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  “Evening, sir,” I said, keeping my voice low. I was pretty sure Celeste was in another, super shitty dimension battling demons, but I didn’t want to wake her anyway.

  “Where did this question come from?”

  I smiled. Dad was never the kind of guy to waste time. He didn’t do small talk. As one of the biggest lawyers on the East Coast, he represented the wealthiest people and won the most high-profile cases, and he didn’t do it by wasting people’s fucking time.

  “Me,” I answered simply.

  I could almost feel his irritation, “Is Celeste the one asking? Did she remember something?”

  “No,” I answered, sounding much less sure than I intended.

  “What brought it up?”

  I coughed out a nervous laugh, “Jeez, dad, you’re acting like what I’m asking is illegal.”

  “Depends on if it’s really you who’s asking,” he muttered tiredly.

  I froze, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Sorry, sir.” I clenched my jaw together.

  “Listen, Maverick, if you really want to know you can find it pretty easily by searching for it yourself.” I sensed his hesitation, “The Hanson name isn’t connected to the incident and there’s a reason for that. As Jack’s lawyer, I can’t give you any more information, but it is there if you are truly curious.”

  “And,” I almost didn’t want to ask, “If Celeste wanted to know?”

  “Well, I’d hope she wouldn’t, for her own sake.”

  “What? Why?”

  Dad sighed, “I signed an NDA, son. The same NDA a whole lot of other people have also had to sign, there isn’t a lot I can say here.”

  I straightened in my chair, fury rising form the ball in my stomach straight into my mouth, “If whatever happened back then is the reason she’s so…screwy, having this information could help turn her around, get her off the medication.” I hoped he couldn’t hear the furious tremble in my voice. “Listen, I’ve been doing research on experiencing adversity at a young age and with the right therapist she could really make a breakthrough, even be normal.”

  “I know you care for her, Maverick, but there isn’t anything I can do until she turns 18.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I could almost see him choosing his words, “When Celeste turns 18, she gets access to her trust and freedom from her parents both financially and…mentally. She’s also legally allowed to purposefully explore her past.”

  I rubbed at my cheek with the palm of my hand, “That’s a whole year away,” I grumbled.

  “I know.”

  “Dad, she’s—it’s getting worse.” I was pleading.

  I heard a shift and the sound of a woman’s voice- my mom- and assumed he was sitting up in bed. “How so?”

  I closed my eyes, wondering how much I should be divulging, “It’s the medicine the doctor keeps sending her. She can’t keep them all straight and sometimes she takes two or more doses of the same kind. She needs help.”

  “Fuck,” He muttered, “Okay. I’ll ask your mom to speak to Carole. I’ve tried interfering before. It’s a delicate subject with those two. Is she experiencing withdrawal again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck,” He said again, but louder. I heard my mom’s concerned tone through the line and wondered if she could hear me too. My parents were pretty awesome, and at that moment, I truly missed them.

  “Carole and Jack don’t really seem to care.”

  “Well,” My dad said dismissively, “They’ve been through a lot.”

  “Yeah, so has Celeste,” I snipped.

  “Maverick. I’m on your side. I’m on her side too.”

  I inhaled, “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Alright, I’ll see what we can do on our end. I doubt they’ll listen to another rehab proposition…” his voice drifted off and I heard my mother’s soft cadence again, “I’ll see what we can do,” he said.

  I knew what that meant. A phone call from her licensed drug dealer that would immediately be ignored. And nothing else.

  “Listen, Maverick, I can’t keep you from digging into her past, all I can do is advise you not to bring your findings to her attention for another year or so. It could cause a great deal of harm before it does any good. Understand?”

  “Yeah. I understand.”

  “Alright,” he let out a harsh breath, “How is school going? You still planning on extending your senior year?”

  And with that, we were done with both subjects.

