My heart races when I recognize who it is.
Diane.
“So that was the woman who gave you a ride home after your accident?” Rollins asks, steering his car back toward the school. “Strange that she just happens to be working in the same part of the hospital where Scotch is being kept.”
“Yup,” I reply. I’m lost in thought, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing there. It doesn’t compute. Could it really be a coincidence that I met her the same night I got into an accident, on the same road that Scotch was driving on only minutes before? It just doesn’t make any sense.
“It’s almost three thirty. Do you want me to just drop you off at home?”
I snap to attention. “What? Crap. Lydia’s supposed to pick me up. If she sees us, she’ll know I skipped school and will report back to my father. He’ll be even madder at you than he already is.”
Rollins taps the steering wheel with his fingertips. “I could drop you off at the back entrance. Then you can go in and get your books and come out the front.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I say.
Rollins pulls up to the curb at the back of the school. Distracted, I lean over to give him a quick kiss.
“Don’t forget to call me tonight,” he says.
“I won’t,” I promise.
I slam the car door shut and hurry into the school.
Sure enough, Lydia’s yellow car is waiting outside the school for me at three thirty. She’s got sunglasses propped up on her forehead, even though the sky is overcast, and I notice she took the time to swipe on some bright red lipstick before leaving the house.
“Hey, honey. How was your day?” she asks when I open the passenger door and scoot inside. She sounds chipper, like she’s playing the part of a mother in some sitcom from the fifties. I get this creepy feeling, like a house centipede has curled up on the back of my neck.
“Super,” I say. “Another day in paradise.”
My sarcastic remark dampens her cheer. She starts the car. “Come on, Vee. I could do with a little less attitude. How can we have any fun together if you’re pouting the whole time?”
I stare at her as she pulls out of the parking lot. She doesn’t make any sense. First, she swirls into our lives like a hurricane, out of nowhere. Then she spies on me until she finds some dirt. She tries to get on my good side by swearing she won’t tell my dad I snuck out of the house. And then she blabs and gets me grounded. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell she wants from me.
“Do you mind if we take a detour?” she asks, signaling a turn that would take us downtown.
Something warns me to be careful about where I let this woman take me. After all, what do I know about her? She lied about her fiancé back in California. She was living her life with a false name. I caught her going through my father’s drawers. And there’s just something about her that gives me the creeps—something about the way she seems so desperate to fit into our family. Still, I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe this is my chance to find out more about her.
“Um. Okay?” I say finally.
She gives me a sideways glance and bursts out laughing. “Don’t look so freaked out, Vee! I just want to go grab some pie.”
She parks in front of a small diner. My dad used to bring us here when we were little, but I haven’t eaten here in years. It’s one of those faux fifties restaurants with a jukebox and all of the waitresses wearing poodle skirts.
Lydia plugs a few quarters into the meter on the sidewalk, and then I follow her inside. She drums her fingers on the little podium as we wait for someone to seat us, seeming a few degrees more nervous than she did in the car. I wonder exactly what she wants to talk to me about.
A girl a few years older than me sidles up and flashes a big grin. “Hi, ladies. Just the two of you?” I can smell the watermelon from her chewing gum. She looks familiar. Her long, blond hair is swept up into a high ponytail, and her face is fresh with only a dab of pink lip gloss. I realize she played Annie Oakley in the school production of Annie Get Your Gun when I was a freshman. Melody, I think her name is.
“Just the two of us,” Lydia says brightly.
Melody motions for us to follow her to a booth. She waits for us to get settled and then asks for our drink orders. I order a Coke and look at Lydia, who is sitting across from me, looking blankly at Melody.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” Lydia asks. She must be planning on bringing up something big if she can’t even pay attention to the waitress.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Just an ice water,” Lydia says.
Melody nods and then heads behind the counter to prepare the drinks. I grab one of the menus, staring but not comprehending.
“So there’s a reason I brought you here, Vee,” Lydia says. Her voice is tight.
“Nostalgia for a golden age?” I ask, not able to look her in the eye now that I’m sitting across from her.
“Nope. That’s just a perk. I have something to give you.” Lydia plops her purse on the table and starts going through it, searching for something. Finally, she pulls out a red velvet box. I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s the box my dad keeps my mom’s wedding ring in.
She offers it to me, the fancy box sitting in the palm of her hand. For a minute, all I can do is stare at it. Since my mother died, I’ve never seen it outside the context of my father’s bedroom. This whole situation is surreal.
“Take it,” she says.
Shaking, I reach across the table and grab the box out of her hand. I hold it in my lap, enclosed in both hands, as if it might grow wings and fly away from me.
“Aren’t you going to look inside?”
“I already know what’s inside,” I say coldly.
My icy tone doesn’t register with her. Melody brings us our drinks, not seeming to notice the tense vibe at our table, and asks what we’d like to eat. Lydia orders a piece of banana cream pie. I say I’m not hungry.
When Melody leaves, Lydia says, “You don’t know. Open it.”
