Page 31 of Saving Sparrow
“I’ll tell him to do the therapy. Just to get her off his back. She’s never home anyway. If he does it, he won’t have to deal with her.”
Quentin let go of my hand so he could pull his own phone out to zoom in on the house. Elliott was alone at the table now, his head in his palms. I called his phone, but it went straight to voicemail.
“Hey, Ellie,” I said, making up the nickname on the fly. “It’s me. Quentin’s here too. We’re watching you from the tree line.” That probably made us look like stalkers, but wanting him to know he wasn’t alone at this very moment felt more important. Who knew if he’d even listento the message, but if he did, he’d think back to being sad and alone at the dinner table, and he’d know we were here with him.
“We wanted to make sure you were okay after what happened earlier. You should eat something,” I said. “Whatever is on your plate looks good.” I couldn’t see his plate, but I didn’t know what else to say.
Quentin took the phone. “You look sad, pretty girl. I don’t like it,” he whispered, then handed the phone back to me.
“Anyway,” I said. “Give us a call if you want to talk. Or come by if you can. In case you forgot, the entry code is fifty-six eighty-three. Okay, see you tomorrow—or tonight. Whenever.”
We couldn’t bring ourselves to leave and ended up staying there until Elliott left the table.
“Guess we should go,” I said, but didn’t move. Quentin took my hand again, squeezing it before leading me back home.
“What do you think she meant by breakthrough?” I asked as we walked, twigs and dried leaves crunching beneath our feet.
“I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with getting his memories back?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I answered, unconvinced.
We skipped dinner and had just showered and gotten into bed when a knock sounded at the door, startling both of us.Elliott, I thought, but then my stepfather entered without being invited in.
We didn’t know he was coming. He hadn’t sought us out the last time he came home and was gone before we even knew he’d been there. What made this time different?
Dylan stood just past the threshold of our room in his fancy business suit. Quentin got his build and all-American good looks from him. It was hard to hate someone when they looked exactly like the person you loved the most.
“Boys,” Dylan greeted, taking in our sleeping arrangement with his usual confusion and barely hidden disgust. He thought our sharing a bed was strange, and didn’t understand why it was necessary. We didn’t give a damn what he thought; he’d helped to make us this way.
Quentin stood, stalking over to his father in just his boxer briefs. I pushed higher against the headboard, preparing for the impending locking of horns.
“We haven’t been boys in a long time—thanks to you. What the fuck are you doing here?” Quentin didn’t stop advancing, forcing his father to take several steps back. It put him just outside our door.
Dylan had picked the wrong time to show up, not that seeing him any other time was ever good.
“I wanted you to know you weren’t alone. The system is offline, so you likely didn’t receive the text alert stating someone had entered.” We kept it offline so he wouldn’t be in our business because he received those same alerts too. But he knew that already.
“Bullshit. It’s always offline. How about the truth for once?”
“I see you still can’t be reasoned with.” Dylan did this every now and then. He’d pop up, as if he were expecting things to be different. Like some time apart was all we needed. “Anyway, I’ll be here for a couple days, then I’m gone again.”
“Business must be booming.” Quentin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. Dylan came from money and had already inherited McAllen Industries from Quentin’s late grandfather by the time he’d met my mother. I was eight years old by then. This new, barely there, too-busy-to-be-bothered version of him had only been in existence for the last five years. It started after my mother died.
“Good night,” Dylan said to me. I hated how he saw me as the reasonable one. Hated that he spoke to me at all. I normally ignored him, but he needed to know my silence didn’t mean I despised him any less than Quentin did.
“Just because I’m not the one lashing out right now doesn’t mean I don’t hate you too.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but Quentin slammed the door in his face.
“Oh,” he said, reopening it. Dylan hadn’t had time to move. “A woman bought the old Lenox House. We’re friends with her nephew. In fact, he lives here now. She’s never home, and he hates being in that big house alone. We know how that feels, except we’d love it if you never came back.”
As much as I wanted him to, we both knew Elliott didn’t live here. Quentin would’ve said anything to push his father’s buttons, though.
“I’m only telling you because I don’t want you getting startled if you bump into him in the halls one day. We all know bad things happen when you get scared, right?”
Dylan’s face turned red with the same anger I assumed my mother had to deal with, but otherwise he didn’t take the bait. “What does his aunt have to say about this?”
“That’s none of your business. Stay out of it and stay away from her.” His voice dropped an octave. “Then again, she seems just as cold-blooded as you. Maybe this timeyou’llbe the one left splattered on the concrete.”