  I knew he disagreed with the idea of extending my stay here at the academy. It wasn’t the money he cared about but that he thought I was wasting my time, especially since I’d been granted early admission to Yale over winter break. I could be starting my university career a year early, one step closer to a law degree and a place at my dad’s firm. As exciting as the prospect was of getting out of here, going back to the states and starting college didn’t seem so shiny and covered in gold with Celeste going through all this other shit. Someone had to keep an eye on her. And not just her, but Ramirez and potentially Professor Bohanan too.

  “Yeah,” I finally answered, “I’m considering what you said.”

  “You could have a law degree by the time you’re 23.”

  I rubbed my forehead, “I know.”

  “Keep thinking about it. Update me on how Celeste is feeling in the morning, alright?”

  “I will. Thanks, dad.”

  “Take care, kiddo.”

  I hit the end button on my phone, placing it on the desk and glancing at the time, trying not to feel overwhelmed. It was one of those moments when I felt 35 instead of 17. Schizophrenic girlfriend with a drug problem and a weird family secret. Sitting on a huge decision to make about my future. Above it all—regular everyday high school crap: homework, raging hormones, and a freaking love triangle. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against Ramirez if he really wanted her. Celeste was so confused all the time, her memory so unreliable, she’d take him up on that offer in an instant. I needed to prepare myself for the very real possibility of being replaced and make a decision based on what she wanted. Ramirez might be a good guy after all, and I was just refusing to see it.

  I shook my head, scoffing. No, fuck that guy.

  I arched my back in my chair, rolling my neck in a circle and stretching out my arms. I was tense, and I had more research to do, this time of a more secretive nature that would require some serious digging. I exited out of the paranoid schizophrenia stuff, choosing to go back to that when I was working again on my research paper for psych.

  Rattling my brain for a concise way to find what I was looking for when I wasn’t even sure what that was, I decided to search through the archives of the Greenwich Free Press, the newspaper from the town we grew up in, around Celeste’s 5th birthday 12 years ago.

  I scrolled through a bunch of boring neighborhood drivel before I found a headline that made my blood run cold.

  University Student Drowns in Putnam Lake Following Kidnapping Attempt

  What. The. Fuck.

  I read through the article then scanned it again, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The picture they had attached of the drowned woman in question was from her New York University student ID. It was blurry and unfocused, and I couldn’t make out more than what looked like lighter colored hair and a broad smile.

  According to the article, twelve years ago an Irish immigrant by the name of Maeve Bohanan had attempted to kidnap her “former employer’s only daughter.” The employer wished to keep himself and his family anonymous in case the woman had an accomplice, supposedly. The man claimed he chased after the woman when she raced out of his house carrying his daughter and followed her in his car up and down the winding, snowy streets of Greenwhich. “Her car had seemingly slipped on the icy roads, crashing into a ditch off the highway. The kidnapper dragged the frightened little girl on foot to the frozen Putnam Lake, where the victim’s father discover
ed his daughter standing alone next to a giant gaping hole in the ice.”

  “It’s a miracle she didn’t fall in,” the father had been quoted as saying.

  A picture was attached in the article of the hole in question, massive and sinister, and was indicated as the reason for the kidnapper’s disappearance. The “shocked” father and police agreed, of course, that she must have fallen in and been swept along by a mysterious current. Or simply frozen in seconds and sunk to the bottom of the lake. Police searched the lake as best and safely as they could, churning up more ice and using nets to sweep for a body, but one was never found.

  The article didn’t mention surviving family members of the kidnapper, and I couldn’t help but wonder if our new red-haired professor had been her husband. Maeve Bohanan. Poor teacher accidentally married a crazy lady.

  I printed off the article using Celeste’s neglected printer, grateful it worked, and stuck it into an empty folder I used for school.

  I’d already concluded that the employer had to have been Jack Hanson, and it didn’t take much digging to confirm those suspicions. Typing in Maeve’s name to the search engine, article after article she’d written for the New York University student newspaper flooded the screen, and on the third or fourth page was a direct link to an interview with the CEO of Hanson Financial himself.

