The Weight of Perfection: Grand Harbor - Book Three Page 9

  “What? How will you even know where to look?”

  “Just…give me a little time. I know a guy. He’s really good at finding people. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’ll take care of it? What does that even mean? What happens when you find him?”

  “I know people who can handle this. Trust me. I don’t want you out there looking for him. You said it yourself, he’s probably not somewhere safe for you.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re right, but I…”

  “Look at me, Lexi. Do you trust me?”

  I realized it wasn’t the first time he’d asked me that since we’d met. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.” I wiped the tears off my face, but more followed. “You can’t possibly…”

  “Let me try to fix it. There has to be a mistake, right? Would your brother rob your bank?” He stared directly into my eyes, waiting for an honest answer.

  “He’s troubled.” It was all I could think to say.

  “I’ll figure this out. I don’t want to leave you here alone though, can one of your friends come over to stay with you tonight?”

  I nodded slowly, though I wasn’t sure I would even call one of them this late.

  “Look at me,” he instructed, “I will take care of it. Don’t worry about your brother. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. I can tell you care about him, so he must care enough about you to not put you in harm’s way, right? Let’s figure it out before jumping to conclusions. I’ll handle it.” He was confident as he said it, but I wasn’t sure if his words were entirely true, or if he simply was telling me what I needed to hear. He kissed me on the forehead, touched my face one last time, reiterating he would take care of it, and seconds later he was out the door.

  I tried calling my brother again but it still went to voicemail. Should I just keep trying to reach him? Did I even want to be attached to him in any way at this point with a call log full of repeated attempts to contact him? I hated the way that thought crept into my mind. He was my brother. Despite his flaws and shortcomings, I still loved him and wanted the best for him. All I could do at this point was trust that Luke could in fact, somehow, fix this. I stared at the word dynamite on my screen, unsure if my brother had opened my message or not. I so badly wanted to believe that the youthful reminder of that childhood codeword would be enough to make him reach out to me so that we could somehow fix all of this.

  After pacing the living room, I finally broke down and called Olivia. She made it over to my place just minutes later. She could tell how anxious I felt by the sound of my voice over the phone. I loved how she dropped everything to come sit with me.

  “The sketch is too close. It’s him, right? Do you think it’s him?” I couldn’t shut up.

  “I don’t know,” she replied sympathetically. “I know he’s had a rough time these past few years, with the drugs and everything, but a bank robbery? That seems extreme. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “That’s just it,” I interjected, “I was there. It was well planned. Perfectly executed. My brother can’t follow basic instructions about a mundane task. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think he could pull it off. Am I stupid for thinking that? But the sketch, Olivia – it looks too much like him.” I started biting at my nails, a habit I’d kicked years before, but I couldn’t help it.

  “He’s your brother, Lex. You don’t have to decide this. Let it all play out and see what happens.”

  “There’s one more thing,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I knew if I could trust anyone with the secret, it would be Olivia. “Cade asked me to hold something for him. He swore me to secrecy and you know I hate that. You know I’m terrible at keeping secrets.”

  “Is it money?”

  I nodded, unable to actually say the words.

  “He asked you to hold onto his money from the robbery?” She gasped, raising her voice in disbelief. “Lexi, this is bad!”

  “That’s the weird part. While I was waiting for you to come over, I looked at it again. It’s all still taped, but – not from my bank.”

  “So he robbed a different bank?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I can’t figure out. But I’m certain the money in that bag isn’t from my bank, so it doesn’t add up.” I was completely flustered by now.

  “What does Luke think?”

  “Well, about that… I didn’t tell him about the money. I wanted to, but…I just couldn’t. The way he looks at me, it’s like he thinks I’m incapable of bad decisions. Like I’m always innocent, but somehow I feel anything but innocent right now, as if I’ve done something wrong. I mean, I have done something wrong. I hate all of this. I so badly want to be on my brother’s side, but I don’t want to pay for his sins either by association. Is that wrong?”

  “Of course not, if Cade really did get himself into this mess, it’s on him. Not you. None of this is your fault.”

  “But lying to Luke about it? Or withholding it, anyway – that feels wrong too. I don’t know why I couldn’t tell him. He was consoling me, and I couldn’t say it. He thinks that I’m this good, put-together person…”

  She cut me off. “You are, Lexi.”

  “But I’m not. I want to be. I’m falling for him so fast, and it’s so easy to get caught up in trying to be perfect when you meet someone who already seems to be. I mean, I know he’s not, he has his own issues, but not like this. He’s not covering for a felon. I don’t want my troubles to become his.”

  “Lexi, that’s all a relationship is – giving the other person all of your issues.” We both snickered.

  “I just feel like I’ve been floundering for the past month. It’s like I’m trying so hard to win the adoration of everyone around me. My distant parents – my lost brother – the ex I couldn’t keep... I feel like I’m perpetually doing something wrong. Like it’s me. Like I’m not good enough for all of these relationships in my life to just be easy. It’s like I’m doing something wrong.”

  “It’s never easy.”

