It Starts with Us (It Ends with Us #2)(8)

“There,” Brad says, pointing to the lower left-hand corner of the screen. I slow down the footage until we see a figure.

When I hit play, we both stare in confusion. Someone is curled up on the back steps, unmoving. We watch the screen for about half a minute, until I hit rewind again. According to the time stamp on the footage, the person remains on the steps for over two hours. Without a blanket, in a Boston October.

“They slept here?” Brad says. “They weren’t too worried about getting caught, were they?”

I rewind the footage even more until it shows the person walking into the frame for the first time, a little after one in the morning. Because it’s dark, it’s hard to make out facial features, but they seem young. More like a teenager than an adult.

They snoop around for a few minutes—dig through the dumpster. Check the lock on the back door. Pull out the spray paint and leave their clever message.

Then they use the can of spray paint to attempt to break the windows, but Corrigan’s windows are triple-paned, so the person eventually gets bored, or grows tired of trying to make a big enough hole to fit through like they did at Bib’s. That’s when they proceed to lie down on the back steps, where they fall asleep.

Just before the sun rises, they wake up, look around, and then casually walk away like the entire night never happened.

“Do you recognize him?” Brad asks.

“No. You?”

“Nope.”

I pause the footage on what may be the clearest visual we can get of the person, but it’s grainy. They’re wearing jeans and a black hoodie with the hood pulled tight so that their hair isn’t visible.

There’s no way we would be able to recognize whoever this is if we saw them in person. It isn’t a clear enough picture, and they never looked straight at the camera. The police wouldn’t even find this footage useful.

I send the file to my email anyway. Right when I hit send, a phone pings. I glance at mine, but it’s Brad who received a text.

“Darin says Bib’s is fine.” He pockets his phone and heads toward my office door. “I’ll start cleaning up.”

I wait for the file to finish sending to my email, then I start the footage over again, feeling more pity than irritation. It just reminds me of the cold nights I spent in that abandoned house before Lily offered me the shelter of her bedroom. I can practically feel the chill in my bones just thinking about it.

I have no idea who this could be. It’s unnerving that they wrote my name on the door, and even more unnerving that they felt comfortable enough to hang out and take a two-hour nap. It’s like they’re daring me to confront them.

My phone begins to vibrate on my desk. I reach for it, but it’s a number I don’t recognize. I normally don’t answer those, but Lily is still in the back of my mind. She could be calling me from a work phone.

God, I sound pathetic.

I raise the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

There’s a sigh on the other end. A female. She sounds relieved that I answered. “Atlas?”

I sigh, too, but not from relief. I sigh because it isn’t Lily’s voice. I’m not sure whose it is, but anyone other than Lily is disappointing, apparently.

I lean back in my office chair. “Can I help you?”

“It’s me.”

I have no idea who “me” is. I think back to any exes that could be calling me, but none of them sound like this person. And none of them would assume I would know who they were if they simply said, It’s me.

“Who’s speaking?”

“Me,” she says again, emphasizing it like it’ll make a difference. “Sutton. Your mother.”

I immediately pull the phone away from my ear and look at the number again. This has to be some kind of prank. How would my mother get my phone number? Why would she want it? It’s been years since she made it clear she never wanted to see me again.

I say nothing. I have nothing to say. I stretch my spine and lean forward, waiting for her to spit out the reason she finally put forth the effort to contact me.

“I… um.” She pauses. I can hear a television on in the background. It sounds like The Price Is Right. I can almost picture her sitting on the couch, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other at ten in the morning. She mostly worked nights when I was growing up, so she’d eat dinner and then stay up to watch The Price Is Right before going to sleep.

It was my least-favorite time of day.

“What do you want?” My voice is clipped.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, and even though it’s been years, I can tell she’s annoyed. I can tell in that one release of breath that she didn’t want to call me. She’s doing it because she has to. She’s not reaching out to apologize; she’s reaching out because she’s desperate.

“Are you dying?” I ask. It’s the only thing that would prevent me from ending this call.

“Am I dying?” She repeats my question with laughter as if I’m absurd and unreasonable and an ass… whole. “No, I’m not dying. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Do you need money?”

“Who doesn’t?”

Every ounce of anxiety she used to fill me with returns in just these few seconds on the phone with her. I immediately end the call. I have nothing to say to her. I block her number, regretful that I gave her as long as I did to speak. I should have ended the call as soon as she told me who she was.