Her grandmother took Emma’s hand across the table, her bright blue eyes wide with concern. “Are you trying to tell me something? Are you in some kind of … trouble?”
Emma shook her head. “No, of course not. Everything’s fine.”
Mrs. Mercer looked searchingly into Emma’s eyes for a long moment, then let go of Emma’s hand and picked up her teacup and saucer, the porcelain clinking softly together. When she spoke again, her voice was halting and careful, as if she were still forming the words in her head.
“Sutton, I love you and your sister very much. I would do anything for you two. I’ve been hard on you sometimes, I know that. But it’s because I look at you and I think about all the potential you have, to be successful and healthy and happy.” She paused. “A mother’s love is unconditional, Sutton. There’s nothing you could ever do to make me love you less. I promise.”
Emma looked back down to her tea. An unmistakable sadness had gripped her at her grandmother’s words. A mother’s love should be unconditional. But Mrs. Mercer clearly hadn’t felt that way about Becky. And Becky certainly hadn’t felt that way about her twins.
Emma didn’t know why Mrs. Mercer had accepted Laurel and Sutton and not Becky, but she knew she wouldn’t be getting any information from her today. She’d just have to keep digging and find her own answers.
For both our sakes.
11
A PICNIC UNDER THE STARS
When Emma arrived at the park that evening, Ethan was already at the trailhead, his telescope in its plastic case on his back. The sun was setting behind the mountains in a blaze of red light. For a moment it gave Ethan’s face an unearthly glow, as if he were illuminated from the inside.
She watched him for a long moment, adding to her mental list of Adorable Things Ethan Does: #578: Carries his telescope like it’s a guitar and he’s a rock star. In his beat-up jeans and white T-shirt, Ethan did actually have a James Dean thing going on. Emma’s heart started beating faster as she walked over to meet him.
“Hey, you.” Ethan held out his arms. Emma pressed her face against his T-shirt and inhaled his clean-laundry scent, feeling his chest muscles against her cheek. He kissed the top of her head. Her toes curled with pleasure inside her socks.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the trail. The park was alive with the soft noises of hunting bats, the chirps of crickets and cicadas, the burrowing of small animals in the sand.
Under a breeze-tousled desert willow lay a red-and-white checkered blanket and a basket filled with grapes, strawberries, a baguette, and a wedge of Brie. Ethan had even brought a bottle of sparkling cider and plastic champagne glasses. Candles in Mason jars completed the scene.
Emma gasped and squeezed Ethan’s arm. “I can’t believe you did all this,” she exclaimed.
He knelt on the blanket and patted the spot next to him. “I thought it might be nice to have an actual date. With, you know, romance and stuff.” He opened the cider and handed her a glass, pouring himself one, too.
She laughed and clinked their glasses together. “Here’s to romance, then. Though I’m not sure I’m as good at it as you are. Maybe you could give me a few pointers.”
“I think that could be arranged,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss her so lightly and sweetly she couldn’t help but want more.
“Good lesson,” she breathed when he pulled away.
They nibbled at the cheese and baguette, watching the sunset in a comfortable silence. Emma had always dreamed of a romantic night like this, but she never dared dream she’d have someone like Ethan to share it with. He was everything she could have asked for in a boyfriend, and she was finally lucky enough to get it.
“Have you thought any more about … you know, about what we should do when this is over?” Ethan asked, glancing up at her nervously. She blushed, remembering what he’d suggested—that they move in together if the Mercers wouldn’t take her in as Emma. She bit her lip, looking away from him before she answered.
“A little.” She hesitated, then went on. “I want to be with you, you know that. But moving in together is a really big step. I want to go to college. I just … I have to get my life back before I can even think about any of that.” She tried to imagine what she would even say on her college essay. Pretending to be my sister while I solved her murder and learned all our family secrets taught me the value of perseverance. I’m also a great multitasker.
“Me, too,” he said quickly. “I mean, I want to go to college, too. I’ve got early applications in. I’m just waiting to hear back.”
