The Lying Game #5: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

by Shepard, Sara

9

  WHITE LIES AND ALIBIS

  It was just after midnight when Mr. Mercer pulled the car into the driveway and killed the motor. The lights were on in the kitchen—Mrs. Mercer had obviously waited up for them—but he made no move to get out of the car. He and Emma sat in silence, neither one looking directly at the other. With the AC off, the air quickly became heavy around them.

  Mr. Mercer took Emma’s hand in his and squeezed. “That really wasn’t how I wanted you to meet your mother,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, looking out the passenger window. She could just make out the hole Mr. Mercer had dug in the lawn before his accident. He’d been planning to plant something there, but in the dark it looked like a fresh grave.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mr. Mercer went on. “It must have been hard to see her like that.”

  Emma didn’t say anything. Her body felt bruised and weak. She’d always imagined she might look for her mother someday, track her down with a private investigator or maybe by herself, with her own research skills. Sometimes in her fantasies, she told Becky off for abandoning her. Sometimes she ran to her, threw her arms around her neck, and all was forgiven. But never in all her daydreams had she pictured it like this.

  After a long pause, Mr. Mercer spoke again. “I’m going to visit her tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll have stabilized her a little and she’ll be more coherent. Do you want to come with me?”

  Emma bit her lip. She had questions she wanted to ask Becky, but nothing she could ask in front of her grandfather. And what if Becky kept calling her Emma? Someone might start trying to figure out whom Becky was referring to. In her deluded state, Becky might say anything—even that Sutton had a twin named Emma. And then what?

  Mr. Mercer gave her an understanding look and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to decide right now.” He undid his seat belt. “We’d better go in. Mom’s probably worried.”

  Emma squinted in the harsh bright light in the foyer. Down the hall, she saw Laurel perched on a stool at the kitchen island, wearing her favorite terrycloth robe. Mrs. Mercer was standing behind her, pouring tea into two pineapple-shaped mugs. She almost dropped the kettle when she saw them.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s after midnight. Why didn’t you call? I tried you a thousand times.”

  Looking abashed, Mr. Mercer pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolling through the missed calls. Emma didn’t have to look at hers to know that there were probably a dozen calls from her mother on the screen. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he mumbled.

  Laurel narrowed her eyes at Emma, giving her a long, scrutinizing look. She pointed to something on Emma’s jacket. “What’s that?”

  Emma looked down. The hospital visitor badge was pinned to her lapel. She caught her breath. She’d been so tired on the way home that she hadn’t remembered to take it off. She tried to slide it into her pocket, but it was too late.

  “You were at the hospital?” Mrs. Mercer demanded.

  Mr. Mercer and Emma exchanged glances. He waited a beat too long before speaking. “Look, I didn’t want to bother you, but I was feeling a lot of pain in my knee. I went in to have it checked out and see if I could get some meds from the pharmacy. I’m so sorry we didn’t call, honey. The signal in the hospital is awful, and we lost track of time.”

  The clock over the kitchen table ticked noisily. Drake, the family’s Great Dane, rose from his dog bed, shook out his coat, and then lay down again. Mrs. Mercer stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Emma wondered if this was how Mrs. Mercer had spent her evenings when she was raising Becky—up late, making tea she was too nervous to drink, waiting for bad news to come in the door. She felt a flare of guilt for making her grandmother worry.

  Finally Mrs. Mercer sighed and turned to Emma. “Well, it was your night to walk Drake, Sutton. It’s too late for that, but the least you can do is to take him out to the yard.”

  Emma nodded. “Come on, boy.”

  The Great Dane lazily stood once more. Emma slid open the door to the backyard and followed him out into the night.

  While he sniffed along the fence, Emma flopped into a wrought-iron chair and stared at the stars. As a little girl, she’d had a habit of naming the stars after things in her own life. There were the Teacher Star, a pretty twinkling one she’d named after Ms. Rodehaver, her beloved third-grade teacher. There were the Bully Star and the Brat Star, which she’d named for particularly awful classmates, stars consigned to the edges of the sky and washed out by light pollution. And then there was the Emma Star, and the Mom Star, and the Dad Star, three stars twinkling close to one another but not quite together. She had made up stories about why they had to exist apart from one another—one in Orion’s Belt, another just a little left of what Ethan had told her was Venus. In her stories, they were apart because they had to break a curse or solve a riddle or go on a pilgrimage in order to reunite. They always ended up together in the end.

