“So, call me when you get this,” I tell Tripp’s voicemail.
There’s nothing I have to say to him that I couldn’t text—just an update from my visit to the Motive office—but sometimes I really want to hear his voice.
It’s only been a week since he came to see me in my bedroom, but the world already looks different. Later that night, we learned that Uncle Nick had improved enough that his doctors were going to start tapering off his medication. He woke up a few days ago, and even though he has a lot of recovery ahead of him, he was so much himself when I visited him in the hospital that I couldn’t stop bawling.
“You’re getting my blanket wet, cherished niece,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, and he weakly patted my hand. “Don’t. I’m okay. You’re okay. Ellie’s okay. Everything else…”
He fell asleep before he could finish, but everything else is being handled by my dad. He’s on a one-man mission to make sure that once Uncle Nick fully recovers, he has all the legal help he needs to handle what happened with Dexter and Mr. Larkin.
It’s Dad’s way of saying sorry for always giving Uncle Nick a hard time. I think we all realize now why Uncle Nick never moved on with his life after college. He and Tripp were trapped in the same purgatory over the past four years, afraid to tell the truth, and always wondering if they could have done something differently to save Mr. Larkin.
I’ve been keeping up with schoolwork at home, with Nadia and Mason taking turns stopping by with assignments. The first time I saw Mason, I couldn’t stop apologizing, until he told me, not unkindly, to shut up. “You didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” he said, and even though Tripp had been hammering the same words into my head nonstop, it was still a relief to hear it from Mason. “And you’d never have figured out who I was if I hadn’t gone full petty vandal, so…glass houses, is what I’m saying.”
Then he gave me back mini-Mason “for company,” which made me cry, like pretty much everything does lately.
This afternoon—when Mom took me to Back Bay so I could meet with Carly—was the longest time I’ve been away from my house since everything imploded at the Winter Dance. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the Motive office, but it was actually pretty great. Carly had a catered lunch brought into Scarlet, and almost everyone came by to say hello. Including Andy, whose gift of a flowering cactus plant made me ashamed that I’d ever thought of him as “Blandy.”
Afterward I sat with Carly and Lindzi alone so I could apologize for stealing their files. “I know I should be mad at you,” Carly said. “But I’m kind of impressed. Any chance you’d ever want to come back?”
“No,” I said, so quickly that Lindzi snort-laughed. “Text me if you change your mind,” Carly said.
I almost did as soon as I reached the elevator. It’s driving me more than a little crazy that after everything that’s happened—all the lies and trauma and injury and death—we still don’t know what happened to Mr. Larkin. Something keeps poking at the corners of my brain, a loose thread begging me to grasp it, but as soon as I try, the thought disappears.
I’m in my bedroom doing homework when my phone rings, and my heart skips when I see Tripp’s name. I swipe and say, “Hi.”
“Hey,” he says. “How was Carly?” “Good. She offered me my job back.”
“Of course she did.” He never had a doubt. “Did you take it?” “What do you think?”
“I think you didn’t, but you should.”
“Right,” I say, before adding, “Wait, really? Why?”
“Because you’re a born reporter,” he says. “And you miss it.”
He’s right, but I’m not ready to admit that. “What are you up to?” I ask instead.
“Deleting my email,” he says. “I didn’t get the Kendrick Scholarship.” “Oh no, I’m sorry,” I say, my heart sinking for him.
“Eh, it’s okay.” He sounds surprisingly fine, maybe because he’s not nearly as desperate to cut ties with his father as he was a month ago. “Martina deserved it more.”
“Do you want to do something later?” I ask.
He takes so long to answer that I almost repeat the question. “I’m kind of already doing something,” he finally says. “Something difficult.”
“Oh?” I ask, and I straighten in my chair. His tone has gone serious. “What?” There’s another lengthy pause, until I add, “Would it be easier with company?”
Tripp releases a long sigh. “Maybe?” “Do you want me to come over?”
“I’m not at home,” he says, before texting me an address.
—
At first I don’t see Tripp when I get to the small, bright blue house at the edge of Sturgis Cemetery. Then I catch sight of my coatless boyfriend waving from the cemetery’s nearest path. He’s still in his Saint Ambrose blazer, his blond hair gleaming in the pale February sun and his cheeks red from the cold.
“Hey,” I call over the short stone wall that separates the cemetery from whoever’s property the blue house is on. “Taking a walk?”
“I like it here,” Tripp calls back. “It’s peaceful.” When he reaches the stone wall, he leans over, cups my face in both hands, and kisses me until I forget we’re supposed to be doing something difficult.
“I like it here too,” I say breathlessly when he releases me. He grins and vaults over the wall as I add, “I parked in somebody’s driveway, though.”
“I know. That’s where we’re going,” Tripp says, turning toward the front door. “This is where Lisa Marie has been staying. It’s her friend Valerie’s place.”
I force myself to keep step with him, even though my first instinct is to stop in my tracks. “You’re visiting your mom?” I ask.
“No.” Tripp’s features settle into a stoic expression, like he’s steeling himself for bad news. “She’s not here. And neither is Valerie. They’re out for one last happy hour before Lisa Marie heads back to Vegas tomorrow.” He jogs up the steps and then, to my surprise, reaches into the mailbox. “But Valerie left a key for me.”
