The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  When she was seven and Trevor was twelve, they’d made wishes under their backyard oak tree. Even now she could remember the warmth of the grass and the bumpy tree roots and the sun on her bare arms as they’d sat outside on a strangely warm March day, trying to find four-leaf clovers.

  “Found one!” she crowed. “And I wish—”

  “Don’t say it out loud!” Trevor stood, looking down at her, with his too-long hair and his dopey Star Wars T-shirt. “You can’t say your wish out loud, midget.”

  “Can too,” she insisted. “And I’m not a midget. I wish we could stay here forever, just you and me. Be like, you know, in Narnia. And you could protect me, be my big brother forever.”

  “You’re so weird,” he said. “Okay, then, you’re a smidgen. That’s smaller than a midget. And there’s no Narnia. That’s a dumb wish.”

  “Is not!” She’d jumped to her feet, standing her ground. “I swear on this clover we—”

  “You can’t swear on a stupid clover, smidgen.”

  She pouted, almost cried, because you could, and then Trevor had found a clover too.

  “Found one!” he said, holding it up. Then he’d shaken his head in what she now recognized as affection. “I’m your big brother anyway, Smidge, you don’t have to wish that.”

  He’d teased her forever, after that, and did all the dumb stuff like short-sheeting her bed, and pretending he didn’t like her in front of his cool friends, which drove her crazy, and even telling her she was adopted since she came so late, which was not true, totally not, and her parents had reassured her that it was just a brother thing and to ignore it. And she did, because Trev loved her, he truly did, and she was his Smidge, and now he was getting married to Lacey, who was so full of herself Brooke wondered why she didn’t spill out over the edges.

  But somehow Trevor loved her, whatever that meant, and he personally had asked Brooke to be a bridesmaid.

  Not Lacey. Who she tried to stay away from as much as humanly possible. Easy enough because it seemed like all Lacey did was put on makeup and fuss with her hair and change clothes. At least Brooke wouldn’t really have to deal with her much. She and Trevor were moving to Washington, D.C., right after the wedding. He’d told her that too.

  She slid the envelope out from between the pages of The Lovely Bones, the book’s cover bent and battered from its travels in her backpack, and looked at the letter from Trevor again. She knew the letter by heart, but seeing his words, all misspelled because he was probably typing so fast, made her hear his voice, talking to her.

  Smidgen, it said. She heard him saying that, especially. You are such a rock star, and I know you think I’m nuts for getting married, but someday you’ll understand what love feels like. Lacey is great, and you two will be great together, and you know I’m not much for words, but you’re terrific. Even for a kid. Even for a dumb sister. Kidding! Ha ha.

  So anyway, I’m not leaving you, even though we have to move to D.C. Don’t tell Lacey, but I’d rather stay home with you all, but marriage is compromise. I learned that, too. And we’ll see you, I know we will, and now, Smidgeroo, one big favor.

  And then he’d asked her to be a bridesmaid and do whatever they do, I know, it’s girl stuff, and you’re not much for that, but I promise it’ll be great.

  She was doing this for Trevor, and Trevor only. And she would save this letter forever.

  Lacey was preening in front of the big mirror now, acting all happy and bridey. Brooke knew, or maybe she just wanted to know, that Lacey was a bitch. She tucked the letter away. But maybe it was simply that Lacey had everything, like her brother and a future. And Brooke had only sadness. And hopelessness.

  No. She had plans. She closed her book, staring at the cover, a book about a girl who died, and then watched how her family dealt with it. Now Brooke had to deal.

  She’d have to live at home until college. No way out of that. Then she’d go to school somewhere far away, and untangle herself from her hideous murdering lying parents as soon as she could.

  She’d seen on TV, from an old Star Trek from before she was born, where Spock told Captain Kirk a Klingon proverb that said “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” She’d asked her dad what it meant, and he’d told her to look it up. Now she understood. It meant she didn’t have to hurry. In fact, it was better if she didn’t hurry.

  She watched the performance in front of her: silly Lacey, all googly and puffy in that ridiculous dress. Her mother having another pink drink and pretending it wasn’t vodka.

