Every Single Lie

by Rachel Vincent

  “Please sit down.”

  I sink onto the bar stool and let my backpack slide down my arm to thunk on the floor. “Don’t you need a warrant?” I demand, pinning Doug with an angry glare.

  “Seriously?” He glances from me to my mother.

  “No, we don’t need a warrant.” My mom sinks onto the center bar stool and twists to face me. “Penn’s still underage, and I’ve given my permission for the test.”

  “Why?”

  She exhales slowly.

  “Because we have to identify that baby,” Doug says. “The whole department is under enormous pressure right now.”

  “Reporters have been calling all week,” my mom adds. “Several of them want to do features on our ‘small-town tragedy.’ ”

  “The governor called this morning,” Doug continues. “I never thought I’d get to talk to the governor, but I answered the phone, and he just started yelling. He’s pissed about the negative news coverage, and he said, and I quote, ‘I want a happy ending for this shit storm in one week, goddamn it.’ ”

  Doug turns to my mother, who suddenly resembles a punctured balloon, the air rushing out all at once.

  “What kind of happy ending does he expect to get at the end of a story about a dead baby?”

  “Doug, will you give us a minute?” My mom stares at her hands as she picks at a hangnail.

  “Sure. I’ll just wait outside.”

  Because there’s no other way to give us privacy without going into one of the bedrooms. But instead of heading for the front porch, he goes out the kitchen door into the backyard.

  “Mom? Why are you doing this?”

  She finally looks up from her hands, and the pain staring out at me from her eyes feels eerily familiar. It’s not the look she got when my screams woke her up, and we waited for an ambulance we already knew that my dad wasn’t going to need. It isn’t the clenched-jaw, hold-it-in pain she breathed through for three straight days while we planned, then endured, the funeral. And it isn’t the weary, almost impatient ache that flickers behind her eyes when someone we haven’t seen in a while hears about my dad and cracks her heart open all over again by offering belated sympathy.

  This is my mother’s middle-of-the-night pain. Her two a.m.-glass-of-wine pain. Her ugly-crying-because-she-thinks-no-one-else-is-awake pain. The kind that wrings her out like a wet rag and leaves her limp in her bed, clutching my father’s pillow.

  This is the kind of pain that will kill her if she can’t figure out how to let it go.

  I don’t understand what’s happening right now, and I’m not sure I want to.

  “I have to know, Beck,” she says at last. “Not for Chief Stoddard. Not for the press. And not for the goddamn governor. If that baby was my granddaughter, I have to know.”

  Now I understand. She wasn’t just grasping at straws when she convinced Jake’s mother to let him take the paternity test by playing the granddaughter card. My mother was asking Grace Mercer to imagine a possibility that she has obviously been steeling herself for from the moment she asked me if Lullaby Doe was my baby. Only this time, Penn’s on the hot seat.

  But he shouldn’t be.

  “She isn’t, Mom.” I take her hands, because she’s picked that hangnail until it’s bleeding. “She wasn’t Penn’s baby, and she wasn’t your granddaughter. I’ll get him to send me that picture. You’ll see. There’s no way Daniela was—”

  “Beckett.” She reclaims her hands. “This isn’t about Daniela. The baby could be Penn’s even if it wasn’t hers.”

  I frown, trying to figure out what dots she’s connecting. “I don’t . . . ?”

  “You found that baby in Jake’s duffel bag. But she was wrapped up in Penn’s shirt. It’s ripped in the armpit, just like you said. On the left side.”

  “Wait. You think I was right? That Jake left his bag here, and Penn used it? Like . . . ​he left that torn shirt in it?” I’ve never wanted to be wrong so badly in my life.

  “Maybe. I think there’s a possibility that your brother used that bag, and that he left it at her house, whoever she is. But we won’t know for sure until we get the paternity test results.”

  “This is crazy. Last night you basically told me to hang up my magnifying glass and step away from the Sherlock Holmes novels because I was a horrible detective.”

