"Matty, it's a bad time."
This particular staircase was one I knew well. I didn't have to watch the steps as I went down and I didn't have to count how many I had left. Nope. I had been going up and down these stairs for years and could now navigate them exclusively by muscle memory. Nothing about them surprised me anymore.
I could not say the same for the two boys standing in the foyer below.
"Don't do this to me, Scout. Not again. Not this time."
I couldn't see much more than their silhouettes, so I knew that they were hiding. Hiding from the wide-open room next door. Hiding from the sounds of cards and celebration and Aunt Abby after too many drinks. Hiding from the smells of fresh beef and some form of roasted potatoes.
Hiding from family. When it came to Scout and Matt, they were always hiding from family. "Your year is up and she's here," said my brother's shadow. "You're out of excuses, Scout."
"I didn't think—that's your whole family in there."
And he wasn't wrong. The Goode family extended far beyond the name. We had Morgans and Townsends and Baxters. McHenry and Woods and a whole three Andersons. That dining room table was surrounded by people who were, in some way, Goode, even if they really weren't.
"It'll be easier," Matt said, his shadow moving closer to Scout's. Scout back away, far too aware of the covert minds sitting just three yards away. "Get it all done in one go—and trust me. Once one of them knows something, they all know it. Take it from the guy who got spaghetti stuck in his nose when he was twelve."
"Matt—"
"This was the deal," Matt said, taking another step forward. When Scout tried to move away again, there was a wall at his back, and I wondered how Scout Jasons had allowed himself to be cornered. "Either we do this today or—or this is the end, Scout."
This seemed to send a shift between the two of them. Listening in, I thought that maybe it was a threat, but upon further inspection, I knew that I was wrong. People with threats don't look at their targets in the same way Matt was looking at Scout. People who are threatened don't lock onto the breath of those threatening them. This was more than that. This was a plea.
"And I would... really hate for this to be the end," Matt sighed.
There wasn't much light in that foyer—just the last traces of sunshine as it set behind the surrounding forest and slithered its way in through the slim windows of the front door. Even so, my brother was looking up at Scout like he didn't need the light to see him and Scout was looking back at Matt, wishing he could say the same. "One more day," he begged. "Just one more day, Matty."
"That's what you said yesterday," Matt reminded him.
"I mean it this time," said Scout.
"That's also what you said yesterday."
"Matty."
"Scout."
And apparently, there were still some things about that particular set of stairs that could surprise me, because I shifted, and the step beneath me creaked, and the two spies below snapped their attention to the sound.
Busted.
Except, not really, because being busted implied some level of danger or trouble or, at the very least, a very stern lecture from a red-faced father. I hadn't been busted. I had been found.
Matt's smile shone bright even in the dimness, but Scout had him beat. I didn't know why they always did that—smile when they saw me—but they did, and it had to be one of my favorite sights. "Maggie!" Scout said. "Happy birthday."
"Happy birthday, Mags," Matt added. "About time you came down. Dad was worried sick—"
"Dad's always worried sick," I said, making my way down the rest of the stairs. I gave Matt a wave, like it wasn't a big deal, but I made a mental note to check up on my father. Matt wasn't kidding. We both knew that Dad really could worry until he made himself physically ill, but that was not the most urgent matter on the table at the moment. "What are you two talking about down here?"
"Nothing," they both said, and I was almost impressed by how awful they were at telling this particular lie. Give Matt a cover and he could play an entirely different human being for the night. Give Scout confidential information and he could lie about it through his teeth. Ask them about their relationship and boom. Done for.
I nodded, and the pair of them must've seen that I knew, because that was when I saw the true meaning of the word busted. "Okay. Well. I'm going to be in the kitchen if you need me."
"Sure thing," Matt said, just as Scout gave me a grumbly, "Uh huh."
They continued their argument as soon as I left them.
The Goode family safe house hadn't changed much over the years, nor had the people inside of it. My grandfather had always been the same, grumpy old man and my grandmother had always been the one to shut him up. Matt and I had always been the youngest, Alice stopping by on occasion to close the gap between us. Abby and Townsend had always been at the kitchen table, playing cards with my aunts, and absolutely no one seemed to have a care in the world.