  Brooke was sad, a little, that her brother had chosen this life. To live like their parents lived, and to be like they’d wanted her to be too. But she would never be that. Not for real.

  When she was a little girl, she’d trusted them. Even the times when she didn’t want to do what they told her, she secretly believed they were right. They had cared for her and were trying to do what was best for her. But this time, what they’d done wasn’t best. What they’d done was worst. She thought about what happened after her own mother gave her those disgusting horrible murder pills. Horribly horribly worst.

  But they’d also done this to themselves. And they’d be sorry.

  As soon as Brooke could make sorry happen. And she was patient.

  CHAPTER 23

  ELLIE

  Meg stood in Ellie’s office doorway, wearing a slouchy beige cardigan and looking like a guilty schoolgirl. Even her ponytail seemed to droop.

  “Ellie?” Meg began. “So you know that interview with Abigail we did last Thursday?”

  “What about it?” Ellie tried to read Meg’s face. “Is something wrong?”

  “Oh. Hang on.” In one quick motion, Meg put her phone to her ear and turned away.

  Ellie rolled her eyes and grabbed her coat, eager to head home. It had been a long Monday. Nothing new in her Pharminex calls, nothing new from any law firms, no government filings. Nothing from Gabe. She’d called the Medical Science Association, curious about tickets for the Vanderwald gala. Whoever they’d transferred her to had been haughty and supercilious.

  “Of course,” the voice gushed. “Are you interested in purchasing tickets for your entire party? It should be indicated on your invitation, of course. It’s invitation only. Of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” Ellie’d made a gagging face as she talked, grateful that this person couldn’t see her. “But I seem to have misplaced it. A whole table is—forgive me, remind me again?”

  “Fifty,” the man said.

  Thousand, Ellie thought. “Lovely,” she said. “Let me check with my husband, and we’ll get back to you. I assume the tables are being snapped up.”

  “It’s simply marvelous.” The voice had apparently been reassured by Ellie’s nonchalance about the price of entry. “Such a paragon. We are so thrilled Winton Vanderwald will be here, and his family too. And of course every penny goes for the Trevor scholarship, such an untimely tragedy.”

  “His family?” Ellie had said. “Is coming?”

  “So we’re told.” The voice went cagey, as if divulging a secret. “It’s all quite hush-hush. But I assume his family would join him. They must be so proud of him.”

  “Of course,” was all Ellie could think of to say.

  Now Meg was back at the door. She hadn’t shouldered her way into Ellie’s office as she usually did, but seemed to be hanging back. “So the interview with—”

  “Abigail, right.” Ellie reached down to grab her tote bag from under her desk. “When can we watch it?”

  “Um. It was great, it really was, Ellie, and you did such a fabulous job getting her to tell her story, but—”

  “Meg?” Warning bells clanged in Ellie’s head again. “But what?”

  “There might be a problem with it.”

  Ellie couldn’t decide whether to feel sorry for Meg or to kill her. “Problem?”

  Meg chewed at her bottom lip. “I know, I know. And I did check it right after we taped. But it’s like … gone.”

 
“Gone.” Ellie nodded, slowly, replaying how Meg had taped it. “You used two phones, didn’t you? One of them had to work. And remember, Abigail’s in silhouette, so it’s only about the audio. There must be some way to get that. If you didn’t delete it.”

  “No, truly, I didn’t. And they’re working on it,” Meg said. “A transmission glitch in the file transfer. Something like that.”

  Ellie tried to understand that. “A what?”

  “I’m sorry.” Meg shook her head.

  “Well, we’ll have to do it again,” Ellie said. “Tell her—”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I can’t tell her anything.” Meg pressed her lips together, then went on. “She won’t answer my calls. I’m worried she’s avoiding me.”

  Meg’s phone buzzed again, and Ellie saw the woman’s face brighten.

  “Oh. Yay. Maybe this is her. She. Anyway. Let me go see.” She clicked on the phone. “This is Meg. Yes, I’ll hold.” She covered the microphone. “Are you on the way home?” she whispered. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Grocery,” Ellie said, thinking out loud. “Blinker’s down to her last can. I’d never hear the end of it.” She dug into her pockets, relieved to find both gloves. “Good luck.”