  “I didn’t want it to be true, Beckett. I still don’t. And I certainly didn’t want you jumping to unfounded conclusions. But then I checked the shirt out of evidence today and I saw that rip again. Right after that, the governor scared the crap out of Doug, and Chief Stoddard basically told us to test every kid who bought one of those shirts until we find a familial match. Since there was no crime, we can’t get a warrant, so we’d need voluntary samples or parental permission. And if I’m going to put all those other parents through this, I kind of have to start here at home. Especially if it’s really Penn’s shirt.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t mean you have to spring a DNA test on him. You could just show him the shirt. Or ask him if he got some other girl pregnant.”

  My mother gives me an odd look.

  “You think he’ll lie.”

  “No,” she insists. “But I feel obligated to verify whatever he tells me. With the test.”

  I have no idea what to say to that. And it turns out I don’t need to say anything, because I can hear Penn’s truck—my dad’s truck—pulling into the driveway. I can see the blur of motion through the thin front curtains that tells me he’s opening his door. That he’s about to walk into the shock of his life.

  At least, I hope it comes as a shock.

  Both truck doors slam, and my mother flinches. “I was hoping you and Landry wouldn’t be home for this.” She rubs her palms on her slacks, then she stands, and Detective Bergen is back with us. My mother has left the building.

  And for the first time in my life, I realize that she isn’t just putting on her professional face when she does that. She’s putting on a costume. Like maybe it’s easier, in moments like these, to pretend the mother half of her doesn’t exist.

  I wonder what would happen if she were forced to be both at once, the same way I used to wonder what would happen if you pressed both the brake and the gas pedal at once. Because those are opposites, right? A car can’t go faster and stop in the same instant. Just like Julie Bergen can’t be both police detective and mother at the same time.

  I think I’m about to witness the implosion of the entire planet.

  Landry comes in first, and she looks so damn excited to see Mom standing in the kitchen. Her joy hits me like a rock slamming into my windshield on the highway. I feel the initial blow with enough force to make me flinch. Then come the cracks splintering outward, webbing across my poor shattered heart from an impact my sister hasn’t even felt yet.

  Penn comes in right behind her, and Mom doesn’t even look at Landry. I don’t think she can, in this moment. I don’t think she’s capable of thinking about anything else in the world until she’s performed this dreadful duty.

  “Hey, Mom! You’re home early,” Landry says with a frown, glancing from Mom to me. She knows something’s wrong.

  She looks scared.

  Penn elbows Landry out of the way when she lingers in the doorway.

  The back door creaks open behind me just as the front door swings shut behind Penn, and Doug’s boots thunk on the kitchen linoleum.

  Finally, Penn interjects. “What’s going on?”

  “Landry, why don’t you go next door and—” In that moment, I can’t think of a single reasonable excuse for my sister to go see her best friend, when on any other day, she would much rather have been at Norah’s house than at ours. “Maybe you and Norah could—”

  “I’m staying.” Landry drops her backpack on the coffee table and sinks onto the couch.

  “Mom?” Penn looks past her, and I turn to see that Doug’s holding the sealed cheek swab.

  “Sorry, man,” he says.

  My brother’s jaw tight
ens as his bag slides to the ground. Ironically, it’s his Clifford Cougars duffel.

  “It’s just a swab,” my mother assures him.

  “Fine. But you have to say it,” he spits. I’ve never seen Penn like this. He’s mad. Really mad. He’s punishing her. And she’s going to let him. “You have to tell us all what’s about to happen, Detective Bergen.”

  My mother exhales. “Penn, I’ve given permission for Officer Chalmers to take a DNA sample from the inside of your cheek.” I can see her fall into the familiar words, into the official process, as if it’s part of her costume. As if it makes sense, in a way none of the rest of this possibly could. “This sample will be used to check for a familial match to the remains found last week in the locker room of Clifford High School. To test for paternity.”