“Early applications?” Emma was impressed. She’d be squeaking by at the last minute with hers, if she got them in this year at all. She bit the end off a strawberry. “Where are you applying?”
He shrugged. “University of Arizona, obviously. UC Davis, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA. Stanford is my long shot. It’ll depend where I get enough financial aid.” He frowned.
“Most of those are so far away,” she said, surprised. She knew she shouldn’t be shocked—Ethan was a good student, and he’d want to go to the best school he could. But she’d never imagined him leaving Tucson. The thought twisted inside her like a knot.
“Emma,” he said firmly, seeming to read her thoughts. “Before I met you, I couldn’t wait to get out of this place. I hated this town. It’s so full of people who watch you, and judge you. But—” He swallowed, fumbling for words, and took her hand. “I’ll go anywhere you want to go. If you want to stay in Tucson, we’ll make it work here. If I do get in somewhere else and can figure out a way to afford it, we’ll have options. And of course we don’t have to move in together if you’re not ready. I just want to stay close to you, no matter what.”
Her head swam. His eyes were so earnest, so full of tenderness, that she couldn’t find her voice. Instead she leaned toward him for another lingering kiss.
“And if the case isn’t solved by then,” he breathed into her ear, “maybe we can just run away. Maybe you could just come with me to school. You could work on applications while I’m in classes, and start the next fall.”
Emma smiled, picturing herself strolling across the main green at Stanford, a to-go coffee mug in her hand. She’d sit on a bench and read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, waiting to meet Ethan after his philosophy seminar. When class let out, he’d give her a big kiss and introduce her to his professor as “my girlfriend, Emma Paxton.”
“I can keep you safe, Emma,” Ethan went on. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
His words brought her crashing down to earth. She pulled back sadly, shaking her head, the spell suddenly broken. “You know I can’t leave Tucson, not while the person who hurt my sister is still out there.” It was completely dark now, the sky bright with stars and the thin crescent of the moon. She looked out across the black expanse of the desert. “When I first started this, I was just trying to survive. But now … I feel like I know Sutton, Ethan. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like she’s here sometimes, still with me, cheering me on. I love her, and I can’t let her down. She deserves justice.” She shook her head again. “I’m either going to solve this thing, or I’m going to die trying.”
I felt my whole being fall very still. No one had ever made a promise like that for me, risked death for me. For once I was glad that Emma couldn’t hear my thoughts. I wasn’t sure I could find the words to tell her how grateful I was.
In the flickering candlelight, Emma saw that the color had drained from Ethan’s face. “Don’t talk like that,” he whispered. “I don’t want to think about anything bad happening to you. I couldn’t take it.”
His hand trembled in hers, and Emma suddenly realized that he had never really processed the danger she was in, had never really understood that a murderer was watching her. Watching them, she thought, remembering what had happened at the Old Tucson Movie Studios.
“Everything is so complicated right now,” she said soothingly. “Let’s see what happens—when the Mercers fin
d out who I am, when you get all those college acceptance letters, when I figure out if I even have time to apply. We can’t decide anything until then, anyway.”
He nodded slowly. “Are there any new leads?”
She shook her head. “No, but I need to find out more about Becky.” She tried to speak firmly, but her voice caught. “I mean, she can barely brush her hair. Could she really put together a scheme like this—kill one of us, make me take Sutton’s place, break into Charlotte’s house to strangle me, somehow trail me all over the place without my noticing? It’s complicated even if you are all there.”
Ethan spoke hesitantly. “She definitely sounds unpredictable.”
Emma could hear the doubt in his voice. She thought back to all the times Becky had surprised her. One minute Becky would be doing something totally weird like crying in the middle of the supermarket over a slightly blemished grapefruit, and the next she’d be smooth-talking a waiter at the local diner into comping their dinner, or sneaking Emma deftly into a Disney movie without buying a ticket. She could be canny sometimes, even clever. She was a survivor. She and Emma were both survivors, and that meant they could be resourceful.