I force myself to look her in the eye. There is a challenge in her expression. So I muster up the strength and crack the box open and see—
“What the hell?”
A gorgeous necklace is nestled at the bottom of the box. With one hand, I lift the thin silver chain and examine the pendant. Set in the center is a beautiful diamond surrounded by rubies in the shape of a heart. It takes me a minute, but then I realize the diamond is the same one that was in my mother’s ring.
“What is this?”
“It’s a necklace,” she says with a teasing smile.
“Uh, yeah. I see that it’s a necklace. Where did you get it?”
“Your father told me he’d been considering having the ring made into a necklace for you. I begged him to let me design it. He’s a man. He doesn’t know about jewelry. Do you like it?”
I remember the day I found her in my father’s bedroom, fingering my mother’s ring. Is it possible she was examining it to design this necklace? I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.
“It’s beautiful,” I say flatly, dropping the necklace back into the box.
“You don’t look happy,” Lydia observes. “I thought you’d love this.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” I say, thinking that I really would love the gift, if only my father had given it to me.
Melody sets a piece of banana cream pie before Lydia and returns to the front of the restaurant to wait on a couple of little old ladies.
“I think I know what your problem is,” Lydia says, stirring the ice in her water with a straw.
“Oh yeah?” I challenge her.
“Yeah. I think you’re mad at me because I dated your father in high school. But you don’t have to worry about that. It’s ancient history. Any feelings I had for him died long ago.”
My mouth falls open.
Lydia dated my father?
Does that mean that he was the one my mom and aun
t were fighting over? I feel myself getting nauseous.
“Is that why you’re angry?” Lydia looks at me expectantly.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” Melody’s voice causes me to jump.
“Could we get the check?” I ask.
I have to get out of here.
Now.
When we get home, Lydia says she has a headache and goes upstairs to lie down. I find Mattie sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal.
“Where were you guys?”
“At that old diner Dad used to take us to. Mattie, I have something to tell you about Lydia. Something you’re not going to like.”
I expect Mattie to look worried or upset. Instead, she takes another bite of her Lucky Charms. “I bet I already know what you’re going to say,” she says, her mouth full. “Dad dated Lydia in high school, right?”
“How did you know?” I stare at her.
Mattie swallows. “She told me.”
“How could you not tell me?”
“Um, because I knew you’d freak out? It’s really not a big deal. It happened ages and ages ago. Besides, it’s not like she still has feelings for him. She has a fiancé back in California.”
“You knew about that, too?” I stand up, my cheeks growing warm with anger. Suddenly, I want to tell Mattie something she doesn’t know about Lydia. I need to show her that she doesn’t know our aunt as well as she thinks she does.
“Did you know that Lydia has been going by a different name in California?”
Mattie looks confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I went through her suitcase one day after school when she was out. I found her wallet. There were credit cards and an ID with the name Lila Harrington on them. I was able to find her fiancé online by Googling her fake name. I called him, and he doesn’t even know where she is. If Lydia is as trustworthy as you think, why would she leave her fiancé without telling him where she was going?”
Mattie shakes her head. “She must have a good reason for not being truthful. Maybe he was abusive or something. Maybe she’s hiding from him.”
I throw my hands up in the air. If Mattie still trusts our aunt, even with the evidence that she’s been lying to the people closest to her, I don’t know what to say.
“Did she give you the necklace?” Mattie asks.
“I can’t believe this. You knew about the necklace too?”
A smile plays upon Mattie’s lips. “Isn’t it pretty?”
I don’t respond. Instead, I stalk out of the kitchen. It kills me, the fact that Mattie and Lydia are acting like besties out of nowhere. Brushing each other’s hair. Talking about Mom. Discussing my private business.
Mattie’s my sister.
I’m supposed to be the one she shares everything with.
And I was.
Until Lydia came along.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Later that afternoon, I’m sitting on my bed, staring at the necklace Lydia gave to me in the diner. The sunlight streaming through my window illuminates the diamond, and I can see angles and shapes, deep inside, that I never noticed before. It is so familiar, the stone I saw on my mother’s finger whenever she pushed me on a swing or stirred marshmallows into a mug of hot cocoa for me.
I pick up the necklace and hold it before me, swinging like a pendulum. I’m overcome with the need to put it on, to hold that part of my mother close to my heart. My hands shaking, I fasten the clasp around my neck, and then look down. The pendant rests at the hollow of my throat as if it was always meant to be there.
My eyelids start to droop, and I lower myself onto my pillow. These last few days have been exhausting. I allow myself to drift away, and the edges of the room become fuzzy. Then all is black.
I’m standing in our kitchen, rinsing tomatoes in the sink. My hands scrub the dirt from the firm, red fruit. The fingers are long, tipped with pale pink nail polish. I’ve slid into Lydia. She must have left some emotional residue on the necklace. Maybe she misses my mother more than I realized.
I hear my father’s voice, talking about something funny that happened at work today, a story about a nurse whose husband sent her a gift certificate to a nearby gym for their anniversary. He sounds relaxed and happy—the most carefree he’s been in months.
