“She didn’t tell me any of this.”
“I would’ve thought . . . but maybe she blocked it out. That’s what Tanya always thought, because she never took any interest after . . . That’s why we raised her instead of Tanya, so it would be easier for—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I grabbed her by the arm and shook her. She seemed surprised by my touch. Was she reliving the experience of killing him? What the hell was going on?
“It was because of Serene. Todd started paying too much attention to her, even though she was only four. And it might have been fatherly, but I couldn’t take that chance, not after Aaron and . . .”
“But what’s Serene got to do with Kiki?”
She looked at me, and I could see the truth in her eyes before she spoke it. “Because she’s Kiki’s daughter. Hers and Todd’s.”
“How did she do it?” Liam asks when I’ve paused for more than a minute. He’s kept his word and let me tell it without asking any questions.
“There were all kinds of mushrooms growing in the woods, some good, some bad. She got herself put on kitchen duty and made Todd a special omelet for breakfast one morning.”
“How come the police didn’t figure it out?”
“They never called the police. They put out the word that Todd was dead and had a funeral. Covington was the one who told me.”
“The local coroner didn’t do anything?”
I shrugged. “Why would he? No one had paid any attention to the LOT for years. It was like a tacit agreement or something. Todd was probably paying them off in some way since none of us ever went to school or had our shots or whatever.”
Liam shifted next to me. “He played closer to the rules than you’d think, actually. Paid taxes, applied for and received a homeschooling permit. He knew how to keep the cops away. And everyone else.”
“If there’d only been one welfare check.”
“Yeah, I thought of that,” he says, “but my aunt and uncle begged me not to.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t want all the kids separated from their parents, which they surely would’ve been.”
“But their parents were the ones who put them in danger.”
“No guarantee that the foster system would have been any better.”
“Who were they to decide that? Or you?”
He rubs at his face. “I made a choice to respect their wishes. They didn’t want to put Aaron through an investigation, have him testify, any of it. So instead, I did what I could. I got out as many as I could.”
His voice is shaking with emotion, but I feel angry now. For having to relive that horrible day with my mother, even though I brought it up. And with Liam, for not saving enough of us.
“Did you know?” I ask. “Did you know my mother was the one who reached out to you?”
“No.”
I’m not sure I believe him, but who am I to call him out?
“How come you never told me about Kiki?” Liam asks.
“I was ashamed.”
“Why?”
“First because I left her behind. And then because it was my fault she died.”
“I hardly think . . .”
I turn on my side, my back to him. “Please don’t, Liam, okay?”
“Okay.”
I watch the shadows move across the wall, waiting for Liam’s next question.
“Where is she now?” he asks eventually.
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
“Why? You think I should turn her in?”
“No.”
“I won’t.”
“I understand.”
He slips his arm around me, and I press into him because even though he can’t keep the nightmares away, he is the one who’s come the closest to doing so.
“You can’t turn her in either,” I say.
“You don’t trust me.”
“It’s not that. She’s my mother. I have to protect her, and even though she was the worst mother in the world, she saved me. She trusted me to keep her secret, and now I’ve broken that by telling you. I’d rather you just forget that I said anything.”
Liam stays quiet for a minute, but he doesn’t roll away from me. Not yet.
“Is this what you were dreaming about earlier?” he asks.
“I’m not sure. I never remember my dreams.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“Shhh.”
“Is Serene with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“She seemed happy there. She thinks they’re her parents. My aunt and uncle thought it was better for Kiki if Serene was raised by my parents, to help her forget the connection. I guess it worked in a way. Besides, I’m not equipped to raise a kid, assuming I could even get custody. Clearly.”
Liam hugs me tighter then, and whispers in my ear, “I think you’d be a great mother.”
And that’s supposed to be so romantic, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why he said it, or maybe he actually thinks that. But I can’t be anyone’s mother. I might be able to turn my life around, like JJ imagines, but that would be a step too far.
But like so many things, I can’t say this to Liam.
Instead, I say, “Thank you,” and let him rock me gently to sleep.
Chapter 40
Unraveling
That night when I told Liam about what my mother did, and some of what happened to Kiki, that could’ve been the beginning of something between us, something more real because we’d brushed so many secrets aside. Instead, it ended up being the beginning of a wall. It’s made up of bricks of things that I’ve known for years but have only started bothering me now that my watertight compartments have broken down. Things like why Liam didn’t call Child Services, and how many things could’ve been changed and saved if he had.
Kiki would be whole and alive. Serene would never have come to be. Todd would be in jail and exposed, maybe dying, surrounded by other harmers of children, bottom-feeders all. And I could be living a normal life, could have found happiness with an ordinary guy who did ordinary things. I could have a career, never have killed Jessie, never have known Jessie at all.
