I Was Never One of Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Foundation

Hazel faces the man convicted of killing her brother, drowns Whitney's phone, and Gavin's mother says the family foundation has never missed a payment on Hazel's mother's treatment.

I stood up from the bed.

The flannel sleeves hung past my fingers, and my legs did not feel like mine.

"Look at me," I said.

Rhys turned from the doorway.

For eight years I had pictured this man's face and never once seen it.

It was just a face.

Tired eyes, gray in his dark hair, the scar through his eyebrow.

He did not look away.

"You killed my brother."

"I was convicted of it," he said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

I wanted to hit him.

I wanted it so badly my cut hand opened and started to bleed under the bandage.

"You never said a word in that courtroom. Not sorry, not anything. My mother sat there for three days, and you stared at the table."

"Yes."

"You stood in my fiancé's family's cabin and put a bandage on my hand."

"Yes."

He said it, agreeing to every charge.

Behind him, Whitney giggled.

"Oh, this is better than the veil," she said. "Keep going. Haz, say that last part again."

I crossed the room and took her phone out of her hand.

Whitney's smile slipped. "Hey."

I walked out onto the porch, past Gavin, to the rain barrel at the corner, and dropped it in.

It went under with a bubble.

"That's a thousand-dollar phone!" Whitney shrieked.

"Then you can afford a new one," I said.

Gavin grabbed my arm. "Hazel, stop. Listen to me."

I looked at his hand until he took it off.

"You knew," I said. "He is standing in your family's cabin, and you knew who he was the whole time. Three years and you never told me."

"Because it didn't matter." His voice went soft and reasonable. "He's my mother's charity case. She took him in when he got out, because nobody else would hire him. It's a kindness. I didn't want you upset."

"You didn't want me upset."

"Your brother was a tragedy, and I'm so sorry. But Nolan paid for it. It's over."

"Don't say his name."

"Whose? Your brother's, or Nolan's?"

I did not answer, because I realised I did not know which one I meant.

Rhys had stepped out under the porch roof.

He stood at the edge of the light, hands at his sides, and watched Gavin's face.

He did not say a word.

Gavin did not look at him once.

That was strange, and I noticed it, and then I was too angry to think about it.

"Get off this porch," I said.

"I came to take you home."

"You can't drive."

It came out of me before I'd thought it.

Gavin went very still.

"What did you say?"

"You never drive. Whitney drives. You sit in the back like a kid." I heard my own voice shake. "I never asked why. You always had a joke."

"I get carsick," Gavin said.

"Since when?"

"Since forever. We've talked about this."

We had not.

Whitney stepped between us, wet to the elbows.

"Gavin, let's go. She's being hysterical, and it's three in the morning."

"I'll find my own way out," I said.

Gavin's phone rang in his pocket.

He looked at the screen, and the color left his face.

He answered and said, "Mother, I'm sorry, it's a long story," and then he listened.

After a moment he held the phone out to me with a hand that was not quite steady.

"She wants to talk to you."

I did not take it.

"Put her on speaker, Gavin."

He did.

Constance Lockridge's voice came out of the phone, level and warm.

"Hazel, dear. I understand there was a misunderstanding at the lodge."

"It wasn't a misunderstanding."

"Of course. Youth is dramatic. But a man doesn't throw away three years over a game, and neither does a sensible woman." She paused. "The engagement stands. Come home in the morning. We'll have lunch."

"No."

"I'd think carefully, dear. You have your mother to consider."

The rain drummed on the porch roof.

"What about my mother?"

"Why, her treatment, naturally. Everything continues as it always has. The foundation has never missed a payment, has it?"

I stared at the phone.

My mother's dialysis was covered by a hospital hardship fund.

That was what the letters said.

That was what my mother had told me for eight years, ever since the week after the funeral, when a form arrived in the mail and the bills simply stopped.

"What foundation?"

Nobody said anything.

Gavin studied his shoes.

Whitney studied her nails.

And on the far end of the porch, Rhys looked at me as if he had been waiting eight years for me to ask.

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