There were a few exceptions to this, of course. Some things had to change. For example, Macey McHenry now sat at my family's table, which my father had assured me was not a new development, but I definitely couldn't remember ever seeing her there before. Eleanora Sutton, expert Disguise Artist, was another new edition, she and Charlotte Woods looking comfortable, but not quite familiar in my family's kitchen. And that smell. That smell was new. Never once had the Goode family safe house smelled so delicious.
And then there was the matter of my mother.
She had always been a part of this household except for, of course, the years during which she was very much not. She was back now, which felt correct to a certain extent. She still sat in the same chair, still wore the same smile when she trumped Grandpa Joe's hand in poker, and her laugh still sounded the same against the high ceilings and linoleum tile. Everyone was laughing with her, glad to have her back—happy to once again have Cameron Goode in their lives—and I knew that things were supposed to be alright.
Except they weren't.
Because the little things had changed. The little things were different. Aunt Bex stole side-eyed glances at her across the table, making sure she was still there. My father no longer squeezed a too-big chair in between her and Grandpa Joe, just so he could hold her hand. They were infinitesimally tiny changes, but in this family, we were trained to notice things, and when I noticed these particular things, it made me feel like maybe I had walked into the wrong house.
Except Alice still sat in her father's lap, and Grandpa Joe still had his arm slung around the back of Grandma's chair. When I stepped through that grand archway the whole room shouted out various versions of, "Happy birthday!" and so I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Big crowds like this used to give me life—used to fill me up with a kind of energy that was unmatchable. Now, it was just scary. Everyone was always watching me. Everyone was always at least a little bit aware of Morgan Goode and the state of her emotions. People used to watch me and wait for a laugh or a smile or at least a slightly-better-than-average act of rebellion. Now they just waited for a panic attack.
My father was, as usual, an exception. He had his arm around an empty chair and a smile on his face and I knew that, just like Scout and Matt, he would smile any time I walked into sight. Maybe that was why it was easy to cross the room. Maybe that was why I felt so confortable nabbing the chair beside him.
A timer went off as I sat and Ellie Sutton let out a giddy squeal. "It's done!" she called to the room, hopping down from the counter and ripping open the oven door. The whole room seemed to take a collective breath in as she reached her bare hands into the fire.
Charlotte Woods was already there, smacking Ellie's hands away and reaching in herself with a pair of hot pads. "Honestly, El," she said, kicking the door closed as she set the glossy dish on top. "How many times are you going to burn yourself before you learn that lesson?"
The smell was even stronger than before, filling up the room with the memory of warm fries or fresh hashbrowns. My stomach grumbled, and I dared to ask, "What is that?"
Woods had an uncharacteristic glint in her eye—a sort of ease that I had never seen in her until the moment she'd stepped through my family's front door. She poked a fork through the center of the dish to see if it was done, licked it clean, and said, "Potatoes gratiné." Her training had equipped her with a spot-on French accent. It was like hearing her speak with marbles in her mouth, accomplishing something with the language that I could only ever hope to. "It will go great with the boeuf bourguignon and—"
But Woods never got to tell me what else was on the menu, because right at that moment, a boy emerged from the shadows, tall, dark, and scared shitless.
Scout Jasons was brave. It was a core, defining characteristic of his personality. He was one of the reasons I still had my sanity and he was the only reason that my brother was still alive today. I knew a lot of brave people, but Scout? Scout might've just trumped them all.
So it was strange, looking up at him and seeing pure fear in his features. It was odd to watch him pull his hand to the back of his neck and rub at his hairline. He looked over his shoulder and into the shadows—to the boy who, no doubt, had shoved him out of them—and when he looked back, he cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. "Hello there, everyone."
When it came to the Goode family, Scout was a person worthy of respect. Not just because he had been Matt's best friend for years and not just because he would one day be an official part of us. Nope. Scout was someone who important people—legendary people—paid attention to, because Scout usually had information that those people so badly wanted. He had been responsible for the medical care of Zachary Goode's only daughter. He had been the doctor to preform invasive surgery on Cameron Goode's only son. Scout had information and updates and just about everything that the Goode family could ask for, and so people listened to him. He was, in many ways, the expert on the case.
