“Yeah, I’ll catch a ride with Rollins.”
“Oh,” Mattie says, her eyes getting all big like she knows something that I don’t.
“What is it?”
“I just saw him walking out to the parking lot with Anna. I assumed you weren’t riding with him.”
My heart falls. I’d really been hoping for a chance to tell Rollins about what happened last night. I’m still not sure I did the right thing by calling the cops anonymously. I wanted to get his perspective because clearly Samantha isn’t going to be a moral compass in this matter. And Mattie’s too invested. She doesn’t want to see me get in trouble.
I slam my locker door shut. “Great. I guess I’ll walk. Again.”
Mattie grabs my hand. “I’ll see you when I get home.” She lets go and hurries down the hallway, her ponytail bouncing.
I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders and somehow summon the energy to walk home. The sun is warm on my face, and it would be an enjoyable hike if it weren’t for the morbid thoughts circling in my head. I keep wondering what’s happening at Lookout Point. Did the paramedics, realizing that Scotch was nonresponsive, zip him into a body bag and load him onto a gurney? Are the police searching the woods for any evidence of foul play? Do Scotch’s parents know yet?
When I turn onto my street, Lydia’s yellow car in my driveway almost makes me want to turn around and run the other way. She’s the last person I want to see right now, but I don’t really have anywhere else to go. I turn the knob slowly and push open the front door. Inside, I hear nothing. After setting my backpack down and hanging up my jacket, I scope out the kitchen and living room. No one’s there. I check out the upstairs. All the bedrooms are empty, and the bathroom door is wide open. No one is inside.
It appears that Lydia went out for the day. This piques my curiosity. Where would she go without her car?
I stand in the doorway to Mattie’s room. The shades are drawn, painting the walls in darkness. I’m tempted to open them or turn on a light, but Mattie’s window faces the driveway, and I don’t want Lydia to realize someone is in here if she comes home early. I can make out a suitcase on the floor next to the closet, though, and I kneel down beside it.
My heart hammers in my chest. I grab the zipper and pull it open, exposing a bunch of wadded-up clothes. One thing is for sure: my aunt isn’t the neatest person in the world. I recognize the outfit she wore when she showed up at the front door. It’s damp and shoved into a corner of the suitcase. Poking through the clothes doesn’t reveal more than my aunt’s preference for black silk underwear, unfortunately.
I push the clothes back into the suitcase and zip it up, noticing a pocket on the front that I hadn’t seen before. From the bulge, I’m able to tell there’s definitely something inside. Excited, I yank open the zipper and thrust my hand in. My fingers close around a leather wallet. Bingo. I pull it out so I can examine it properly.
Inside, I find a wad of receipts from places in San Francisco. A few credit cards. And her driver’s license. All of these items have the same name on them, but they’re not my aunt’s name. They say “Lila Harrington.”
Who is Lila Harrington?
That’s when I hear the front door open.
Crap crap crap crap crap.
My dad’s at work, and Mattie’s at cheerleading practice, meaning there’s only one other person who’d be walking into our house.
Lydia.
My panic makes me uncoordinated, and I struggle with stuffing the wallet back into the suitcase pocket. It takes me several tries to zip it up. I scramble to my feet and am poised to race out the door when something on the bureau catches my eye.
It is the picture of my mother in a sombrero.
The one I thought I lost last Thursday, before I got into the car accident.
I hear footsteps on the stairs, and the sound is enough to shake me out of my paralysis. I rush out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me. Somehow I make it to my doorway and bolt inside.
Lydia comes down the hall and pauses outside my room. “Hello, Vee.”
I’m out of breath. “Huh-hi. How was your day?”
“It was great.” She ticks off her daily activities on her fingers. “Took a walk around the neighborhood this morning. Lovely houses. Had a late lunch at this cute diner. They had the best pie. Seriously. I’ll have to take you there sometime. Then I walked around downtown and did some window-shopping.” She sighs. “The weather is just perfect today, don’t you think?”
“Perfect,” I agree, hoping she doesn’t see the way my smile wobbles.
Her face turns more serious. “I was hoping we could have a little talk.”
“Um, okay.”
Lydia shifts her weight, looking uncomfortable. “I want you to know I didn’t say anything to your father about you coming in late last night.”
My heart pounds. “What are you talking about? I went to sleep early.”
She gives me a long look. “Right.”
“What? Don’t you believe me?”
“I wasn’t exactly born yesterday, Vee.”
We stare at each other.
If she was the one who slid into me before Scotch’s accident, of course she would know I wasn’t in my bed.
After a long moment, Lydia says, “So you weren’t out with that boy? Rollins?”
“No,” I sputter, confused. “I told you. I wasn’t feeling well. I was in bed.”
She sighs. “Look, are you at least using protection?” The maternal tone she uses makes me want to vomit. Who does she think she is, anyway?
“I’m not having sex,” I say. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Promise me,” she says. “Promise me that if you do have sex, you’ll use protection. I’ll even take you to Planned Parenthood if you want. We can get you on the pill.”
“Jesus. What’s your problem?”