“How horrible,” Lydia says, but her giggles betray her. She glances up from her work to smile at my father, who takes her laughter as a sign of encouragement and launches into another story.
I should be glad that my father has someone to tell his boring stories to, someone who appreciates them more than Mattie or I do. But I can’t help but feel disgusted. Why didn’t he tell me the truth about Lydia? Is he starting to have feelings for her again? Do I detect a note of flirtation in his jokes?
When I slide out of the domestic scene, I am immersed in dread. Lydia said she wanted to get to know us better, really be a part of our family. Could she have meant that literally? She’s already won over my sister. What if she puts the moves on my father? Is it possible she could be aiming to reclaim his affection?
I sit up and look around. My room is just as it was when I fell asleep, the violet walls darkening as the sun dips lower in the sky. The chain around my neck pulls taut, caught on a knot in my hair. I look down in dismay at the necklace. If I wear the necklace, I will always risk sliding into Lydia. It’s now tainted.
I reach behind my neck and undo the clasp, pulling the necklace free. Carefully, I return it to the red velvet box and hide it in my bottom drawer, along with Scotch’s father’s glove and the various other items I’ve collected that allow me to slide into others.
I go to my mother’s rocking chair and sit down, pressing my face against the wood worn smooth over the years. I close my eyes and think of her and my father, how they used to laugh together in the kitchen while they prepared dinner. Now, Lydia is the one making my father smile, and I can’t stand it.
My father and Lydia are strangely giddy at dinner. They’ve each had a couple of glasses of wine, and they keep looking at each other and grinning and then looking away. Their thinly veiled flirtations make my stomach churn.
My father’s eyes gleam as he laughs at one of Lydia’s stories about her students in California. It must be impossible for him to not see Mom in Lydia when he looks at her. Doesn’t he see that it’s a betrayal, for him to reconnect with Mom’s sister?
Mattie, not seeming to notice the shift in tone between my father and Lydia, scoops a bite of spaghetti into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she says. “This sauce is delicious.”
“That would be Lydia’s doing,” my father says. “She shared a new recipe with me.” I think of my mother’s cookbook, stashed away, forgotten. What was wrong with her recipe?
“Hey, Dad. Did you decide whether I can go to that movie with Russ and Vee and Rollins Saturday night?”
My dad’s pleasant expression fades, replaced with confusion. “I’m sorry. Vee and Rollins and who?”
Mattie turns her attention to me. “Didn’t you talk to him yet? God, you’ve had forever.”
“Talk to me about what?”
“Russ is this guy from school. He’s a senior, but he’s really only Vee’s age. He’s just supersmart. He asked me out. I thought it would be okay if we doubled with Vee and Rollins.”
Dad crosses his arms. “Well, there’s just one problem with that. Vee is grounded.”
“What? You didn’t tell me that,” Mattie says to me. “Why are you grounded?”
I shrug, giving her a pointed look. “You don’t tell me a lot of things.”
Lydia jumps in. “It’s just a movie, Jared. What kind of trouble can she get in there?” I glare at her. I don’t need anyone to stand up for me, especially her.
Seeming to forget about my punishment, Mattie continues to nag my father. “Yeah, Dad. We’ll be home by midnight. Eleven, even. We’ll go to the early show.”
Lydia touches my father’s arm. “What do you say, Jared?”
He takes another bi
te of spaghetti. “Fine, fine. Be home by midnight. Both of you.” His final words are directed at me.
“Does this mean I can start hanging out with Rollins again?”
My father exchanges a look with Lydia. “I suppose so. As long as you never stay out all night again. Is that clear?”
I nod. Lydia gives me a look like she’s done me some big favor. I take a bite of my pasta and make a face, showing what I think of her special recipe.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The next morning, I find Lydia making a pot of coffee. I turn on my heel, hoping to avoid conversation, but it’s too late. She sees me.
“Good morning, Vee.”
Reluctantly, I turn back. “Oh, hey.” I grab a banana from the counter and peel it slowly, avoiding eye contact. I’m grateful for being ungrounded, but the fact that she had anything to do with it irritates me to no end.
“Are you ready to go? I just need to grab my purse, and then I’m all set.”
I blink. “Rollins is coming to get me. He always gives me a ride, and now that I’m not grounded anymore . . .”
“Oh.” She looks disappointed.
I take a bite of my banana and throw the peel in the trash. “Yeah.”
Lydia takes a step toward me. “Vee, why are you so hostile toward me?”
I finish chewing and swallow. “It’s simple. You disappeared for twenty years and then just showed up and expected us to welcome you with open arms, like nothing ever happened. You want to instantly be part of our family, but you haven’t done the legwork. To me, there’s something just a little bit creepy about that. Especially now that I know you have a past with my father. Does he know that you go by the name Lila Harrington these days?”
My last words hang in the air between us.
Lydia crosses her arms over her chest. “You went through my things.”
There’s no point in trying to deny it. “Yeah, I did. You didn’t answer my question. Does my father know about your new name? Or that you left a fiancé behind in California?”
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