by Kay Marie
Addy bit her lips to hide her smile. Their definitions of serious were probably very different, but she didn’t say anything. She let Jo keep going, unfiltered.
“Thad, well, give the man a paintbrush and he can rival Picasso, but a tech genius he is not. Which was why he had me. When he turned fifteen, I completely failed at getting him a birthday present—I was dealing with a bit of a first-boyfriend situation at the time. Anyway, I digress. Thad didn’t care. He’s never been much about stuff, well, except for an illegal painting or two, but again, I digress.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes, as though to say, What can you do?
Addy stifled a laugh and bit her lip instead.
“Anyway, he asked me to see if I could uncover any information about his sister for his birthday. He was very careful not to ask about his mom, I remember that, but well, we came up with a lot about her too. I found the divorce papers his father signed without telling him, and the marriage certificate that popped up with her maiden name a few years later. I found the house she lived in. I found photos posted by extended family members of the wedding. Emma was a flower girl—she was about five at the time. And then it became a tradition that continued for the next ten years. Every year on his birthday, instead of a gift, I’d give him a manila envelope with another round of updates about Emma. When she got old enough to have her own Facebook page, everything became a little easier. Oh, can you get the pie crust out of the fridge? I bought some premade, just in case I was too frazzled to wait. Patience isn’t exactly my strongest suit, and the first batch of brownies are half-baked, so…time for coopie assembly!”
It took a moment for Addy’s brain to register the conversation switch. “Oh! Sure.”
She pulled the dough from the fridge and gently unrolled it across the stone counter. Jo gave her a small bowl and Addy used it to cut circles from the crust. Jo took the pieces and started stuffing them with bits of gooey brownie mix, crimping the edges to form a tight seal. Addy added a little extra splash of butter to the discs—store-bought crust never tasted buttery enough, as if there was such a concept. Within a few minutes, the coopies were back in the oven to finish baking.
“We work well together,” Jo commented with a smile.
Addy met her gaze and smiled. They did. It was easy, simple in a way few things were.
“Anyway…” Jo half sighed the word as she jumped up onto the counter to wait, sending a little wave of flour into the air, completely unconcerned. “He was able to watch her grow up, in a way. I mean, not the way he wanted, but the only way he could, without completely derailing her life. And I was happy to give him that, even if it was a little, well, stalkerish.”
“Why didn’t he just go see her?”
Jo tapped her fingers on the counter, antsy. “It wasn’t that simple. After his mom left, Thad was a shadow of his former self. He didn’t smile so easily. His gaze turned haunted in a way it’d never been before. He was quiet with everyone but me, and when he did speak, it was only with the purpose of pushing the person away. I think he thought he wasn’t worthy of his sister—of her attention, of her love. Because if he was, why did his mother take her away? Or, more fittingly, why didn’t his mother take him too? When they vanished, his innocence went with them. Thad stopped thinking he deserved to be loved. He thought something was wrong about him, that he was broken. I don’t think he was, but it sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy. He believed it so hard he broke himself.”
Jo jumped off the counter, shook her head, and dove back into her ganache, mixing it far more than it needed. But the food didn’t matter, not at that point. It was just something to do, a distraction. Addy leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, chest burning with this new information she didn’t have a right to know. But now she did know, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to do.
“Thad never said as much out loud, but I think he was worried that if he ever met Emma, he would ruin her somehow, in whatever way his mom always feared, like he’d be some kind of poison. He was content to watch from the sidelines—until now.”
Because it’s his last chance. Addy sighed and walked back to the fridge, then opened it with no direction in mind. She stared aimlessly at the food as the cold air chilled her face. Because he’s leaving and he’s never coming back.
“Because now they’re in danger, so he has to—” A knock at the door interrupted her. “That’s odd. Maybe Nate sent someone?”
Thinking of Thad gone, thinking of the pain he was probably enduring, the pain he had endured, it was suffocating. Addy couldn’t breathe. Her skin was hot. Her throat was tight. Jo was elbow deep in chocolate ganache, piping little spirals to look like the poo emoji. Addy took the opening. “I’ll get it.”