  Landry sucks in a breath. Her gaze flicks from face to face in sharp, shocked little motions.

  “Let’s do this, then.” Penn glares at me while he stomps across the living room carpet toward the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry!” I mouth as he passes me, but his glare only hardens.

  This is all my fault.

  TWELVE

  “Hey, what kind of pizza do you want?” I ask as I lean around the doorway into Landry’s room. She’s on her stomach on her bed, propped on both elbows with an algebra textbook in front of her. But she hasn’t even opened it yet. She’s on her phone.

  “Caramelized pears, gorgonzola cheese, and prosciutto.”

  I roll my eyes at her. “Little Caesars pretty much has pepperoni and sausage. Bacon, if you call ahead.”

  “Well, you weren’t very specific about where you were going.”

  I step into her room and lean against the wall, which puts me close enough to reach out and touch her. Landry’s room used to be the laundry room, which means there’s just enough space for a twin bed, a nightstand made of repurposed wooden crates, and her narrow chest of drawers. No closet.

  She and I shared a room until three years ago, when my mom decided every thirteen-year-old—me, at the time—should have a little space of her own. So my dad converted the laundry room into a bedroom for Landry and moved her into it. She was thrilled, even though her bed sits too close to the floor, because it used to be the top half of our set of bunk beds.

  Dad was so pleased with his own work, and with how much she loved it, that he bought a metal sign that said “Laundry Room” and painted an artful slash through the letter U, then he added an apostrophe-S. Turning “Laundry Room” into “Landry’s Room.” He strung a pink ribbon through holes punched in the top corners and hung it from a nail on her door.

  That sign still hangs there today, and it rattles against the wood anytime she opens or closes her door.

  Our washer and dryer now stand in one corner of the kitchen.

  “You know there’s no place near here that serves gor . . . ​ gouda cheese—”

  “Gorgonzola.”

  “—on pizza, Lan.”

  In fact, the only place to get any pizza in Clifford is the Pizza Hut satellite location, inside the gas station on the highway access road. I’m going to have to drive to Daley just to get Little Caesars, which I volunteered to do because after watching Penn get his cheek swabbed by a cop, our little sister retreated to her room and declared tonight one of her two “nights off.” Not that I can blame her.

  “So again . . . Pepperoni or sausage?”

  “Like it matters.” She rolls onto her back, scrolling through something on her phone, using her algebra book as the world’s least comfortable pillow.

  “Landry. What’s wrong with you? Pick a damn protein.” When she doesn’t answer, I lean forward and snatch her phone.

  “Hey!”

  “You can have it back when you—” I glance at the screen, and a sick feeling churns in my stomach. She’s on a third-party app that lets people who don’t have Twitter accounts read through someone’s feed.

  Landry’s reading my @ replies. Post after post calling me everything from a #babykiller to a hell-bound whore. No wonder she looks like she’s ready to hide from the entire world.

  “Why are you looking at this?” I swipe the screen closed. I wish I knew how to block it.

  “Some of those assholes are threatening to kill you, Beckett.”

  “Don’t curse.”

  “You do.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “I’m not a little kid. And anyway, age is just a number.”

  My long, slow exhalation reminds me way too much of our mother. “Yes. It’s a number that quantifies an accumulation of experience and wisdom. Besides, as you pointed out, people online are threatening to kill me, and that comes with a ‘get out of jail free’ card, for profanity.”

  Mom seems to agree. She hasn’t told me to watch my mouth even once since the Crimson Cryer accused me of abandoning my dead baby on the locker room floor.

  “You are still living the life of a normal eighth grader. So lay off the language.”

  Landry rolls her eyes. “Fine. Some of those jerks are threatening to kill you.”

  “Yes, but they’re all bark and no bite.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Mom’s monitoring the threats and reporting them to the FBI. There’s been nothing credible so far.”

  “So far?”

  “Nothing at all. And there won’t be.”

  “Again, how do you know?”

