I catch Jake’s mother’s gaze and make myself hold it. “Mrs. Mercer, what they’re saying isn’t true. It isn’t my baby. I just found it.”
Jake’s father huffs. “These days, a rumor is enough to kill a career. A fact I’m sure your mother is well aware of.”
My mom’s eyes narrow. “Okay, I think we’re done here.”
Her voice is a blade glinting in moonlight—a razor-edged threat. I’m dying to see it draw blood, but she only blinks and puts her professional face back on.
“I’ll let you know when the test results come in.”
“Beckett,” Jake says as my mom practically hauls me toward the front door.
I twist in her grip so I can see him, but he can only shrug an apology at me, with his parents right there.
I shiver on my way down the Mercers’ driveway. My mother opens the back door of the police car and makes me ride behind the partition, like a criminal.
“Where did you park?” she asks as she slides into the front passenger’s seat.
“Around the block, on Elm.”
“What were you thinking, Beckett?” she demands as Officer Green backs the car onto the street.
“I just . . . I wanted to warn him. It’s scary for cops to show up at your house, and I thought he should have some notice.”
She glares at me in the rearview mirror. “That doesn’t excuse—”
“And I was going to apologize for assuming he was cheating on me. Not that I got a chance.”
My mother’s sigh carries the weight of the world.
“What did Mr. Mercer mean?”
“About what?” She turns to look out the window, avoiding my gaze in the mirror as Officer Green takes a right-hand turn, driving us through a puddle of light from the streetlamp.
“About the rumor he said you were aware of. What rumor was he talking about?”
“That’s not what he said. He said I was well aware that a rumor could kill a career, and he’s right. But he was talking about Jake, not me.”
Officer Green pulls to a stop next to my car, and my mom gets out to open my door.
“Why did you ask him about that shirt?” I ask as I crawl out of the back seat.
“Beckett, go home.”
“It was found with the baby, wasn’t it? Is that what she was wrapped in?”
“Straight home,” my mother says.
“Fine. Are you coming?”
“Maybe. Someone has to drive Jake’s DNA to the state lab in Memphis. Not sure yet who that’s going to be, but I’ll let you know if I draw the short straw.”
Fact-Check Rating: False.
My mother just told Grace Mercer no one would be able to take that DNA kit to the lab until tomorrow.
I get in my car and start the engine, then I watch as Officer Green pulls away, carrying my mother back to the station. She’s going back to work, and she’s lying about why. But the truth is no big mystery.
She stays gone as much as possible, because there’s nothing to do at home but remember. Because even with Penn, Landry, and me in it, our house feels empty to my mother.
I can only imagine how empty her heart must feel.
SEVEN
My father came home from Afghanistan with a cast on one leg and a prescription for Oxycontin. The cast went away eight weeks later. The Oxy stuck around.
He never talked about what happened over there. All I know is what I heard my mom tell one of her friends over a third glass of wine one night after my father went into the “hospital.”
Two years ago, my dad was a full-time firefighter and a part-time reservist in the local CE battalion—a unit of army civil engineers. He’d been to the desert six times before that last deployment to Afghanistan, twice with the reserve unit, and four times when he was on active duty before joining the reserves. Before separating from the army after ten years of service and moving us all to his hometown, when Penn and I were in elementary school and Landry was barely three years old. But this time was different.
This time, several weeks before he was due to come home, Mom got a call in the middle of the night. She tried to be quiet, but I heard her crying, so I woke up Penn, and we went into her room just as she was hanging up the phone. She said Dad had broken his leg in three places. She said they’d flown him to a base in Germany, and that he had just come out of surgery.
She said that he would still get to come home with his unit, and that he was going to be just fine.
I think she really believed that at the time.
A year later, I heard her tell her friend that my father’s jeep had hit a roadside bomb. The other three men who were with him died right there in what was left of their vehicle, but my father was thrown clear. He landed in the middle of the road, where his left leg was basically pulverized. It was a miracle he’d survived.
My dad’s unit came home during the second week of June. He was the third one off the bus, greeted by a crowd waving American flags in a parking lot decked out with tables full of food, strung with red, white, and blue streamers. He walked with crutches and wore a haunted smile.
He spent the next two months on the couch with Landry, watching one cooking show after the next. Planning all the elaborate meals they were going to make for us as soon as he got his cast off. As soon as he got back on his feet.
If you look closely, you can still see his imprint in the far-right couch cushion.
No one sits there anymore.
I wake up Tuesday morning to the horrible electronic bleating of the old-fashioned alarm clock my mother dug out of a box in the garage. I’ve had to use it for the past two days, since phone calls from journalists rendered my cell phone unusable. But I can’t take another hostile wake-up—not to mention the unsettling feeling of being disconnected from the world—so I turn my phone on in the bathroom while I wait for the shower to warm up.
There are three missed calls from numbers I don’t recognize. But even if they’re all from reporters, rather than the usual spam callers, that’s a significant improvement from the weekend.
My Twitter app shows more than three hundred notifications, but I resist the urge to open it. This will blow over soon. People have short attention spans, right?
