But a new thought had lodged in my head, circling and digging, refusing to let go: Who is she, who is she, who is she—
This went to seventeen years of lies, not just to me, but to the world. She had to have a reason. The woman who’d stood in front of me, who raised me, who had nightmares and feared the world: she was real. But so was this other one.
Can you love someone if you don’t really know them? My heart was in a vise.
Who am I? I do not know.
Ryan parked in front of Jan’s house and grabbed my bag from the backseat. I stood in front of the door, not sure what to do. Too much time had passed to just walk in or use the spare key like I used to. I rang the bell, heard the footfall of someone heading down the steps.
Emma flinched when she opened the door, her eyes darting between me and Ryan. She shrank behind the open door when she realized she was standing in front of Ryan wearing pajamas and no makeup.
“Is your brother okay?” Ryan asked.
She hung on the side of the door, moving it back and forth. “Lost a lot of blood, but the bullet missed all the organs. Guess we have you to thank,” she said.
Ryan shook his head. “Kelsey got us out of there.”
“Right,” she said. She opened the door wider, and I heard her mumble, “But she also got him in there.”
The house was otherwise quiet, but I saw Jan’s car out front.
“Everyone’s sleeping,” Emma said, by way of explanation. “My dad flew home late last night, and they both spent the night at the hospital.”
I walked slowly through the downstairs, Ryan trailing behind me.
Jan’s house reminded me of a person I used to know. Rooms painted a new color, but the same creak in the floor at the kitchen entrance, which I had forgotten. Something comforting and familiar. Even if it was just a loose piece of wood. I used to share Emma’s room when I slept over, a sleeping bag on the plush carpeting upstairs, but I doubted that was the plan this time around.
“You can leave her stuff in the den,” Emma said.
The den had an old pull-out couch across from an ancient television. You had to step down from the kitchen, and there was a sliding door with vertical blinds leading to the backyard. I stared at that door now, at the windows. The only line of protection.
Ryan dropped my bag onto the couch, and I felt him standing behind me, his hands dropping onto my shoulders.
“Sure you can’t stay with me?” he whispered.
“Ha.”
He pushed the blinds aside so they cascaded against one another in their own makeshift alarm.
“How is Cole?” I called to Emma, but nobody was there.
We heard footsteps overhead, the floorboards creaking, an engine turning over down the street. There was safety in a crowd, in houses all clumped together, with eyewitnesses who could track you down.
Except. Except my mother was taken from a house like this, once upon a time. She was taken, and nobody saw. Before that, there had been years of abuse, and nobody came.
Ryan stood in the middle of the room, looking at the pictures on the shelves. “So you and Cole…,” he said.
“Me and Cole what?” Me and Cole hadn’t spoken in three years until he’d showed up at the hospital. But I remembered, as Ryan must have, the way I pressed my body close to his, whispered in his ear, trying to stop the blood.
“Were you and Cole ever…?”
“Three years ago. For a nanosecond. Before his mother told him to cut it out.” He had shrugged then, and I shrugged now. “Didn’t mean anything. I was just…there.”
I looked through the slats of the blinds. There was a brown split-wood fence encircling the yard, and a tire swing dangling from a tree. And on that tire swing was the place Cole first kissed me. And in this room was where I stood, hiding behind the wall, while Jan yelled at Cole in the kitchen, and where I waited for her to drive me home after. She never said anything to me about it—apparently, I was not capable of making decisions. I just went along with things. And the situation had been handled.
“You’re never just there,” Ryan said.
“I was a girl in his house all the time. That’s all.”
“He still cares.”
“He doesn’t. He’s pissed I disrupt his life. He wanted to hand me over.”
“He wouldn’t have showed up in the first place if he didn’t care. He was scared. He was bleeding, and he was scared.”
We were all scared. And the fear revealed things. About all of us—including me. Something I didn’t really want to know. I felt it down to my bones, clawing its way to the surface.
Ryan scrunched up his nose, and he looked younger, more vulnerable. “I don’t like the way he treats girls, and I really don’t like that he ever kissed you.”
I put a hand on my hip. “Are you going to give me a list of all the girls you’ve kissed?”
He grinned. Shook his head.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“Doesn’t change the fact that I hate that you’re staying with him,” he said.
“I’m staying with Jan, who has power of attorney over me and my mother. He just lives here. We have nothing to do with each other.”
He came closer, put his hands on top of his head, like he’d just run a race. “Okay, what I’m trying to say, and what I’m not doing a very good job of saying apparently, is that I want you to be mine.”
My eyes must’ve widened, or my face must’ve turned as red as it felt, because he grimaced, then tipped his head back. “Okay, wait, that sounded creepy. God, why is this so hard? What I mean is, I don’t want this to be a temporary thing. A thing that you’re doing because I was just there.”
I smiled, stepped closer. “You’re never just there,” I said, and he pulled me closer, erasing every memory I’d ever had in this house—
There was a squeak in the kitchen, and Emma stood there, mouth agape. “God, Kelsey, really? Do you have to take everything?”