But that didn’t mean she was homicidal. Did it? But then she thought of how Becky had smiled when she called Emma by her real name, with such an eerily calm expression, as though she knew she wasn’t Sutton. As if she were sure of it.
Emma rubbed her eyes, the image of that manila folder coming back to her. “Dr. Banerjee has been her doctor for years. He had a file five inches thick on her. I bet there are session notes, diagnostic tests, all sorts of things in there. If I could get my hands on that, it might answer some questions.”
When she looked back at Ethan, his spine had gone rigid and his lips were pulled in a taut, angry line. His eyes looked black in the dark, unreflective and unreadable. “Psych records are private, Emma,” he said.
She recoiled at the coldness in his voice. “I know that. Trust me, I’m not thrilled at the idea of digging into my mom’s crazy past. But it could give us the answers we’ve been looking for. And we don’t have any other leads.”
He shook his head violently. “No. It’s wrong.”
“Ethan, this could clear Becky!” she exclaimed. A flare of irritation swept through her. Did he want to believe her mother was a murderer?
“You have no right to pry into someone’s head that way!” he snapped. Neither one of them spoke for a moment. Far off in the desert, some coyotes barked.
Then he exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry. I just feel strongly about this.”
At any other time in her life, she would have agreed with him—she didn’t want to go digging through someone’s private records either, particularly not her own mother’s. But the people in Sutton’s life protected their secrets so carefully, and Emma’s safety depended on learning everything she could.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t have access to the files.” Emma sighed. “I don’t really want to look at them, Ethan. I’m just so tired of dead ends.”
He touched her cheek. “I know you’re frustrated.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Emma smiled sadly. “So much for romance, huh?”
A small smile spread across Ethan’s face. “I would say romance isn’t totally off the table,” he whispered into her ear. He nuzzled gently against her neck, kissing her throat softly. Emma shivered at his touch, coiling her fingers in his hair. The heat of their brief argument didn’t dissipate, but it softened, morphing into a different kind of energy. Her nerve endings hummed beneath his fingertips. He kissed her, a longer, deeper kiss than before. She closed her eyes and leaned into him.
All but one of the candles had flickered out. I stared at the last tiny flame, remembering the vitriolic shouting matches between Thayer and me, and the frenzied kisses that usually followed. That’s what you get for dating a brooder, sis, I thought. Lots of epic fighting, lots of hot apology make-outs.
I was glad Emma and Ethan were making up. But the question still lingered at the back of my mind: How was Emma going to find out whether Becky was innocent?
And if Ethan couldn’t help her prove it, who could?
12
MONSTERS IN THE ATTIC
After a grueling tennis practice the next day, Emma stood in the upstairs hallway, staring at the hatch to the attic. During their father-daughter—or rather, grandfather-granddaughter—dinner, Mr. Mercer had mentioned that some of Becky’s old things were still up there. Maybe something upstairs would help her piece together Becky’s relationship with her family and illuminate her motives. It was a thin lead, but it was all she had to go on.
She checked her watch. She had the house to herself—Mr. Mercer was at the hospital, Mrs. Mercer was out running errands, and Laurel was still at school for a physics project—but she wasn’t sure for how long, so she had to move fast. She tugged the cord down from the ceiling. Drake, who was keeping her company in the hall, scampered backward as dust billowed down around her. For a big lug, he was quite the coward.
Emma gripped the sides of the ladder and climbed up into the darkness. The musty smell of old paper and mothballs pervaded the attic, which was cluttered with evidence of abandoned hobbies and family history. A pair of downhill skis was propped against a yellowed dress form. Translucent boxes of red and green Christmas ornaments were neatly piled on the floor. A porcelain doll with a cracked cheek sat staring blankly from a child-sized rocking chair. At one end of the attic a few beams of sunlight fought through a small, dirty window that looked out over the backyard.
