Once the door was open, I spotted Mason instantly. The sky was light for this time of night, and that added to the street light made Mason stand out. He was standing in my yard right in front of the steps that led to the porch, holding a thick book in his hands. I stepped out of my cold house onto the porch into the even colder night and pulled the door shut just a crack. I wanted to be able to get back in without worrying about making a sound. If I could make it through this without getting caught, I’d celebrate with a piece of chocolate cake tomorrow.
“Hey,” Mason whispered as I walked toward him.
“Hey,” I mumbled back groggily. As I approached him, he handed the book over to me, and stared at me with an expectant look in his eye. I looked down at the book in my hands with confusion lining my face. He had called me out here to give me a book? This clearly wasn’t a confession of his undying love. Tell me again why I got out of bed for this?
I turned the book over in my hands, making out the title. War and Peace. I frowned at it. “What do you want me to do with this? I can’t read almost two thousand pages right this second.”
He laughed lightly at my comment. “I want you to look through it,” Mason said. He guided me down the steps, and assisted me in sitting on the bottom step. He joined me, and once again his legs were against mine, making me notice how much I enjoyed his touch and his presence. I wanted to take the time to reach out and try to make the connection that Sophie clearly saw between us, but Mason mistook it as hesitation to follow his plan. “Just trust me,” he pleaded. I nodded, waiting for his next instruction. “Flip through the pages. You’ll know when to stop.”
“Okay.” I sighed before I flipped through the pages to find whatever he wanted me to see. Frankly, I was still disappointed he hadn’t come to admit he had some kind of feelings for me. I had almost melted when he touched me at his house earlier. I wanted to feel like that every time, to feel loved and cherished, not like I was just some girl he was helping look for a killer.
I pushed those thoughts away as I turned the pages until I was about halfway through the book. Well at least he didn’t make me read it. There was an envelope stuck between the pages, just small enough not to be seen when looking at the novel, but from the bulge in the paper material I knew it held something hefty. It better; otherwise, Mason had pulled me out of bed for nothing.
Plucking the envelope from its spot, I turned it over to see a name scrawled across the center of it. The name ‘Charles’ was written in an eloquent handwriting that made my stomach turn to knots. It looked like my mother’s handwriting, but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be, either.
I looked at Mason, and he nodded. His gaze was on the envelope. He already knew what was inside. He had read it, and from the apologetic look on his features I knew I wouldn’t like what I was about to read. I took a deep breath and slowly opened the envelope. I noticed that it had been sealed once, but now it was just tucked into the envelope to prevent the contents from falling out.
My hands were shaking as I opened the envelope, Mason watching my every move as I did so. I removed the folded papers and opened them to find a handwritten letter signed by my mother.
With love, Andrea.
I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling queasy. There was something wrong with this, and I knew I wouldn’t like it as I unfolded the other paper in the letter, Sophie’s birth certificate with my mother’s name, Andrea Hale, listed as her mother.
Chapter 15
My Sister’s Keeper
I stood up and held the certificate in Mason’s face. “What is this? Where did you get this?” I questioned as quietly as possible, but it was hard to hide the shock in my voice. I didn’t understand how this could happen. How could I not know that my mother had another child? I paused for a moment, thinking back. I realized then that there was a reason I never knew and it gave her enough time to have a child and come back to us without us knowing exactly why.
I shuddered as I thought about my mother cheating on my father. It sickened me to think that she had somehow managed to meet and engage with Mason’s dad. I didn’t know how they could have met, but I remember my mom saying that she used to travel a lot for work when I was in my early school years. According to her, she had missed a lot of my milestones due to her job, which is why she had ultimately ended up changing jobs. Dad never mentioned it, though he did take jabs at her for the year she was gone, without an explanation other than being with her family and her job. He had been left alone to raise John and me, and then she showed up again a year later as if nothing had changed. I had to have been two or three at the time, so I didn’t really remember, but I knew my father never got an answer to why she had disappeared for so long. Now I felt as if I held the answer in my hands.
Sophie was the child of the affair, and my mom had left for a year to secretly have the baby. Then she must have left Sophie with Mason’s father, and returned without the child, and no evidence of the affair. It made me wonder how Mason’s mother had taken the news, or if she even knew. If she didn’t, then how did Mr. Peters find a way to convince her to keep a child that wasn’t hers? I bet Mason had wondered the same thing when he came across the envelope.
Sophie wasn’t only my mother’s child, but she was my sister. I had always wanted a little sister, but not like this. I never would have imagined that I had a little sister somewhere in the world. Now I didn’t. She was taken from me before I had even known she was mine. My sister…the words felt weird even in my mind. Sophie Peters, my sister. It was hard to believe even after I had put the pieces together. That was why we resembled each other. We shared half of each other’s DNA. That was also why my mom was so distressed after Sophie’s body was found in the woods. She had lost a daughter. One she didn’t know, but she had still given birth to her and brought her into this world. It had to be tough to know that her presence no longer remained here.
