Brooke

There’s this weight that’s building inside me. When Stone first said the name Keeper to me, it was a tiny drop of water on a mountain of security. I know Daddy better than anyone. Maybe even better than my mom. I’ve seen how gentle he can be when he patches a skinned knee. He can’t be involved in anything to do with Stone or hurting boys. He wouldn’t.

But this terrible fear drips, drips, drips until I feel like it’s a hundred pounds. A thousand. It’s creating a fissure right through my middle, cutting apart everything I thought I knew.

Because it wasn’t pure coincidence that had Stone at that party the night we met. He came for Mr. Madsen, who was a friend of my father’s. A business friend, not a real friend, but that’s enough, isn’t it? Enough of a smoking gun. Enough to incriminate him in Stone’s eyes.

That’s how I end up in Daddy’s office, my heart pounding loud enough to shake the solid wood floor, hands shaking as I pull open a file cabinet. I’ve been in this room a hundred times. Played Barbies under the desk. Sat on his lap in front of the fireplace. Never did I think there could be evidence of a terrible crime only a few feet away. I don’t know what to believe, but I need to know, once and for all.

Because it’s not just the vengeance Stone wants or the justice he deserves that’s at stake. It’s the boys who might be held right now. If there’s even a chance I can help them, I have to try.

Daddy’s at his weekly racquetball game with Uncle Bill, so now is the time.

Dang technology takes twice as long for double the cost, Daddy sometimes jokes, but this would have been before digital files and online listings. It takes a little while to look through the files and find a box in the closet from the right decade. Before I was born, but I recognize the scrawled handwriting. I’ve seen it on my birthday cards and permission slips. It was even on a present from Santa one year. The year I realized that Santa wasn’t real, that it was Daddy all along.

“Where are you?” I whisper, my throat tight.

There are smudged yellow and pink papers slipped between white ones, copies that have faded almost to nothing. Only the hard downstrokes of pen are showing on some of them.

I’m almost afraid to see it, the street name where Stone was held as a child.

My hands move faster, the paper thin as butterfly wings. Dust tickles my nose and blurs my vision. A dark round stain on one of the pink sheets, and I realize it isn’t only dust clouding my eyes. I’m crying. How did I end up here? Snooping on my own father? Doubting him?

And then I see it, the street name in Daddy’s bold writing.

A sound comes from outside the closet, a soft snick, as loud as an explosion to my grief-stricken mind. Daddy shouldn’t be home for another hour. Mom’s at her hair appointment. It’s the maid’s day off. One of the only times I’m in the house alone, which is why I took advantage.

The paper crumples in my fist. I shove it into my jeans pocket.

For a wild second, I think it might be Stone, that from across the city he realized what I’d found, that he’s here to demand I give him the proof. It burns in my pocket, all the way through the denim to my skin.

Then my father’s standing in the doorway to the closet, a concerned look on his weathered face.

“Brooke, what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

His familiar voice makes me crack, and I run to him, press my face into his chest, feel the hard chest of him, the springy hair and the ribbed fabric of his workout shirt. Whatever aftershave he uses, a little too strong, but it only reminds me of him. Of safety. “Oh, Daddy.”

“What are you doing in here?”

He doesn’t sound angry. And he doesn’t sound worried, even though the lid to the file box is ajar.

Has it been so long that he’s forgotten? Has he done so many bad things that this one doesn’t register? I don’t even know what to think. Part of me wants to whip out the piece of paper in my pocket, to show it to him and make him explain it. To demand there be some innocent reason for him to own three houses on a street in an abandoned part of town.

Another part of me knows I have to be careful. I need to figure out who to trust, because right now I trust no one. And everyone. If Daddy was really one of these terrible men, then he can’t know that I know. Would he hurt me? I don’t want to believe that, but I don’t believe he could hurt boys either.

“I’m sorry,” I say desperately, wanting him to explain himself without being able to ask it of him. “I was just scared. I wanted to talk to you. I thought you were at your racquetball game, so I was waiting for you.”

“Bill sprained his ankle. We had a drink instead.” Familiar brown eyes darken with worry. “Maybe I should have listened to that detective. Got you in with a psychiatrist who can help you. Your mother thought—” He sighs. “She thought you didn’t need it.”

“I don’t,” I say too quickly. We both know the real reason she didn’t want me to see a psychiatrist is because it would get out. People would talk.

He looks at me, unusually grave. “I always wondered, Brooke, if something happened that you didn’t tell us about. That you were scared to tell us about. You know I would never be angry at you. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

He means sex. He means violence. But I want to tell him, I started to care about this man, Daddy. It’s wrong, but it’s also real. And he might try to kill you if he knew what I know.

“Nothing happened,” I say, my voice small.

The lie sits between us, pulsing with its own vitality.

After a long moment he nods and stands aside. I run from the office like my life depends on it. Well, maybe it does. Only that night do I smooth out the paper under a lamp and confirm my worst fears. The doubt had been a steady drip. The certainty is only a single drop more, but it’s enough to break me.