Page 71 of Holding On

“Is this what Maya found out for you?”

Carlson ignores my question and taps the keys, and then there’s a shot of a page as if in a catalog, except the pictures are of young girls with numbers where their names should be.

“Jesus Christ, what a shit bag,” says Bryce, his face flush. He wipes his upper lip. I wonder if he’s seeing red right now.

Carlson stands up from the bank of computers and glances at all of us. “I had to borrow my neighbor’s car to get down here so no one notices I’m away from the station. I can’t stay long.”

Then he turns to me. “Travis, what she did is important. It’s going to help nail this guy to the wall fast and hard.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “She did it. She got these images texted to me before she left on that boat with him. Hang on to her, Travis. She’s special.”

***

Jackson and I leave together. Not out of some fake sense of camaraderie, but because the beer he likes lives in Claire’s refrigerator, and he wants to grab two bottles.

“That was intense,” he says and grins at me. I’m not in a grinning mood. “Hey, man, don’t get mad at me. Everything was so hush-hush. Carlson was involved, and there was one guy and a woman from the FBI, and Audrey. I know she’s Cory’s grandma, but still . . . kind of intense.”

But he’s the easy one to stay mad at. None of my sisters are dating him, and Nic’s practically Finn’s brother, so that makes both of them my family too.

I swing in too close to the dispensing counter going up the stairs, and I let out an involuntary hiss as pain shoots from my lower left chest wall, down my leg, and wraps around my back.

“Fuck.”

“You gotta take it easy, dude. I broke ribs once. Hurt like hell.”

I grip the railing, determined to remain as stoic as possible. Then I hear voices. My sisters and Maya.

There are two boxes of tissues strewn about, one on the floor by Cory, who is sleeping. Laurel sits next to him, stroking his back. The other box is enshrined in a litter of white tissues on the coffee table.

They stare at me as if they’re a herd of startled deer.

“Hey,” says Jackson, following right behind me and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “I’m just here for some beer. Ignore me.”

As he fishes around in the fridge, I go to sit next to Maya, who’s curled up at one end of the plaid sofa. Luckily, she’s to my good side, so I can easily put an arm around her.

It still pulls some, but it’s worth feeling her next to me.

Claire looks red-eyed.

“She told you all, I take it,” I say. “Secret’s out.”

Chloe starts to rise and then sits back down in the glider next to the wood stove. “Travis. Oh, Travis,” she says, and then she starts to cry.

“Should I stay?” asks Jackson, two Sam Adams in each hand. “You guys okay?”

It’s like they don’t hear him. We’re in Russo-lockdown, where no one else exists beyond us.

Maya is dry-eyed, but the quaver in her voice gives her away. “Travis, have you checked your phone?”

Checking phones, getting bad phone calls, waiting for horrible phone calls to come . . . I always feel like I’m trapped in a bad dream from my childhood.

“Why?”

“I texted you something before . . . before all that happened out there on the boat with Barr.”

My phone suddenly feels like the piece of evidence I think she’s going to turn it into.

“I got a ton of texts when you disappeared.”

“Look from before all that,” she says. “I forgot I did this, but I’m sure I pressed the send button.”