  “That’s the trap. When I’m with Luke, it feels like everything is okay. When we lay under the stars together, it’s so easy to pretend like the rest of the universe isn’t eternally against me. Yet swirling around those simple moments with him, here I am stuck in the middle of this disaster.”

  “That’s how love works, Lexi. Finding someone to wade through disaster with you…forever. Then repeat. It’s never perfect. Never. Trust me, I would know. What exactly did Luke say when he left tonight?”

  “He said he would fix all of this.”

  “So let him try. Maybe he can’t. Maybe his grand idea won’t pan out, but the mere fact that he’s trying to solve something that’s hurting you, that’s the part that matters in this whole thing.”

  I mulled over her words. I knew she was right. Nothing was ever easy. Nothing was perfect – not family, not love, and definitely not people. We were all just doing the best we could. This wasn’t even Luke’s problem to fix, so it was unfair of me to expect him to. She was right – the fact that he was trying to ease my hurt over this whole thing – that’s what really mattered.

  The chime from my phone pulled me out of my thoughts. It was a text from Luke.

  Are you holding up okay? I smiled as soon as I read the words.

  I miss you. I hope this is all a terrible misunderstanding. Maybe tomorrow we can pick up where we left off tonight and forget about all of this.

  He text back quickly. Definitely. Give me twenty-four hours and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

  “What is he saying?” Olivia sounded eager as she tried to read my facial expression.

  I was confused by his timeline. Twenty-four hours? What did that mean? What would he be able to resolve by then? What made him think he could fix any of this?

  “Somehow he thinks he can make all of this better,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I don’t even know what that means, but I love the way he’s trying. I guess we’ll see.”

  *
****

  The following day, the counseling group from my work tried to reset my appointment, but I couldn’t do it. Not now. Part of me felt nervous to talk to anyone about the ordeal after seeing the sketch of my brother on the news, while the other part of me felt like the session would be frivolous altogether. I’d moved on from what had happened at the bank to something much more personal now if my brother was truly involved.

  I spent the day with Olivia, helping her stage one of her lake cottages for an upcoming open house. I probably wasn’t a lot of help, but it was fun nonetheless. We had lunch with Grandma Eve and Sophia at the assisted living facility and then spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, soaking up the sun.

  Just before five pm, my phone buzzed.

  Check the news. Everything’s been sorted out. Can I pick you up in an hour?

  Before responding, I quickly checked the local news on my phone.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Olivia leaned over to see what I was reading, but the glare was making it impossible for her to see.

  “It’s about my brother. I think he’s been cleared!” I kept reading the article. It turned out my brother was involved in some way, but not as the news first reported it. It sounded like he was only responsible for moving the getaway car from a nearby street into a parking garage, with no apparent knowledge as to why. It still sounded fishy to me. I called Luke right away.

  “Hey,” he said with a sweet tone in his voice. “Did you read it?”

  “It sounds like good news, but I still don’t totally understand what happened. He moved the car the thieves used to get away, but he didn’t know what he was doing? The article is all over the place. No wonder people barely read newspapers anymore.”

  Luke explained that once my brother’s sketch was released yesterday, a local antique shop in town turned in their video surveillance of the outdoor street front about ten minutes before the robbery. Some guy in a gray hoodie – his face conveniently shielded from the camera – was seen handing my brother a few hundred dollar bills.

  According to Cade’s statement, the guy stopped him while he was walking down the street and offered him five hundred bucks to move a black Toyota Camry from the street corner nearby into a parking garage. The exchange was quick, and all my brother cared about was the money, so of course he didn’t ask too many follow up questions like a sane, rational person. Within a few minutes he was picked up on another camera, exiting the parking garage after completing the task. Sure enough, minutes later at the exact time of the robbery, he was on surveillance footage in a nearby gas station, using the five hundred dollars to buy a couple cases of beer and a bunch of scratch-off lottery tickets. The time-stamp on the video was enough to prove my brother wasn’t actually part of the robbery, and his drug-induced state led officers to believe he had no knowledge the vehicle was going to be used for a criminal act, so they didn’t charge him with anything in exchange for information on the guy who gave him the money.

  “So that’s it? He’s off the hook?”

  “I’m sure he’s on their radar now, which may not help him. Perhaps some extra surveillance on him, just to make sure he’s not caught up in something else, or maybe the drug unit is interested in what he’s up to. That kind of thing. It definitely didn’t do him any favors, being mixed up in this at all. But as far as the bank goes, it doesn’t look like he’ll be charged with anything. The video in the gas station clearly proves he wasn’t in the bank at the time of the robbery. That’s enough.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I didn’t. I said I had a guy, remember?” Luke was vague about that, but I guess it didn’t matter. “So, do I get to pick you up at six tonight? Maybe we can finally have one perfect, drama-free night. Just the two of us, with no distractions.”

  “That sounds amazing.” I hung up the phone, and I could tell Olivia had so many questions.

  “So, is he innocent or guilty?”