She practically ran to the front door. Is it him? It can’t be. Why would he be back? But what if he is? What if he came back…for me? Her heart fluttered in her chest. Her mind raced. Her imagination went all the places she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. Addy couldn’t help it. With a deep breath, she twisted the knob and—
Crack!
The door flew open and slammed into the wall. For the second time in her life, two men stepped forward, aiming guns at her chest. But this time, she didn’t scream. She stood there in shock and stared, not quite able to believe her eyes. In the kitchen, the oven dinged.
“Where’s Thaddeus Ryder?” one of the men growled, accent thick.
Addy swallowed and found her voice just long enough to whisper, “Code brown?”
- 25 -
Thad
“Aren’t you that guy on TV?” Emma asked, tilting her head to the side and squinting. Her voice was carefree and light, laced with the naiveté of youth, full of all the things he’d never had. And yet, there wasn’t an ounce of jealousy in his bones. He’d always wanted that for her—a normal life. “Isn’t, like, the whole country looking for you?”
“Yeah,” he confessed, lifting his hand to run it through his hair, uncomfortable. In all his years of dreaming, this was never how he imagined this conversation might go. “I guess I am that guy on TV.”
“Thad.” Her voice was frail, so weak he thought for a moment that if he lifted his hands, he might be able to catch the sound and swat it away. This wasn’t about her. It was about Emma. Still, the words settled heavy in his bones, weighing his feet to the spot. “Thad, is that really you?”
Emma frowned, shifting her gaze to study her mom. Then she turned back to Thad with a calculating look in her gray eyes, an expression so similar to their father’s it stole the breath from his lungs. She was smart, he knew it from the many report cards he’d read over the years, but now he could see she was cunning too—a trait they shared. She catalogued every detail, taking them in and sorting them, until the full picture came to fruition. Her eyes popped wide.
Warm palms came to his cheeks, turning his face away toward a sight he didn’t much care for. His mother’s grip was tight, as though she feared he might be a ghost, one wrong word from disappearing. All his life he’d pictured her brown eyes the moment before she’d left—cold and distant, a patch of dirt trapped beneath a frozen layer of ice. Now, they watched him with a warmth he didn’t understand, turning his stubborn heart all the bitterer.
“Thad,” she whispered again, brushing her thumb across his cheek.
A crack splintered down his walls.
He quickly built them back up and twisted free of her grip. While his mother stood frozen, he moved to the table and took a seat. He ached to reach across the distance and take one of his sister’s hands, but they weren’t there yet. They might never be. Instead, he folded his fists on the tabletop and met her questioning eyes.
“Emma,” he said slowly. This time, she flinched when he said her name, confusion and anger mounting. A little piece of him broke at the sight. “I know this will be a lot for you to take in, and it might not be the best time or place or delivery, but unfortunately, I’ve run out of options. I wanted you to hear this from me, before
reporters followed the trail, before the news got wind. I’m, well—” He took a deep breath, strengthening his voice. “I’m your brother.”
“My brother?” she repeated slowly.
Thad nodded.
She swallowed, gaze darting between him and her mother. “But aren’t you, like, a criminal? My friends showed me a magazine at school. They’re obsessed with you. You’re a thief or something. Didn’t you just kidnap someone?”
Thad winced. “You’re probably going to hear a lot about me in the next few months. Not all of it’s true, but I’ll—”
“How is this possible?” Emma interrupted, voice rising. Her head swiveled to the side where her mother was still standing silent. She was good at that. “Mom? How is this possible? What is he talking about?”
“Honey,” their mother murmured, on the edge of a sob. Her eyes were wet in a way Thad didn’t understand. “It’s true.”
Emma’s chin wobbled. All of a sudden, in her pigtails and her uniform, she looked so much like a child. He hated himself for doing this to her.