After my shower, I put on a little makeup, and on the way to the kitchen, I stop when I hear my mother’s voice.
“Those vegetables were delicious,” she says. “Even cold. What did you say they were called?”
“Vegetable tian.” Landry’s sigh is accompanied by the clink of glass, then the slosh of liquid being poured. “You should have warmed it up. Fifteen minutes on three-fifty, and it would have been like new.”
“I was too tired to cook when I got home.”
“That isn’t cooking, Mom. That’s just applying heat to food.”
“Speaking of which . . .” I step into the kitchen and grab the Pop-Tarts box on the counter, surprised to see that my mom’s still in her bathrobe. She must have overslept.
“You’re going to die of accumulated preservatives,” Landry says as I drop a s’mores-flavored pastry into the toaster.
“Yeah, but at least I’ll go out smiling.”
My smile fades when I notice what she’s wearing over her favorite pair of black leggings. “That’s my sweater.”
“Oh yeah, can I borrow it? You left it in the dryer, and . . .” She shrugs.
“Well, you’re already wearing it. But ask next time.”
“I promise.” And with that, she sets her empty juice glass in the sink and disappears into the hall.
“Little thief,” I mumble as my breakfast pops up from the toaster, and I realize that though it’s too big on her, the deep red of my sweater looks pretty good with her dark hair. Just like it does with mine.
My mother refreshes her coffee and sips it, hot and black. “Those were my earrings too. I think that’s her way of holding on to us, even if she doesn’t realize that’s what she’s doing. She’s had a rough year.”
I bite into my Pop-Tart w
ithout commentary. We’ve all had a rough year. I think Landry just knows that the cheapest shopping is done in someone else’s closet.
“I got a text from June McAlister last night.” The sympathy in Mom’s voice rubs me the wrong way, like a shoe that’s a size too small. “She said she couldn’t get through to your phone.”
Because it’s been off, due to reporters and psychos calling me almost nonstop.
“She canceled for Friday night?”
My mother sighs into her mug. “Actually, she said they won’t be needing you anymore. I’m sorry, hon.”
“Great.” The McAlisters were my most consistent source of babysitting money, and they won’t be the only ones to decide their children aren’t safe with the #babykiller. “Tell me this will blow over, Mom.”
She sets her mug down and gives me the I’m Afraid I Have Some Bad News, Ma’am look. Another Julie Bergen classic. “I’m not sure it will, Beck. Not anytime soon, anyway.”
I hear some mothers lie to make their kids feel better. Mine only seems to lie to make herself feel better. Speaking of which . . .
“So, did you draw the short straw?” I ask around a bite of chocolate and marshmallow creme.
“What?”
“Do you have to take Jake’s DNA kit to Memphis? That’s a two-hour drive each way.”
“No, Robert’s going to take it.”
I chew in silence for a minute as I listen to the shower running from down the hall. Penn is finally up. “So, about that Titans shirt . . .”
My mother dumps the last of her coffee into the sink and sets her mug on the counter. “Beckett, I can’t trust you after last night. So don’t even bother.”
“That’s not fair. I had nothing to do with the Crimson Cryer leaks. And as for last night, I felt like I owed Jake a heads-up after what I accused him of. Anyway, Officer Green said you don’t even know yet that a crime has been committed, so—”
“Until we know that baby wasn’t killed, we have to run this investigation on the assumption that she was, because by the time we get the results from the coroner, it’ll be too late to go back and preserve evidence. But regardless of all of that, you can’t go tip off a suspect that he’s about to be served with a warrant!”
“You told Jake’s parents that he isn’t a suspect.”
“No, I didn’t. Of course he’s a suspect, Beckett! The baby was found in his bag, and that’s the best lead we have so far.”
“But it isn’t the only one. You also have the shirt and the Crimson Cryer Twitter account.”
“That account is a nuisance, not a lead. We have no reason to believe the account holder knows anything more than we do about that poor baby. In fact, all its information seems to be coming directly from our investigation.”
“But the shirt?”
“I’m not going to discuss this with you.” My mother heads for the arched doorway into the hall. “I’m going to be late.”
“Wait, just one more question. Unrelated to the investigation.”
She turns back to me with her arms crossed over her robe. “Quickly.”
“What’s going to happen to the baby if they can’t find her next of kin? If no one claims her body?”
My mother sighs. “There’s a lot of paperwork, a public notice, and a ninety-six-hour hold after the body is released by the coroner, while we wait for relatives to come forward. But eventually, because the expense lies with Daley County, unclaimed remains will be cremated, which is the most cost-effective way to handle the situation.”
“What will happen to the ashes?”
“The state requires that they be buried. Daley County has a paupers’ lot.”
“That’s a cemetery?”
“Of sorts. The plots are very small, because ashes don’t take up much space. There are no headstones, and no real funerals. Just a legally mandated final resting place.”
Ouch.
“So, they’re just going to incinerate her and dump her in an unmarked hole in the ground? No one will be able to visit her, even if the mom eventually comes forward to identify her?”
My mother exhales slowly. “Some stories don’t have happy endings, Beckett.”
