Page 33 of Brenna, Brat

“I didn’t think this would happen.”

“No, me neither.” He rubbed his fingers over the stubble on his jaw and glanced around, taking in the small space. “I wasthinking I’d leave and get home before the news crews showed up there. It’s always a little strained the morning after, anyway. Not that it’s that kind of morning after,” he added, finally looking at me.

I understood what he meant, and no, it wasn’t a typical morning-after-sex. Yes, now it felt weird, but he had stayed tucked into my bed and I’d curled up a few paces away on the couch. This was only a morning-after-sleeping and nothing more, but since I also felt the strain, I nodded. “I can drive you to the nearest precinct,” I told him. “You have to report auto theft in person.”

“Do you know that from sad experience?”

“It’s not unheard of for vehicles to go missing in a big city,” I said, as if I had to defend Detroit.

“No, it’s not. That’s why I said at least three times that I’m not surprised and that I shouldn’t have done this.” He gestured toward the bed. “I should have gone home and faced the music, but this is what I get.”

“I don’t think you’re being punished,” I told him, and he shrugged. He ran his hand over his hair, which was now a lot messier than I was used to seeing, even when we’d gone ice skating—but he wore it very well. I liked it a little crazy with some wave where it had been mostly straight. It made him look younger and…well, he was handsome all the time.

But there were more important things than Campbell’s hair, so we did go to report the crime, and then I drove him home. It was near-silence in my car as we went north on Woodward Avenue. I certainly didn’t mind that, and it made sense to me that hewouldn’t have wanted to talk after the shock of everything that had happened in his life over the past forty-eight hours.

“Or, was it a shock?”

“Huh?” Campbell looked over at me, and I realized that I had spoken out loud. I’d gotten into a little habit of that by conversing so often with Cleo.

“I was wondering if you were actually surprised when you heard about all these problems with your company,” I explained.

But he shook his head. “I already told you that I didn’t—”

“I know that you weren’t part of stealing any money and I know that you weren’t willingly taking part in a fraud,” I said. “I meant, did you ever suspect anything? Did you have any idea, or were you as shocked as everyone else by your dad’s legal issues?” Because he’d seemed worried before when we had talked about his job and specifically about his father.

He was quiet as I continued to drive, but as we crossed the city limit at Eight Mile Road, he spoke again. “The first I heard for sure was the night you were over for dinner. One of our in-house lawyers called and said I needed to come to the office immediately, and that was when they told me that an indictment was imminent. I was in shock. The thought of Ghregg going to jail…”

He stopped for a moment and I glanced over to see him staring out the window but not, I thought, seeing very much.

“For the past few months, I’ve had a strange feeling,” he continued. “I kept telling myself that I was imagining it. My dadhad started acting the same way he did before I had a big game, like he was full of nervous energy. It always made me think that he was gearing himself up for a letdown.”

“He used to prepare himself to be let down by your performance in games?” I asked, and he nodded. “He was really invested in your hockey career.”

“Funny that you would call it a ‘career,’ because that’s what he always said, too. Ghregg would tell me that I needed to put in the necessary time and energy to guarantee my success, just like I’d have to in my job someday. Or, I guess that instead of working hard, I could have cheated like he did.” He turned to look at me again. “I may have suspected that something was wrong, but I didn’t know for sure. If I had, I would have done something. I would have…” But he stopped again, and shook his head. “That’s easy to say now, that I would have been the hero. I have no idea what I really would have done if I’d had the facts and not just a bad feeling.”

“None of this seems very easy,” I said. “But you don’t have to try to convince me of anything. I don’t know about your dad and your sister, but I’m already sure that you’re not a criminal yourself. Obviously, you’re not.”

Those were the words that Sophie zeroed in on later that afternoon, because I repeated them to her when she called (again) to ask me about any developments. I didn’t have much to say, which made her annoyed. I didn’t tell her that Campbell had spent the night in my studio, or that I’d driven him home, slowing as I turned the corner onto his street and we’d both seen the news vans parked in front.

“Just pull into the driveway. No, wait,” he’d said, and had taken off his sunglasses. “You should wear these so you won’t get recognized.” They were huge on my face when I put them on and he smiled slightly. Despite the presence of the cameras pointed at him when I’d stopped, he’d paused. “Thanks, Brenna. Thanks for letting me stay and thanks for believing me.” Then he’d gotten out and slammed the door fast, but I’d heard questions yelled from the direction of the sidewalk. They hadn’t blocked my way as I’d backed up—not that I was showing any signs of stopping, if they were considering it—and I’d driven to Detroit, to my atelier. That was where I’d been when Sophie had called and this time I’d picked up right away. I’d hoped that she had some more information for me but in fact, she was on a fishing expedition herself.

Several questions in, though, I hadn’t told her much except that I was sure that Campbell wasn’t involved, which she took issue with. “I don’t understand why you’re dead set that the Bates siblings are innocent. And no, I’m not trying to pin this on Carrington,” she told me. “But how did Campbell manage to convince you?”

“First of all, I’m not making a judgement about Carrington’s part in it. She’s a lot more suspicious.” She was, after all, the girl who used to trip others in their races, and behavior like that didn’t stop once you got older. For all of her flaws, my sister Juliet never would have tried to sabotage another swimmer in the pool. She’d never splashed her arms or jumped on the lane line to celebrate, and she’d always shaken hands after she beat them, too.

“But you’re sure about Campbell Bates and that he isn’t guilty,” Sophie stated, and I said yes, absolutely. “How? Why?”

“He’s not like that,” I told her. “He’s not the kind of person who would steal. When we went ice skating, a little boy ran into us and we all fell hard. Campbell even hit his head, but the first thing he did was pick up the kid and make him feel better.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” She sounded exasperated.

Well, it wasn’t exactly proof of his innocence, just like that story about rescuing a dog on the freeway hadn’t proved that his dad was, either. I just didn’t believe that the kind of person who would bump fists with a boy when he himself had a brain bleed, the kind of person who would seek out special boots for someone else, the kind of person who didn’t get angry about his beautiful car going missing and blame others for the loss because she’d been the one who’d said to stay…

“He’s just not the kind of person who would steal,” I informed my sister.

“I looked him up. Only a little,” Sophie said. After some problems with running her investigation business, she had mostly stopped pulling together damaging dossiers on strangers. But she still dipped her toe into background research when she thought it would help family, and I was instantly and insanely curious about what she’d found.

“Did you?” I asked casually. “Anything interesting?” I gripped the sponge in my hand as I spoke. I’d been trying againto remove the mold, but the result was mostly me getting lightheaded due to the fumes from the cleaning products.

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