Judging by the look on his face and the crack in his voice, Scout probably would have preferred the surgery just then.
No one in the room said a word. Dad and Grandpa Joe both stole a glance at me, as if making sure that I was really there and that I wasn't about to blow. Most other times Scout had demanded the room's attention, it was because something terrible had happened or was about to happen, either to Matt or to myself, so I couldn't really blame anyone when they started looking for me.
And then they started looking for Matt.
And that was when I knew exactly what this was.
Scout's gulp was audible as he scanned the room. I knew what he was looking at. He wasn't seeing Matt's Mom or Maggie's Dad. He was seeing Zachary and Cameron Goode. He was seeing Rachel Morgan and the Joe Solomon with the world's most highly-trained aunts at their backs. Scout was seeing the Goodes, not as the family, but as the force, and I was trying to figure out why on earth Matt would make him do this alone.
But then I found my brother, still in the shadows, and he gave me a single, solid wink. I smiled. Of course he wasn't going to make Scout do this alone.
And so I locked eyes with one of my closest friends, and I tried to repay a favor or two that I owed him. I gave him a reassuring nod and, as he had done for me so many times before, I pulled my hand up across my chest, then let it fall again.
Deep breaths, Scout. Just take a deep breath.
He must've gotten my message, because he followed the order. Or, well, he started to. He took the deep breath in, but the breath out ended up sounding more like another, "Hi."
He rolled his shoulders back, apparently deciding that if the boy in him couldn't handle this, then maybe he needed to resort to the soldier. It was courage in it's rawest form—seeping with fear.
Because Scout had done this all before. He'd had a family, and then he'd told them this secret, and then he'd been thrown away. I couldn't blame him for wanting to make sure that it never happened again, but he couldn't hide forever. He had other people to consider now, too. He had to think about Matt.
It was like watching a lightshow in his expression—flickers of red hot fear mixed with flashes of deep blue dread. Moments of cowardly yellows and instants of sickly greens. Scout Jasons was internal debate personified, but in the end, one argument was always going to win over the others. "Matt," he blurted.
Which was probably the exact wrong thing to say.
Because now, everyone at the table put their cards down. They sat up just a little bit taller and leaned in just a little bit closer. Dad's arm wasn't around me anymore, because now he was looking for his son who, just a few months ago, had been closer to death than anyone wanted to remember. "Is he okay?" Dad wanted to know.
For the first time all night, confusion struck Scout Jasons, but then he seemed to remember exactly who he was and exactly what kind of news he had been handling for the past summer. "Oh—no. No, he's fine. His vitals are up and we can just about take that boot of his leg, but that's not—listen, Mr. Goode." He cleared his throat again, and then looked around the table to the most talented set of people he knew. "Everyone. Matt and I have been friends for—well, what I'm trying to say is that... listen."
Everyone already was listening, so Scout saying it again didn't really do much except for elicit a roll of the eyes from my shadowed brother. So Scout started again. "It's been five years since—well we've known each other for a long time so—"
"You really are awful at this, aren't you?" Matt said, stepping out into the light. The room seemed to deflate at the sight of him, still in just as good of shape as before. But when Matt started to walk again, each and every one of us remembered that he hadn't been in great shape to begin with.
It was a long, slow walk to Scout's side. Matt had only just gotten off his crutches, but he still had that big, clunky boot around his leg. He walked with an obvious limp and a little bit of a hunch to his back—a habit from when his sides had been stitched closed in twelve different places. Everyone in the room seemed to remember all at once that Matthew Goode had just about given up his life to get his mother back, but as everyone else watched the boy with the boot, I turned to watch the woman made of guilt.
She had been gone.
She had been gone.
But then Matt cleared his throat, a little bit of his own nervousness slipping through, and I turned back just in time to see my brother's pale fingers lace trough Scout's dark. When I caught sight of Matt's wrist, there was a flash of panic in my chest as I remembered what he had looked like hanging from the rafters of an abandoned basement and my breath caught as I wondered how deep his scars would be if only I had figured it out just a little bit sooner.