I blink as Tripp unlocks the door and holds it open. “Why?” I ask, crossing the threshold.
He shuts the door behind us. “So I could look for something.”
We’re in a neat-as-a-pin living room, the kind where you can tell everything has been carefully chosen to coordinate. The blue sky in a framed Thomas Kinkade print perfectly matches the rug, and the curtains and accent cushions look as though they were made from the exact same fabric. Tripp pulls his boots off and drops them onto a black rubber tray beside the door, and I do the same. “Valerie said Lisa Marie’s room is at the end of the hall,” Tripp says, turning to our right.
I’m dying to ask what he’s looking for, but I’m pretty sure he’d tell me if he was ready to talk about it. So I just pad silently behind him until he opens the last door. “Yeah, definitely looks like Lisa Marie lives here,” Tripp says, stepping into the room.
Compared to the rest of the house, it’s a disaster area—unmade bed, clothes strewn everywhere, dishes piled on the desk and dressers, and a heap of wet towels directly in front of us. Tripp skirts past them and heads
for a large suitcase in the corner, open and overflowing with more clothes. Then he pauses, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a pair of plastic gloves.
I can’t keep quiet any longer. “What are those for?” “I don’t want to leave fingerprints,” he says.
My stomach twists with unease as he crouches beside the suitcase. “I thought Valerie said it was okay for you to be here?”
“She did,” he says, unzipping a compartment inside the suitcase. He feels around, then repeats the process with another compartment.
“Can I do anything?” I ask, feeling equal parts useless and confused.
He turns and gives me a brief smile. “You’re helping. Believe me,” he says before returning to the suitcase. After sorting through all the clothes, he shuts the suitcase and unzips the front pocket. This time he reaches in and pulls out a bunch of crumpled bills. He stares at them for so long that I figure they must be what he was looking for, but then he shoves them back inside and swivels to face the bed.
“I’m gonna check under here,” he mutters, lifting the bedspread.
I watch in silence as he methodically searches the rest of Lisa Marie’s room—the bed, the dresser, the piles of clothes—before turning his attention to the closet. He starts with the top shelf, moving around a stack of blankets, and just when I’m about to burst with unasked questions, he goes suddenly, completely still.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I was hoping…” He swallows hard. “I was really hoping not to find this.”
He pulls something off the shelf before turning to face me, and I let out an involuntary gasp when I see what’s in his hands.
It’s a fishing tackle box made of faded red plastic, its rusty latch unfastened, the letters R.S. written in black marker across the front. “Is that
—”
“Mr. Solomon’s?” Tripp holds it gingerly with both hands, as though he’s afraid it might shatter. “Yeah, it is.”
“How did you know…” I trail off, not sure how to best finish the question, but he doesn’t need me to.
“I still haven’t told Officer Patz that Lisa Marie took the class-trip money,” Tripp says in a low, musing voice. “Dad keeps bugging me to do it, now that everything else has come out, and I started thinking how weird it is that money always goes missing when Lisa Marie is in town. I stopped by Mo’s Barber Shop to talk with Valerie—she works there, and she’s pretty cool, actually. Sick of my mother’s shit, so we bonded over that.” He huffs out a humorless laugh. “I asked her if Lisa Marie knew that Mr. Solomon used his tackle box as a bank, and she said yeah. Valerie had mentioned it to Lisa Marie, because that’s how he paid when he got his hair cut.”
“Oh,” I say softly. Oh no.
“Yeah,” Tripp says. “And Valerie said Lisa Marie hasn’t been hitting her up for money lately, which we agreed isn’t like her, especially since she’s allegedly broke. So—long story short, Valerie offered to look through Lisa Marie’s stuff. I asked if I could do it, because I needed…I don’t know. I think I needed to see for myself.” He sets the box down carefully on the unmade bed. “What did the police say, again? That Mr. Solomon might’ve fallen, or he might’ve…been pushed.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just reach for his hand.
“My mother could have killed him,” Tripp says, staring at the box. “Maybe accidentally, but maybe not.” His voice takes on a strangled tone as he adds, “So then I started thinking…what if she did something to Mr. Larkin too? She’s the one who took the class-trip money. She was in town, but she lied about it until she thought Gunnar Fox was going to make her a star. And she…”
“Tripp, stop,” I say, squeezing his hand. The reporter in me has a few immediate theories about that—number one being that Lisa Marie is too smart to partner with a true-crime show that’s investigating a murder she committed. But the last thing I want, or that Tripp needs, is for him to spend another four years obsessing over a parent’s potential guilt in a murder. I cup my palm against his face and turn it toward mine, forcing his eyes away
from Mr. Solomon’s fishing tackle box. “You don’t know if any of that is true, and it’s not your job to find out.”
“Yeah, I know. Been there, done that,” Tripp says, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I just needed to talk it through for a minute. Remind myself why I’m doing a difficult thing.”
He holds my gaze for another beat, then takes a deep breath and presses his keypad. My heart swells, and the words I love you rush into my brain with so much force that I almost blurt them out. But I manage to stop myself, because I don’t want this to be the first time he hears me say it. Instead I stand quietly by his side as he puts the phone to his ear and says, “Hey, Officer Patz, it’s Tripp Talbot. I need to report a theft.”
