by Tess Sharpe
I shake my head. “I don’t think he will. He’s got a record already, so he knows he’s going away for a long time, no matter what information he hands over. Knowing who I am . . . that’s much more valuable where he’s going.”
“Will you run?”
It’s not Iris who asks it. It’s Wes.
I look across the lounge at him, the depth of all he knows and all we’ve endured together and separately almost swallowing me.
“No,” I say. “But that’s why we need to be careful. Because of Lee. No. Don’t look over at her,” I say as Wes instinctively starts to turn toward the house where she’s probably still checking on us.
“Lee can’t know,” I continue. “She thinks my cover is intact. It needs to stay that way.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Iris asks.
“She’s gone,” Wes says, and I shrug helplessly when Iris looks at me like she expects disagreement.
“If she thought Raymond might find out that Ashley Keane became Nora O’Malley, Lee would knock me out and have me on a plane before I came to.”
“How long do you think it’ll take for him to figure it out?” Wes asks. He’s playing it so casual, but there’s an undercurrent to his voice, to the shine in his eyes. He’s had years of not just being in the know, but living with the results. He’s been across the hall, listening to me yell in my sleep, just as much as I’ve been across that same hall, listening to his pacing and late-night stirring that’s part insomnia, part avoiding his own nightmares.
I understand that shine in his eyes. I got to metaphorically throttle the bad man who hurt the only boy I loved in this world. And Wes wants to actually throttle the bad man who hurt me. But he’ll have to wait in line.
“Yes, how much time is there to prepare?” Iris sits up straighter, like she’s going to whip out a notebook from the pocket of her PJs or something.
I shrug again. “Raymond could know already. He could find out in six months. It just depends on who Duane knows and how fast they can get the news to him in prison.”
I’ll be surprised if it takes more than a month, though. Duane will be determined. Raymond will be eager. They’ll probably bond with a big ol’ Ashley Bested Me party. And then Duane will tell, and Raymond will finally know, and I’ll be the thing my sister fears the most: a sitting duck.
“We can talk more about the consequences after we give our statements to the sheriff,” I say. “But before we make any plans, let’s make sure we get through tomorrow.”
We go through our story three times until we have it perfect. Wes walks into the house for a few minutes as Iris stretches out on the lounge, tucking one of the pillows under her head. When he comes back, he has a fresh hot-water bottle for her, blankets for all of us, and Iris is already half asleep. Her lashes touch the dark smudges of purple under her eyes, and I reach out and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. She twitches under the touch and then settles, dropping off into sleep as Wes and I stretch out on either side of her.
“Sleep?” he asks me.
“No way.” The numbness is starting to set in; it’ll power me through until tomorrow. I’ll crash after I talk with the sheriff.
He hands me a bottle of water. “I told Lee I’d make you drink that.”
“Because being hydrated is going to fix things.” I take the bottle from him, setting it on my lap.
“It won’t hurt.” He shrugs.
His phone buzzes. It’s been going off every few minutes since he left the hospital with me instead of his parents.
“Him or her?”
“Her,” he says, and I feel a twinge of guilt. Mrs. Prentiss is not a bad person. She loves Wes. But she doesn’t leave the mayor, and I’ve tried hard not to resent her for it, and a lot of the time, I fail. I’ve wondered why, and I’ve raged against her in my mind shamefully, like this is her fault, when there is only one person to blame.
She’s a victim, too. A part of me understands that.
But a bigger part of me will choose her son’s well-being over hers, because someone needs to.
“Do you need to go?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. He looks down at Iris, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. “I wish I could’ve seen her throw that flaming petticoat over that asshole’s head.”
“It was amazing.”
“She’s amazing,” he says, and his eyes catch mine, suddenly serious. “You made me feel like a jerk last month when I said I thought she liked you.”
“I’m sorry.” I am. I could’ve found a better dodge around it, instead of going for the easy gaslighting.
“You could’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want to.” It’s as blunt as a butter knife, but it’s true, and it makes him lean back against a pile of the yellow cushions and laugh softly so he doesn’t wake Iris.
“I was avoiding all of it like a coward,” I continue. “I thought I could control it this time. How she found out about me. How you found out about us. I thought I could make it neat and new and . . . palatable, I guess.” I can’t look at him, and I bite the inside of the nonswollen side of my mouth before I continue. “It was childish, thinking I could make my past sound good or somehow okay. It isn’t.”