“What?”
“Hey, hold on—” Ryan said.
But Emma was too riled up. There would be no holding on. I knew this version of her, whose emotions were too close to the surface, ready to tip over…“First my mother,” she said, “then my brother…and you just keep taking.”
“What are you talking about?” Ryan asked.
She pointed at me, her jaw set. “Our lives revolve around her and her mother. Sorry, Emma, we can’t go skiing, Mandy’s had a setback. Sorry, Emma, the job at the Lodge is for Kelsey, she needs it, for legal reasons. Sorry, Emma, drop everything and get to the hospital with Kelsey’s paperwork.” She finished with a hard k, and I backed up—never realizing the depth of her anger. “I thought it would end when I told Mom about you and Cole, but no. It only made it worse.”
“You did what?” I thought Emma and I had drifted apart because of Cole, but it was the other way around. She had been the instigator. She was the reason I had been banished back to my own house. And maybe she had good reason. I was currently standing in her house with a bag of clothes, and her brother was upstairs, injured because of me.
She put her hands on her hips. “And Ryan, I thought you liked Holly.”
He shook his head. “I never said that. I don’t even know Holly.”
“You know her fine. So, you were just stringing her along? Like some asshole?”
He took a step back, hands held up in proclaimed innocence. “I didn’t…I didn’t do anything to make her think that I liked her.”
“Well, you didn’t do anything to make her think that you didn’t like her, either.”
Her words cut, and I pictured Holly in Ryan’s room, in Ryan’s clothes, in Ryan’s bed.
Emma held up her hands, a mirror image of Ryan. “Never mind. Just. Never mind. Do whatever the hell you want, Kelsey. You always do.”
She backed out of the room.
“It’s not like that, Kelsey,” Ryan said, turning to face me. “I didn’t…we never…If I led her on, I didn’t mean to.
”
I stared at him, trying to see him through a different filter. Through Emma. Through Holly. Through my mother.
“I think I should go,” Ryan said. “But Kelsey? Call me, okay?”
I watched him go, my arms faintly trembling, everything twisted in my heart. Everything.
I pulled open the bag, about to unpack into the drawers of the television stand. But everything smelled faintly of smoke.
—
I tried calling Annika again. I sent her an email. I left her a voice mail. “I just want to know that you’re okay,” I said for the tenth time. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” I thought of what I had done to Emma and Cole just by existing, and now I wondered if I had done the same to Annika. Annika, who was fearless when it came to talking to boys, and being who she wanted—but who had been scared to go back home.
I was lying on the couch, eyes wide open, listening to the clock on the mantel, unsure what to do because of all the movement happening overhead. My mother was gone, and it didn’t seem to be anyone’s priority. And now the police believed my mother did not get the money where I thought she had. Had she lied about where she got the money? Or had I made it up myself, filling in the story gaps with things that made sense? Much as they were doing right now?
I had to ask Jan. Cole said that Jan knew my mother was lying, that she knew more than she let on. Jan would have the answers.
“I’m fine,” I heard Cole saying. “Seriously, you guys can let go now.” He was coming down the steps, surrounded by both parents.
Jan froze at the entrance of the den. “Hi, Kelsey. When did you get here?”
“Emma let me in,” I said. I looked Cole over. He was in sweats, and he leaned slightly to one side, but he was on his feet and he was here and talking and okay.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He gestured to his side. “Stitches.” Then turned his arm over for me to see. “And an IV. Got someone else’s blood running through my veins at the moment.”
“We’re glad you’re both okay, Kelsey,” Cole’s dad said, then he gave Jan a look. He went into the kitchen to start cooking, while Cole eased himself onto the sofa behind me.
Jan stood before me in the den. She looked like crap. Like she hadn’t slept, or showered. No, like her kid had been shot, and she didn’t know what to do.
“The police think she ran,” I said. “You have to tell them the truth. She couldn’t, Jan. She’s hurt.”
She hesitated. Looked at Cole sitting behind me. “Come on,” she said, gesturing toward her office on the other side of the den.
She had a wooden desk that backed onto a large window, and walls covered in bookshelves, a few document boxes on the floor. Behind her were the double doors of the closet of files, with the metal lock between them. She shut the office door behind us—though I’m sure Cole could hear us just fine regardless.
“The police were asking me questions….”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know, Kelsey. I know.”
“What aren’t you telling me? What happened to my mother?”
“Kelsey, I can’t talk about this. It’s privileged.”
“She’s missing and the police think she ran….You don’t believe that, do you?”
She looked around at the empty walls, as if searching for an answer. Finally, she said, “I think she might have.”
I flinched. “You think she could’ve left?”
She reached for me, but I backed away. “I think your mother is very strong. I think she could do more than she let on. It’s the only reason you were allowed to stay there in the first place. Because I believed that she was capable of more. That she was capable of caring for you.”
“You’re wrong.” I had lived with her. She was contained by walls and limitations, nightmares and memories she could never reach.
