Everything Stolen

by Sophia Scarlet

  I think I might vomit as he bares his soul. He clasps my hands more tightly and his eyes plead for my forgiveness, my understanding. I don’t know if I can ever give either.

  “How could you keep this from me?” I croak, the anguish straining my voice.

  Silas reaches to wipe the tears from my face, but I lean away from his hand and he drops it with a grimace.

  “If you were so fucking transformed by my love, how could you have lied to me so easily for all these years? What kind of man does that? How could you do this to me?”

  My tears overwhelm me and my whole body shakes as I search for answers in the pained twist of his features. For so long I’d thought that my dreams of Jeremy were the fantasy and that my reality was here, with Silas. His confession shatters that illusion. My marriage, my life, has always been built on a foundation of lies.

  “Sylvie,” he pleads, hanging his head. “I can’t ask you to forgive me. I’ve betrayed your trust in so many ways. But I want you to know that I never lied about loving you. Everything I’ve done since we met has been to protect you, to give you back some semblance of the life you lost when I left Jeremy on the side of the road. It’s been killing me to keep this from you, but I loved you too much to burden you with the truth.”

  By the time he finishes, my tears have evolved into violent sobs. Silas pulls me to him and I’m too weak to push him away again.

  “Tell me you don’t hate me,” he whispers.

  I don’t answer. I feel no hate. I feel nothing. I feel everything. My heart is slamming against my sternum and I’m holding my breath.

  Silas holds me tighter, forcing me to gasp for air. My fatigue compels me to rest my head on to his chest, and my silent tears begin again. He exhales when I do. When he feels my body relax against his, he kisses my hair and strokes my back.

  The way he holds me reminds me of every time over the last four years that he’s done the same. So many comforting embraces. So much tenderness. So much love and security. I’d never experienced that type of sureness before him. Was that real? Even if the rest of it was a lie? He’d been there for me and for my son. In that moment, I feel so much hate and so much love that I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

  “I have to go, Sylvie,” he says, standing abruptly and walking to the door. “I’ll make sure that Noah gets the help he needs and then I’ll be back.”

  He turns to me with his hand on the knob.

  “Promise me you’ll stay here. Promise me we’ll talk when I come home.”

  My shoulders sag with emotional fatigue. I look to my swollen ankle and then meet his gaze. I’m too overwrought to drive. I don’t even know where I would go, if I could.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I answer truthfully.

  He nods and then he’s gone. I sit in our bed, in our home, in a marriage that I no longer recognize.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The cold air nips at me as I walk up to the front doors of the hotel. The address my investigator texted me is exactly what I would have expected from Noah. The rusty hinges groan when I swing the door open. An all-too-familiar man wearing tan pants and a golf shirt waits at the check-in desk. He looks up and our eyes flash with recognition.

  “What are you doing here, Silas?”

  “Same as you. Sylvie's worried about Noah.”

  “Did you tell her how it is exactly that you found him so easily?”

  Swallowing, he lowers his head.

  “I told Sylvie everything.”

  I’m going to ask what exactly everything is when the heavyset woman behind the desk interrupts to tell us Noah’s room number. He’s on the fourth floor and the elevator is out of service so Silas and I head to the stairwell.

  Once we’re inside, I shove him against the wall.

  “How were you involved with all of this, Silas? The last thing I remember was being in the car with Noah. Did you know about the money he stole? Were you in on the whole thing with him?”

  Silas doesn’t try to push me away. The look on his face can only be described as penitent.

  “I didn’t know about the money until after the accident,” he says. “Noah called me. I drove up and saw you on the roadside. You were barely breathing, Jeremy. I didn’t think you’d live. That’s when Noah told me everything. He said he’d taken the money to invest in a friend’s business deal before it blew up. He didn’t know what insider trading was and he didn’t know it was illegal. He put the money back and figured no one would notice. But he made a dumb error—a decimal point in the wrong place—and he put back too much. All the records were in the car.”

  “That’s why I unbuckled my seat belt,” I mutter as chips of memories continue to fall into place. “Noah asked me to look through the records and see if I could find a way to correct the error without drawing anymore attention. I unbuckled and reached back. I felt the crash. Then nothing until I woke up at the hospital.”

  “I should have told him to call 911,” he says.

  The regret written all over his face tells me he’s sincere. I back away and he straightens up and adjusts his collar. My hands are clenched at my sides when I ask my next question.

  “What did you tell him to do, Silas?”

  He shakes his head and swallows again.

  “You have to understand that you were barely alive. I didn't think there was anything anyone could do for you. Your pulse was weak, you were covered with blood. We couldn’t get you to wake up. And Noah had all the evidence of both the embezzlement and the insider trading just sitting on his back seat. He would have spent the rest of his life in jail. I’d been working for your parents for years. I did what I thought was best for your family. I told him to leave you there and drive away. To get his car fixed on the quiet and say nothing.”

  “You left me to die,” I growl.

  “I was protecting Noah.”

  “You left me on the side of the street, like roadkill!”

  I barely recognize the sound of my voice as I yell at him.

