Genevieve
I REMEMBER A LIFE LESSON.
My mom was all about life lessons when I was younger. They've been sparser in recent years, and that might because she believes she's imparted as much wisdom already onto me as she can. Truthfully, there's a lot of holes and illogic in her life lessons, but I've never had the heart to be so frank with her.
The life lesson I remember now is that you think you know someone, but really you don't.
No matter how much you believe you know them, you don't know them enough.
I'm not sure why it's suddenly popped back into my head. When she first decided to instil this knowledge into my mind, I was thirteen and becoming boy crazy. The boy I liked—who I believed reciprocated the childish crush because he fucking told me so and we messaged constantly—ended up making out with one of my friends. No matter how many times he told me he wanted to see if a relationship could spark between us as we were slowly working towards high school, he then amended his desire to just have a relationship in general.
And then he spent the entirety of high school as the resident's fucking player.
No relationships at all.
So, you think you know someone. But you don't. And it's a shitty as hell example, but somehow my mom managed to turn that devastating, end-of-the-world heartache when I was thirteen into a life lesson. And right now, that life lesson is all I can think about as it overrides every other rational thought I had until it drenched my mind.
That's why I'm standing outside my dad's study, home alone, after finishing college.
I suppose the tipoff from an unknown number also aided this bizarre decision. There's no doubt in my mind that the number came from the alleged Jeanette Somerby—alive or dead, who fucking knows—as the message thread displays to me the message consisting of Hudson Bray's home address way back when.
Unknown: There's something you should know. You'll know where it is
Shaking my head, I'm almost tempted to give up on the entire idea. Fuck Carson for planting the seed of doubt in my head that my parents might be concealing something. What could they possibly know about the entire investigation?
Unless that's the point: they're hiding nothing at all pertinent to the investigation and just want to cause further tension between my parents and I, adding to the rift that's threatening our dynamic already. But they know my mind will point automatically in the direction of the investigation and that's what they're banking on.
Plucking my phone from my pocket, I glance at the time. If my parents don't deviate from their usual schedule, I've still got three hours of solitude before Dad should return before Mom. While that sounds like a shitload of time, I don't have the faintest idea of how to pick a fucking lock, and it takes me twenty minutes researching methods on YouTube before I'm clutching my entire stash of bobby pins and cursing quietly at the lock on my dad's study.
"Fuck... shit... motherfucker," I hiss when my fourth bobby pin snaps, brittle from the years of use it's had.
As I draw another one out of my pile it doesn't escape my notice that I've picked up that curse word from Ford. Before him, I'd never have said it.
The YouTube video repeats again as perspiration begins to seep out of my hairline. My frustration is causing my attention and intricacy to wane, my fingers fumbling in a futile attempt to accelerate the entire process. Meanwhile, all it's doing is slowing me down, chorusing take your goddamn time in my mind.
