Never Turn Back

over to another table and retrieves something from it, handing it to Uncle Gavin. My uncle kneels and puts the phone on the concrete floor, and it’s at this point that I realize that the object Caesar gave him is a hammer, which Uncle Gavin now holds poised above the phone. The icy numbness that gripped me earlier breaks and falls away, replaced by panic. “Hey!” I shout, but it’s too late. Uncle Gavin brings the hammer down onto the phone. The first blow cracks the screen, the second shattering it. My uncle keeps at it until the phone is bent and twisted, the screen reduced to shards. Gingerly he picks up the ruined frame and plucks out a thin wafer from the wreckage—the phone’s SIM card. He puts that on the floor and whacks it with the hammer until it is pulverized. He puts his free hand on the ground to help him stand up, his knees popping as he does. He winces. “I’m getting old,” he says. He hands the hammer to Caesar, then turns to me, ignoring the fact that I’m gaping openmouthed at him. “No one will know you had that phone,” he says. “If the police ask, you don’t know anything about it. But when they come to you—and they will—you call my lawyer, Johnny Shaw, and then you tell them everything about your relationship with that woman. The truth. Just leave the phone out of it.” He nods, once, then heads to the garage door with Caesar trailing behind. Frankie is already approaching with a broom and dustpan, ready to literally sweep the problem away.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Frankie has already swept up and bagged the smashed phone when Caesar returns, pulling the garage door back down. It closes with a horrible crash—he must have pulled it down hard. I’m still leaning against the metal table, but I’m no longer numb. That tiny flame of anger inside me is still burning, and I’m doing my best to nurture it.

“We need to get back to work,” Caesar says. He’s talking to Frankie, but I know the words are directed to me as well.

“Sure,” Frankie says. “I need to get rid of the phone case and dump this bag first, and then we—”

“I need to know what she meant,” I say.

Frankie looks genuinely confused, but Caesar narrows his eyes, sensing a problem.

“What who meant?” Frankie says.

“Marisa,” I say. “The two calendar entries about those men.”

Frankie glances at Caesar, who is now on full threat alert—arms uncrossed, hands loose at his sides, head up and eyes on me. “Your uncle said she was crazy,” Frankie says.

“She turned my life inside out,” I say. “She went to bed with my sister to get inside my head. She—” I hear my voice rising and stop, take a deep breath. “I need to know why those men were in her calendar,” I say. “I need to know for certain that it doesn’t mean anything. Susannah is in a psych ward, Frankie. I barely stopped her from jumping off an overpass. I need to know what Marisa did, everything she did. I need to make sure she didn’t do something that’s going to come back and bite me in the ass. So Susannah doesn’t try to hurt herself again.”

Caesar sucks at his teeth. “Mr. Lester said no,” he says.

That little flame of anger now blazes up, and I snap, “Fuck you, Caesar.”

Caesar’s nostrils flare and he steps toward me. Even though I can see he’s angry and all the threat receptors in my lizard brain are pulsing bright red, I still notice how graceful he is, every movement a smooth economy of motion. Some detached part of me is curious to see what he will do, how he will hurt me. I stand up off the table. If I’m going to get beat down, I’d like to be standing first.

Frankie steps between us, still holding the trash bag with the smashed phone. “That’s enough,” he says firmly. He points a finger in my face. “Don’t talk to him like that,” he says. “Ever. Okay?” Before I can react, he turns to Caesar. “Don’t do it,” he says, his tone still firm but gentler. “He’s hurt and he’s worried about his sister, yeah? He’s scared, too. Look at him. Look at him.”

Caesar is looking at me, and I wish he wasn’t, because Frankie’s words have shocked me out of my detached anger and now I would like to keep living. Caesar’s expression suggests he would like the exact opposite for me. Slowly, though, slowly, Caesar relaxes. Just barely. But it’s enough.

“Okay,” Frankie says, “okay,” and he turns back to me. “You gonna be nice now?”

That anger starts glowing again, but with an effort I stifle it. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry, Caesar. I just … Frankie’s right, man. I’m hurt, and I’m scared, and I’m pissed at my uncle for smashing the phone. I should be yelling at him, not you. I’m sorry.”

Caesar’s expression is stony, but he folds his arms across his chest and stands still.

“What do you want, Ethan?” Frankie asks.

I hesitate. “I need to know if you can hack into Marisa’s phone records,” I say. “Take another look at her posts, her calls, see if we learn anything. Maybe she called one of those men.”

Caesar snorts, conveying an entire range of derision in a single sound. “You want me to hack into a major communication network so we can take a look at private phone records?”

“Can you?” I ask. “Can you do that?”

“It’s stupid,” Caesar says. “A stupid waste of time, and a stupid risk.”

“Please,” Frankie says. He reaches out and puts a hand on Caesar’s forearm. “For me.”

Something passes between the two of them, and realization breaks over me like a wave: the jealous vibes I got off of Caesar, this loft. I look at the two men and see them as they are, together.

Caesar looks Frankie in the eye for a few moments, then nods brusquely at him and