“When I was eight,” Thad started, paused, then forced the next word through his lips. “Mom left while she was pregnant with you. Our father was a bad man. She wanted to get away from him. She wanted to get you away from him. So, she left. You were better for it, and I—well, I guess I followed the only footsteps I had left to follow.” He could feel their mother’s eyes on him, silently pleading he turn and meet her gaze. He didn’t. He swallowed and kept going. “And now some very bad men are after me, and they aren’t above using you to get to me. Which is why I’m here, now. I need you to know that this is serious. I’m not lying. And in the next few weeks, whatever the FBI tells you to do, you’ll need to listen, because it will keep you safe. If they tell you to shut down all your social media profiles, you will. If they tell you to get a new phone, you will. If they tell you not to communicate with your friends for a while, you won’t. Because this isn’t a game. I wish you could have stayed ignorant of the harsher sides of the life forever, but because of who I am, who our father was, I don’t think that was ever going to be possible for you, Emma. I waited as long as I could, but time ran out faster than I would’ve liked.”
She stared at him in silence for a moment, then at her mom, then back at him, over and over, the intelligence in her gaze slowly overtaken by teenage emotion. “I thought my father was dead.”
“He is.” Thad held her gaze, fully aware that some blows were impossible to soften. All he could offer was the truth. “He died five years ago.”
“No.” Emma shook her head and curled her hands into fists, staring hard at the table. “I thought he was always dead. I thought you were a widow. I thought I was an only child. I thought— I thought—” Her voice rose to a scream. Her eyes fastened on their mother. “You lied! My whole life, you lied to me! Why?”
“Emma.” The word slipped out in a maternal scold, but their mother was too weak for the command to land true.
Emma leapt to her feet. The chair fell back, landing with a crash against the floor. She’s willful, Thad thought, the corner of his mouth lifting. Like me.
“I can’t believe you lied!” she shouted at their mother and flung her notebooks from the table. They sailed into the wall and sank to the floor. Homework, he presumed. “I could’ve met my father? I could’ve had a brother? I can’t— I can’t—”
Emma lost her voice to tears. She ran around the table, lifting one hand to her lips, trying to fight the water pooling in her eyes. Thad caught her arm as she rounded the table, forcing her to stop. He slid his hand down until he found her fingers, slipping a little paper into her palm. Emma looked up, meeting his eyes as her fist closed around the note. Her brows twitched together. Curiosity brightened her gray eyes, little spots of sunlight breaking through the clouds.
“I know what it was like to grow up with questions, and I don’t want that for you,” Thad said, still holding her hand. The Feds watching from the sidelines didn’t see the exchange. If they had, they would’ve stepped in. Emma was a natural. Deception was in their blood. “If you never want to speak to me again, that’s fine. I understand. But if you want to know more about me, about our father, I’ll tell you the truth, whether you’ll like it or not. I won’t sugarcoat. I’d like nothing more than to get to know you, for you to get to know me, but for once in this family, I’d like a relationship based on honesty.” He let her go. Then he glanced around, meeting the eyes of some of the agents watching from the hall. “The Feds will know how you can contact me.”
Emma held his gaze a moment longer, a silent understanding passing between them. He already knew how to read her, maybe because their eyes were so similar it was like looking into a mirror, or maybe because of something deeper, something innate. He wanted to believe the latter, that there was some invisible bond stretching between them, a connection between siblings, but it was difficult to hold on to that hope as she turned and fled up the stairs. Her feet pounded. A door slammed. Muffled music trickled down in her wake, reminding them all that she was just a teenage girl whose whole life had flipped upside down. But it was okay. He’d done what he came here to do.
He met her.
He told her the truth.
He gave her the secret email address Jo had helped him set up ages ago.
And now the rest was up to her.
“I’m ready,” Thad said, turning toward Agent Parker. The Fed stepped forward, but a feminine voice stopped him.
“Thad, don’t just…”
“What, Mom?” he snapped, his emotions finally too strong to control now that Emma was gone and he didn’t have to hold back. He turned and looked his mom dead in the eyes, a snarl on his lips. “Leave?”