Dad must've noticed, because when I came back to the safe house, he was watching me. I smiled, letting him know that all was well, and then I threw my head to Matt and Scout. They were the stars of this show, and they had been waiting a very long time for this particular audience.
And then it was Matt's turn to take a deep breath, just before he let the words, "Scout and I are a couple," fall out of his mouth.
I tried to get a read on the room, but it seemed impossible. The only thing I could pick up on was the relief—overwhelming relief. It seemed as though, as long as no one was bleeding or beaten or having a breakdown, everything was okay. It seemed like, as long as he was here and safe and happy, no one gave one single damn about what—or who—Matthew Goode did in his free time.
"We've been dating for a little over five years now," Matt went on, and Scout stood tall by his side, despite looking like he wanted to shrink into nonexistence. Matt just laughed. "And we're getting pretty sick of hiding it."
Silence. Absolute silence. I was pretty sure that I could hear the blinks of the people around me, watching as Scout and Matt held their breaths. This was it. This was the moment of truth. They would either be embraced or rejected, and Scout didn't look like he'd be able to handle the latter.
Mom blinked twice. Aunt Bex gave the boys a proud smile. Grandpa Joe just wore the look of a man who had been chasing a lead for a very long time and had finally found the clue that closed the case.
It was, of course, Alice who spoke first. In a single moment, she seemed to recall every side-stepped, secondary, hidden conversation that she had ever had with Scout and I, and then she let out a long, understanding, "Ohhh." I had to smile. Leave it to Alice to break the silence.
And breaking the silence was exactly what that moment needed, because then the room sparked right back to life.
Dad was up in a heartbeat, across the room in the second, and hugging his boy in the third. Matt's hand fell from Scout's as he let out the brightest, loudest laugh I had ever heard my brother give. Scout looked on with a tentative smile, but when Dad's arm wrapped around him, Scout joined in on the laughter and the relief as Zachary Goode wrapped his two boys into the biggest dad-hug I'd ever seen.
Aunt Abby was the next person up. "Charlotte, hand me that bottle," she called across the room, and without even looking, Woods threw the evening's second--third?--red wine into Abby's hands. With a pop and a fizz, it was open, and Aunt Abby was pouring out drinks for anyone holding their cups to the sky. "This calls for a little bit of celebration," she announced to the room.
"You think everything calls for a celebration," Townsend reminded her, but he, too, held his glass high.
Abby just shrugged. "Doesn't it?"
The boys were still laughing. Dad was still hugging. Next to me I heard Macey say, "I'm sorry, but was this a secret? Was this something that we didn't know? Because I totally knew."
"I thought for sure it was Scout and Maggie," Alice said, taking a generous helping of wine for herself.
On the other side of my table, Grandma held up her glass for Aunt Abby to pour, just as Woods passed behind her and silently slipped ten dollars into her hands. Grandma looked entirely too smug and Woods looked like she was about to swear off betting forever.
If I listened carefully—which was pretty much the only way I did my listening—I could hear Dad talking to the boys. "You could have told us," he said. "You know that, right? You could have told us."
"Yeah, Dad," Matt said. "Yeah, we know."
Aunt Liz took a sip out of her glass, looking like a normal mother gathered at a normal book club with the latest gossip. "Zach was convinced that it was Maggie," she told Aunt Bex.
"So was I," Aunt Bex admitted. "Until Scout Jasons decided to stay on my couch for two weeks straight."
The room was buzzing. The wine was flowing. Aunt Abby raised her own glass to the sky. "To love, and to trust, and to finding the right guy," she said. And then she tipped her drink to her great-nephew, and shot him a sly smile. "To my Matthew and his Scout."
Dad had finally let them go, and handed each boy a plastic up that was as red as the wine it held. Matt was beaming as he found Scout's hand again, and even Scout was having a hard time keeping a smile off his face. Matt held his cup up to Aunt Abby, and Scout followed his lead, just before everyone called out in excitement and took a drink.
But when that sip was over, Matt's smile was fading, and he was looking right at the only person who had yet to say anything. He was looking at the ghost at the corner of the table. "Mom?" he choked out.