  After seeing her mother tonight, Emma was no longer so sure her story would have a happy ending.

  “So what were you really doing tonight?”

  Emma jumped and turned, catching a whiff of tuberose lotion. Laurel stood behind her, the porch light making a halo around her honey-blond head.

  “Was Dad’s knee actually acting up?” Laurel asked. “Or was he covering for you, just like old times?”

  Emma squinted, trying to read Laurel in the darkness. “There was nothing to cover up,” she said in a clear, firm voice. “Dad’s knee hurt, we went to the hospital. Why would I lie about something like that?”

  Laurel shifted her weight. “Gee, I don’t know, Sutton. I don’t know why you lie about half the things you lie about. You only invented a whole, you know, game about it.”

  “A game you begged to be in, if I remember correctly.”

  “All right, all right, touché.” Laurel pulled her robe more tightly around her shoulders, then sat down in a chair next to Emma’s. A light breeze riffled through the wind chimes hanging over the patio. “You know you can trust me. What are these secrets about?”

  In the porch light Emma could see Laurel’s face, earnest and hopeful, and for a minute Emma considered telling Laurel about Becky. Maybe not the whole truth—not about Becky calling her by her real name—but what would it hurt to tell Laurel that she’d met her birth mother? Sutton might have told her adopted sister, too, once she got over the initial shock.

  But if Becky really was responsible for Sutton’s death, the less Laurel knew, the safer she’d be. Emma gazed out over the yard, where Drake was circling the birdbath.

  “Okay. You’ve found me out,” she said. “We were rehearsing for the Father-Daughter Roller Derby. His derby name is Doctor Feelbad, but I’m torn between Paris Hellton and Nicole Bitchy. What do you think?”

  “Liar!” Laurel punched her in the arm, but she was laughing. The tension dissipated.

  “I’m not sure we have a shot with Dad’s leg in a brace, but we’re going to go for it. Reach for the stars, that’s what I always say,” Emma went on with a smile.

  Laurel grabbed a cushion from the porch swing and hit at Emma with it. Emma ducked and squealed, grabbing a pillow of her own in retaliation. By the time Drake trotted up to the patio to investigate, they were both giggling and throwing cushions at each other from opposite sides of the deck chair.

  “Girls?” Mrs. Mercer’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing? You’re going to wake up the neighborhood. Drake, get inside. Laurel, Sutton, go to bed.”

  The door shut firmly. Emma and Laurel exchanged glances, and then collapsed into silent laughter.

  I watched my sisters with a sad pang, wishing I were there between them. I marveled at my twin’s ability to defuse Laurel’s frustration. I’d never been able to do that.

  “Sutton,” Laurel whispered, pushing her away so she could look into her eyes. “Whatever’s going on … just tell me if I can help, okay?”

  Emma thought about denying that the
re was anything going on, but then she bit her lip. “Okay,” she said.

  Then they stood and strode toward the brightly lit kitchen while I, their silent third sister, trailed unseen behind them.

  10

  TEA FOR TWO

  The next day after school, Emma skipped tennis and drove straight home. The house was quiet when she arrived, the soft ticking of the grandfather clock echoing through the foyer. When her phone beeped, piercing the silence, she jumped. She had a new text from Ethan: I DIDN’T SEE YOU AT TENNIS PRACTICE. EVERYTHING OK?

  YEAH, JUST TRYING TO GET SOME REST, Emma wrote back. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, haunted by nightmares of being strapped to a hospital bed.

  HOW ARE YOU HOLDING UP?

  Emma’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She’d quickly told Ethan about Becky in the hallway that morning, not wanting to go into much detail because she wasn’t sure who might be listening—she doubted the story of Sutton Mercer’s crazy mother was something Sutton would have wanted to become common knowledge. Ethan had given her a huge hug. “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” he’d said, and she’d felt just a little better, knowing that he was there for her.