  But Meg was already back on her cell, and walking away.

  By the time Ellie got home, grocery bags in hand, the last of the struggling daylight was long gone, and she was as hungry as Blinker must be. When she’d first found the kitten, curled up in a tiny ball under a boxwood hedge, she had lured it out with an open can of tuna cat food. Scrawny and pitiful, her white fur spackled with sandy dust, the little cat hadn’t made one sound, not one peep, just blinked at Ellie as she crept, tentative and needy, tail twitching, toward the tuna. After the puff of scraggly white had scarfed up a few bites, Ellie could hear the rumble of a contented purr, and knew it was no use resisting. She’d scooped her up, and when the kitten blinked at her again, blissed out, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Now, three years later, Blinker still craved tuna, even though Ellie still hated the smell of it. But cats were easier to please than people. Cats told the truth.

  She unclicked the front door and took the stairs to the third floor. The moment her foot hit the final step, Meg’s door opened. Did the woman have super-hearing?

  “Ellie,” Meg whispered. She stepped into the hallway, Blinker in her arms.

  “Why do you have the cat?” Ellie was completely confused. She looked at her own apartment door. It was ajar. “How’d—”

  “I don’t know,” Meg said. “When I got home, two seconds ago, the door was like that. I didn’t touch it. Blinker was out in the hall, wandering around, meowing. So I grabbed her and brought her inside. I knew you weren’t home, and I tried to call you, but I guess the call didn’t go through. Did you leave the door open?”

  “I never got a—” But the phone call wasn’t the point. Ellie set down the bags, then reached out, took Blinker, held her against her chest. “Why is my door open?”

  “Well, like I said, I figured you left it open, but I didn’t want to go in, you know? I called the—”

  “We need to call the police,” Ellie said.

  “That’s what I’m saying, I already did, in case, I mean, it’s so incredibly scary, and the police are—”

  Inside Meg’s lemon-scented entryway, which seemed to be a mirror image of her own, the front door intercom buzzed.

  “This must be them,” Meg said. “Finally.”

  “You didn’t see anyone?” Ellie kept thinking about this. Meg and her parabolic hearing. She’d heard Ellie arrive, so why not the … but maybe Meg hadn’t been home when the intruder arrived. They must have opened the main front door too.

  “Third floor,” Meg said into the intercom.

  Ellie ached to go into her own place but knew that was the wrong thing to do. If anyone had been there … or was still there… Her brain started a list of possibilities. And those were only the people she knew of.

  Fast-moving footsteps on the stairway, and then two uniformed Boston police officers—navy twill, billed caps, squared shoulders, one with a dark chignon and one with a darker mustache, each with a hand poised over a holstered weapon—appeared in the hallway, a blue blockade.

  “In there, that door,” Meg said, pointing. “When I called nine-one-one I said—”

  “It was like that when you got home?” The man’s black plastic nametag said Samuel Adomako. “When was that?”

  “Yes, like that, maybe five minutes ago. The cat was out in the hall. And I got the cat and went into my place.” She pointed at her front door. “I listened, but I didn’t hear anything. Or see anyone. Do you think anyone’s still inside? I mean, my apartment was fine when I got here, all locked up. Unless you think—what if they—”

  “It’s my apartment, officers,” Ellie said. “That one. With the open door.”

  “Could you have left it open, ma’am?” The chignon was edging toward the door. Carolann Phillips, her name tag read.

  “No, definitely not.” Ellie was certain of that.

  “And I called her too, right away,” Meg said. “I was so worried about the stuff she has inside. She just moved here and—I’m Meg. Weest. This is Ellie Berensen. It’s her apartment. Are you going inside? What should we do?”

  “Once inside, is there another way out?” Officer Adomako asked.

  “No. Except for the fire escape,” Ellie said, staring at her door. “Back door downstairs, though, yeah.” The reality washed over her. Someone had been inside. Someone had been inside while she was gone, and if it was—well, she almost wished they’d taken her pitiful jewelry, or the cash she’d stashed in the bookcase. Anything to make it a run-of-the-mill burglary. Anything to make it not personal. But they’d chosen her place, not Meg’s.

