Page 141 of It Runs in the Family

“What’s he like? What are his hobbies? What are your best memories of him?”

He flashed a tight smile. “Anything else?”

“Just tell me whatever you feel comfortable with sharin’.”

He took a bite of his burger. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “He’s nine years younger than me. We weren’t close. I left for college after I graduated from high school, and I didn’t come home much.”

“Do you feel bad about that?”

He made a face. “Yes and no. I mean, he’s my brother. I love him. He came to me for help, so that has to mean something. We’re just really different.”

“How are you different?”

“I went to college. He had no interest in school. He was lost, trying to figure out his place in the world. And he fell into the wrong crowd.” He picked up a fry. “Tell me about Selena.”

I pushed out a sigh. “Where to start?” I picked up a fry too. “Selena and I were really close when we were younger. For a while, my mom lived next door to Selena’s mother.” I took a bite of the fry. “My mother has a penchant for shitty guys. So quite a few nights, I’d escape my room and climb through Selena’s window and sleep with her.”’

A soft grin lit up his eyes. “So, you actually have experience climbing out of windows.”

I pointed at him with what was left of my fry. “That was need-to-know information.”

He chuckled.

“Selena was there for me for so long, and then, right before she graduated, something happened, and she refused to tell me what. After we graduated, she stayed in my house for nearly two years, rarely leaving, barely talking that first year. I tried my best to help her, but…” My voice trailed off as I remembered my desperation and fear. “Then she slowly started to face the world. Only she’d changed. She wasn’t the Selena I’d grown up with. My best friend.” My voice broke. “She started sleeping around with men—a lot of men—and no shame there. She can sleep with whoever she wants, but she started to see those men as her meal ticket. She rarely holds a job.”

“So, if someone like Dario Voss gave her attention, she’d jump on it?”

“Yeah.” I picked up my burger but didn’t take a bite. “She probably saw him as a big score.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuine.

I drew in a breath. “I feel like I failed her.”

“How?” he asked quietly.

I took a beat. “I honestly don’t think I would have survived elementary school without her. She was strong and she gave me strength. She gave me hope.” I paused. “And when it was my turn to help her, I failed.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Is that why you’re trying to help her? Because you feel like you failed her once, so you have an opportunity to save her now?”

I let the silence hang for a few seconds. Did I want to save her because I wanted to right a wrong or because I loved and missed her? Maybe it was both. “Probably.”

He nodded, then said, “Cody idolized me. I, of course, found him annoying. He always wanted to hang out with me and my friends. No sixteen-year-old wants his seven-year-old brother hanging around with him. We included him sometimes, but we usually sent him away.”

“But he came to you for help,” I said. “When it mattered. He came to you.”

“Yet I still didn’t help him.”

“You are now.”

He considered it and nodded. “Yeah. We’re closer to findin’ him, but he still feels so far away.”

“We need to find Selena and Cody,” I said, then I had an idea. “What if we find Eddie and have him lead us to them?”

He studied me for a moment. “That could work. But we’d have to find him first.”

“Rebecca would’ve had his phone number. Maybe we could call him and tell him we have what he was looking for last night. We tell him to meet us somewhere, but we don’t show. We can watch from a distance, then follow him when he leaves. There’s a chance he’d take us directly to Cody and Selena.”

His lips pursed. “That could work. But we don’t have her phone. I suspect whoever killed her kept it.”