Chapter 7 - The Brother Who Smiled
We met Ethan in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour grocery store. I made him stand under a security camera. He noticed, then let out a tired laugh.
"You think I'm going to attack you?"
"Yesterday you smiled while Dad hit me. You don't get to be offended by my precautions."
For a moment he looked twelve again, hovering in the hallway while Richard screamed at me for spilling orange juice on a contract.
"He told me you'd stolen client files," Ethan said. "That you were going to sell them."
"And that made the slap okay?"
"No." He pulled a phone from his pocket. "Nothing makes it okay."
He played a recording from the night before graduation. Richard's voice filled the car.
"The dean needs to question the thesis before Emily gets onstage. If the story goes public first, we lose control."
Elaine answered, "Make it about cheating. People believe that about girls who act smarter than everyone else."
I stopped breathing.
On the recording Ethan asked, "What if she shows the drive?"
Richard said, "Then nobody in this family knows her."
I looked up from the phone. "You knew. All along."
"I knew there was a drive. Dad made me search your room four years ago. I told him about your library job. I thought if I did what he wanted, he'd leave me alone."
"He didn't leave me alone."
"I know." Ethan's voice broke. "That's the part I didn't let myself think about."
He confessed he'd helped draft the anonymous complaint against my thesis. Richard had promised to pay off Ethan's gambling debts and get him a job at the company. The first payment had already cleared.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," he said. "I'm giving you the recording."
Maya watched him through the windshield. "Tell the police what you just told us."
He nodded. Then he handed me a receipt from a document storage company. "Dad moved boxes from his office last week. The name on the account is your mother's."
"Elaine?"
"She told me to keep it. She said she'd explain when she found the courage."
A car pulled into the next space. Elaine climbed out, her face bare of makeup, looking years older than yesterday.
May you like
"Ethan," she said, "go home."
Then she turned to me. "I need to tell you what I did to Daniel."