The attic gave me that same frustrating feeling of déjà vu that I got from all the objects and places of my former life. Some of the objects—a child-sized vanity with a padded pink stool, a North Face frame backpack, a pile of old board games laced with cobwebs—drew me toward them like magnets. I knew they’d meant something to me, but I couldn’t remember what.
Emma stood still for a moment, wondering where the Mercers would have stored Becky’s things. It wasn’t as if there would be a big box in the corner labeled OUR ESTRANGED SECRET DAUGHTER’S STUFF. But she knew that Mr. Mercer had been up here recently for the pictures, so she looked around the attic for areas that seemed recently disturbed. Her gaze fell on an ornately carved Chinese chest. A bunch of graying shoe boxes were sitting next to it, as if they’d been recently shifted off the top. The patterns on its rosewood lid were clean and dust free. She braced herself and opened it.
The inside of the chest smelled like tobacco and old newspapers. A stuffed rabbit with one ear was nestled in the leg of a purple Dr. Martens combat boot. Under that she found a silver-plated hand mirror wrapped in a scarf, a bunch of shattered CD jewel cases, a dog-eared copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, and a crumpled pack of cigarettes. It looked as if someone had swept up all the contents of Becky’s room and shoved them in the chest. Then, tucked near the bottom, under a pile of faded magazines, she found a composition book covered in doodles. Her heart lurched. She knew a journal when she saw it—she’d certainly kept enough herself. She just never knew her mother had.
Girl Finds Mother’s Old Journal, Contents Change Everything, she hoped, looking at the book’s cover. Then she flipped the journal open.
The handwriting was painfully familiar, the same untidy scrawl Emma remembered from childhood birthday cards and from the note Becky had left for her at the diner just a few weeks earlier.
At first, the journal’s entries were neat and tidy, dated even down to the time of day:
Today I woke up at five and could not sleep any more so I climbed out the window and went to Denny’s. Mom and Dad panicked and thought I had run away when I did not come down to the table and when they saw my shoes were missing. Can’t a person enjoy her Grand Slam breakfast in peace around here?
A few days later:
I got $200 for the cheesy diamond studs Mom got me for “sweet sixteen” last year. Part of me thinks I should feel bad for selling them but I’m not sweet at all and she should know tha
t. Between that & the $150 I’ve saved babysitting for the Gandins, I almost have enough to get out of here.
Emma looked up from the book, a strange ache piercing her chest. She felt as if she was spying on her mother, never mind that almost twenty years had passed. But spying or not, this was her only lead. She turned another page.
The entries went on and on, one every few days. Sketches filled some pages, mostly elaborate abstract designs or flowering vines. An Emily Dickinson poem filled a sheet, with colored-pencil illustrations all around the text. Becky complained about school and her parents. She broke up with one boyfriend and hooked up with another one. She cheated on a third. She was always lonely, even when she was surrounded by people. She sounded surprisingly, almost disappointingly normal—creative and sullen and rebellious, but not crazy.
But about halfway through the composition book the entries started to change. The language became disjointed, the thoughts scattered. Dog next door keeps barking and if he doesn’t stop soon I may snap, she’d written one day. This town is poison. Even the clothes on my back hurt my skin. And then, one day, just the words Mama, I’m so sorry. The writing ran sideways in some places or curled around in weird spirals of text.
Emma turned another page. Her breath caught in her throat. Printed across two facing pages, in enormous block letters, was Emma.
On the next page it was repeated in long lines across the paper—Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma—in different sizes and scripts, ornate calligraphy and cartoon block letters and colorful sketches sprinkled with stars. She flipped through the pages, faster and faster. The rest of the book was filled with nothing but that one word, EMMA, scrawled wilder and wilder, in Sharpie, in pencil, sometimes written so hard the letters tore through the paper.
The book fell out of her trembling hands and hit the floor in a cloud of dust. The attic spun around her like a strange, shadowy carousel. She knew Becky was sick, but this … this was obsession.
The Lying Game #5: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die Page 7