  “Well, he’s guilty of being an idiot. He moved the getaway car without even realizing it. But in typical Cade-fashion, he was high as a kite, so it appears he had no knowledge as to what he was actually doing, or why he was doing it. Apparently the drugs saved him in this twisted circumstance. How’s that for irony.” I went on to regurgitate everything Luke explained to me. The whole story still sounded very suspect to me – who would move a vehicle at the request of a random stranger? A drug addict who needs money. But what about the bag of money under my bed? Where did that come from? It was definitely more than whatever he’d had leftover from the car transaction, assuming he spent most of that on alcohol and scratch-offs.

  “How did Luke figure all of that out?” Olivia narrowed her eyes at me, no doubt as puzzled about it as I was.

  “I don’t think he had much to do with it,” I replied. “He said he had ‘a guy.’ Why does every guy have a guy? What does that even mean? I don’t know, apparently this guy is good at finding people, so maybe he found Cade, told him about the news, and my brother came forward and cleared himself, knowing he had no part in the actual robbery.” I still wasn’t completely convinced of my brother’s innocence. Things like this didn’t happen to regular people – it always happened to someone already sitting in their own pile of crap, but I guess it didn’t matter now. Truthfully I was just glad the manhunt for him was already over, and that it hadn’t turned out worse. That’s all I could hope for with Cade – dodging the worst case scenario.

  “Miles and I are heading to a salsa dancing club tonight. Do you guys want to join us?”

  “Actually, Luke asked if he could pick me up in a bit. It sounded like he already had some kind of plan – hopefully something relaxing and quiet. I’m not up for loud salsa music tonight. This whole week has been a mess.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya. Volleyball tomorrow afternoon at least?”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  We cleaned up our beach area and I headed back to my place to shower and change. Luke picked me up on time and we headed out in his truck.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, kissing me softly.

  “Thanks. My nerves are still on fire. I feel anxious. I wish I could shut off my brain.”

  “Is this about your brother?”

  “No. Yes. Probably,” I admitted. “I just still feel uneasy about the whole thing.”

  “About the robbery? Maybe you should go talk to one of the counselors from your work. Maybe that will help? I’m sure they’ve been well trained on how to help people deal with this kind of thing.”

  “They called me today, but I didn’t go. It’s not about the actual robbery to me. It feels more personal than that. If it was just a random freak thing, I get it. I’ve been trained for years on how to handle that kind of thing. It’s happened to me twice before, and I was able to brush it off. It’s routine. We give them what they want, hope they catch the bad guys, and report back to work, expecting it can happen again. I get that. It’s part of the job, and something we talk about in a lot in meetings and whatnot. This just feels…personal. I don’t know, I can’t explain it.”

  “Do you still think your brother was involved, beyond just moving the car? Or just wrong place wrong time?”

  “Honestly, no. We lived in the same house for sixteen years and he can’t even remember my birthday, so I don’t expect that he’s ever aware of anything happening around him. It makes the whole thing that much sadder to me, like he’s going to get caught in dumb stuff like this forever because of who he is. I hate that. I so badly want to fix him. Then I feel stupid for thinking that, because why on earth would someone think they can fix such a bad person who doesn’t want to change?”

  Luke reached over, squeezing my hand as he drove. He offered me a sympathetic smile.

  “I understand, you know,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Caring about someone when the rest of the world tells you they don’t deserve it.” He looked over at me from the driver’s seat. “My brothers and I ha
ve had our own share of struggles. Well, it’s usually them struggling, and me bailing them out. People always wonder why I do it. Why help someone so helpless? People who haven’t experienced it themselves don’t understand it.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “The same reason you do, I imagine. Because without me, what else would they have? Can you imagine living in a world where no one is on your side? Where not one single person is in your corner? What would be left? This entire world would self-destruct. The world swallows the helpless, and some people believe it should, and I get that too. But when that person is tied to you somehow – how do you watch them sink? What kind of world would this be if no one had it in them to fight for those people? I want to believe everyone has at least one person willing to fight for them. Your brother has you. If there’s only one thing on this planet that has any chance of saving him, I’d like to believe it’s you.”

  “I tell myself that all the time. Yet somehow it feels like I’m perpetually failing. Can a person be so broken that it’s impossible to save them?”

  “Yes.” His voice cracked as he said it, and I realized how personal this conversation was to him. “Everyone says my brothers are a lost cause. Maybe they are, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll both end up just like my father. But by not giving up on them, at least I won’t end up like my father, which is the difference. All I know is that even if I can’t save them, I’ll never have the guilt or weight of not trying.”

  I soaked up his words as he spoke, feeling everything he was saying. There were so many reasons to give up on my brother – but if I did, perhaps that said more about me than it did about him. The people I admired most had so much fight in them – Olivia, Sophia, even Grandma Eve – I wanted to be like that too. They all loved so fiercely, and whether that was reckless or not, I knew I wanted to pour myself into someone the same way, independent of whether or not the world deemed them worthy. I had to believe it made a difference.

  “I’m in your corner too, Lex. I don’t know if you have that person – the one who’s on your side, even when you’re wrong - but I’ll be that for you.”