Chapter 19: Odile Will Never Know

“Fifteen years,” Kade said, staring at the cracked screen. “He taught me to ride a bicycle in the driveway when my father stopped coming home.”

“Maybe he was only told to do it, maybe he did not know what it was for,” I said.

“Teddy does not scratch his nose without permission, if he was in that alley, somebody sent him,” Kade said.

“He sat with me in the hospital when Nana Rose had her surgery, he brought me chocolate milk, he knows how I take my coffee,” he added, and his voice caught.

“Your mother,” Zola said quietly.

“Do not say it yet,” Kade said, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.

“Sir, I can bring him in, I know where he parks the car on weekends,” Brandt said.

“Not yet, if he disappears, we learn nothing, I want to hear her say it first,” Kade said, and he pulled out his phone.

“You are calling her now?” I asked.

“I have waited twenty years to ask my mother one honest question, I am not going to wait another hour,” Kade said, and he put the phone on speaker.

It rang three times.

“Kade, darling, I am in the middle of a very important conversation with my florist,” Odile said.

“Where is Teddy?” Kade asked.

“Teddy, how strange, he took the week off, he is visiting his sister in Sacramento, why?” Odile asked.

“Because an hour ago he was in an alley behind a bridal shop, with a camera, pointing it at my fiancée,” Kade said.

There was a pause, and I counted four seconds.

“That is absurd, Teddy does not own a camera,” Odile said.

“Mother, did you send him?” Kade asked.

“If I wanted to look at that girl, darling, I would invite her to tea, I would not hide behind a driver like a coward, I find that vulgar,” Odile said.

“That is not an answer,” Kade said.

“It is the only one you are getting on the telephone, bring her to the house tomorrow, we will have a proper conversation, and I have been saving my mother in law’s veil for twenty five years, she may as well wear it,” Odile said.

“Mother,” Kade said.

“Goodbye, darling, give the girl my love,” Odile said, and the line clicked.

“She did not say no,” Zola said.

“She did not say yes either, she never does, she says things that sound like both, and I have spent my life trying to decide which one she meant,” Kade said, and his voice cracked.

“Can I hit something, anything, a pillow?” Zola asked.

“Take the sofa, it was very expensive, I never liked it,” Kade said.

I stepped in front of him and took the phone out of his hand and set it on a table, and then I took both his hands in mine.

“Look at me,” I said.

“I am looking,” Kade said.

“You are not alone in this, I know I am the Hale girl, and I know my father’s face is in your mother’s hallway, but I am standing right here, and I am not going anywhere,” I said.

“You were nearly hurt today because of my family’s war,” Kade said, and a tear ran down his face, and he did not wipe it.

“I was nearly hurt because someone is a coward with a phone, that is not your war, and it is not mine,” I said.

“When I was nine, after my father left, Teddy drove me to school every morning, and he never said a word, and on the fourth day he stopped the car, bought me an ice cream, and handed it back without looking at me, and I have never forgotten it,” Kade said. “If he sold me out for money, I think I can survive that, but if he did it because she told him to, I do not know what I do with the ice cream.”

“Then we find out which one it is before we decide how to feel,” I said.

“I am so tired of being afraid of my own mother,” Kade said, and his shoulders folded.

I pulled him down against me and held his head, and Zola turned toward the window and blew her nose very loudly, and Brandt studied the ceiling as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“That is rule three, you are making me break it again,” Kade said into my neck.

“Then fire me, I am a terrible employee,” I said.

He laughed, a wet, cracked laugh, and held on tighter.

“I am still wearing a wedding dress under a coat, and I think I look like a very confused ghost,” I said.

“A very beautiful ghost,” Kade said, lifting his head, and he almost smiled.

“Sir,” Brandt said gently, “the other phone, it is lighting up.”

Kade turned, and Brandt held up Teddy’s cracked phone, and a message had slid onto the screen from a number with no name.

It was the number, the same one that had texted me and Tamsin, and Zola made a small sound in her throat.

“Read it,” I said.

Kade took the phone and read aloud, slowly. “Good work, Teddy. The photo is perfect. Odile will never know it was me.”

“Odile will never know,” Zola whispered.

“So it is not her,” I said, and my knees went weak, and Kade caught my elbow.

“Then who, who knows my mother’s driver, who has his number, who can pay him without her finding out?” Kade asked.

“Someone close enough to both of you,” Brandt said.

“Brandt, when I told you the hotel was the fake location, where were we?” Kade asked.

“In the car, sir, with your phone on the seat between us,” Brandt said.

“And before that, when I told Pierce his place, and Nana Rose hers, and Bash his, where was my phone?” Kade asked.

“In your pocket, sir, every time,” Brandt said.

“Then someone is not only watching me, they are listening,” Kade said slowly. “Turn off your phones, all of you, and put them in the kitchen drawer.”

“Even mine, I have forty thousand followers,” Zola said.

“Especially yours,” Kade said.

Another message slid onto the screen under the first one, and Kade read it, and he went completely still.

“What does it say?” I asked, and he did not answer, so I took the phone from his hand.

There was no text this time, only a photograph, taken through the glass doors of the lobby, from the street.

It showed a man in a rumpled shirt holding a woman in a gray coat over a cream wedding dress, with her face buried in his chest, and in the corner of the picture was a time stamp from this very minute.

“They are outside,” Zola said, and she turned slowly toward the glass doors, and the street beyond them was full of people, cars, and long afternoon shadows, and not one of them looked back.