“But you are,” he says, so simply, cutting me down to the bone with three words. They shake my world even more than the three words he said when we were fifteen, when we were all broken and healing and falling at once.
Is it true, though? Am I okay? Am I good?
“I had the gun on Duane,” I say softly. “The sheriff hadn’t come yet. I could have—”
“No,” he says softly. “You couldn’t have.”
No.
I couldn’t have.
“She would have,” I say, and I don’t have to clarify it’s my mother I’m talking about. He can read between my lines in a way no one else can, because he’s the only one who knows all the stories of the girls that make me up. “She wouldn’t have hesitated. Him or her. It would’ve been easy.”
“You’re not her.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know her.”
“I know you.”
“Yes, you do,” I say, and I can’t see it in the dark, his smile, but I can feel it now.
“And you know me,” he continues.
“Yes, I do,” I say.
“I’d tear the whole world apart for you,” he says, and it’s not romantic, even though it should be. It’s so matter-of-fact, this secret truth now sprouted between us, like my name and my real hair color and the stories behind my scars; also things that only he knows.
“And I’d burn it down for you.”
“You almost burned it down around me today,” he points out, and when Iris murmurs, “That was me, actually,” between us, it startles a painful laugh out of my lungs that sounds strange because it’s not hollow.
“I stand corrected,” Wes says, trying to suppress a smile.
“I can’t let her take credit for my pyrotechnic skills,” Iris says, sounding prim even when squished between the pillows and the two of us. “Now both of you need to lie down and try to sleep. You can make vows of loyalty to each other like medieval knights next week. I’ll weave some flower crowns and wear a nice dress for the occasion.”
“I like poppies,” Wes says.
“Noted.”
“All your dresses are nice,” I add.
“I know. Now, please, some of us need sleep. My mom’s plane will be landing in a few hours and she’s going to be an emotional tornado.”
“Lee’s getting your mom at the airport. She’ll have her calmed down by the time they drive back up,” I say gently, but she shakes her head.
“I was a hostage in a bank robbery. Mom will never be calm again. She’s going to get one of those toddler backpack leashes in my size and make me wear it.”
W
es presses his lips together so tight they disappear trying not to laugh.
“You’re okay now, and you saved the day,” I remind her when I’m sure I won’t laugh, because her mom is overprotective . . . and now I have some insight why.
“That last thing is not going to help.”
“What will?” Wes asks.
“Sleep,” she says, her eyelids drooping again. “I just need to sleep a little until the next designated borderline-concussion wake-up call.”
So he lies down to her right, and I lie down to her left.
We curve around her like parentheses; Iris is some precious phrase between us that needs the shelter of our crooked knees and tucked hands under chins, breath skating in the space between that makes up all three of us now, along with our secrets, exposed and not.
The world is tilting again. But I have people to hold on to. People to fight for. And that is so different than just fighting for yourself.
I don’t sleep. I watch them instead, these people who have become the core of me just as much as the girls who’ve lived under my skin, and I think about what I have to lose.
It’s too much. And I’m not enough.
But somehow, I’ll have to be.
— 65 —
August 18 (10 days free)
2 safe-deposit keys (stashed in my room)
It takes ten days before certain parts of the internet light up with talk about Ashley Keane. There are no specifics—not yet. And it’s not enough talk to be totally unusual this time of year. But it’s enough to give me the confirmation I need: He knows where I am.
Wes shows up after breakfast the morning my alerts start going wild. His mom’s been insisting he stay at home with her, and it’s been the kind of tug-of-war we haven’t had in a long time. “Have you seen?” he asks.
I nod, but hold a finger to my lips. Lee’s still in the kitchen, eating the oatmeal I made. She’s actually going to work today.
“Let’s go for a drive,” I tell him.
He takes us out past the edge of town to one of the lookout points on the winding climb toward the clouds. I get out without asking when he parks, before pulling down the tailgate and clambering into the bed.
He settles on one side and I sit down on the other, my back against the wheel hub.
“They’re buzzing about Ashley again,” he says. “I’d hoped it would take longer.”
“No actual description or location, though. He’s keeping the real information close.”
“What are we going to do?” he asks me.
The truck bed yawns between us, an ever-widening chasm, and only he has the rope to toss to me. When I told him who I was, I told him everything. Which meant telling him my fail-safe that even Lee doesn’t know about.
