WHEN KAELYN CAME HOME THE NEXT AFTERNOON, her brother was nowhere to be found. Normally, she assumed he was at work like he always seemed to be these days. However, his phone and keys were sitting on the kitchen counter, where he always left them despite the fact they had a rack for all the keys they needed right next to the door. It was a pet peeve of hers, so she grunted and grabbed them, hanging them up before beginning to get curious. The apartment was dead silent, but he had to be home.
Right away, she began to check for signs of forced entry or forced removal from the apartment, but there were none. The door had been safely closed and locked when she entered, no piece of furniture was out of place. Everything was clean, which was a miracle in and of itself. If Caden was home, he must have been stressed about something, he only cleaned when he was stressed and Kaelyn knew for damn sure she hadn't been the one to tidy up.
Quietly and carefully, she began to investigate the apartment. The living room, kitchen, and bathroom were all empty, so she began to creep down the hallway. Her brother's door was ajar, something synonymous with him being absent from the apartment. If she wasn't concerned before, she was now. She had a rough day at school and she didn't really need another family member to go missing and/or turn up dead. That had happened enough for her lifetime.
Finally, she reached her own room. She distinctly remembered closing her door before she left for school that morning and yet, she found the door partially open. She had a feeling she was going to find something inside her room, whether it was her sibling or not.
It turned out the be the former, but once she realized what her brother was doing, she couldn't say she was happy about that. What she found when she entered her bedroom was her brother staring down, papers and pictures in his hands, going through them. She recognized them as the pictures, articles, and other things from her "murder board" in her closet.
"What are you doing with those?" She asked carefully, her voice quiet and calm, trying her hardest not to explode at the giant invasion of privacy occurring.
Caden looked up, betrayal and hurt in his eyes, "I feel like I should be asking you that very question. What do you think you're doing investigating this? It was years ago, the cops gave up, why didn't you?"
"I'm not answering any questions until you tell me why the fuck you thought it was okay to go through my stuff. Legal guardian or not, you don't have that right," the redhead shook her head, her arms crossed and her back straight. She knew her brother could tower over her, but she was determined to have the stance of someone taller and stronger than him.
"You left your jacket on the back of the couch like always, so I went to put it away for you since I was cleaning anyway and lo and behold, I find a whole conspiracy theory," he explained, but she didn't budge. "Now you answer my questions."
"I didn't give up because I deserve to know what happened to them, I deserve closure, and I absolutely deserve to find out who ruined my life," was the only answer she was willing to give. There was bitterness on her tongue and no remorse in her eyes. "You can take away my "conspiracy theory" as you called it, but you'll never be able to stop me searching for the truth so put my shit back where you found it and leave me the hell alone."
The boy, however, didn't look like he planned on moving. Instead, he just asked another question, "Okay, but why do you have pictures of this Peter kid? And Liz? Aren't you friends with her? Why is she in here."
Kaelyn ignored the Peter portion of the question since she couldn't exactly tell her brother that the boy in her math class doubled as a crime-fighting vigilante after hours. So, she skipped to Liz, "When I met her dad, he cringed at my last name. I asked him if he knew them, he hesitated and said he only knew them from the news and he was sorry that happened. It seemed ingenuine, his eyes were cold. I don't trust him."
"Seriously? You think your friend's dad has something to do with our parents' murder just because he didn't cry when you mentioned them? Kae, you're smarter than this."
"I have nothing! I have no one to help me! The cops gave up, you gave up, everyone gave up on them except for me. I don't give a shit if I'm grasping at straws, at least I have something to hold onto!" She didn't realize she was crying until a tear fell down her cheek, taking traces of her mascara with it. With a sigh, she wiped the tear. She had been hoping to have a relatively calm evening at home since it had been a particularly rough day, but it seemed she couldn't catch a break anywhere. Peter was barely talking to her and that didn't sit well with her, Beth was being weird about something and all the information she could get was that it had something to do with her brother and Beth never kept secrets from Kaelyn so she knew it was bad, but she wouldn't tell her about it so she knew her friend was suffering and she couldn't do anything about it. Her day was bad enough and she did not need her brother making things worse than they already were.
"Solving their murder isn't going to bring them back, Kae," Caden shook his head. "You're barely sixteen, just go be sixteen! You're still a kid, worry about these things when you're older. Right now, you should be focusing on school, on cute boys or who to ask to Homecoming, not some cold case."
She scoffed, "It's not just some cold case, Caden, it's our parents. I can't go be a kid anymore because their murderer robbed me of my childhood. They robbed me of two loving parents, they robbed me of my older brother, they robbed me of a father-daughter dance at my wedding, they robbed me of my mom giving me the awkward talk about things that happen once a month, they robbed me of chatting with mom about boys while we get our nails done, they robbed me of dad teaching me about cars or football, they robbed me. I'm never going to get that back, but at least if we catch whoever killed them, they'll get to rot in jail and I can finally have some fucking closure with my life. They took those things from me and maybe if I see them caught if I see their life robbed the way I was, maybe, just maybe I can feel like I don't have the entire world weighing down on my shoulders for once. I don't care if you don't want me looking for whoever killed them, but we both know you won't be able to stop me."
"You're right, I won't." His voice was eerily calm, it was almost scary, "But you won't be investigating anything in this house, which is where you'll be for the next two weeks because you're grounded and I'm taking all of this away."
"You can't do that!" she yelled, full-on crying now. She was fully aware she was throwing a fit akin to a child not getting what they wanted, but she had every right to do so.
Caden, who had taken everything off of the wall and was about to walk out of the room with it, turned around and shouted, "Actually, I can, because I'm your legal guardian so you do whatever I tell you to. Right now, I'm telling you to leave this alone. You are not to step outside of this apartment if not for school. Understand."
"Fuck you," she spat, grabbing her coat, phone, and keys before running past him and to the door. He chased after her, but she got to the stairs before he did, sprinting up them and hitting the roof door and full speed, slamming it behind her. The door locked automatically, but he could open it from his side. That didn't matter because he seemed to give up the fight, the door only budging once before it went silent.
With a sigh, she leaned against the door and just cried. Not knowing who to call, not feeling like she could call Beth at a time like this, she called the first name that popped into her head.
After three rings, the phone call was answered, "Kaelyn? What's up?"
"Peter?" she asked, her voice breaking as tears streamed down her cheeks, "Um, this is weird, but can I stay at your place tonight? I don't wanna be home tonight."
A beat of silence passed before he answered, "Where are you? I'll come to get you."
"On my roof, I'm trapped, but I can give you the code to get into my building if you need it."
"Don't worry about it, I'll just, uh, swing by, heh," Peter joked and despite the inappropriate timing, it actually made the girl laugh, "Sorry, that was bad. Sit tight, I'll be there."
"Thank you."
can you believe I really love these two with my whole heart? wow!