  Hanson Financial was a major international corporation. Celeste’s dad had branches of his business in every major city, the biggest one located in New York. I personally knew he stopped going to that office as much, choosing to spend his time abroad and away from familial responsibility. But, apparently, 14 years ago, Jack Hanson was the best boss an intern and aspiring journalist could work for.

  The interview was about some internship Maeve had scored during the summer before her sophomore year at NYU and the article itself was un-fucking-believable. Even through the computer I could tell they were flirting and probably already fucking at that point. Hanson was disgustingly forward with his employee, not even bothering to censor himself for the sake of the newsletter.

  Things were beginning to make sense. Maeve had an affair with Hanson during her internship while she was married to the poor struggling professor. Later, she tried to kidnap his daughter for…revenge? Attention? And now Bohanan was here to seek revenge for his wife. A few facts didn’t quite make sense. Maeve had to only have been 20 or so when she was interviewing Hanson, and the professor looked much younger than the age I could be calculating for him. Were they married young? The original article claimed she was an Irish immigrant, and Bohanan sure looked Irish. Had they come here together? Did she marry him for his green card?

  I kept digging, heading over to the NYU alumni website, and searching for her again. A picture of her popped up, the same one from the earlier article but much, much clearer. My stomach turned, knots forming in the empty space.

  Maeve Bohanan was Celeste’s twin. They had the same small, sharp nose, perfectly arched eyebrows, and wide smile. The picture was in black and white, but I knew by looking at it their eyes were unmistakably identical, similar even to the professors.

  But that would make he and Maeve…siblings?

  So, Professor Bohanan was Celeste’s uncle?

  Holy shit.

  I sat back in my chair, the realization of what I’d potentially just uncovered dawning on my exhausted brain. If this picture was any indication, Carole wasn’t Celeste’s birth mom. This Irish lady, the lady who’d attempted to kidnap her 12 years ago, was.

  Celeste and Jack Hanson shared some distinct features as well, and the interview led me to believe in their affair. Could Celeste be the love child of an intern and a CEO?

  What. The. Fuck.

  I printed out the interview and the picture of Celeste’s potentially biological mom, tucking them into the folder, and sharing copies of them to a file on my desktop. I could see myself handing Celeste a big white envelope with all of this information inside of it on her 18th birthday, after her bank account was padded with that hefty trust fund money. I had a whole year to plan this event, and if I was right about anything I’d just discovered, it could completely change her life.

  I understood now what my dad was trying to hide with all the legal ramifications. If a secret like this got out, it would destroy not just Hanson’s reputation, but any semblance of a relationship the Hanson’s had with their wayward daughter.

  I had to wonder what Carole had been doing all this time and how any of this came to be. Did Carole just blindly look past this affair (and probably many others) to keep Celeste as a baby? Did she steal Celeste from Maeve? Did she kidnap her first, and Maeve was just kidnapping her back? If Carole wanted Celeste so badly, why didn’t she give her a single moment out of her day? I glanced over at the closet full of untouched designer clothing. It was clear Carole cared about her only adopted daughter, or at least cared enough to make it appear that way. So why all the secrecy? What the fuck happened?

  There was so much more to this story than I was comprehending, so many more secrets to unbury. And I needed to unbury them, for Celeste.

  Hearing her moan on the bed, I got up out of my chair and went to the medicine cabinet in her bathroom, pulling out every pill bottle and re-reading the recommended dosages. I’d read the various bottles so many times, I should have most of them memorized, but they kept changing. Sometimes a new bottle would show up I’d never seen before, supposedly replacing another that would never be thrown out. I didn’t think she even talked to her “therapist” anyway, I think the woman just sent her new shit every now and then to see what would stick. Hopefully Rosenburg wasn’t planning on using Celeste in a dissertation or case study, seeing as there was little to no consistency in anything the woman did.