  I’M FINE, she finally wrote. BUT I MISS YOU. I CAN’T WAIT FOR OUR PICNIC TONIGHT.

  ME NEITHER, he responded. SEE YOU AT 8?

  After Emma texted YES, she shut the door softly. Drake loped into the foyer, his long tail waving behind him. She stroked the smooth short fur around his ears. “Hey, buddy,” she whispered.

  He raised his head to lick her face. When she started up the stairs to Sutton’s room, he followed, his nails clattering noisily on the hardwood.

  The stairwell was hung with family pictures: images of the vacations the Mercers had taken over the years to Disneyland, Paris, Maui, mixed in with snapshots of Christmas mornings and school awards ceremonies. Emma stopped absently to straighten a school picture of a seven-year-old Sutton in pigtails. Even then Sutton’s smile looked mischievous, like she knew just how much she could get away with.

  Emma was halfway up the stairs when Mrs. Mercer stepped into the hall with a basket of laundry in her arms. She had changed out of the sleek, tailored work suit she’d worn this morning into a pair of dark-wash jeans and a short-sleeved cashmere sweater. When she saw Emma on the stairs, she looked startled. “Sutton!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing home?”

  Emma rested her hands on the banister. “I have a headache, so I skipped tennis.” It wasn’t too far from the truth. The episode with Becky had shaken her to her core.

  Seeing Mrs. Mercer’s concerned frown, she added, “I’m okay. I took some aspirin and I’m already feeling better. Just not up to running around a hot tennis court.” Then she cocked her head. “What are you doing home?”

  Mrs. Mercer smiled. “I cut out of work early today. There was a meeting on the books that I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through.”

  “I guess we’re both playing hooky,” Emma joked.

  Mrs. Mercer shifted the laundry basket to one arm. “Why don’t you join me for some tea? I was just about to sit down for a cup.”

  Emma had actually come home to try to refocus—she needed to be able to think logically if she was going to find out what had really happened to Sutton. She’d been looking forward to some time alone, relaxing in Sutton’s bedroom, but she didn’t feel like she could turn down the offer. “Sure.”

  Sun poured through the kitchen’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Emma perched at the island counter and watched as Mrs. Mercer measured loose-leaf tea into a purple-flowered teapot. “Remember playing tea when you were little?” Mrs. Mercer asked, smiling. “You would bring your stuffed animals down and sit them around the table and pretend to serve them crumpets.”

  “Crumpets?” Emma rolled her eyes as she imagined Sutton would have done. “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. I don’t think you even knew what crumpets were—you just heard the word somewhere and liked how it sounded.”

  Emma smiled. She liked hearing sweet memories of her sister.

  I liked that my mom had sweet memories of me.

  “How’s Ethan?” Mrs. Mercer poured hot water over the leaves. Lavender-scented steam billowed from the teapot’s spout.

  “He’s good.” Emma couldn’t wipe a dopey grin off her face. “We’re having a picnic tonight.”

  Mrs. Mercer raised an eyebrow. “How romantic.”

  Emma ducked her head, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. “We’re going stargazing—he’s really into astronomy. I was going to bake cookies this afternoon to take with us.”

  “You’re making cookies?” Mrs. Mercer peered at her. “You don’t even know how to turn the oven on!”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can figure it out,” Emma covered. It didn’t surprise her that Sutton didn’t know how to cook, but she’d been baking since junior high, making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and peanut butter blossoms to try to win over her various foster families. Baking relaxed her. She liked to sit, listening to her favorite music on the used iPod she’d bought at Goodwill, inhaling the delicious smells of sugar and chocolate.

  I just hoped she didn’t lick the batter from the spoon. Sutton Mercer did not get love handles.

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll love them, even if they’re a little burned,” Mrs. Mercer teased.