Our mother stood. It was still so strange to see her. To realize that she wasn't just the voice in my head anymore. Something close to deja vu washed over me each and every time I saw her, but there was something different about it. Something worse. There was an ever-present fear that I really had died somewhere along the line, and this was just the dream I had been sent to after death.
The shiver started at the base of my spine and made a slow, uncomfortable crawl to the top. Was I even here?
I shook my head. Of course I was. And so was my mother. Because she made her way to the front of Scout and she looked him dead in the eye. "Scout Jasons," she said, testing the name out. "In my experience, there are good guys, and there are bad guys. Sometimes the ones you think are good, turn out to be bad and sometimes the ones you think are bad, turn out to be good."
Behind her, Townsend laughed, taking another sip of wine, and she smiled, the two of them in on their own little joke.
But when she put her hand on Scout's shoulder, there was nothing playful about her tone. "You, Scout Jasons, are a good guy. Through and through. And I'm proud to have a son smart enough to know when someone good lands in front of him."
There was plenty of agreement around that table at the center of the Goode family safe house, as well as a gooey "Aww," from Alice and Aunt Liz. It was everything that Matt and Scout could have possibly hoped for, but my ears felt plugged. My heart felt heavy. Who did she think she was? Why did she think that she could make those snap decisions about Scout. Sure, she was right, but she hadn't been here. She hadn't been a part of this family for two years, so I couldn't understand why she thought that she got to be proud of anyone.
She had been gone.
She had been gone.
And it didn't seem like anyone else remembered that except for me.
She wrapped an arm around each of them but, unlike Dad, the pair of them were so tall that she had to stand on her tiptoes. The room let out another cheer, everyone drinking and chatting and returning to their card game with smiles on their faces once more. Woods made the dinner call and half of the room rushed up to get their taste at fresh potatoes—Scout and Matt first in line.
Everything was happening so fast and it was all so loud. I wanted it to stop. I just needed... I didn't know. I needed a break. I needed a closed door between me and this chaos—god. Why was I so tired? I was so over being tired all the time.
So I channeled the talents of my mother and I slipped past the crowd, making my exit without a single soul noticing.
Mom had been gone and everyone had forgiven her already.
Was there something wrong with me? Had I been broken somewhere in between William Kidd and Blake Hughes?
Was I a bad person if I couldn't forgive her yet?
As I reached the top of the steps, I saw someone leave the only bedroom I'd had throughout my entire life. In that instant, my breath caught. Attack, said my instincts. Run, said my brain.
But then my heart told me to fight, and I knew exactly who it was.
Luke Collins had been nothing but a ghost in the Goode family safe house all summer. He opened and closed the occasional door. Sometimes I could hear his voice through the walls. There had been a few sightings in the past few months, but mostly, he hadn't been around.
This time was no different. He left my room and slid right next door, barely making a sound as he shut Matt's bedroom door behind him. He'd probably hide in there for days, I knew. It was the same thing he'd been doing all summer long, and I couldn't blame him, because it was exactly what I had done too. It was hard to think that we had spend out entire summer without seeing each other, even though we were always just a wall away.
When I closed my own door behind me, I scanned the room, trying to figure out what he had been up to. My bed was messy, just like before. My books were all in the same order with all of the same bookmarks in all of the same pages. I still had a cup on my nightstand, half filled with water—
Except, wait.
The water had waves in it.
And there was something new acting as a coaster.
I took three, easy strides across the room, nearly knocking the glass over as I ripped the manuscript from under it and read the words as carefully as possible.
INTERROGATION REPORT
CAMERON ANN GOODE
(Conducted by Zachary Goode and Luke Collins)
I looked over my shoulder, perhaps expecting Luke to appear there, explanation ready. Maybe I wanted some sort of permission before I peeled the pages back. But then I remembered exactly who I was and I scoffed at the very idea. Permission. Pfft.
He wouldn't have left it here if he didn't want me to read it.
He wouldn't have left it here if he didn't think that I needed to read it.
I took the manuscript and I crawled into bed, flicking my lamp on and curling up under the covers. I could feel myself shaking as I flipped the cover back.
And then I read.