Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(76)

Now, we were back in the real world.

And it just was what it was.

I stared at the laptop in my hands, and my chest ached for a completely different reason. “There’s something else I need to tell you guys,” I said, looking up at both of them.

Their frowns mirrored each other as I opened my laptop again, and I swallowed, turning the screen toward them.

Jordan squinted at it. “Username: Becker dot John at Scooter Whiskey dot com,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. Are you trying to break into Dad’s old email?”

“I’m trying to break into his old laptop.”

Mikey leaned in closer. “But his laptop is gone,” he said. “They never recovered it from the fire.”

“They did,” I corrected. “They just never told us.”

My brothers watched me for a long moment before Mikey pulled the laptop into his hands, and Jordan watched over his shoulder while I told them the whole story. I told them about the storage closet, the laptop, how I’d extracted the hard drive, but it was password protected. I told them that I didn’t want to tell them at first, because I thought it was hopeless. But, I’d tried everything that I knew, and now, I needed their help trying to figure out the password.

“If we can get into it, maybe we can find something,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but maybe…”

“Maybe there are answers,” Jordan finished, his eyes scanning the screen.

“Ky knows a little about hacking,” Mikey chimed in. “She’s big into gaming and computers, and one time she hacked into the school system and changed everyone’s grade to an A in Mr. Zee’s anatomy class because he was such a stickler and never taught us what was actually on our tests.”

“Oh shit, I remember that. Your sophomore year, right?” I asked

He nodded. “Maybe she can help.”

“Here,” I said, reaching for the laptop. I safely ejected the external hard drive that now housed the one that had been inside Dad’s computer and handed it to Mikey. “Take it. You guys can work on it for a while. I’ve been obsessing over it, anyway. Need a break.”

“Okay. We need to tell Noah, too.”

“I will,” I said. “As soon as he’s back. He’s happy right now, I want to let him have that.”

For a long pause, my brothers and I were quiet. I felt marginally better, though my chest was still tight. I figured it would be that way for a while, until time could do its work and heal me, my heart, my soul. It’d been that way when Dad passed away, too, and I’d survived.

If I could make it through that, I could make it through anything.

When we all stood to make our way back inside, Jordan nudged Mikey with a smirk. “So… you and Ky are hanging out again, huh?”

Mikey frowned with a noncommittal shrug. “So? We’ve been friends forever. Why is it weird that we’re hanging out?”

“No reason,” Jordan said, but he and I exchanged a knowing look. That girl had been in love with our brother since they were toddlers, and I had a feeling Mikey was going to discover that real soon.

I just hoped he could give her a chance, open his heart to that possibility after Bailey.

And I hoped that maybe, one day, I could do the same with mine.





Mallory


I shouldn’t have been as angry as I was that Christmas decorations still lined Main Street when I woke up the next morning. Of course, no one was going to take them down over night. In fact, I knew they’d still be up for another week or so, spreading joy through the new year.

Damn them.

It was just that it didn’t match my mood as I flew down the road in my old Camry, the one I had insisted on buying with my own money that I saved up before I went to college. It was a piece of shit. It needed a new air conditioner and a new radiator and a new everything.

But it was mine.

I wondered briefly why I never saw my situation now the way I saw buying this car when I was seventeen, but I tried not to dwell on it. What was done, was done.

I only had my actions and choices now.

It was a little harder to breathe when I pulled through the gate at the end of my parents’ long driveway. I didn’t grow up in a house, I grew up in a giant, southern-as-can-be Tennessee estate. It sat on one-hundred-and-fifty-two acres on the north side of town, which was entirely too much land for a family of four. Of course, my father needed land to entertain — to shoot skeet, have a driving range and putter course for business talk, and, for some reason, horses. I never did figure that one out, since he wasn’t a rider, and neither was Mom, nor were Malcolm or myself.

And where Dad wanted the land, Mom wanted the large house. She wanted enough room to have servants’ quarters, where those who worked for her could live and be readily available. She needed multiple kitchens, dozens of rooms to house guests who were too inebriated to leave, and, as she would tell anyone who would listen, “Plenty of room for future grandchildren to have adventures and get lost.”

It was always too much for me. I’d felt suffocated in that massive home, and when I parked in the driveway next to the elaborate fountain, I found myself struggling for air once again.

I pushed through the front door without knocking, handing my coat and scarf to Larry — one of our butlers — before I made my way into the dining room. Mom lit up when she saw me, clapping her hands together, whereas Dad just barely glanced at me over his newspaper. Malcolm was there, too, but he was on his phone, and I was pretty sure he didn’t even realize I’d walked in.