She recoiled as though hit.
He stood his ground.
“Please, just, let me look at you,” she murmured, one hand clutching her throat, the other wrapped around her midsection. “You look so…so…”
“Much like him?” The words slipped out before he could stop them, echoing her final words to him seventeen years before.
His mom sucked in a sharp breath and closed her eyes. As the air slowly released, her whole body fell, arching in on itself. She blinked a few times. “I was going to say grown up.”
“That’s what happens when you abandon someone for seventeen years.” Thad shrugged, trying hard to pretend it didn’t hurt. “They get older.”
“Oh, Thad.” She sighed, a sad, sorry sound. “Do you know how much it hurt to see your face for the first time as the breaking story on the nightly news? Do you know what it was like to see all my darkest fears come true? I never wanted to leave you, but I had to. Can’t you understand that? For Emma, for her future, I had to.”
He swallowed, not responding, but he didn’t look away either. As much as he willed his body to turn, to walk away, to deny her the explanation she didn’t deserve, he was frozen solid.
“I never knew what your father did for a living. I was from a poor family. I was young and naïve. He seduced me with his money and his charm, and it wasn’t until you were born that I began to see past the mystique. I overheard him and Robert talking. I snuck into his vault when they were traveling. I realized he wasn’t a businessman, and there was no family money, only the stolen kind. I didn’t want to bring any more children into his web. I was going to stay with him until you grew up, so you had a chance to be different, to be better. Then Emma happened. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to run. I had to give her a chance at a better life, and I knew your father would never let his only son go. Never. After I left, I tried to negotiate visitation rights into the divorce agreement, but he would only let me see you if I also let him see her. And I thought it would be better if she thought he was dead. If she was free from his influence. So she didn’t, so she wouldn’t—”
“End up like me?” He laughed under his breath, a dark, ugly sound. “I know. You don’t have to explain. I figured that out for myself. You sacrificed one child to
save the other—I get it. It just wasn’t so easy being the one you left behind.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Well, you did.” He started to turn and then paused. Like he’d said to Emma, he knew what it was like to live with questions, and this might be his only chance to get answers. “And if you were so bent out of shape about it, why didn’t you find me after he died? You had five long years to make up for lost time. I know Robert contacted you to tell you about the funeral. He wouldn’t have lied to me about that.”
“He did contact me.” She glanced at the floor, ashamed. “But Emma was so young, so fragile.”
“You could’ve come alone.”
“I thought about it.” Her face twisted with pain. “But I didn’t think you’d want to see me, and I didn’t want to cause more pain. I wanted to rebuild—I just didn’t know where to start.”
He’d spent most of the funeral searching for her face in the crowd. The second taste of her rejection was almost as painful as the first. And after five years of wondering, her answer did little to absolve the hurt. “Showing up, Mom. Showing up would’ve been a helluva place to start.”
He turned and walked out of the dining room. Agent Parker watched him with the barest hint of pity in his eyes. All the Feds did. Thad kept his head down. He didn’t want their sympathy or their understanding. He wanted to be alone, the way he should be—so he couldn’t hurt anyone and no one could hurt him. Lonely was easier than gutted. At least there was peace to be found in melancholy, instead of the raging storm that came with pain.
“Thad!” she called down the hall as he made his way to the front door. “The biggest regret of my life is not fighting for you harder.”
Yeah? he thought, reaching for the knob, not bothering to turn around. The biggest regret of my life is wasting so much time wishing you had.
Thad walked out the door without looking back. Closure was an elusive beast he’d yet to cage, and he wasn’t sure if today had brought him one step closer or two steps back. But he’d finally met his sister, and no one could ever take that away. If Emma was anything like him, which he had a feeling she was, there’d be an email in his inbox in a matter of days. Jo had been wrong—Thad did remember everything she’d taught him. He just hadn’t wanted to waste that knowledge prematurely. Half the skill in a good con was knowing when to strike, a thought sitting at the front of his mind as he opened the door to Parker’s car and sat down.
