Chapter 5 - RACHEL’S VERSION OF THE PLAN
Rachel called me that afternoon.
I nearly declined.
Then I remembered something Lily had said on our first date.
Accuracy.
So I answered.
“What?”
Rachel inhaled slowly. “Your mother says you’re acting irrationally.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course she does.”
“I didn’t know Brooke didn’t have permission to use the key.”
“That makes one of us.”
Silence.
Then she said, “I thought you knew about last night.”
“Why would I take another woman to a drive-in if I knew my ex-girlfriend was waiting in my apartment with an engagement ring?”
“I thought Lily was casual.”
There it was.
Not a guess.
Information.
“Who told you that?”
Rachel hesitated.
I stood up from the couch.
“Rachel.”
“Your mother.”
Of course.
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“That you were confused. That you’d been seeing your upstairs neighbor but weren’t serious. That you still talked about me.”
“I haven’t talked about you to her in months.”
Another silence.
“Brooke said you still kept our wedding photo.”
“We were never married.”
“You know which picture I mean.”
The one they had pulled back out.
I felt something click.
“How did Brooke know that picture existed?”
“She’s your sister.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Rachel’s breathing changed.
“Ethan, I don’t want to fight.”
“Then answer.”
“She’s been helping me understand where you were emotionally.”
“For how long?”
No answer.
My stomach tightened.
“For how long?”
“Since the breakup.”
Eleven months.
Brooke had been reporting on me to Rachel for eleven months.
“When I went to Charleston in February,” Rachel continued cautiously, “Brooke told me you were still asking about my new boyfriend.”
“I never asked about him.”
“She said you did.”
I closed my eyes.
“What else?”
Rachel started defending herself.
She said she missed me.
Said Mom had encouraged her.
Said Brooke believed we belonged together.
Then I asked the one question she couldn’t answer comfortably.
“How did you know Lily and I were going to the drive-in?”
Silence.
“Rachel?”
“Brooke saw the tickets.”
My skin went cold.
“Where?”
“In your apartment.”
Before yesterday.
Before my date.
Brooke had been inside.
That was clue number two.
My family had not just reacted to Lily.
They had been monitoring me closely enough to know where I would be.
I ended the call without another word.
When Lily came downstairs twenty minutes later, she found me sitting at my kitchen table with Grandma’s letter, the empty appraisal envelope, and my phone laid out in front of me.
“What happened?”
I looked up.
“My family didn’t follow us because they panicked.”
May you like
I tapped the table.
“They followed us because they already knew exactly where we were going.”
