Chapter 13: Only Words

The click was still in my ear when Tyler spoke.

"Just say it, Cass."

His face was gray in the lounge light.

"Say what?"

"That the video was a mistake. For Dad. She'll bury him, and you know it."

"She wants me to say I made up the peanut."

"You could say you were confused. You were dizzy, you were scared..."

"I was on the floor of a bathroom at a party, Tyler."

He shut his mouth.

Nate sat with his elbows on his knees and said nothing, which was the first smart thing he had done all day.

I looked at the pages laid out in rows on the table.

I thought about the kitchen back home, and Brynn's tidy little speech about Aunt Laurel.

I had apologized in that kitchen for being sick, for being quiet, for being in the way, since I was eight years old.

I was not going to do it again for the man who had never once stood up in it.

"No," I said.

"Cass..."

"I'm calling him."

I picked up the phone and dialed my father's number and put it on speaker.

He answered on the first ring.

I could hear the hum of the garage freezer behind him.

"Cass?"

"Dad, are you alone?"

"I'm in the garage. Your mother thinks I'm sleeping." He breathed out. "Brynn called me an hour ago."

"I know. She called me too."

Nobody spoke.

"She has the whole file, Dad," I said. "She's had it since she was fourteen."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Mom Hung Up on My Call for Help to Toast My Cousin, So I Vanished from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.