Page 64 of Brenna, Brat

“That’s what the lawyers advised.” She had lowered her voice too, and now we had our faces practically touching the door in order to hear everything.

“But it made me doubt you,” he told her. “I want to hear from you now that you really weren’t in on it with him.”

Apparently, those were Carrington’s magic words. “What? You don’t fucking trust me?” she yelled. Then I heard a slap, the sharp sound of a hand striking someone else’s skin. I recognized that because it may have happened a few times in our household when I was a kid, a few slaps between me and my siblings—and that was a big no. No one was going to hit Campbell, not when I was around!

Dion grabbed my arm before I could reach the door knob, and he was a lot stronger than he used to be. I couldn’t even pull away! “Let them talk,” he hissed, and after a moment it was clear that Campbell was ok. I stopped fighting and returned to listening.

“No, I didn’t know what he was doing!” we heard Carrington say, and then she paused and sounded a lot less certain when she continued. “I keep thinking that I could have stopped him. I only had a bad feeling, and what was I supposed to do about it? He wouldn’t talk to me when I tried to ask, but he was acting…there was something…”

“Yeah,” her brother told her. “I wish I’d done something, too, but I’m not sure what that would have been. Hire outside auditors? Ghregg never would have allowed them to access anything of significance. Should I have called the SEC, the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI? Maybe. It’s too late now.”

“No, you couldn’t have done any of those things,” she answered, quietly enough that we had to strain to hear even with our ears pressed hard to the wood slab. “‘Hi, FBI, my dad is giving me a bad vibe,’” she suggested, and they both laughed a little, sounding just the same. “I thought about that, too. I tried to look into things but it was so complicated. That was part of his scam, right? It was all compartmentalized and confused, so that no one except for him could get a clear picture. I didn’t have one and I knew that you didn’t. I wish I had talked to you, though.”

“You were scared of him, just like I was. Just like I always have been,” her brother answered, and I couldn’t catch her response. Then, in a clear voice, we heard him ask, “Can people hear us talking?”

Dion and I jerked back and scurried away, out onto the deck and into our seats. We tried to look casual, him by playing on his phone and me by looking at the stars and making wild guesses about the faint constellations that were visible despite the moon.

After a while, when Campbell hadn’t appeared, I stood up and stretched. “Well, I’m tired,” I announced, although mostly I was nervous. “I guess I’ll go up to bed.”

“Have fun. Did you bring enough condoms? I have a lot if you need more.”

“Dion, why did you bring those?”

“I also brought toothpaste and other essentials,” he explained.

“Were you expecting to have sex this weekend? With whom?”

“You never know and you should be ready,” he said. “It’s like wearing your seat belt in the car because there could be an accident.”

“Like some woman’s hoo-ha might accidentally take in your penis?” I asked, and he laughed hard enough that he couldn’t answer at first.

I left but as I did, I heard him call, “I gave a box to Jackie, too!”

Holy Mary. I shook my head, unwilling to think about my parents and Dion’s prophylactics, and I went upstairs.

Campbell was lying on the bed, the one we would share and the one that was smaller than the bed in Beckett’s guestroom. He stared at the ceiling but turned his head to look at me when I came in. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I answered. “Are you going to sleep?”

“No, I’m just thinking.” He watched as I gathered up my night things, which did not include the sexy outfit that Addie had suggested. Instead, I had made a little tank top with coordinating shorts, and on the spectrum of sexiness, that outfit rated somewhere near “crumbs in the bottom of a toaster” and “snowplows.” I decided that it was like Grace had said: I made things that suited me, just for me. Sexless Brenna.

“What was that sigh for?” he asked, and I realized that my distress had been audible.

“Nothing.” Nothing important, just a sad reality. I changed the subject. “Why is your sister friends with such terrible people?” I asked him.

“They’re not her friends,” he answered. “They’re a group of competitors who hang out together. Everything between them is like a race or a game. Carrington was the queen.”

Of course, since she’d been the prettiest, the richest, the one with the best body, and possibly the meanest. I wasn’t sure about that anymore because she had sounded very human when we’d been eavesdropping.

“All they did was try to knock her off her throne, with their individual digs and then sometimes by banding together like hyenas. It’s ugly and it’s not a good situation for her, mentally. Things have probably been bad enough without that crowd around. I wish I’d been around for her instead.” He closed his eyes.

I went quietly into the adjoining bathroom. First, I flossed and brushed very carefully, and then came the dilemma. To remove the makeup, or not to remove the makeup? If I left it on, I looked better now. If I took it off, I’d look better in the morning. But he was going to see me at the beach in my turquoise bikini that was almost exactly like Carrington’s, so there was really nothing that I would be able to hide. I removed the makeup and came out of the bathroom.

I had taken long enough that Campbell was now asleep. I quietly walked around the room, closing the curtains so that the sun wouldn’t wake him in the morning and flicking off the lights, all of them, so that it was completely dark. Now, after getting to know him, I was aware that he preferred to sleep this way. I could deal, even if I didn’t like it.

Just as quietly, I got into the bed, trying not to jostle the mattress at all. I couldn’t have totally succeeded because he said, “Brenna,” very urgently, as if something was wrong.

“What?”

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