“I can’t tell you. I won’t be responsible for whatever it is you plan on doing.” Her false lashes brush her cheeks and a drop of moisture hangs on the tips like a desperate man who’s run out of options. He lets go and he’s gone.
“Don’t tell me.” He smiles sadly and reaches for a small memo pad and pen. He puts them in her hands. “Write it down,” he says, barely audible.
“Lucas.” Her gaze lowers to the items in her hands. Her lower lip trembles and hands shake. But he doesn’t have to ask her twice. She opens the pad to a blank sheet and scribbles the hotel name and city. She rips off the paper, folds it twice, and puts it in Lucas’s palm. She closes his fingers around it. “Be careful.”
Lucas kisses her forehead and heads for the front door.
She follows him. “When will you be back?”
“Don’t know.”
“You will be back.”
“Sure, Mom.” He gives her a gentle smile and softly closes the door. He waits for her to flip the lock. He’s been telling her she needs to keep the door locked when she’s home alone. Dwight’s security cameras are shit. They can’t prevent someone from walking in.
The bolt flips. Nice to know she’s finally listening to him.
CHAPTER 21
As soon as she arrives home, Olivia prints off two dozen of the panel templates she uses for her own illustration work, gathers a fresh supply of drafting lead, and calls Josh into her studio. Renewed hope and a fresh sense of urgency has her setting him up at her drafting table, and like a penciller translating a graphic novel script into visual form, she instructs Josh to illustrate what he’s been through, how he got here, and maybe, just maybe, what happened to Lily. The least she wants to know is where and when Lily drops out of his story. His script is in his head. But a picture is worth a thousand words. With luck, through his artwork she can extract the thousands he hasn’t been able to vocalize.
When she turns around, Josh isn’t listening. Riveted, he stares at the Crimson Wave prints adorning her wall. Her superheroes are quite intimidating in life-size form, all sinewy muscle and glossy attire.
He points at Titian and says, “Uncle . . . ?” He waits, looking at her.
“Uh . . . yeah. Lucas. That’s right,” she says, unsettled, amazed at his intuitiveness. He picked that up fast. Not many of her friends have caught on to the physical similarities between the Crimson Wave and the Carson siblings. Lucas has yet to comment, but she knows her drawings unnerve him. She’s seen him study the prints like he’s looking in a mirror and isn’t keen on what he sees. Olivia senses Lucas doesn’t believe he can live up to the man he has the potential to become. She fleshed out Titian with young Lucas’s most positive traits. His fierce protectiveness of the young and weak. His humor and wit. The prankster. Traits he’s lost over the years after he lost himself. How she wishes more than ever that she knew what happened to him in juvenile hall. She wishes she’d made the effort to reach out to her siblings rather than feeling sorry for herself because they didn’t seem to have interest in her.
Her parents have chosen to ignore how obviously she modeled her characters after her siblings. Her heroes shine a spotlight on their family’s flaws. The Carson siblings never were as tight as the Crimson Wave. As much as she wishes for it, she wonders if they ever will be. Is it even possible?
Olivia used to believe they grew apart after their summers stopped at the lake. They no longer spent weeks on end relying solely on each other. But these past few days, with her breakup with Blaze and Josh’s arrival, she’s been thinking a lot about those summers, and her relationship with Lily and Lucas in general. Instead, those summers pushed them apart. They took sides. As Lucas’s pranks escalated, so did Olivia’s temper.
Olivia scoffs. She probably sounded like their father. A thought that now disgusts her given what she’s learned about him.
Lily gravitated from her side to Lucas’s, because in Lily’s eyes Lucas could do no wrong. She was too young to understand their brother’s antics took away the one thing Olivia looked forward to most of the year.
No wonder Olivia’s temper flared like Dwight’s anytime Lily or Lucas upset her. She was disappointed and despondent.