Page 93 of A Forgotten Mistake

Liam’s body gets stiff as Matthew squeezes him closer. “I will tie you up and toss you in a pit of spiders if you don’t let go of me,” Liam threatens, but quietly, so the rest of my family who is over there pitying him can’t hear it.

“That sounds really fun, actually,” Jesse whispers back. “They’re just so cute with their little eyes.”

“Ha… ha ha,” Matthew says as he lets go of Liam.

I see Grandma over there sternly talking to Tom as I realize that we are full-grown adults, enjoying all of this far too much.

After we finish eating, Liam decides to take a crazy amount of time to clean up, so I head over to pester him some more.

“What are you looking at on your phone?” I ask him now that the attention is off him and onto how much of a shit Tom is. And Jesse is busy telling Matthew about jumping spiders.

“Just pictures of your cat. Questioning how out of all the cats in the entire world, you got the cutest one,” he says.

“You’re such a liar.”

“I would never lie.”

I hold out my hand. “If you aren’t going to tell me, then let me see your phone.”

“I like it when you’re demanding,” he says as he hands his phone over. I grab him in a headlock so he can’t dodge the facial recognition and then click over to the GPS tracker he was watching. I stare at it for a bit while trying to figure out if I even know this area. It’s not in the same city as us; instead, it’s a city about thirty minutes away. What the hell is he watching… Oh…

He’s watching Caleb Hill. Why am I not even surprised? There’s a button at the bottom to stop tracking, and for a moment, I contemplate pushing it. It’s hard to even understand how I feel about any part of this, so I simply say, “I see,” and hand him his phone back.

Liam’s fixated on me, waiting to see if I’m upset, but I give him a smile to assure him everything is fine, and Mom pulls me away before I can do anything else. As people start to head out, and only a handful linger, Matthew and Jesse help Liam clean up the tables and chairs. When Tom doesn’t immediately choose to help, Grandma sends him over, and I get to watch Liam set six chairs in his arms. Tom nearly drops them but doesn’t want to look weak while Liam proceeds to try to throw out his back to show Tom that he can carrysevenchairs.

It’s all quite ridiculous, yet I can’t help but stare and laugh as Liam then tries making Tom carry all of the tables himself. It’s quite enjoyable watching Tom look miserable.

As Jesse and Matthew head for the door, I hear Liam begging them to start a house fire to make the rest of my family leave. And when that doesn’t seem to work, he tries to bribe Jesse to allow him to leave in Jesse’s trunk.

Once they’re gone and no fires have been started, I notice him staring at Tom like he wants to throw him in his trunk and drive around the block a few times. And as my grandma continues to rattle on, I realize that she’s talking about how nice of a man Liam is, which for her means we should think about having kids—as though Liam and I didn’t start dating a little over a month ago.

Liam becomes increasingly fixated on his phone to the point that I take it from him to see what’s so interesting about Caleb Hill being near West Lake Avenue.

The man’s current location is different than where he was previously, but I can’t quite tell what’s of interest until Liam flicks to a report stating where Leanne Peters is currently residing:

3812 West Lake Avenue.

I grab Liam’s wrist as my grandma says something about how an estranged cousin of ours is pregnant and we should just takeherchild because she’s definitely not fit to have kids, like she thinks I’m fit with my serial killer boyfriend who is stalking some man he wants to murder.

I hurry him back into his bedroom and shut the door. “We need to call the police.”

Liam gives me a look of disbelief. “And tell them that I’m tracking him? That won’t look strange at all. I can’t fathom someone not questioning how or why I started tracking his whereabouts. And anyway, he’s not right outside her house, he’s in a parking lot at a mall that happens to be within sight of it. You said I could do this if I told you about it. This is me telling you about it.”

“What if he hurts her in the time it takes you to get there?” I ask.

“He won’t. He’s not going to walk into her grandparents’ house and give himself away. He’s going to wait until she leavesthe house or is alone. Her grandparents have something at the church tonight; they’ll be gone then.”

“How do you know that?”

“Social media. Likely how he also knows it. In all the prior pictures, Leanne doesn’t go with them. So I doubt she will tonight.”

“They would leave a teenager home alone after what happened to her?” I ask.

“Her uncle lives in the house next door. She’ll probably go over there, but all Caleb has to do is wait for her to run over to her grandparents’ house for something she forgot and he’ll grab her. Gabriel, let me go.”

The idea of sending him off with a man who could brutally kill two people just because he has some sick fantasy running through his mind about this Leanne makes me anxious. “What if it’s not him?” I ask.

“You need more proof?”

---