The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(20)

I raised an eyebrow. “Ted did? Seriously?”

“Yeah. I was wearing these shorts—kind of high-waisted, with tights, nothing that I hadn’t worn loads of times before, and he asked if I was going out to see a boy in those, and maybe I shouldn’t wear it if so, and he was ‘kidding’ but he wasn’t. Mum shut him down quickly.” She pursed her lips. “I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, you know? Like, he doesn’t have any kids. Maybe he’s trying it out, the dad thing.”

“He’s doing a gross job of it, then,” I said, making a mental note to follow up with Mum. “I hate that shit. It makes it sound like he’s looking at you, and finding you—”

“Attractive. Or whatever. I know. It’s horrid. And he’s not even that old.” Her voice went steely. “He better not try it again.”

I had that feeling I got every now and then, that I was missing out on something pretty significant, not seeing my sister grow up. “Or else?”

“Or else,” she said firmly. “Anyway, it might not matter, I’m not going to be around. I’m going to school in America.”

I sat up so quickly I hit my head on the bookshelf above my bed. “What? No. Absolutely not. Not Sherringford.”

At that, she laughed. “Not Sherringford. I refuse to go to your weirdo murder school, no matter how much money they offer me. No, there’s this, like, other boarding school in Connecticut that Mum dug up. It’s close to yours. But this one has a one-to-one student-to-horse ratio.” She waited for that to sink in. “Jamie, I know you’re awful at maths, but seriously. One-to-one. Everyone gets her own horse. And it’s an all-girls’ school, which is great.”

It wasn’t really all that surprising, when she put it that way. Shelby had spent our childhood begging for riding lessons, but Mum could never afford them. Instead, she’d given Shelby a Shetland-sized stuffed pony that my sister dragged around behind her on a lead. “I knew you were shopping around for a school, but I always sort of thought you’d stay in England. Isn’t this place expensive? How can she afford it?”

“I think they offer, like, gold-plated financial aid. Or maybe her new boyfriend is feeling generous. I don’t know.”

“And you’re okay with all this?”

“I—” She chewed her lip, thinking. “Mum has her own life here now. And I sort of feel like I’m in the way. This place sounds better than staying in London, slowly making myself invisible.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Shelby blinked quickly, rubbed her eyes. “Anyway, I’m not going without looking at it first, I’m not stupid. That’s what I wanted to tell you, that Mum booked tickets to come out so I could see the campus, and if I like it, I can start right away. She was talking about wanting to see Dad. I guess she hasn’t seen him since—since—”

“Since last winter. Since he came to pick me up after Sussex.”

Past the phone in my hands, I could see the snow falling thickly out the window. Just this morning the weather was clear.

“Are you okay, Jamie?”

Shelby had sat up on her own bed. I didn’t like the pitying look in her eyes. “Fine,” I said, too sharply. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” she sang, the way she’d do when we were kids. “You’re being a jerk, such a jerk, such a jerk—”

“Don’t you ‘Jerk Song’ me—”

She went up an octave. “You’re the biggest jerk in Jerkfordshire—”

“Shel, oh my God,” I said, trying hard not to laugh. It’d been a good instinct, to call my sister. “I hope you like that horse school. It sounds perfect. We’ll talk more about it when you’re here.”

“I miss you too.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “Bye, Jamie. See you soon.”

I stood and pulled the curtains closed. Enough light still snuck through to speckle my bedspread, like I was living underwater. I watched it for a while, lying down on my bed, the shimmer of it against my wall. Thought bleary thoughts about the ocean in winter. I wanted to see it again, I decided. Maybe the North Sea up in Scotland, instead of the southern coast. I’d go once I was in uni. I’d take the train up alone. Watch the sheep out the window, the rolling hills. Stop a night in Edinburgh to tour my father’s old stomping grounds. I wanted to relearn what it was like to be me, in places that I loved, to remember what it was like to be enough. Pretend there wasn’t anyone out to get me.

Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe I had made some kind of mistake, had saved over the file for my presentation, named it something stupid and lost it in a folder. Maybe, after the last two years, my instincts were just shot to hell. None of this had ever been about me, after all.

The exhaustion rolled up and over me like a blanket.

In the dream I had, I’d been an orphan living in Holmes’s house. Her father had been chasing me, had the two of us terrified, hiding together in a basement. We were alone down there in the dark, but I could hear a crowd murmuring around us, someone stutter-coughing, the beginnings of applause. When I turned to tell Holmes we were being watched, a spotlight drew down over her face. Her eyes went fluorescent.

Just say your lines, she said.