“Why not? Do you think Cody loves being a used car salesman working for commission? And what about me? I’ve given up my pride, my self-esteem, my joy to bend over backwards for that man. I deserve payment for what I suffered. I can’t believe you’d want me to turn down something that could help us.”

Debra didn’t seem convinced. The silence was brittle, until she splintered it.

“I also overheard your message about Vera. It seems like you’ve been keeping secrets too, Marin.”

What was she suggesting? I tried to string together a lucid explanation for what she had heard, but the words kept dancing around me. Only one thought finally surfaced: confess.

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Felicity

Confess.

The word lagged behind me like an elderly dog. I had finally reached the last resort.

Austin hadn’t been much help when Oliver and I stopped at his house on our way home from our dinner date disaster. Within a minute of Austin opening the door, I shoved the torn-out journal entry in his face. The way his trembling hand took it, the quickness of his gaze passing over the words, his lack of shock—this told me everything I needed to know. Austin had known why Vera disappeared all along, but he wasn’t telling.

My only consolation? Vera hadn’t just betrayed me, but she lied to her best friend Blythe too. It took the threat of calling the cops right then and there—my index finger tapping the 9, and the 1, then hovering over the 1—before Austin spit out the truth like it tasted sour.

The breakup was because of me. Not because of Sydney, which had been my first assumption, but because of a picture Vera had found in Marin’s belongings that proved me a liar. Austin hadn’t seen the picture, only knew that whatever it was erupted all over Vera’s perfect life, destroying her. Austin used words like outraged, heartbroken, and hypocrite.

Vera had determined then and there that she would find out what else I had lied about. The only way to do that was to visit some long-lost relative—one we kept Vera far away from for her own protection—who could answer all her questions. Austin insisted, his conviction pure and pleading, that he didn’t know anything more than that. She never told him where she was going or who she was going with, only that she’d be off the grid until she figured everything out.

I bought Austin’s story, but Oliver remained skeptical. “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool,” Oliver cautioned, using Stephen King’s words as he stripped down to his boxers and T-shirt on his way to the master bathroom.