  “I know because it’s a lot easier to say something anonymously online than it is to follow through with it. That’s true for everything from pledging to call your congressman to threatening to kill innocent sixteen-year-olds you’ve never even met.” I give her a casual shrug and hope she’s buying it. “Fortunately, the American public is really lazy.”

  She spins around to lean on her pillow, which is propped against the wall at the head of her bed. “Why does Mom think Penn is that baby’s father?”

  Her swift subject change leaves me reeling for a second. “It’s not that she actually thinks that.” I sink onto the edge of Landry’s narrow bed and hand her phone back. “She’s trying to officially rule him out.”

  “But why would she need to do that?”

  Sometimes I forget how smart my sister is. When she’s in the kitchen, I swear she’s thirteen going on thirty. Large and in charge, and inspiringly confident. But now . . .

  Thirteen has never looked so young.

  “That wasn’t his bag,” she says. “The one in the picture. It can’t be, because he was carrying his bag today.”

  “You saw the picture?”

  She shrugs. “It’s all over the internet. That’s all anyone’s talking about at school.”

  Of course it is. “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this, but no, the bag was actually Jake’s. Which is why he took a paternity test a couple of days ago.”

  Her eyes widen, and I hold up one “shhh” finger before she can start firing questions at me.

  “It was negative. So now they’re testing Penn, because they found one of his shirts in that bag.”

  No need for her to know that Penn’s Titans shirt was little Lullaby Doe’s first and only outfit. The entire extent of the poor thing’s wardrobe.

  “Penn’s really mad,” Landry says.

  “Yeah. I can’t blame him. He wants Mom to believe him without needing a test for proof.” The fact that I’m echoing what Jake told me has not escaped my attention. “But it’s not that simple. The police are not in the business of just believing people.”

  “Is there something they can do about the threats?” Landry holds up her phone, which helps me follow the derailment in her train of thought. “Something other than just monitoring and reporting them?”

  “I’m sure Mom’s doing everything she can. And I don’t want you to worry about any of that. The police have it under control, and now that they know the baby died of natural causes—”

  “As opposed to being killed by her own mother?” Her big brown eyes look wide and haunted. Which is exactly why peop
le try to shield kids from stuff like this.

  “Well, I don’t think they actually thought that. But again, they had to rule it out. Which they’ve done now. So I really think things are about to calm down and go back to normal. Speaking of which . . .” I stand and back toward her door, careful to keep an easy smile on my face. Battling horror and sadness with a fanatically casual affectation. “What do you want on your pizza?”

  Finally Landry gives me a small smile. “I’ll take pepperoni.”

  Down the hall, I start to knock on Penn’s door, to ask if he wants to drive to Daley with me, but my hand freezes with my knuckles an inch from the wood when I hear my mother’s voice.

  “I’m sorry, Penn,” she says, and I spin away from the door to flatten my back against the wall. I shouldn’t listen. But I’m going to. “I didn’t intend to spring it on you in front of everyone. I thought Beckett was picking up Landry, and we could have the test done before they got home.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Penn’s probably sitting with his back to her. Shutting her out. He does that when he’s mad. Or upset. “Secrets have never served this family well anyway.”

  “So, Beckett seems pretty sure the baby couldn’t have been Daniela’s.”

  “You want to see the picture too?” Penn demands, and there’s an edge in his voice now. Not sharp like a knife, but rough like a rock. An edge that will grind you into nothing. “You want to see the picture of my girlfriend in her underwear? Because I’m sure she’d be fine with me showing that to my whole damn family.”

  “No, I don’t want to see it. But I do have to ask . . . ​is there any chance that you could have fathered a baby with someone other than Daniela?”

  I expect Penn to hit the roof. To start shouting at Mom for doubting his honor. For accusing him of cheating on his girlfriend.

  Instead, silence echoes from beyond the door to my brother’s room. Then his bedsprings creak, and I lean closer to the door so I can hear better. Because I think he’s just whispered the word “yes.”