Page 147 of Pretty Nightmare

“Will you help me?”

“What. Fucking. Secret, Adam?”

“Before I say any more, you need to ask yourself if you really want to know this secret. Because like you said, you have a husband, and two kids, and a fucking dog. And if I tell you this, you might walk away from all of it.”

She laughs. “Not fucking likely.” But then she goes quiet. “What is it?”

“Will you call Merc for me? Talk him into giving me a hand?”

She pauses. For several long seconds. Which is good—for her, anyway. Bad for me, but good for her. Because she doesn’t need this secret. It will rip her life apart. And if she was smart, she’d hang up on me right now and forget she ever knew a man called Adam Boucher.

She finally sighs. “Keep your secret. I’ll make the call.”

And then she’s gone.

I stare out the dining room window.

How many times have I stood in this same spot and looked out across the duck lake at the cottage that used to be there?

Too many to count, for sure.

There are a lot of interesting things to see over there right now though. And that’s what I’m looking at. I’m not thinking about the past or how many ways I might kill Nathan St. James.

No. I’m looking at McKay over there. He’s in a front-loader tractor smoothing dirt as the concrete truck idles not far off. He’s building a fucking house. Only Core McKay would wake up one day after we lived through Hell out in the Old Home woods and say, “I think I’ll build a house.”

But that’s what he is doing.

I’m not sure who’s gonna live over there. McKay and I sleep in my room now and Indie and Nathan have taken his. Maggie is right where she belongs in Indie’s childhood bedroom.

So none of us need a house across the duck lake. I’m fairly certain Indie will not want to live there, even if Nathan does. So I’m equally as sure that it’s not going to happen.

Maybe he’s building it for Donovan?

Maybe he’s just… keeping busy? Doing something to take his mind off the fact that our best friend is insane and in a coma. And if he ever recovers, he might try to kill us.

Maggie is over there ‘helping him’ and I recall all those days gone by when it was Indie out there giving McKay a hand.

Nathan and Indie are trying to figure out their past. They sit out there on her swing in the pavilion and go over it every day. She’s still not sure what was real and what wasn’t.

But only one thing really matters as far as I’m concerned.

Nathan St. James is Maggie’s father. Bolton has a colleague at Ole Miss who runs the molecular biology department so he sent in a DNA test for Maggie and Nathan and it came back a match.

Two weeks ago, I’d have been upset about that. But now I think I might’ve lost my mind if he wasn’t Maggie’s father and Carter was.

I turn away from the window and walk back into my office. Take a seat at my desk and stare down at the packet of papers I found in my twin brother’s grave.

It almost makes sense.

Most of it does.

I think my father was a friend to Nathan’s grandfather. Otherwise known as Nikos Szabó.

I think my father helped save Nathan. I think… maybe… I regret getting him killed.

I think I would’ve liked to hear his real story. Hear about my twin, who is missing. There is no baby-boy body in our family mausoleum.

I think I would’ve liked to know why he took me out of the Zero Program. Why he bought McKay when it seems pretty clear to me now that he never really intended to go through with any of it.