We Told Six Lies(27)

I push open the door to my room and find Holt facing away from me, hunched over something.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Holt jerks with surprise and whips around. He’s holding something in his hands. He’s holding my notebook in his hands.

He holds it up. “What is this, Cobain?”

I cross the room and tear it away from him. “That’s mine, is what it is.”

The look that crosses Holt’s face breaks my spirit, makes me question if I have a heart at all. Or if, like that tin man from The Wizard of Oz, I’m made of only steel and bolts, a hatchet in my unfeeling hands.

“You knew I wasn’t convinced that Molly ran away,” I say.

He nods. “And I was okay with helping you work through that.”

Work through that sounds a lot like humoring you.

“But Cobain.” He gestures to the notebook. “The names in that thing. You have a list of, what, suspects? How are you crossing them off? What are you doing? If the police found out you’re messing with—”

“They won’t find out.” I shake my head. “What am I supposed to do? Sit around? Hope the police know what they’re doing? If you cared about me, you’d want me to find her.”

“I want the police to find her, and they will. I want you to stop…”

I look down my nose at my older brother. “Stop what?”

He sighs. “Stop obsessing.”

I’m not sure why that cuts me the wrong way, but it does. “I’m not obsessed. I’m in love. Maybe you’re just jealous because you’ve never experienced that.”

Holt frowns. “Cobain.”

I know I’m taking my frustration out on him, but I can’t stop myself. “You were always better at everything. You were smarter. More popular. More athletic, even though I was always bigger than you.”

Holt scoffs at the last part.

“Mom and Dad always liked you best,” I continue. “And you had all these friends because where you went to school, the kids weren’t sadists.”

Holt holds his hands up. “I only went to that school—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know why Mom and Dad got you in there. Because you were gifted. Because you showed so much promise. They would never have even sent in an application for me.”

My gaze locks on him. “You were the best at everything. But I was the best at loving Molly.”

I struggle to control my emotions at the end, and Holt must hear it because he crosses the room in an instant and hugs me tight. Slaps me on the back and squeezes me again before releasing me. He takes my face in his hands. Gives my head a rattle.

“I am your brother, Cobain. I love you. All right? I’ll always be here.”

“Sometimes when I don’t want you to be,” I mutter.

Holt throws his head back and roars with laughter, and I find myself smiling, too.

“Seriously? Are you going to get kicked out of school?” I ask. “You barely even come home for holidays anymore, and now I see you almost every day.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much as I should’ve been. College girls are pretty hot.”

I try to laugh but can’t manage it.

“Hey,” he says, and grabs the back of my neck. Taps our foreheads together quickly. “I’m here now, fucker.”

He releases me, smiles, and turns to walk out of the room. I’m still gripping the notebook between my hands as he goes.





MOLLY


He came back for her, just as he said he would.

But first, he left the dress.

It was lying on her bed when Molly woke in the morning, the sun from the window casting an ethereal glow against the folds of white. It was vintage, yellowing along the lace sleeves and neckline. Along the lace-hemmed bottom and lace back.

After seeing the dress, she realized two new things:

The door to the restroom was closed.

The restraints on her wrists had been removed.

She knew she was being idiotic, but she still rushed toward the bathroom door. Ripped at the handle until her hands ached. It was locked, the keyhole mocking her with its gaping golden mouth. She tried to jam her finger in the hole, then ripped the shoelace from her shoe and attempted to stick the plastic end inside. Nothing worked to move the lock out of place. In a final, desperate act, she kicked the door—once, twice, twelve times—but she couldn’t form even the smallest dent in the heavy wood.

She leaned against the door and caught her breath, closed her eyes, and pictured the window on the other side. So close. It gave her hope that, soon, she’d find a way through it.

Is that why he left it uncovered?

To give her a sense that escape was possible?

Molly thought again of the letter he forced her to write. He wanted everyone to think she’d run away, and she had been doing just that before he took her, hadn’t she?

She’d included a line that he jabbed his thumb at. He didn’t understand it, didn’t like it, but she hoped the boy she left behind would. And so she pacified her abductor by saying it was something between her mother and herself. A language only the two of them spoke. When he’d shaken his head, adamant that she write another letter without it, she turned her face away and allowed her bottom lip to tremble just so. “I only wanted her to know it was me. So she wouldn’t worry.”