I know that. And I know she’s not just talking about Lullaby Doe.
But I also know that sometimes if you want a happy ending, you have to pick up the pen and write it yourself.
Before she left for work, Mom gave Penn a twenty-dollar bill and three ones to reimburse him for the groceries, and she gave me a ten for gas. So on my way to school, I stop at the cheapest gas station in town and ask the clerk to put ten dollars on pump number two. I can tell from the creepy way his gaze stays glued to me that he knows who I am. It takes every bit of self-control I have to keep from shouting at him that I am not a baby killer while I spend the last of my babysitting money on two hot chocolates from the machine next to the hot dog rotisserie.
I hope he isn’t one of the Twitter psychos.
I hope he doesn’t keep a gun under the counter.
Ten minutes later, I carry both steaming cups of gas station cocoa into the math and science hall at school, where I find Amira at her locker.
“What’s this for?” she asks as she accepts one of the hot chocolates.
“It’s an outright bribe. If you drink it, you have to help,” I add as she takes the first sip.
Amira laughs. “I feel like you should have mentioned that part first.” She sets the cup on the floor of her locker and lifts a textbook over it. “What have I gotten myself into, exactly? Fair warning: I’m not breaking into anyone’s car.”
“You heard about that?” I take a sip from my own cup.
“Everyone heard about that.”
“Great.” At this point, setting the school on fire might actually improve my reputation. “But this is nothing illegal. I could just really use some moral support.”
Amira reclaims her cup and closes her locker. “What’s going on, Beckett?”
I turn toward our first class. In a school this size, there are only enough kids for one section of most AP classes, so all the “smart” juniors have most of our classes together, all day long. Starting with first period AP English Lang.
I’m relieved when she falls into step with me, because as hard as it is to walk through the school knowing that all the stares and whispers are about me, it’s even harder to walk the gauntlet alone.
“I just found out that if no one claims Lullaby Doe’s body, the county is going to have her cremated and buried in an unmarked hole in the ground.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Yeah. I think I know how we can do better than that for her, but I’ll have to get the Key Club involved, and coming from me . . .” I shrug. “I mean, I’m pretty sure our school doesn’t have a varsity firing squad, but I don’t want to be the reason they start one.”
Amira gestures for me to follow her into an alcove, out of traffic. “You think you’ll be giving the haters another opportunity to throw stones?”
“My gut says I should avoid any further association of my name with the baby everyone thinks I killed. But I can’t just let them drop her in a hole and forget about her. She deserves better than that.”
Amira nods. “So, what can I do?”
“Just come with me while I pitch my idea to Sophia Nelson. I could use the moral support.”
Sophia is the Key Club president, and I’ve seen them hanging out, a little, since Amira and I grew apart.
She smiles as she lifts her cup for another sip. “I would have done that without a bribe.”
Everyone stares when we walk into English four minutes before the late bell. Mrs. Eagleton is writing on the whiteboard, and she doesn’t seem to notice that all her students have suddenly been struck mute.
Sophia and one of her friends are leaning over Colin Trent’s desk, helping him with the homework he clearly didn’t do. She stands and starts fidgeting with the cowl neck of her pink cashmere sweater when she sees us coming. Then she suddenly bre
aks away from the pack and heads us off in the middle of the room.
Evidently we were less than subtle in our determined march straight toward her.
“Hey!” Sophia’s smile looks genuine, but the dip between her eyebrows says she’s well aware that everyone is watching us. This isn’t the kind of attention she likes to draw. “What’s up?”
I suck in a quick breath and swallow my nerves. “Have you decided yet on this year’s fundraiser for Key Club?”
“What’s this ‘emergency meeting’ about? Have we ever even had a meeting?”
Cameron Mitchell drops into a chair in the circle of desks Sophia is still arranging around Coach Killebrew’s classroom.
“Once,” she says as she shoves the last desk into place. “To elect officers. That’s how you became my vice president. Remember?”
“Oh shit, that’s right!” Cameron snorts, then he leans over for a conspiratorial fist bump with Payton Cruz.
Payton is wearing a navy Titans T-shirt just like the one Jake showed my mom last night.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper to Amira, where we’re huddled next to Coach Killebrew’s Keurig. “You don’t need me for this, and no one has to know that the idea’s mine.”
“How would it look if you were a no-show at the fundraiser for Lullaby Doe?” Amira whispers.
“Like I’m guilty.”
“Well, you aren’t. So stop letting them treat you like you are.” With that, she tugs me toward a chair at the back of the circle.
“Hurry up, guys!” Sophia calls to the last few stragglers as they come through the door. “Coach Killebrew said we could have her classroom during tutorial, but that’s only fifteen minutes, and she won’t give us late passes. So we need to get started.”
Chair legs squeal against the floor as a dozen Key Club members find seats, and I can feel their gazes land on me. The only truly friendly face in this room belongs to Amira, who takes the seat to my left.
The seat to my right stays empty.
“What’s this about?” Payton calls out as Sophia makes her way to the center of the circle. “I’ve got shit to do.”
Every Single Lie Page 8