I know a lot of this isn’t fair. Todd didn’t make Jessie. She was out there, already rotten, waiting for the opportunity to arise. Our paths could have crossed anyway, and maybe I would’ve made the same choices. Or maybe I would have chosen to let go, let her go, if I were happy. If the LOT were a distant memory that had lost its power to harm or shape me.
The bricks are not all of my making. Liam builds them too. I’m holding back details from him, things that happened with Jessie, things that happened to Kiki. I suspect he’s unsure of whether I’ve actually given up the search for Jessie. It seems out of character for me to have done so after my dogged pursuit. But I don’t have the energy to keep up the pretense that I’m still looking for her, even if it creates suspicion.
He is suspicious of me in general now. He’ll start to ask questions, like whether I’ve checked in with the sergeant in Jackson lately, and I’ll bite back that I’m not under investigation, and he should drop it, but I’m not sure he ever will. Not till Jessie’s found.
Another brick I help him build involves the choice I made about my mother. To let her be. To let her raise Serene. To let her and the other leftovers live in their utopia on a quiet farm in Connecticut.
And then there’s all the rest of the secrets, the biggest bricks of all.
I don’t tell him that I’ve recovered the money. Not that this is the biggest thing I’m keeping from him, but still. I made my way through the labyrinth of Jessie’s passwords and used the various passports I found to identify her two substantial offshore bank accounts and liquidate them. I’m not a thief, though, so when I unlocked the final key, I used some more tricks I learned from Liam and his cohorts along the way and found a way to send JJ her portion securely, and set up a trust for Serene. I kept
my promise to Five and set up a real photography prize in her name in Jackson supplied by an anonymous donation, then salted away the rest of it offshore for myself, for a rainy day.
I don’t tell Liam that I spend my mornings in the bathroom reading the Jackson paper online, looking for signs that Jessie’s popped up. As a result, that town is so alive in my mind that I feel like I know many of the locals, those who show up in the paper on a regular basis, anyway. Sometimes I forget, and I start telling Liam a story I read that day, and he gets this puzzled expression on his face. I tell him it’s my way of keeping track of the investigation, setting up a Google Alert for stories that mention the town, but like so many things I say to him now, I’m not sure he believes me.
There are so many secrets, it’s hard to keep track.
In the end I think this is what breaks us. Opening up to him enough for him to see, or sense, the vast ocean of things I’ve kept to myself was a mistake. People always say that it’s bad to keep secrets, that they corrode trust. But I don’t think that’s true. It’s knowing there are secrets that you’ll never have access to that rubs away at us. I can’t tell him everything about me, but what I have said is too much.
It doesn’t happen all at once, us falling apart. That would be easier. There isn’t any dramatic fight; we could get past that, forgive each other, and make up with sex. Instead, one night, needing more sleep than I can get with Liam watching over me, I don’t go to his place. I don’t answer his texts. I just fall into the best sleep I’ve had in months in my own bed.
In the morning, I watch JJ’s new show on my iPad as I listen to my roommates rumble around, going through their morning routines. Then I start looking for apartments on Craigslist.
I need some space to write, I tell Liam. I found my original thesis in a box at the back of my closet. After I sent it to my old editor at FeedNews, they had to print a retraction. While it was more time in the public eye, at least this time it was positive press and got me an assignment. I mostly have to write on spec, and my articles are fact-checked to infinity, but I sell them, and it’s a foothold to getting back my career.
JJ’s right that people like a second-chance story. She’s making a comeback, too. Her first episode is about a foster house, not an orphanage exactly, but a family who takes twenty children at a time. Cooking’s a major deal in this house, so she spent a week with them, teaching the kids how to make a week’s worth of basics, then opened it up to donations. They flood in and the show goes viral. JJ’s back, winning smile firmly in place, eternal optimism achievable. She tells me to write about it, and it’s one of the first pieces I sell.
Liam visits my new apartment, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t ask me to move in with him, though, either. We work best in transience, I’ve decided. Or maybe that’s just me. I don’t know how to keep my secrets with someone I also depend on to make sure there’s toilet paper in the house and milk in the fridge.
Maybe we could have found a way. I like to think that. As the nightmares recede and I have things to do to occupy myself, I’m not thinking all day long about what JJ and I did.
As the months pass without a body being discovered.
Then I get a text.
“Something’s been bugging me since that day at the dive bar last summer,” Covington says one day in early June, almost a year to the day since I met Jessica Two. He wanted to drop by to see the new place, he’d said.
“What day at the dive bar?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even, as if I’ve forgotten all about that conversation.
“When I told you my theory about Todd last year,” Covington says. He looks tall in my tiny apartment, as if he might not fit on most of the furniture.
I go to the fridge in the alcove kitchen and grab the beer I know he wants. “That someone killed him?”