  “I was doing my job. I thought that you’d be found dead and that the police would assume it was some sort of accident. I never thought that you’d end up in a coma at a hospital for years.”

  Chuckling, I shake my head and sink my angry hands into the front pockets of my pants.

  “Was marrying Sylvie part of your job, too?”

  Shaking his head he lifts his palms to me.

  “Everything I told you about Sylvie and me was true. I never meant to fall in love with her. I thought you were dead. I felt guilty for letting you die, for the fact that no one ever found your body. She didn’t have any closure. She was lost and terrified. She was so desperate to find you and I did everything I could for her and for Levi.”

  I could rip him to shreds with my bare hands, if not for the truth in what he’s saying. His crimes were severe, but he’d also been the one to protect Sylvie and Levi. And that is enough to earn his pardon. Today.

  “Sylvie’s terrified that Noah is going to hurt himself,” he says, pointing up the steps in the direction of my brother’s room. “I promised her I’d come here and try to keep him safe. Are you going to help me? Or not?”

  Glaring at him, I take a couple of steps forward.

  “This conversation isn’t over, Silas.”

  We stare at each other for a moment longer before we head up the stairs.

  By the time we reach the fourth floor I’m seething with anger. Walking down the hallway, my mind lingers on its newest memories: the crunch of metal as Noah’s car slammed into the cement barrier, the shattering of the glass as I was thrown through the windshield. The smell of burnt rubber overwhelms my senses. I hear the sounds of the crash over and over in my head as we move through the corridors. But when we get to Noah’s door, I realize that the crashing is coming from inside his room.

  I pound my fist on the door and the crashing stops.

  “Noah,” I yell. “Open the door.”<
br />
  Footsteps near, then the door clicks open.

  He’s pacing when Silas pushes the door wider. Shirtless and muttering, Noah’s whole body shakes but he doesn’t look up at us. The stench of alcohol and despair fill the room. For a second I remember him as a little boy.

  He was a sweet kid—always getting into mischief. I was his big brother; I had always been the one to protect him. Once he accidentally knocked over the neighbor’s mailbox while he was practicing his baseball swing. I knew that if Bruce and Sharon found out they’d punish him so I took the blame and offered to fix it myself. The neighbors agreed to let it go and Noah didn’t get in trouble that day.

  As I look around the room, I can see that this mess is in a different league from those childhood scrapes. The blinds are down and the small room is dark, but the light from outside catches on something shiny and metallic in Noah’s hand and my chest tightens.

  “Noah, put the gun down,” I order him.

  When he meets my eyes, his are bleary and swollen, but there is something else there too. A cocktail of rage, self-pity, and regret shrouds his every inch. Tears fall as he stares at me and taps his chest with the pistol.

  “It was MY fault,” he screams. “All of it. I took the money. I put too much back and made everyone suspicious. Then I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking when I was trying to tell you and I lost control of the car. You almost died because of me. You lost four years because of me.”

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he thumps his chest with the gun again.

  “You lost Sylvie because of me,” he whispers, shaking his head.

  The anguished sound of his voice chips away at the bitterness in which I’ve been bathing for months.

  “Noah, you need help,” Silas says.

  He moves toward my brother with his hands in the air. Shards of glass, remnants of a broken bottle, crunch under his shoes and he pauses.

  “Give me the gun, Noah,” he says. “Everything is going to be alright.”

  Noah’s expression changes suddenly. A dopey half-smile overtakes his face and he chuckles.

  “Do you know how easy it is to get a gun?” he says. “I got this baby at a gun show in Nevada. There was no background check, no waiting period. All I had to do was walk past the fucked-up Nazi propaganda and hand the man behind the counter a wad of cash.”

  “Noah,” Silas says, drawing my brother back into the present. “Sylvie is worried about you.”

  That catches his attention. The two men stare at each other for a moment before Noah lowers the gun.

  “Is she alright?” Noah asks.

  “She’s fine, Noah, but she needs you,” Silas replies. “You can’t leave her alone in the middle of all this. Levi needs his uncle.”

  The pensive crease on Noah’s brow suggests that Silas might be able to lawyer his way through this. But as Silas tries to talk him down, I glance around the room and that glimmer of hope begins to fade. A small bottle of pills and a large bottle of whiskey rest on a table by the single window. My old riding jacket lies, crumpled on the floor. There are no food containers anywhere, but empty beer and alcohol bottles line the window ledge. I guess that Noah hasn’t eaten; he’s running on pills, booze, and his own wretchedness. I hear him in the background—his words are bumping together and his head slumps to the side.

  Tuning back into the conversation, I see Silas within reaching distance of my brother.

  “…but I’m the one who told you not to call 911,” Silas says.

  “But I’m the one who convinced Jack Moore to bury the accounting ‘glitch’,” Noah shoots back, offering a sloppy wave of his hands for air quotes.

  “I’m the one who paid off the investigators,” Noah continues. “They told me where Jeremy was and I paid them to tell Sharon and Bruce and Sylvie that they couldn’t find him.”

