Page 17 of Thicker Than Water
I know Sienna’s suspicious of my reaction. At red lights on the drive home, I felt her examining my face, wondering about the tight, agitated expression I’d been struggling for hours to loosen. But more than ever, I can’t tell her about those ten thousand dollars, can’t explain why Maeve’s revelation about the promotion has me so rattled. Sienna’s already on the defensive, deflecting details that continue to confound me: Gavin’s phone in Jason’s car, the gap in his timeline. If I told her what he did, how he explained it, she’d skip right over Jason’s betrayal of my trust and focus only on the wayhegot hurt, the part where someone screwedhimover. The injustice would be too much for her, and her reaction—defending Jason instead of supporting me—would only devastate me more. So I’ve buried my discontent from the beginning, entombing it deep inside me.
I lock the front door, shuffle into the kitchen to set the timer on the coffeemaker, then head upstairs. Jason’s absence is everywhere. It thickens the air like humidity. Working from home, I’m used to being here without him. But that’s during the day, when his return is a promise. Now his absence feels more like a presence, a shadow hovering above me, even as I flick on the stairwell light and darkness skitters away.
The door to Aiden’s room is ajar, but when I peek in, I find that his bed is empty. I look across the hall at the bathroom—empty, too—and concern seizes my throat.
“Aiden?” I choke out.
I yank my phone from my pocket, hoping for a text, a missed call, a voice mail in which he begrudgingly keeps me in the loop. Maybe he went to a friend’s house after school, got picked up by someone else’s mother. But I have no messages, no notifications.
I type out a text to him, pausing only at a sound down the hall: a drawer sliding open. I whip my head toward the master bedroom, a crack of light leaking through the space where the door isn’t totally closed. I hurry to my room, push inside, and finally breathe at the sight of Aiden, his back facing me, earbuds in, hands rummaging through Jason’s nightstand.
“Aiden?”
He doesn’t respond. I touch his shoulder and he jolts like I’ve electrocuted him.
“Jesus!” he says, ripping out an earbud.
“Sorry! I was calling you, but—”
“Why are you home so early?” His question is sharpened to an accusation.
“It’s not early. It’s eight forty-five.”
“What? No it’s not.” Aiden pulls his phone from his hoodie, pauses his music, then squints at the time. “Whoa.” He takes a stepback, setting a hand against the wall. He looks disoriented. Suddenly unstable.
I leap forward to support him. “Honey, are you okay?”
He jerks upright. “I’m fine. I just—didn’t realize what time it was.” His gaze drops to the open drawer of Jason’s nightstand. He closes it with his thigh, then stares at his Converse, the white toes marked by handwritten band names.
I stare at them, too. I’ve seen these sneakers hundreds of times, but suddenly, there’s something about them that gives me pause. A vague anxiety hums in the back of my mind.
“Are you sure?” I stall, waiting for the thought to clarify.
Aiden digs the toe of his shoe into the carpet, like he’s squashing a bug, and that’s when it strikes me, a detail I didn’t register until now. On Sunday night, when Aiden couldn’t sleep—spooked by the news of Gavin’s murder—he was wearing these sneakers. But it was two o’clock when I found him like that, hours since he’d gone up to bed.
“Did you go somewhere Sunday night?” I ask.
His brows knit together. “Huh?”
I point to his sneakers. “You were wearing those when I talked to you, in the middle of the night. Did you leave the house?”
I’m careful not to saysneak out—which is what teenagers do, right? It never occurred to me that Aiden would, but he’s been so bristly lately, so unlike the boy I’ve known, and now I wonder what he does when he thinks we’re asleep.
“No,” Aiden says, scornful, as if I’m being ridiculous. But I see his shoulders stiffen.
“Why were you wearing them, then?”
“I wasn’t. You must have imagined it. You were, like, half-asleep.”
I shake my head, but I can’t exactly prove I’m right. It nags at me, an odd sense of unease, but I table it for now, turning my attention to Jason’s nightstand, still open a crack.
Gently, I ask, “What were you doing in here?”
“Nothing, just—looking for something.”
“For what?”
Aiden’s foot scrapes the carpet again. “Dad’s cuff links. The semiformal’s on Saturday and he told me on Monday I could borrow them.”