She held up her hands. “Okay, Kelsey. Okay. The police are looking for her. They’re talking to the cops in Atlanta. They’re digging through her history right now.”
“You think she remembers,” I said.
She paused. “I think there’s more to the story than what was reported in the papers. I think she doesn’t want to remember.”
“But she’s gone, Jan. People came and she’s gone. You have to tell the police.”
“You know what the police think is more likely? That your mother took something that didn’t belong to her. That whoever she took it from came back for it. You’re safe here now. We’ll talk this weekend, okay? We’ll figure out what to do.”
She brushed by me, but I couldn’t move.
“You really think she left me?”
She stood in the entrance, the door open. “I think I made a really big mistake, Kelsey. I think I did something terrible, that almost got you…and Cole…killed. And I will never forgive myself for it.”
—
Cole was sitting just outside the doors, on the couch I’d be sleeping on, a glass of water in his hands. Jan went to the kitchen, and he tapped the seat beside him.
“You look about how I feel,” he said.
I cut my eyes to him. He was pale, and there was a tremor running through his arm, and he pressed it to his side, to hide it.
“Are you really okay?” I asked.
He shrugged, changed the topic. “So, you and Baker, huh?”
“Yeah, me and Baker.”
He was staring at the blank television, at our distorted reflections, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. “I was scared, Kelsey,” he said. And I thought that was an apology.
“Well, I did get you shot,” I said, which I guess was mine, too.
He nodded, motioned for me to lean closer, so close I could smell the hospital soap, the astringent on his skin. His mouth was next to my ear. “She keeps the key to her files in her purse.”
—
That night, I waited for everyone to go to sleep, rifled through Jan’s purse, and took the key that was hidden within the secondary pocket inside.
Maybe I was mistaken and nobody was out there. Maybe Jan was right. That they had gotten what they came for, and left. But just in case, I checked my phone every few minutes, just to make sure I had a signal. And I picked up the home line, listening to the dial tone. A hum in my ear that promised, You are safe.
I used Jan’s key, unlocked the double closet doors, and stared at the stacks of shelves. They were organized alphabetically by last name, but we had an entire box to ourselves. Eight years’ worth of research into my mother’s life. Eight years of truth, boxed up right here.
Jan had her sessions documented in shorthand inside several journals, everything written out in lists or indecipherable scrawl. Her journals also had timestamps alongside several of the entries, but they didn’t seem to correlate to time of day.
It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the box and found the digital recorder that I realized the timestamps referred to that.
From what I could understand from Jan’s notes, Cole was right—Jan had suspected, long, long ago, that my mother remembered everything. What he didn’t tell me, what I had to find out for myself, was that Jan suspected my mother’s fear went deeper than the men who had taken her. The fear was real, but misdirected.
I lay on the hardwood floor, headphones over my ears, my mother’s voice filling my head. And I listened for hours to her lies. I could pick them out, just as surely as Jan could. Her voice, like warm blankets tucked up to my chin. The lies, like a burst of cold air that turned my stomach to ice.
This was the thing I kept rewinding, and replaying, that Jan had time-marked in her notes:
Jan’s voice. “Let’s go back to the day you were taken. Start over again.”
And my mother’s broken voice. “The house was dark. I was asleep. I heard glass breaking, and I screamed.”
“And what did you see next?”
“I saw a shadow.”
“What did you do? Did you try to run?”
“Yes, I tried to run. We fought. Thin
gs broke.”
“But nobody came.”
“Nobody came.”
“Then what?”
“Then he hit me harder, and I fell, and then I don’t remember.”
“Okay, Mandy, okay. You’re okay. Take a deep breath.” A pause. “Ready?”
“Sorry. Ready.”
“Let’s start again. What woke you up?”
“The sound of glass breaking.”
“And then you screamed?”
“Yes, when I saw the shadow.”
I rewound it three times, heard the discrepancy. The first thing Jan must’ve noticed. The first time, she screamed at the sound of glass breaking. The second time, not until she saw the shadow.
Another note in the journal, three question marks, another timestamp.
I found the corresponding section of the recording. Jan’s voice: “Let’s talk about your home life before you were taken.”
“No. I’m not talking about that.”
“The newspaper reports about your father, the abuse. The medical report from when you escaped showed old rib fractures, long since healed.”
“I said I’m not talking about that.”
“Were you scared before you were taken? Of your father?”
“Was I scared? No. Scared isn’t the right word. It’s the only thing I’d ever known. But it has nothing to do with anything, and he’s dead, so we’re not going to talk about it.”
“Well, we’re going to have to. You understand why, don’t you? We need to be sure of your daughter’s safety.”
“She’s perfectly safe. It’s the only thing I can do. Everything I’ve done is for her.”
I rewound it, over and over, hearing the slip. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve done.
If she could lie then, so readily, for so long—then surely she could lie now.
They came back for something, Jan had said.
But this was what I was starting to think: what if the thing they came back for was us?
I found her that night, in the files. The thing she was most scared of, more than anything, was not of being taken, but of being found.
The Safest Lies Page 19