You Drive Me Crazy novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Count Back

Cade stood in the doorway in a gray T-shirt, with the light behind him.

He looked like a man who had been awake all night, and probably had.

"Shut the door," I said.

He shut it.

"Say it," I said. "Whatever you wanted to say yourself."

"I suspected."

"Since when?"

"Since the last report. Six weeks ago."

"And you didn't pick up a phone."

"What would I have said? 'Mara, I paid a man to follow you for seven years, and I think you hid my kid'?" His voice scraped. "You'd have hung up. You'd have moved. You did it once."

"So you lied to me."

"Yes."

"For ten days."

"Yes."

"You stood in your own garage and called me Ms. Tolland, and let me think you'd forgotten me."

"I wanted to see what you would do."

"You wanted to see whether I would lie."

"Yes." He didn't look away. "And you did, with my hands on you."

"You tested me."

"You hid him."

The words hit the room.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm clean," Cade said, quieter. "I built a trap. I'm not proud. But I'd like to know what the hell you were going to do, Mara. Hide him forever? Let him find out from a stranger?"

"I was going to finish your car and go home."

"And then?"

"And then nothing. I'd have been gone."

"With my son."

"He isn't yours."

It came out of me fast, a reflex.

Cade took one step.

He stopped an arm's length from me, and I could see he was shaking.

"Then look me in the eye," he said, "and say it again."

I looked.

I had lied to a thousand people in six years.

To the nurse. To the school. To Eli, on the nights he asked why other boys had fathers who picked them up.

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