  “Can you both wait inside your apartment, ma’am?” Adomako cocked his head toward Meg’s 3-B. “I assume the super has a key?”

  “Sam?” Phillips took the two steps toward Ellie’s door. “We going in?”

  Ellie stationed herself behind Meg’s door, listening for sounds of whatever would happen. Yelling, or commotion, or an arrest. Blinker, uncharacteristically calm, purred in her arms. Meg hovered behind them.

  A knock at the door made them all flinch.

  “Ma’am? Ms. Berensen? It’s Officer Phillips.”

  Ellie yanked open the door, still clutching Blinker, seeing the brown grocery bags she’d left in the hall. The two officers stood in the hallway. Ellie’s apartment door was closed.

  “And?” She looked at Adomako, then Phillips, assessing their expressions. “What?”

  “Nothing seems to be out of place. That we can see, at least,” Adomako said. “Your TV and computer were undisturbed and your medicine cabinet appears untouched. Drawers all uniformly closed, kitchen cabinets too. Nothing seems in disarray. Window’s not touched, far as we can see. No activity on the fire escape.”

  “Really?” Ellie put a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. Blinker had curled against Ellie’s shoulder, purring.

  “Is there anyone you might suspect of breaking in?” Adomako seemed to be searching for a way to phrase his inquiry. “I don’t want to put words into your mouth. But anyone who might be interested in something that’s in your apartment?”

  Ellie thought about what she could say as she mentally surveyed her apartment. “Well, I just moved here three-ish weeks ago.” Should she bring up the Pharminex investigation? It seemed melodramatically far-fetched, and yet not.

  “Before we go back in, does anyone else have a key?” Phillips asked. “You see, ma’am, the apartment door was open but—”

  “You never gave me a key, Ellie,” Meg interrupted. “I mean, we talked about it, Officer, exchanging keys. But we didn’t do it. Ellie, you’re the only one with a key to your apartment, isn’t that right? Or is there someone else who goes in there sometimes?”

  “The company that owns Channel Eleven owns the building,” Ellie said. “T
hey have a super. He has a key. He lives in the basement unit.”

  “Right. We’ll talk to him.” Officer Adomako flipped open a black spiral notebook. “Though why would he leave the door open?”

  “How do you know he didn’t get into my apartment too?” Meg spread her arms in front of her, taking the floor. “Whoever it was? Officer?”

  “And how do we know whoever it was won’t come back?” Ellie tried to prevent her voice from being as shrill as Meg’s. She pictured returning to her apartment, the place where someone had been without her permission. Someone she didn’t know. Someone who might come back.

  “Honest answer? We don’t, ma’am,” Adomako said. “But since nothing seems to be disturbed…” He left the rest of the sentence hanging in the hallway gloom.

  How could they be sure nothing was taken? She would know, as soon as she checked the places the police would never know to look. Or maybe she was making too much of it.

  “Ms. Berensen, again, you didn’t leave the door open, did you?” Adomako pointed his notebook at her, then took it down, his face softening. “It could happen to anyone, ma’am. No harm, no foul. We’re happy to help.”

  “Your cat always wants to get out,” added helpful Meg. “Maybe you—”

  Ellie lifted her chin. “I did not leave the door open.”

  Meg frowned, pursed her lips, as if replaying a scene in her head. “Come to think of it, I might have seen your door kind of open when I left this morning. I thought maybe you were, like, in the basement doing laundry or something.”

  Ellie felt three pairs of eyes on her. She heard Phillips draw in a deep breath, saw her push a blond strand of hair back into custody under her cap. Exchange glances with her partner.

  “Might you have done that, ma’am?” Adomako’s tone had changed, talking to her now as if she were twelve. “Maybe you were in a hurry?”

  “No, Officer.” She used the same tone, then regretted it. He was only being thorough. She half smiled, acknowledging her flare. “Sorry, but no.”

  “You’ve got a lot on your mind, El,” Meg said. “And—”