She takes a few steps into my room, puts her hand on my shoulder. “I just want to be here for you. I’ve been without a real family for so long. I want to be a good aunt to you. Vee, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”
She pats me on the back, and I feel all my muscles tense. She sighs and backs away from me. “See you at dinner.”
“Wait,” I say, thinking of the picture I saw in her room. I want some confirmation that Lydia’s as shady as I think she is. “Have you seen a picture of my mother lying around anywhere? She’s wearing a sombrero. It’s from her honeymoon.”
Is my mind playing tricks on me, or did Lydia’s muscles just tighten, ever so slightly?
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Sure, I saw that picture. It was lying on the floor under the couch downstairs. I held on to it for a little while. Is it yours?”
I hold her gaze. She doesn’t look away.
“Do you want it? I can go get it for you,” Lydia offers.
“Yes, please.”
I hold my breath as she walks down the hallway. Doing the math in my head, I realize the last time I saw the picture was at breakfast on Thursday morning. It was missing by suppertime that night. What if Lydia is lying about finding it underneath the couch? Is it possible she was following me the day I lost it? Could I have dropped it in the parking lot or something? If so, Lydia could have slid into me that night and forced me to steal my father’s car, hoping I would get into an accident. But then, seeing I wasn’t hurt badly enough, she could have taken her plan a step further and decided to infiltrate our home. To destroy us from the inside out.
This speculation makes me feel crazy.
Still, when Lydia returns with the picture and presses it into my hand, I see an arch in her eyebrow that makes me wonder if I’m not.
Chapter Seventeen
After dinner, I try to concentrate on my homework, but it’s no use. I put away my Introduction to Psychology textbook after reading the same page six times in a row and not comprehending any of the material.
I hear Lydia laughing downstairs.
What
does she want from us? What was she doing with the picture of my mother?
My gaze falls on my laptop. Nothing came up when I searched for my aunt under her real name, but maybe that’s because she’s been using a pseudonym.
I get up and lock my door.
Sitting back on my bed, my computer on my lap, I pull up Google. In a moment of inspiration, I type in “Lila Harrington,” along with “San Francisco, California.”
A few dozen hits.
I click on the first one. It’s the faculty page for a high school in San Francisco. One of the teachers listed is Lila Harrington. I click on the link and see a picture of my aunt. She wears a pearl necklace and a half smile. According to the page, she has taught art at the school for the last five years. I wonder what the school is doing for a replacement in the middle of April. Did she tell the school she was taking a break, or did she just not show up one day?
Backtracking to my Google results page, I click on the next entry down. It’s an engagement announcement for Lila Harrington and James Sutton that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in late October. I scroll down and scan the biographical details about the couple. The article says that Lila comes from Iowa and has lived in California for twenty years. She received her degree in education from UCLA thirteen years ago and spent three years teaching at a school in northern California before taking a position at her current school. She enjoys rock climbing and pottery.
Lila met James while camping last summer. She describes the experience as “love at first sight” and knew that she’d spend the rest of her life with him. I roll my eyes. Farther down the page, there is a picture of the two of them. James is incredibly good-looking and muscular. He kind of reminds me of Brad Pitt. I wonder if Lydia told him about her family, who she abandoned years ago. At Christmastime, did he wonder why she didn’t have anyone to spend the holidays with?
I stare at the picture of the two of them. If only I could speak with him, he’d be able to provide so many answers. Navigating to an online phone book, I wonder, Why not? If I can find his number, why shouldn’t I call him and ask him what he knows about my aunt?
I find three listings for J. Sutton. Only one is under age forty, though, and James definitely doesn’t look much older than Lydia. That has to be him, I think, digging my phone out of my pocket.
I punch his number into my phone and hit the Call button.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hi,” I say, breathing hard. I probably should have put some thought into what I was going to say before I actually made the call. The poor guy will think I’m some pervert mouth breather.
“Who is this?”
“Hi,” I say again, cringing. “Um, my name is Sylvia Bell. I’m looking for Lila Harrington . . .”
His voice turns sharp. “Who did you say this was?”
I cough. “My name is Sylvia Bell.”
“Is this another reporter? I’ve already said everything I know. We were supposed to be married last Saturday, and she disappeared. Look, I’m really getting sick of this Runaway Bride bullshit. Something bad must have happened to her. Don’t you people understand?”
I am quiet.
So Lydia ditched her wedding to come to Iowa. Why would she do that? What happened to make her leave her life in California? One thing is clear. This man doesn’t know anything about her real life. He sounds genuinely broken, like he believes his wife-to-be has been kidnapped or something.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sutton. I’m sure Lila is fine, wherever she is.”
I hear him sob on the other end. “No, she’s not fine. If she were fine, she would be here. With me.”
I hit the End Call button and drop my head into my hands.
Who is this woman?
Mattie gets home around five. I sit on my bed, watching her unbraid her hair in front of my full-length mirror.
“Lydia said she had a little talk with you,” Mattie says, examining her face for blemishes.
I consider telling Mattie what I’ve learned about Lydia. But she doesn’t know about sliding, so it would be hard for me to explain why I felt the need to go through Lydia’s things. My theory that Lydia has been sliding into me sounds insane, even to me.
“Yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “She thinks I’m on the verge of getting pregnant or something. It was weird, considering I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“She can tell something’s going on. She just doesn’t know what it is. She’s trying to help.”
I shake my head. “When did you get so buddy-buddy with her?”
Mattie turns toward me. “We did a lot of talking last night. She told me all she wants is a family. She was lonely in California.”
“She could have had a family if she didn’t run away. It’s not our fault she’s been off doing God knows what for the past twenty years,” I say, closing my hands into fists. “It’s like she’s just decided to leech on to our family instead of making her own.”
Mattie’s face turns hard. “I’m going to take a shower.”
She makes it halfway out the door before she turns back and says, “I can’t believe you could be so cruel to our own flesh and blood.”
After Mattie slams the door, I flop back onto my bed and glare at the ceiling. If only it were so simple, I think. I envy Mattie, being able to open her arms and accept someone new into her life without suspicion.
Once, in school, we had this discussion about whether ignorance really is bliss. Everyone kept saying they’d rather know the truth than go on living a lie. But me, I just kept arguing that the only way to truly be happy is to not know the truth.
Because the truth is too complicated.
And, most of the time, the truth is too ugly.
Chapter Eighteen
I’m on my way to the bathroom when I notice that Mattie’s door is ajar. Soft voices escape into the hall. Through the crack, I can see Mattie sitting on the bed. Lydia sits behind her, pulling a hairbrush through my sister’s long, blond tresses.
“Your hair is so much like your mother’s,” Lydia says.
“Yeah?” I can hear the pride in my sister’s voice.
“Mmmmhmmm. Your mother had the most beautiful, silky hair. I was so jealous. Mine frizzes up at the mere mention of rain, but your mother’s hair always behaved.”
Mattie sighs. “Can you tell me a story about her?”
I lean against the wall, barely breathing.
“Let’s see,” Lydia replies. She combs through Mattie’s hair thoughtfully. “Well, when we were little girls, your grandparents took us up to Lake Okoboji for a week every summer. Even though it was expensive, we always rented a boat. One of us would go out waterskiing with your grandfather, and the other would stay on the dock, sunbathing with your grandmother. We took turns.”
“Anyway, there was one summer . . . Your mom must have been about twelve. She was out skiing, and I was sitting on the dock, reading some terrible fashion magazine. I happened to look up, and I noticed that I couldn’t see your mom. Your grandfather was out there on the boat, zipping around, but I couldn’t see anyone on the skis behind him. Well, I stood up and started shouting at him, trying to get his attention. After a minute or so, he turned around and saw that Susan was down. Thank God she was wearing a life jacket, or he never would have found her.”
I let out a puff of air.
“Wow,” Mattie says. “So Mom just passed out? Did she do that a lot? That must be where Vee gets it from.”
“She was never diagnosed,” Lydia says, setting the hairbrush on the bed. “But I strongly suspect she had narcolepsy.”
“That’s one trait I’m glad I didn’t inherit,” Mattie says.
I back away and duck into the bathroom, locking the door. When I look in the mirror, I realize that I’ve been crying.
Later, I am sitting in my mother’s rocking chair in the corner of my room, a blanket draped around my shoulders. I think about the story Lydia was telling Mattie.
It sounds like my mother definitely strugg
led with the same condition that I have. I wonder if it was as torturous to her as it is to me. If she was always learning things she didn’t want to know. If she longed to just be normal.
I roll onto my side and prop my head up with my hand. My eyes fall on the clothes I wore last night, and my thoughts turn to Scotch. Did the police figure out who he was with? Did they find our footsteps in the dirt? Can they tell there was a scuffle? If only there were some way to find out what’s going on.
I stop rocking.
There is a way.
Back in October, when I was investigating Sophie’s death, I picked up a glove that Scotch dropped. I thought I could use it to slide into him and find out if he was Sophie’s killer. But when I used the glove, I didn’t slide into Scotch. I slid into his father. The glove belonged to his dad. Somehow, I knew better than to throw it away. I stashed the glove in my bottom drawer, beneath my collection of concert T-shirts.
I jump up and rush over to my chest of drawers. I throw T-shirts everywhere in my hurry to find the glove. There it is, at the very bottom. I seize it and slam the drawer shut.
I shut my door and then return to my bed. For a moment, I just stare at the glove. Do I really want to do this? Do I want to slide into the man whose son’s death I might be responsible for?
I don’t have a choice.
I have to know what’s going on.
Ignorance is not an option anymore.
Heart pounding, I lay my fingers on the glove, rubbing it softly. The room starts to fade away. I let go of myself.
I’m sitting in the cab of a pickup truck, driving down a busy street.
The driver carefully navigates through traffic, letting his foot slowly lower onto the brake when he sees a yellow light up ahead.
A phone on the seat beside me buzzes.
When the light turns red, he answers the call. “Hello?” he says gruffly, glancing in the rearview mirror. I’ve never seen Scotch’s father before, but he looks like his son, except for the worn, leathery quality of his skin and the receding hairline.
Someone is sobbing on the other end of the phone. I can’t make out what the person is saying. “Calm down,” he says gently. “What’s going on?”
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