  Turning to me, Noah continues. His whole body shakes as he bares his soul.

  “I’m the one who convinced Bruce to start a trust and donate money to the Brightstar hospitals to pay for care for anyone who was uninsured. I knew where you were the whole time and I never told anyone. I convinced myself that since you weren’t going to wake up, I was sparing the rest of the family the pain of it all, that I was sparing Sylvie the pain of seeing you like that. But I was just a selfish ass.”

  His words are coming in croaks and whispers now. Falling to his knees, he adds, “I didn’t want anyone to find out what I had done. So I hid you from everyone who loved you for all that time.”

  I ought to scream at him in rage, but I can’t. He doubles over and cries with his face pressed down on the stained, filthy carpet and all I can think of is how pathetic he looks, how pathetic he is. When I remembered what happened, I was certain I could never forgive him. Looking at him now, I see that little boy who’d never been able to keep himself out of trouble; the boy who always needed his big brother.

  “Noah, I forgive you,” I tell him moving forward slowly. “Give us the gun and we’ll get you the help you need.”

  His head shakes, rubbing his face into the floor.

  “Give us the gun, Noah,” Silas echoes, falling to his knees in front of Noah.

  “I don’t deserve help,” Noah mutters, sitting up, “And I don’t deserve forgiveness,” he says.

  His eyes reach numbly past us as he raises the gun. He puts the muzzle into his mouth, but Silas quickly grabs it. They wrestle for it, grunting with labored breaths and yells. Then the gun discharges.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Why didn’t I tell her? If I loved her so much, how could I keep the truth from her for all these years? I’ve been asking myself that question for almost four years, but especially since that afternoon phone call from Noah.

  * * *

  “Silas, he’s awake.”

  “Who?” I asked, not bothering to look up from my case research.

  “Jeremy.”

  Everything stopped. My lungs froze. My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t blink. A strange hum filled the room.

  “Silas!” Noah yelled, jarring me almost back to life.

  I reached for my mug, but my fingers hadn’t made their way out of the daze yet. My clumsy, disoriented digits knocked the cup off my desk. The slow motion fall and subsequent explosion of ceramic and black coffee brought me the rest of the way back to reality.

  “Silas!” he yelled again, louder and more urgently this time.

  “Noah, Jeremy’s dead,” I remind him. “And I’m not discussing it with you.”

  “Silas, I fucked up.”

  The lump that formed in my throat prevented me from swallowing, so I coughed.

  “What do you mean, Noah?”

  “Four years ago, I took everything that could identify him out of his pockets and called 911 before I drove away.”

  My mind churned. I’d always wondered why no one had found Jeremy’s body. I spent months holding my breath, waiting for the police to come notify the Bradfords of their eldest son’s death. When they never came, I assumed that his body had been lost to the wilderness. But if he’d been alive all that time, where had he been?

  “What do you mean he’s awake?”

  “He was… he was in a coma,” Noah answered without even a tinge of surprise.

  “How long have you known he was alive?”

  I heard the sounds of Noah shuffling his feet on the other end of the call. I pictured him, pacing anxiously, dragging his hand through his too-long hair. Noah was always the weak one, the one everyone always tried to protect. I learned long ago that the best way to protect Noah—to protect all of them—was to manage him with a firm hand.

  “Noah, how long have you known your brother was still alive?”

  The gravel in my voice halts the rustling on the other end of the call.

  “I paid the investigator that Sylvie hired back then. He told me where Jeremy was and that he was in a coma. The doctors didn’t expect him to recover. So I… I never told any
one.”

  Closing my eyes, I restrained myself from screaming into the phone.

  “You also paid off Bruce and Sharon’s investigator, didn’t you?”

  He grumbled his confirmation but I didn’t need it. It’s the only thing that made sense. I’d never understood how three separate search efforts for golden boy Jeremy Bradford had come up empty. The local authorities had been too busy or too incompetent to spend a lot of time on a blue blood gone missing; they’d implied, more than once, that Jeremy had just taken off. I knew that Sylvie had always suspected that herself. Once that idea took hold, even Bruce and Sharon’s many connections couldn’t keep the police searching.

  But the private investigator the Bradfords hired was one of mine. I didn’t think anything of the fact that he took off shortly after the investigation and never returned. Noah had found Sylvie’s guy through the same nefarious connections that got him involved in the insider trading racket to begin with. I’d paid them well to disappear and never contact Noah again. That investigator must have taken money from both of us as well as from Sylvie and made off with a small fortune.

  “What do I do?”

  Noah’s quiet voice brought me back from my thoughts.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the hospital in St. Helena. Jeremy’s out now, but he’s just sleeping. He’ll wake up again in a few hours. The doctors want to send him to a rehab facility. What if he remembers what happened? What’s going to happen once everyone finds out what I did? He wants to see Sylvie. He tried to break out of the hospital to go find her.”

  Of course he had. A new fear gripped me as I refocused on the threat Jeremy Bradford posed to my marriage. I didn’t keep much from Sylvie, but long ago I’d decided never to tell her the truth about Jeremy’s disappearance.