Chapter 2 What He Already Knew

Dash's POV

I should not have said that.

The second the words left my mouth, is that from who I think it's from, I watched Cleo Farris go completely still. Not the kind of still that means she is thinking. The kind that means something inside her just shut off all at once like a power cut.

She is staring at me.

The envelope is in her hands.

And I am standing in a doorway I should have never walked through.

"Get out," she says.

Her voice is low. Flat. The kind of voice that is not angry yet, but is one wrong word away from becoming something I won't recover from.

"Cleo,"

"Get. Out."

I go.

I find the actual bathroom, splash water on my face, and stand over the sink, telling myself to think.

Here is what I know.

Four days ago, Lorraine called me. Not Prentice, me. She had my number from the group chat she made when she and Weston started planning the wedding. She said she needed to talk to someone who wasn't her daughter and wasn't her fiancé, and something in her voice made me sit down before she even started.

She told me about the letter. About Cleo's father showing back up after seven years of nothing, not a call, not a birthday card, not a single word. Just an envelope appearing in her mailbox like the years between didn't happen. She said she didn't know whether to give it to Cleo or burn it. She said Cleo had spent seven years building a wall around that wound, and she was terrified the letter would tear it open right before the wedding.

I listened. I told her she had to give it to Cleo. That hiding it was worse. That Cleo would find out eventually, and being kept from it would hurt more than the letter itself.

Lorraine went quiet for a long time. Then she said, "You sound like you know her."

I didn't answer that.

I didn't know how.

What I did not do, what I was very careful not to do, was tell her what to actually say to Cleo. I didn't promise anything. I didn't make it my business.

And then I walked into that bedroom and made it my business in four words.

I am an idiot.

Downstairs, the reception is loud and warm and completely unaware that anything just happened. Prentice is laughing with Marcus near the back fence. The adults are dancing badly on the makeshift floor Weston built out of plywood and optimism. Someone has a speaker playing something with too much bass.

I get a plate of food I don't eat and find a spot near the side of the house where I can see the back door.

I am not waiting for her. I am just standing here.

She comes out eleven minutes later.

She has put the envelope somewhere, her hands are empty now, and she has fixed whatever was happening on her face. To anyone else at this reception, she looks completely normal. Composed. Unbothered.

I have spent exactly one day in the same house as Cleo Farris, and I already know that when she looks like that, it means the opposite of fine.

She gets a drink. She finds a chair at the edge of the yard. She sits in it with her back straight and her chin up and watches the dancing like she is observing something from a safe distance.

Prentice drops into the chair next to her, says something, and makes her almost smile. Almost.

I look away.

The announcement happens an hour later.

Weston taps his glass and thanks everyone for coming, and looks at Lorraine like she is the answer to a question he spent years asking. Then he says the plan: six weeks in Europe. The house is covered. Prentice is responsible.

Prentice pumps his fist.

I hear Cleo very quietly say, "Of course he is."

Then Weston looks at me from across the yard and says, "Dash, we appreciate you staying on. It means a lot."

The whole yard turns toward me.

Including Cleo.

I look at her. I can't help it. Her expression does something complicated, surprise first, then understanding, then something that closes off so fast I almost miss it.

She did not know I was staying.

Prentice didn't tell her.

She looks at me for exactly two seconds, like she is doing very fast math in her head. Then she turns back to her drink.

But her hand, holding the glass, is tight. Knuckles are just slightly pale.

Six weeks.

Same house.

She heard it the same moment I said it to myself.

Later, after the guests leave and Prentice is helping Weston stack chairs, and Lorraine is inside, I find Cleo in the kitchen.

She is washing her hands at the sink, back to me, and she knows I'm there. I can tell by the way her shoulders change.

"I didn't know she called me," I say. "I mean, I didn't plan to say anything."

She turns off the tap. Doesn't turn around.

"But she did call you," Cleo says.

"Yes."

"And you know about the letter."

"Yes."

Silence. She reaches for the hand towel. Dries her hands slowly, deliberately, like she is using the action to keep herself steady.

"How much did she tell you?" she asks.

I consider lying. It would be easier.

"Enough," I say.

She turns around then. Her eyes meet mine, and there is something in them I wasn't ready for. Not anger. Something older than anger. Something tired in the way that only comes from carrying a thing for too long alone.

"You had no right," she says quietly.

"I know."

"She should not have told you."

"I know that too."

She stares at me for a long moment. Then she nods once, small, sharp, like she is filing something away.

"Stay out of my business, Dash," she says.

She walks past me toward the stairs.

I let her go.

But I stand in the kitchen a long time after she leaves, because something is pulling at me. Something she said. Or didn't say. A detail that doesn't line up right.

Lorraine told me she got the letter three weeks ago.

But Cleo acted as she found it this morning for the very first time.

Which means one of two things.

Either Lorraine hid it from her own daughter for three weeks.

Or the letter in that drawer is not the first one.