“Fuck.” He sits on the bed with a thud, bending at the waist, holding his head in his hands. “It’s all so obvious when you look at it from outside. Her running into us, playing the damsel in distress—anybody who knows us would know we’d be suckers for that. And then the phone call. More distress. More need for us. Like we wouldn’t come running.”
When he puts it that way, I feel like the world’s biggest asshole. We walked right into a trap. There’s the rage, burning in my chest, fighting to make its way out of me before I burst into flames. I thought it was tough to think straight before this? It’s almost enough to make me laugh now.
“So this was a set-up.” I look at the laptop, where the past two years of Payton’s life are laid bare. “It makes more sense the longer I think about it. How the fuck does a teacher get a job when she has no past, no references, no education? She must work under her real name.”
“Right. For all we know, somebody set her up with this new name ages ago and have been using her against other families the same way they’re using her against us.”
“But why? That’s what I wanna know. We’re not well-loved, but we’re not in a war right now, either.”
“Who fucking knows? All I know is, she’s not who she pretends she is, and that’s more than enough reason to treat her the way we treat liars.” He looks up at me, and I know this is tearing him apart the way it’s doing to me. But what has to be done has to be done. That’s how we live and the entire reason we’re still alive. We can’t afford to take risks.
And no matter how much we want to believe somebody—no matter how beautiful or defenseless they are—we have to put the family first. If we fucked up and let her get too close, there’s no choice but to put a stop to it now. While there’s still time to undo any damage that might already have been done.
I thought it was agony before now, waiting to see her again? Trying to find ways to fill my time?
Every minute that ticks by might as well be a century. By the time we get in the car, the tension is almost enough to choke on. We don’t say a word on the way to the school. It’s not until we park outside with a chain link fence separating us from the playground and then the building beyond that I turn to him. “What do we do with her?”
His face is a mask of dark rage. “I wish I knew. I don’t have the first idea what to think or what to believe. If she’s who we think she might be—a spy, a plant, somebody dangerous—then we both know what has to happen.”
I nod, though inside, it’s a different story. I can’t quite bring myself to imagine her screaming, bloodied, pushed to the point where she tells us the truth. Everybody has that limit, don’t they? Where they can’t stand the pain anymore, and all that matters is making it stop. A person will tell you anything you want once they reach that place.
Do I have it in me to take her there? Do we have it in us?
Only one way to find out.