“Yeah.”
I walk into the living room and hand him the beer, keeping my hands steady. “Have you been talking to Liam?”
“What? Why?”
“Nothing. Have a seat,” I say. He sits, and I do the same on the couch across from him. They only got delivered last week, these couches, my first purchase with the money I got back from Jessie.
Covington takes a swig of his beer, then holds it awkwardly between his hands.
“What’s going on, Cov?”
“It’s been bugging me, like I said.”
“What?”
He makes eye contact briefly, then looks away. “Your reaction.”
I try to think back. We were drunk when he brought that up. I’m sure I denied knowing anything about it. Called it out for the silly thought it was.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t seem surprised.”
“I . . . What?”
“It didn’t seem like news to you.” Covington takes what I can only consider as a nervous sip of his beer, then puts it down on the table.
“What are you suggesting? That I somehow snuck back into the LOT and killed Todd?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What, Covington? Jesus.”
He glances at me again, then away. “How did Kiki die?”
I do not like the direction this is going in. “I told you, she killed herself.”
“You didn’t tell me that, actually.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. You told me she died, and that the funeral had been family only, and you said something about an accident.”
“It was an accidental overdose. That’s what I said.”
“That’s not what you said. And that’s not true.”
I look to the door. He’s between me and it, though if I move fast enough, I’d probably get out before he reacts. But there’s no point in trying to escape him. Better to sit here and learn what he knows, then make a plan.
“What business is it of yours how she died?” I ask. “Just because you shared a kiss—”
“It was more than that. I cared for her. And she cared for me.”
I shrug. “She left you and went to Ohio.”
He winces. “She needed to clear her head before we could start a real relationship.”
“Fucking Todd.”
“Yeah, him. But also, you.”
“Me?”
“You wanted her to be something she wasn’t.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m only telling you what Kiki told me.”
I swallow my pain. I need to stay focused and not get distracted.
“She killed herself, okay?” I say. “I was ashamed to tell people. It felt like my fault.”
“Why?”
“For a lot of reasons I don’t have to discuss with you.” I consider my words. “But how do you know what happened to Kiki? You been investigating me, Covington? Putting your Liam training to good use?”
“I wanted some answers.”
“What did you come here to say?”
He stands and starts to pace back and forth in the small space.
“Todd’s death was bugging me,” he says. “It got me thinking about Kiki. How I’d never known what happened to her because I’d shoved all those feelings away after I found out she was dead because that was easier. Then that stuff with that girl, that other Jessica who defrauded you, something there was bugging me, too, and I couldn’t quite place it. So, I started digging around, and, well, I ended up going to see your parents.”
“My parents?”
“In Connecticut.”
My stomach’s in knots. “You have a nice reunion?”
Covington grimaces. “Ugh, no. It was awful seeing them all together. But Kiki’s mom was nice to me. She showed me some pictures she had of Kiki, and that’s when I noticed it.”
“What?”
“Her name on the front of the photograph album. Her real name.”
“Jessica Katherine Williams,” I say.
He nods. “And her birthday.”
&nb
sp; “The same day as me.”
“The same. I’d forgotten about that. Kiki mentioned it once, but I never thought about the two of you having the same name because I’d always known her as Kiki. Even in the LOT.”
“We called her that since she was two. Before you were born.”
“Her mother said. But not why they gave you the same name.”
“It was a kind of joke between them, I think. The two families. That’s what my mother told me. Because it was funny that two cousins were born on the same day in the same place, so why not take it a step further. Jessica was Todd’s mother’s name.”
“That’s weird.”
“They were weird, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Anyway, the more I thought about it,” Covington says, “the more it seemed like too many coincidences. Too many Jessicas.” He picks up his beer and drains it. “And then your mother told me what she did.”
“What?”
What the actual fuck? What is wrong with her?
“She told me what she did to Todd,” Covington says. “And why.”
“She told you about Serene?”
He nods. “I think it was because she could tell that I cared about Kiki. But I’m not sure. She seems a bit off.”
“She is, obviously. Your parents too. Because they’re living there also, right?” I say. “That’s how you knew how to find my parents?”
“They can’t seem to quit one another.”
“Apparently. You never suspected about Serene?”
He shakes his head. “After you left, there was this strange three months or so where we were all forced to live in the Gathering Place together, but then all the kids were sent back up the hill, including me and the few others who’d been allowed to stay with their parents. I didn’t see my parents for months, only Todd and the guardians. When we were allowed to come back down the next summer, Kiki was living in the house she built with Sarah. Only we were supposed to call them Tori and Thalia. And your parents had Serene. They told us that she was your mom’s kid.”
“She was too old to have a kid.”
“I know that now, but I was only fourteen. I didn’t understand that kind of stuff.” He looks at me. “Did you know?”
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