Chapter 3 Nine Words and a Lie

Cleo's POV

I found the second letter at midnight.

I wasn't looking for it. I was looking for my phone charger in the hallway closet, the one Mom lets me use because the outlet in my room is too far from my bed, and when I reached up to the top shelf, a shoebox shifted, and two envelopes slid out and landed on the floor at my feet.

Same handwriting. Same postmark format. Different dates.

One from eight months ago. One from fourteen months ago.

I stood in that hallway for a long time. Long enough for the floor to feel cold through my socks. Long enough to understand that my mother has been collecting letters from my father for over a year and has not said a single word to me about any of them.

I put them back. I found my charger. I went to my room and lay in the dark with my eyes open until 4 a.m.

I did not cry. I am done crying about him. I decided that at thirteen, and I have not broken it since.

But I wanted to. For the first time in a long time, I really wanted to.

I wake up at nine with a headache behind my eyes and a plan.

The plan is simple: stay in my room, eat the granola bar in my bag, and wait until Dash Calloway does something that takes him out of the kitchen. He seems like an early morning person. Early morning, people do not stay in the kitchen past ten. I give it forty minutes.

I make it exactly forty minutes before my stomach overrules my entire strategy.

I go downstairs, telling myself he is probably already gone.

He is not gone.

He is standing at the counter with two mugs out and the coffee already made, like this is his kitchen and he has been using it for years. He doesn't look up when I walk in. He just reaches for the second mug and pushes it toward the space beside him.

I stop in the doorway.

"I didn't ask for that," I say.

"No," he agrees.

I walk to the cabinet and get my own mug. I pour my own coffee. I put the pot back without offering him any, even though his mug is still empty.

He watches all of this without saying anything.

It takes nine words to start the argument.

I say, "You don't have to make coffee for two."

He says, "You're right. I just did."

Something about the calmness of it gets under my skin faster than I expect. Like he already knows exactly how to sit inside my nerves.

"This is my kitchen," I say.

"It's your mom's kitchen," he says. "And she asked me to make sure you eat breakfast."

I go very still.

"She what?"

He picks up his mug. Takes a slow sip. Looks at me over the rim with those dark, steady eyes.

"Before they left this morning," he says. "She pulled me aside. She said, and I'm quoting, make sure Cleo eats actual food and not just coffee." He pauses. "Those were her exact words."

The heat that moves up my throat is not embarrassment. It is something angrier than that. Because my mother left before I woke up. She left for six weeks in Europe without waking me up to say goodbye. And apparently, she had time to give Dash Calloway breakfast instructions but not time to knock on my door.

"She could have woken me up herself," I say. My voice is very controlled.

"Yeah," Dash says quietly. "She could have."

He doesn't say it like an argument. He says it as he agrees with me. Like he knows it lands wrong, and he is not going to pretend it doesn't.

That is somehow worse than if he had argued back.

Prentice hits the bottom of the stairs at full volume, talking before he even reaches the kitchen, asking about food, asking about plans, filling the room with noise in that way he has that I usually find exhausting and right now find deeply relieving. He drops into a chair and starts talking about taking the car out later, and he looks between the two of us with the cheerful oblivion of someone who has never once in his life walked into a room and felt its temperature.

"You two good?" he asks.

"Perfect," I say.

"Great," Dash says.

Prentice accepts this completely and starts talking about breakfast options.

I eat cereal standing at the sink. I do not look at Dash. He does not look at me.

Prentice looks at both of us and grins as he has just been given a gift.

After breakfast, I go back upstairs and sit on the edge of my bed and let myself feel it for exactly five minutes. The missing mom. The letter in the drawer upstairs that I still haven't opened. The two letters in the closet prove she has been lying to me by silence for over a year. The fact that Dash Calloway is sleeping down the hall and apparently has been briefed on my eating habits.

Five minutes. Then I put it away.

I pull out my phone. I almost called Mom. I almost texted her. I type three different versions of the same message and delete all of them.

What would I even say? Did you say goodbye to me this morning? Did you even try?

I know the answer. The not-knowing is easier.

I put my phone down.

That is when I hear it. Voices downstairs. Prentice and Dash. Low and serious in a way that is completely different from the tone at breakfast.

I open my door. I don't go up the stairs. I just listen.

Prentice says something I can't fully make out. Something with my name in it.

Then Dash says, clearly and carefully: "She doesn't know the whole story, Prentice."

Prentice says: "She's going to find out eventually."

Silence.

Then Dash says the thing that stops my heart cold:

"Not if we handle it before she does."

I stop breathing.

Handle what.

Handle what before I do.

My hand is on the doorframe, and the wood is the only thing keeping me upright because something just shifted underneath me, and I do not know what it is yet. But Dash Calloway is standing in my kitchen talking to my stepbrother about something they are both planning to keep from me.

And my mother left this morning without waking me up.

And there are two letters in a closet she never told me existed.

Something is happening in this house.

Something everyone knows about except me.

And I am done waiting to find out what it is.