  I went back to my computer with the new load, typing in symptoms and the names of the medicines, trying not to stoke that ball of rage with each new window. I didn’t know what it was like to be a parent, and my own weren’t half as wealthy as Celeste’s, but I had a hard time believing that good parents treated their kids like this. Why would Carole and Jack Hanson go through all the trouble of adopting a baby and putting up legal walls to keep anyone from finding out her true origins if they weren’t going to bother being actual parents? My own parents were incredible. They were invested, loving, supportive, maybe a little too pushy on certain fronts, but overall, I was grateful to have them, especially after experiencing the secondhand neglect Celeste faced on a daily basis.

  I still didn’t know what to do with this situation. Celeste was constantly misusing her prescriptions, and this withdrawal shit had happened three or four times before. The first two times I’d left messages with Carole about it and supposedly her doctor had offered a lecture. But nothing had changed, and now here I was again, about to crush up some pills to shake into a flavored water I’d have to practically shove down her throat.

  Setting the bottle of water on the desk, I watched the little pieces of crushed meds swirl around in a vortex pushing against the inside of the bottle and swirling back in until they finally settled at the bottom. Once again, I had arrived at the conclusion that Celeste needed help and no one but me was willing to give it to her. If she left me for Ramirez, I’d have to abandon any hope of settling her into normalcy myself and be willing to expend the effort. I closed my eyes, resting my neck against the headrest of the chair. At least if she left me, I’d start to get some real sleep.

  I almost laughed, opening my eyes, and picking up the bottle to take to Celeste on the giant bed.

  Blame the teenage hormones, but if she left me, I doubted I’d ever sleep again.

  Chapter 7

  Celeste

  I woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly okay. My head didn’t ache like I thought it would, and I was no longer a sweaty mess, although I certainly needed to shower. I pushed out of the bed and noticed Maverick asleep in the office chair perched at my desk, his laptop screen darkened before him. My phone was not-so mysteriously plugged into its charger on the n
ightstand, and I checked the time. It was just after 5AM and I had several missed calls and texts from Maverick, as well as one missed text from Eli.

  Mav: So, library?

  Mav: It’s been three hours, where the fuck are you?

  Mav: Did your phone die again? You need to charge that shit every night.

  Mav: Respond or I’m coming to find you.

  And from Eli.

  Eli: No lunch today?

  There was still some time before either of us had to be ready for class, but I had zero doubt that chair would be comfortable to sleep in, so I gently woke Mav up and led him to the bed, assuring his grumpy ass that it was too early to be up still. He fell asleep almost instantly, the heavy tiredness evident in those icy blue eyes.

  I dragged my sore limbs to the bathroom, staring at the message written with masculine handwriting using my eyeliner on the mirror.

  Please take your medicine. Properly.

  I scowled, hating that he felt the need to constantly remind me of something I already knew. Everyone was afraid I would go off my meds and do something crazy, but I had no idea why. My parents and all of their friends tiptoed around me like I’d just returned from an insane asylum, although I had zero memory of doing anything to warrant their caution. My mom had told me years ago that the medicine was to help me focus and stay calm in any situation because my brain was simply “wired differently” from other peoples. Dr. Rosenburg assured me it would require some trial and error before we found the right combination of meds, but after a while, I’d just stopped paying attention. There were too many options, and none of them made me feel that sense of normalcy I assumed was supposed to come.

  Pulling open the cabinet, I glared at the rows of orange bottles with their white labels. I resented them, and I resented anyone who needed to remind me why they were there. After Maverick and I had first started fooling around, he began going through my stash and getting rid of anything that was expired or had a zero-refill directive. The trashcan next to the sink had a few bottles in it, completely empty so I wouldn’t pull them out and put them back into the cabinet. We’d known each other too long, and he certainly knew me too well. I closed the cabinet, deciding to choose the right combination after I’d showered, and turned on the water.