“Cal?” Rory says again.
“It made me wonder if the Steels could have anything to do with this Pat Lamone thing. Do you think… Do you think maybe they don’t want Donny and me together? So they’re dredging up all this shit to make him fall out of love with me or something?”
Rory raises one eyebrow. I have no idea how she does that, but when she does, I’ve made her think.
Which freaks me out more than a little.
“Think about it,” I continue. “This happened right after Donny and I got together.”
“True, but it also happened right when Raine and I split up, which you also thought was weird timing.”
I shake my head quickly, nearly whipping my ponytail out of its holder, trying to ease my mind of all the jumbled thoughts, none of which make sense when I put them all together. They only make sense in their isolation. Which means only one of them is probably true, if any.
“Or what if the Steels are behind it anyway? Maybe it has nothing to do with Donny and me?”
“Cal, you’re talking nonsense,” Rory says. “The Steels have been nothing but generous to us over the years, and especially now, after the fire. Jade gave you a job. Their foundation is helping us out with grants. They hire Jesse’s band for all their parties. Come on.”
“But why now, Rory? Someone dug up that key. What if it wasn’t Pat Lamone? What if it was someone else? What if it was…” I can’t finish the sentence. All I can see is that glasses case in Donny’s medicine cabinet in his bathroom. The case holding a key to a safe-deposit box from this very bank.
The freaking case even has a heartbeat in my mind.
I feel like Edgar Allan Poe in The Tell-Tale Heart. Any minute now I’m going to go mental and break down the walls of this bank.
“For the record,” Rory says, “I don’t think Donny is behind any of this. Or any of the Steels. You’re grasping, Callie. You’re assuming the worst.”
“That’s kind of what I do.”
“I know it is. But you have to be realistic. Donny loves you.”
“But what if it’s like I said? What if it’s not Donny? What if it’s his family who doesn’t want us together?”
“And like I said, they’ve been nothing but generous with all of us.”
“Being generous and wanting us as part of their family are two very different things.”
Rory sighs. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I just need a minute.” I lean against the brick building that houses the bank. I breathe in. Breathe out. And again.
Donny was there that night. At homecoming. The bonfire didn’t happen until after, but… Did he stick around? Were he and Jesse at the bonfire?
“You look pretty pale,” Rory says.
“No shit.”
“We’ve got this, sis.”
“Do we?” I question. “Because I truly thought this was all behind us. I mean, the fire and all screwed up my law school plans, but I fell in love. Life was getting good. And now the past—that we thought was dead and buried—is back.”
Rory joins me, leaning against the building. “Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Make things worse than they actually are?”
“And how can you be so calm?” I ask.
“You think I’m calm? Are you nuts? I was eighteen when all of this happened. I was the adult in the room. I should have protected my little sister, not gotten her involved in my mess.”
“I was just as involved as you were, Ror. And honestly, biologically speaking, there’s not much difference between an eighteen-year-old girl and an almost sixteen-year-old girl.”
“But there’s a hell of a lot of difference legally.”
I say nothing. She’s right. She doesn’t need me to affirm it.
“Whatever happens,” she continues, “this is more on me, Callie.”
“No. Please don’t do that to yourself. I didn’t mean to—”
“I know you didn’t, but it’s the reality of the situation.”
We stand there, both leaning our backs against the brick building, neither speaking for a few minutes.
Finally, “It’s early yet,” Rory says. “We don’t have to do this now.”
I nod.
We stand in silence a few more moments.
Then a few more.
Until I take a giant step forward, turn toward the brass door, grasp the handle, and pull it open.
And then I gasp.
Standing inside the bank, his phone in his hand, is none other than Donny Steel.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Donny
I jerk upward at a woman’s gasp.
“Callie! What are you doing here?”
Her jaw is dropped, and Rory stands behind her, jaw also dropped. I never realized how much they look alike. Callie’s eyes are lighter, and her boobs are smaller, but man, they have the same What the fuck? look.
“We…uh…”
“We have a safe-deposit box here,” Rory says.
Callie darts her sister a wide-eyed look.
“Small world,” I say. “I’m here to open a safe-deposit box as well.” Then I berate myself. Should I really be telling Callie—and her sister—about this mysterious key that showed up in my bathroom?