’t be alone in this big, empty place.
If so, that was just depressing.
Eventually I managed to say, “Did he say who?” Back in my own mind enough to wonder just who the hell could be here to see me. Brittany had seen me leave Ollie’s car, so she knew—and thereby the whole school knew—I lived at the Fitzpatrick house, so theoretically it could be anyone.
Definitely wouldn’t be Jacob, because our meeting was tomorrow, and he knew better than to talk to the guard at the gate.
I highly doubted it would be Bobbi, either. When she’d left, she’d told me she’d see me Monday, and she didn’t forget anything at the house, so…
“No,” Ollie spoke, reaching to rub the back of his neck. “He did mention it was a boy, though.”
A boy? Who in the world…was Vaughn outside the gate, waiting to talk to me? No. No way. Why would he be here? That didn’t make sense.
Whoever it was waiting out there, wanting to see me, it was a good thing Frank had called Ollie and not my mom. My mom would literally be freaking the hell out if she knew a boy had called on me.
If I was careful, it was possible I’d be able to sneak around my mom and exit the house. Getting back in would be more difficult, but I was willing to try.
“Well?” Ollie broke into my thoughts. “Are you going to go out, or should I tell Frank to get rid of him?”
I got to my feet, slowly closing my math book. “No, I’ll…I’m going.”
Ollie said nothing else, leaving my room. After hurriedly slipping on shoes and grabbing a hoodie to slip on, I found that Ollie had gone to the kitchen. When my feet hit the ground on the first floor, I heard his voice echoing from the kitchen, along with my mom’s. He was asking her why she never took it easy, why she never took a day off.