I turned to him and waited for an explanation. He gave me an apologetic smile, and lightly took my hands in his before instructing me to sit down again. His touch, while it had instantly calmed me down, didn’t relieve the confusion, nor did it answer the swarm of questions I had swimming through my head. I had so many different trains of thought leaving the station that I didn’t know which one to follow first.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, Casey,” Mason said. His voice was soft and soothing. “I just need you to calm down so you can focus. This is also why I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I thought it would be better to tell you when there would be no chance of someone watching us, I didn’t want to cause a scene.”
I had to agree with that. If he had waited to tell me tomorrow, then all eyes would be on us. We wouldn’t have any privacy, and I wouldn’t have been able to fully express my emotions. Mason had understood that, and I felt myself warming to him even more for being so thoughtful. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in front of anyone else, but despite my short time with Mason, I felt comfortable around him.
“Then people would think we were having a fight, and there goes the dating rumor working to our advantage,” he continued. There was a soft laughter in his words as he spoke, trying to ease the tension with playful banter.
I smiled a close-lipped smile, calming slightly from the playfulness of his words. “Why would that ruin our facade of dating?”
“We’d be the center of attention for the latest gossip. We’d have people talking about us every time we were seen, what we were doing, and where we were,” he said, turning to me with a smile.
“That’s no different from how it is now,” I said with a sigh, taking a seat next to him on the steps again.
He raised an eyebrow teasingly. “I bet someone is watching us even now, taking detailed notes on what we’re doing and trying to read our lips so that they can recount an exact tale to their friends tomorrow.” He smirked as his eyes searched my face. He leaned in a little and his voice deepened as he said, “If I leaned in to kiss you, by morning everyone in town would know ab
out it.”
I felt a playful smile tug on my lips, and for a moment I decided to focus on something other than the life-ruining realization that was perched in my hands. “Want to test that theory?”
Mason’s eyebrows lifted in shock, but I noticed the smile he was fighting as he spoke. “Only if you accept the consequences.”
“And what are those?”
A mischievous smile stretched across his lips. “You’d be breaking one of our guidelines, which we agreed upon.”
I pretended to be thoughtful for a moment, which caused Mason’s smirk to remain. “I think we changed the guidelines so you would have to fight falling for me. So if you kiss me, then you’ll be breaking the guidelines.”
Mason shrugged, the smile still on his face. “Maybe I’m willing to make that choice.” There was a pause, a moment of hesitation where my mind wandered to where this could lead. My heart was a flutter, my mind buzzing with what ifs and thoughts of Mason and I being together, but it all came crashing down in a moment’s notice. He reached his hand out and seemed hesitant to touch me. I could see the indecision on his face, as if he was having an internal battle on what to do, and it looked like the side I had been rooting against won. “We will see if I do it when the choice comes up. Maybe I’ll have to kiss you to keep our cover, so I hope you won’t mind.”
I shook my head, trying to hide the hurt. He hadn’t said no, but he had said he would only do it for our charade. I tried not to show I was hurt, but I knew Mason saw right through it. He was about to say something, probably an apology, but I wouldn’t let him. I needed to focus on the matter at hand: my newly discovered half-sister, and her murder.
I dropped my gaze from him to the letter I clutched in my hands. We had to focus on this, not whatever was happening between us. Sophie was dead, and we had found a strong link from her to me. It could be the killer’s motive for all we knew. Whatever was happening between Mason and me could wait. “So, how did you get ahold of this?” I waited for him to look down at the envelope before I swiped a stray tear from my cheek. I didn’t know if I was crying because he had rejected me, or because of this connection to Sophie that I had and never knew about. It felt like both.
Mason took a sharp breath, pushing whatever he had been about to say aside and refocusing on the topic at hand. “I went into my father’s study before dinner tonight. He said he wanted to talk to me. I’m not sure what it was about. Honestly I thought it was about you,” he said, glancing at me nervously.
“Why?”
Mason hesitated, thinking for a moment, before shrugging and moving on. Now I was really curious what he thought his dad wanted to say about me. Maybe they didn’t like me. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy’s parents had said they didn’t like me. I had an off-putting personality for most, and it didn’t surprise me when I was told they didn’t like me. Their loss.
“Well, anyway, I went into his office and he was reading this book. He hadn’t noticed me come in, so I was able to see the envelope before I announced that I was there. He quickly slammed the book shut when he saw me in the room, and then proceeded to carry on a short conversation with me. It wasn’t about much, it was just to ask me how school was going and to see how I was holding up, but he normally breezes through short conversations like that. He got a little tense when I asked if you could stay for dinner, whereas my mom had no problem with it. I just thought something was off,” Mason said as he ran his fingers through his hair. From the way his face was creased, he looked annoyed, if not frustrated.
“Maybe he just doesn’t like me,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, I went back to his study after I was sure they were sleeping, which is also why I’m here so late. I had to be sure he was asleep and wouldn’t interrupt,” Mason stated. “I took my phone so I wouldn’t turn on any lights, and looked through the book for the envelope I had seen. I was worried that he had moved it, but he must not have known I saw it. I flipped through the pages and that came out.” Mason pointed at the papers in my hands. “Those papers say your mother and my father are Sophie’s real parents.”
