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Back The truth about keeping secrets Save as PDF
Chapters (22)
  1. Chapter 1
  2. Chapter 2
  3. Chapter 3
  4. Chapter 4
  5. Chapter 5
  6. Chapter 6
  7. Chapter 7
  8. Chapter 8
  9. Chapter 9
  10. Chapter 10
  11. Chapter 11
  12. Chapter 12
  13. Chapter 13
  14. Chapter 14
  15. Chapter 15
  16. Chapter 16
  17. Chapter 17
  18. Chapter 18
  19. Chapter 19
  20. Author Interview
  21. Acknowledgements
  22. Follow Penguin

‘What? What do you mean?’ We pulled out of the driveway, rain battering the roof.

What did she mean? Why did I get in the car?

My phone buzzed. I slid it from my pocket.

Leo: was trying to tell you. did research. Heath lied to you. mom’s not dead?

Who was the only other person who knew about the ToD?

My mouth went dry.

Leo: and didn’t you say his dad was  the city attorney?

The red wrapping paper in the picture June sent. It was the same as the paper round Healing Homosexuality.

Leo: he’d have access to the cameras.

New year. June’s phone.

Olivia wasn’t lying. She hadn’t told anybody. And the house key – she hadn’t lost it. It was stolen.

Heath didn’t look at me when he spoke. ‘Sydney, if you’re thinking about calling the police or anything, I ask that you don’t,’ he said. ‘Because if you do, I’ll have to crash the fucking car.’

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Heath Alderman still looked pretty much the same.

Eyes narrowed, intense, looking at all of you, everything. This was Heath as he’d always been, but now it was different, now it wasn’t charming, now it was ugly and putrid and charred.

‘Could you put your phone down, please?’ he said to me. His gaze didn’t waver from the road, and mine didn’t from him. His jaw clenched, and the tendons in his hands flexed like he was trying to choke the life out of the steering wheel. ‘It would just make things easier.’

That took me a moment to process. When faced with the answers, I’d envisioned myself going red hot, accosting the perpetrator, completely confident in the knowledge that I was correct and this was happening now. But I didn’t want to believe it. You don’t want to believe anything is the matter. Your brain actively filters it out. Avoids chaos. And that was why I’d got in the car. And that was why, when I looked at him now, I still wasn’t even sure I hated him. I couldn’t process any of it. My brain was not interested in concluding that the person behind everything was at the wheel, had been in my life, had been there all along and there was nothing, nothing I could do about it.

‘OK,’ I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, because based on the malice in his voice I believed him, because even if he was bluffing I didn’t want to call him on it. ‘OK. I’m putting it down.’ And I did. Slowly. I set it at my feet and left it there – but not before managing to flick open the camera and press record, somehow, with my fingers trembling.

He wasn’t looking at me when I sat up again. He hadn’t seen.