My mother stepped toward them. “Why are you here now?”
Caleb’s mother sobbed harder. “Because he left us a note.”
Everything inside me went cold.
The officer quickly raised a hand. “Caleb is alive. He turned himself in early this morning. He’s at the station with a counselor.”
I breathed again, but barely.
The officer looked at me. “He said dancing with you last night made him realize he couldn’t keep carrying the lie.”
My prom dress was still hanging over a chair in the living room.
A few hours earlier, it had felt like proof that I had been seen. Now it looked like evidence in a story I did not understand.
“He asked me to dance because he felt guilty?” I whispered.
Caleb’s mother shook her head. “No. He said he’d wanted to for years. But he was afraid if he got close to you, the truth would come out.”
I laughed once, sharp and broken.
“So instead he let me believe I was just unlucky.”
No one answered.
Because there are some truths so heavy that silence is the only honest response.