“That means Sophie is…” I paused. I had thought it, and I knew what it meant, but saying it out loud was a whole different task. Saying it out loud made it real. Once I said it, I could never take it back.
Mason didn’t have the same hang ups that I did. He already knew that Sophie was his sister. It wasn’t like she wasn’t anymore. She just shared half of his DNA, rather than all of it. That didn’t make her any less his sister. “Our half-sister, she’s the daughter of my father and your mother.”
“I can’t believe she cheated on Dad,” I said in a whisper, not even wanting to address my mom as anything more than ‘she.’ People told little white lies all of the time, but this was different. This secret was bigger than anything else. I had a sister who I had never gotten to know because of her. This secret involved more than just her and Mason’s dad. It was unforgivable. I took in a ragged breath. “I wonder if my dad knows.” But even as the words left my mouth I knew the truth, I just didn’t want to be the one to break it to him.
Chapter 16
Too Close To Home
Mason had returned the envelope back to its proper place in the book and put it back in his father’s study as soon as he arrived home. He didn’t want his father to figure out he had taken it. We didn’t know what would happen if his father and my mother’s secret got out, but we didn’t want to find out either. For all we knew, our respective parents could have come clean by now, and Sophie’s relation to John and me may have been kept a secret from just us. At least that’s what I hoped.
Mason had left early, but if his father had noticed him gone during the night, then he wouldn’t be pleased. Though according to Mason his father acted normal, as if nothing had happened. I hoped he wasn’t acting, and had truly been asleep. If worse came to worst, I would cover for him and say that he had come to my house. I would utilize the rumor of us dating to our advantage and say that we had spent the time on my porch just talking and being together. It wasn’t a total lie—just a truthful extension of an already present lie.
Other than a few texts here and there, we hadn’t gotten a chance to talk in further detail about the letter. We didn’t even have lunch together because Mason had figured it would be best not to talk in public, and add fuel to the fire that was our classmates. I had lunch with Mindy, while he went to the library. It was the longest lunch period I had ever sat through. Ever since I had been waiting impatiently for school to finish because I wanted to figure out what to do with the information Mason had come across. A part of me wanted to confront my mom, and the other part wanted to pretend I was still oblivious to the newfound information.
I could tell that Mason was just as impatient for the day to end as I was because all through our math class I felt the heaviness of his stare. He was glancing between me and the clock judging from the brief moments I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders. Mr. Miller had even called him out for being distracted, though he let it slide without a mention of detention or other punishment. I had a feeling he thought Mason was distracted due to Sophie’s still recent death, and he was trying to be respectful. He was half right, but Mason was more focused on what this new information meant for our investigation. It was the first break we had, and we weren’t sure what to do with it.
As soon as the bell rang, he hurried up to me and we exited class together in search of a place where we could be away from the prying eyes and eavesdropping ears of our classmates. Mason led the way, pulling me along as we went. I knew we were being watched. It looked odd to be racing around, constantly looking over our shoulders. We had to be sure no one was around us, and we didn’t start talking until we had made it to the park near my neighborhood. It would be vacant for a few hours until the elementary school let out, so we were safe for now.
Mason sat on the bench next to me with a slight frown
etched onto his handsome face as he jumped straight to the point of our conversation. “Clearly this means we don’t know our parents like we thought we did, but what do we do about it? What can we do with it?”
I hesitated, kicking at the mulch beneath my feet. I wanted to ask him what this meant, based off the new information about the infidelity, but I’m not sure how he would react. Instead I just said, “Yeah,” while trying to muster up the courage to bring it up. I wasn’t sure I could, though.
He sighed and shook his head. “Maybe the killer was wronged by one of our parents?” he suggested. “That would be a good reason, but then why only go after Sophie? Who would it be, anyway? I’ve never known my parents to be rude to anyone in my life, but clearly that doesn’t mean anything.”
I bit my lip and shrugged. It was possible, but who had his father and my mother wronged other than their partners? It didn’t seem likely, but I couldn’t help but consider our parents. I didn’t want to bring it up, but we had to review every possible suspect. I hated to say it, or even think it, but someone had to and clearly it wasn’t going to be Mason. I looked at the side of his face as I asked, “Could one of them be responsible for it?”
Mason’s jaw dropped, and he looked as if I had slapped him across the face. “How can you even suggest that?” He sounded insulted that I had brought it up. I should have kept it to myself, but I knew that saying it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t just sit on something as big as that and never bring it up. Sometimes the people who are the least likely are the ones who did it. While I hated pointing my finger at our parents, mine in particular, it had to be done. If the police had known about the affair, our parents would have become the prime suspects, so we shouldn’t ignore it now. Mason squeezed his hands into tight fists. “My parents would never do such a thing! My dad really cared about Sophie. That was his only daughter. He treated her like a princess. Why would he suddenly kill her?”
Deadly Hallows (The Dead Ringer Series Book 1) Page 10
