Page 71 of This for That (The Edge of Retaliation 1)
I walk over to the closet first, my chest aching with the knowledge that I’m in Celia Yates’ room. I flick the light on in the closet and glance around. She owned a lot of sundresses and shoes. It gives me some insight to what her personality must have been like. I bet she was a beautiful girl, sweet and kind. I can feel that just being in this room.
My stomach twists.
I push it aside and keep focused.
I shuffle through her clothes, looking behind them and searching through the closet. I come up empty; there isn’t anything hidden in here.
I turn and walk back out, making sure to leave the space exactly as I found it. I move over to her bed, glancing around it, opening the drawers beside it, checking everything out. There is nothing here, either. No diary. No pictures. I’m assuming her parents have kept her room the same, but taken away anything that might resemble her. There are no photos, no posters on the wall, nothing a normal teenage girl would have lying around.
I walk over to her desk, opening a few drawers and flicking through the papers. They’re neat, really neat, which tells me her parents have already gone through all of this. That leaves me with only one thing—the laptop. It’s closed on her desk, so I carefully push it open and find the charger, plugging it in. It lights up after a few minutes, but I see it’s password protected.
Have they had this looked at? Did her parents search the contents of her laptop? Or did they just overlook it?
I’m curious. So damned curious.
If I take it, I could get into a lot of trouble, yet something is telling me to find out what’s on this laptop. Making a rash decision and hoping that the reason this room is locked is because nobody comes in here, I take the laptop and tuck it under my arm, putting everything back the way I found it. I exit the room, locking it on my way out.
With the laptop firmly in my grip, I walk down the hall, stopping when I reach the living room.
I glance at a line of photos sitting on a cabinet that houses the television. There are about twenty of them. I can’t see them from here, and the light is on. I wonder if it’s worth the risk crossing the room and looking at them?
Deciding it is, I glance around and then cross the room, stopping at the photos and letting my eyes run over them.
The first three or four are of Celia. She was absolutely beautiful. The kind of beautiful you just don’t see often anymore, real beauty, natural beauty. Her smile looks infectious. In every photo, she is laughing, her head thrown back, her smile massive. I can see why it would have been hard to believe she stepped out in front of my car that night.
But the eyes I saw. The broken smile that she gave me. That isn’t in any of these pictures.
Did she hide it from her family?
If so, what was it that she couldn’t tell them? What was so bad that she had to suffer alone?
I take a few steps over and keep scanning the photos.
My blood runs cold.
For a moment, I stare, sure I’m seeing things wrong. My heart races, my palms get clammy, and my breathing becomes labored. No way. No way in the world. My eyes flitter over the photographs, back and forth, back and forth, as if the more I look at them, the less likely it is that what I’m seeing is real.
No.
No.
God. No.
The first photo I stare at is a family photo of Celia with her parents, and her brother and sister.
Two faces I’m so familiar with.
Two faces I’ve come to know so well in the last few months.
Two faces of people I thought were my friends.
As my world unravels around me, and my eyes fill with horrified tears, I look to the next photo.
Two faces I know, too.
Two of the people who I love the most in this world.
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I make a loud, pained sound and grip my chest as I really let what I’m seeing sink in.
The first photo is of Andrea and Tanner.
With their family.
With their sister, Celia.
Andrea and Tanner Yates.
Andrea and Tanner are Celia’s siblings.
Andrea and Tanner have known all along who I am.
Andrea and Tanner.
No.
The second photo, the one that rips my heart from my chest, is a photo of Tanner when he was clearly heading off to serve overseas. He’s wearing all his military clothes, and next to him is a man. He has his arm thrown around him, like they’re the very best of friends. They’re both smiling. Both happy.
That man is Ethan Corel.
Tanner and Ethan are friends.
