Page 60 of The Next Lie

That’s the thing about Cal. He can go deadly when he needs to, but with me, he has always been patient first. Patient when I screamed. Patient when I refused to eat. Patient when I broke three mugs in one week because grief kept making my hands stupid.

His patience feels different now, though. Less like love and more like strategy.

“I know what you’re doing down there and who you’re chasing. I didn’t confirm it was Deacon who killed your family,” he says, “because it wasn’t.”

I freeze. The correction is quiet, but it cuts clean.

“You always swore there was a man with a rosary mark,” Cal continues. “Which tracks…for many reasons. Any such man would be very dangerous, and you needed to just stay away. But you couldn’t just stay away.”

My throat tightens. “You needed to be honest with me.”

“It wasn’t safe. For you or Delia.”

The railing digs into my palm. “That’s not fair. I deserved to know, damnit.”

“Fair, deserve…they have no place in any of this.”

“God, Cal.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t get to know.” My voice cracks on it, and I hate that. “You don’t get to be calm and sad and reasonable. You knew Delia was alive. You knew Deacon was connected. You knew there was more to this than the story I had, and you let me grow up with half a truth sharp enough to cut myself on.”

His silence is heavier now. When he speaks again, his voice has changed. Lower. More careful.

“Deacon and I made an arrangement.”

The words move through me slowly, like my brain refuses to take them in all at once.

“What arrangement?”

“He made sure I could get to you. Keep you safe. I made sure you disappeared.”

My fingers go numb around the phone.

“He gave me to you?”

“No.” Cal’s voice hardens for the first time. “No one gave you to anyone. But you were supposed to be⁠—”

He breaks off, and impatiently I fill in the blanks. “Dead, I know.”

“Okay, dead. So we had to make sure you continued to stay dead, yeah? But you were a child. You were scared out of your mind. The official channels would have exposed you within a week if the wrong person looked too closely. Deacon understood that. So did I.”

I press my free hand to my stomach. “Go on.”

“After the house. After the police. After the first round of questions. Before anyone important realized the wrong child had survived.”

The wrong child. Even knowing the truth already, my fingers tighten around my phone.

Cal hears the change in my breathing. “Reva.”

“So Delia was…the right child. And I was..the wrong one?”

“It’s more complicated than that, but...”

“But yes.”

“It’s what they would have meant.”