Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Yeah. Complicated doesn’t begin to cover it, really.
My phone buzzes, alerting me to a message. I glance at it and check the time. I am expected at dinner with the Foxes in an hour. Ethan is texting that he’s stuck in traffic and will be late picking me up. I text a quick reply, telling him I’m running late too and not to worry. I don’t mention I’m late because I’m in my old house.
I slip the phone into my back pocket and open the nightstand drawer to take out what I came for, the framed photo of Mom and Dad. I look at it, see his smiling face and Mom’s, although her smile is less wide. There’s a sadness in her eyes, eyes I inherited. A face I inherited. Except her eyes are hollow, like something is missing. I touch their faces and wipe away a tear because how I wish I could turn back time. How I wish we could take back these last three years and have a do-over.
But do-overs don’t happen in real life.
“Suck it up, Phee,” I tell myself because I’m not the one who will be spending the next decade of his life behind bars. I’m not the one who lost everything.
I stand up and go into my old bedroom. The moon is bright in the bay window. I spent hours here reading when I was a kid.
From the little hiding spot beneath the seat, I lift out my binoculars and train them on the Fox house. Well, not the Fox house. The Cruz cottage. Although I guess it’s technically the Fox cottage, and no Cruz has lived there for a long time.
A hopelessness, a sense of utter loss, twists my belly. I recall Silas’s words to me that first day I’d met him. He was seventeen, gruff and angry. He’s been much the same every time I’ve run into him since that day.
Well, most times, at least.
A light goes on in the cottage and I jump, remembering how he’d caught me watching them that first day when they all moved in. What he’d said to me, his cryptic message to a twelve-year-old girl:
Some things are better left unknown.
Thinking back on it now, it’s like he was reading my future.
Someone moves around inside. I guess it’s the new staff who live on site. Esmerelda Cruz was staff, and often, Silas was treated as staff. I’m not sure how Mira could stand having them on their property, actually.
I turn to go, not wanting to be here any longer. It’s all too much. I set the binoculars on top of one of the boxes, deciding I don’t want them after all. I take the photo with me and walk out of my house and into my car. I put the things inside, grab my dress out from the back and walk across to the Fox house.
There, I climb the stairs to the imposing front door. When I look at the sculpture beside it, I remember how Dad had lifted the heavy thing out of the arms of the women who were struggling with it when the Foxes were moving in.
I miss my dad. I miss the way we were. Now, I’m torn between the Foxes and my father because they are very firmly enemies, and I am stuck dead center.
Shaking my head to clear it, I unlock and open the door. They’ve long since told me to treat it like it’s my home, and I am used to slipping in and out. I even have my own key and a room here, for when I stay over.
I walk inside. The house is silent. Mr. and Mrs. Fox are already in town and will meet Ethan and I at the restaurant.
The light over the stove is on in the kitchen, but other than that and the moonlight glinting off the pool, it’s dark. The sliding door is open a crack, letting in cool air. Someone must have forgotten to close it.
I drape my dress over the back of a chair and cross the hall into the living room. It’s cooler for the breeze blowing in. An owl hoots in the dense grove of trees beyond the cottage. I don’t hear that sound much in the city, and I pause to listen before pulling the door closed.
“Been a while,” comes a deep voice from the corner.
I jump, spinning to face the man sitting in Mr. Fox’s armchair, watching me.
My stomach flutters, heart racing.
He holds up his glass in a sort of toast. Ice clanks against crystal as he brings it to his mouth, never taking his eyes off me, his gaze sending shivers down my spine.
I steel myself. Those eyes are cruel now. I used to think they were so very beautiful once upon a time.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask when I can speak again. The moon illuminates Silas Cruz’s face. He’s twenty-seven now. He looks older though, his dark hair cut shorter so it doesn’t flop into his eyes like it used to when he was a boy. Although he was never a boy, not really.