  “Gee, thanks, Mom,” Emma groused good-naturedly. Just talking about her night with Ethan made Emma’s heart speed up. It felt like ages since their date at the movie studio, and she couldn’t wait to feel his breath on her ear and his lips on hers. She smiled at the thought of his cryptic text from that morning: N 32° 12' 23.2554", W 110° 41' 18.3012" = <3? 8PM? After a moment of puzzling, Emma had plugged the longitude and latitude notations into Sutton’s iPhone. The coordinates were for a site in Saguaro National Park. Sends me invitations in the form of riddles was something else to add to her list of Adorable Things Ethan Does.

  The teapot whistled, breaking Emma from her thoughts. “He wasn’t hurt too badly in that fight, was he?” Mrs. Mercer asked.

  Emma shrugged. “I think he’s okay. He has a black eye that he thinks makes him look really cool.”

  Mrs. Mercer sighed. “He shouldn’t have swung at Thayer. Boys never stop to think things through, do they? People get hurt in fights like that—and not just the people in the actual fight.” Then she looked at Emma. “How are you doing with all of that, Sutton?”

  Emma picked at a speck of lint on her skirt. “Haven’t you heard? I’m Sutton Mercer. I love it when boys fight over me.”

  Mrs. Mercer crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve never seen you get so pale as when those two started on each other.”

  Gratitude bubbled up in Emma’s chest as she met Mrs. Mercer’s eyes. No else one was willing to believe that she wasn’t enjoying stringing two boys along. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I like Ethan, and it’s completely over with me and Thayer. I just can’t seem to convince either one of them of that.”

  Mrs. Mercer sipped her tea. “You know, Sutton, the problem isn’t that you’re giving them the wrong signals. It’s that you’re so worth fighting for. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  If I could have put my head on my adoptive mother’s shoulder right at that moment, I would have. Ever since my death, Emma and I had scrambled around trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve getting murdered. It seemed I’d given so many people reasons to want me gone that the real mystery was why someone hadn’t done it sooner. It was a welcome change to hear something nice about me for once.

  Mrs. Mercer opened a package of shortbread cookies and placed a few on a plate. “Well, I for one think Ethan has been a good influence on you. Your grades have improved so much since you started seeing him, and you’ve been nicer to your sister.” She gave Emma a motherly smile. “Or maybe my little girl is just growing up.”

  Emma shifted uncomfortably. “Um, where did this tea set come from, Mom?” she asked, hoping to change th
e subject from her personality shift.

  Mrs. Mercer eyed her strangely over the silver sugar tongs. “You don’t remember? This was your great-grandma’s, the only thing she brought with her from Scotland. I’m not sure how old it is—I always got the impression that it’d been handed down well before then.”

  I suppressed a twinge of sadness—and anger. How many times had I listened to family history and felt shut out of it just because I thought I was adopted? I still didn’t understand why my grandparents didn’t feel that they could tell me that their stories were my stories, too, that I was related to the ancestors who had come over from Scotland with that tea set. It all came back to Becky. What had she done that had merited banishment so complete that I wasn’t even allowed to know my own heritage?

  Emma looked thoughtfully at the tea service, thinking the same thing I was. Wheels started turning at the back of her mind.

  She looked up. “Mom, can I ask you a question? Do you … have any regrets?”

  Mrs. Mercer looked surprised. “Regrets?”

  “You know, people you don’t talk to anymore, relationships you’ve cut off. Anything like that.” She almost winced at how transparent she sounded, but Mrs. Mercer didn’t seem to notice.

  Her grandmother looked down into her cup. “You know, things change. People change. Sometimes you have to move on from someone you care about. It can be hard, honey.” Mrs. Mercer folded and unfolded a linen napkin embroidered with a pineapple. “Sometimes you have to admit that a relationship can’t be fixed. That no matter how much you want to, you can’t trust some people.”

  Something about her words sent a little shiver up Emma’s spine. She poured more tea into her cup, a few stray leaves swirling in the hot liquid. She wished she could use them to see the future. Or even better, the past.

  Mrs. Mercer frowned. “What’s this about, sweetheart?”

  “Nothing,” Emma said, biting her lip. “I’ve just been thinking how you’ve always been there for me, no matter what. I guess it just got me wondering if I’ve ever pushed you too far.” Like Becky did, she thought, willing Mrs. Mercer to open up. Come on, Grandma, tell me how Becky crossed that line.