He tried to talk me out of going down the rabbit hole once, and when he realized he couldn’t, he started to help. But I’m worried that this—to fight back in this way—will be too much. This is risking so much more. This is risking him and her and all of us.
Maybe I should go, and when I say it out loud, he does the only thing he can.
“What the fuck, Nora?” he asks, and his incredulity snaps me out of my self-loathing just enough. “Do you really want to spend your life running?”
“Aren’t we all running from something?”
“That might sound profound on a mug or a photo of a winding road, but come on.”
That’s the thing about Wes: He tolerated my bullshit longer than anyone. And now that he can identify said bullshit, he’ll never tolerate it again.
“You told me you weren’t running,” he says quietly. “You told Iris. She won’t understand that unless you say promise, your truths can get a little shaky.”
“Hey,” I start to protest, but it dies off my lips, vanishing in the air. He’s right that I didn’t say promise. Just in case. And he caught it. Iris didn’t know she had to, yet. Wes would probably fill her in during their next Nora Lied to Me club meeting.
“I’m not running,” I tell him again. “I promise.”
There’s a warmth in his eyes that he doesn’t hide but doesn’t want me to see, so I ignore it and continue. “As long as Lee doesn’t find out, I have a plan for the fail-safe that is risky and probably doomed to failure, but it’s the only one I can think of with a remote chance I don’t end up dead.”
“Tell me.”
I do. I tell him everything I’ve been thinking, and when I’m done, he’s silent. I don’t know if it’s shock or contemplation.
“We knew this was coming,” I say, when the quiet’s too much and his face is too much and it’s just all too fucking much.
“The FBI—” he starts to say, and then stops when I shake my head. He sighs and yanks a hand through his hair, the frustration bleeding off him. It’s an old argument.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
I expect more quiet from him, but instead I get agreement. “Neither do I.”
“I don’t want to do it.” I need him to know that as much as I need to just admit it out loud. I’m not some badass here; I am scared. I’m facing what I’ve hidden from since I was twelve. The consequences are coming too fast . . . and I see no choice but to charge forward to meet them.
“I know.” He tilts his head up to the sky, the sunlight washing him golden. “Are you going to tell Iris?”
“If I don’t, you will.”
His eyes crinkle. “You girls,” he says.
“Bane of your existence?” I suggest, a mix of honey and acid that makes his mouth quirk.
“Family I always wanted,” he answers, because there’s no acid in him; there’s just sweetness and maybe a little sarcasm when the situation calls for it, but it doesn’t right now.
I know I’ll start doing something like cry if I respond with how I feel, so I kick his foot with my boot and say, “Sap,” to give both of us an out, and he takes it gladly, tapping my foot back, because both of us are good at veering around emotional land mines.
“She won’t like it. Iris. She’ll want to come with you.”
For a second all I can do is look at the patch on his jeans that Iris sewed, this little burst of yellow from the fabric she used against the denim. “I have to go alone.”
“I know. But she wants to protect you,” Wes says. “It’ll take her a while to realize that you do the protecting.”
“Do you think that’s bad?” I can’t help but ask.
“No,” he says. “I just used to think it was my job. Now I think it’s the most honest thing about you.”
“I didn’t need your protection,” I say softly.
“I know.”
“No, Wes.” I do not reach out. I do not tangle our fingers together. But my voice, the depth of it, it makes him shift in his seat. “I didn’t need it. Because you were the first guy I’d ever met who I didn’t need any protection from.”
I guess I’ve never put it that way before, because his eyes go suspiciously bright, and I love him for it. I have loved him in more ways than anyone else in my life. I loved him gleefully as a friend because it was all discovery, and I fell in love with him before I even knew how, and now we’ve survived together past that, into Franken-friends. Family.
“When do you want to go?” he asks, and I follow the change of subject, because I’m trying to learn the grace he and Iris have.
“Next time Lee’s out of town on a job,” I say. “It’ll be short notice. I’ll need you to cover for me.”
“You’ll have to be fast so she won’t catch you.”
“I’ll be in and out.”
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out.
“Your mom again?” I ask, trying not to feel annoyed.
He shakes his head. “Amanda.”
The silly grin on my face is met by a shy one on his.
“Sh
e texted me a few days after the bank, when Terry went around blabbing about how we’d survived near-death to everyone we know.”
“I’m surprised it took that long. Terry blabbing, not Amanda texting. Have you two been talking? Was she worried about you? What did she say? Can I see?”
He holds his phone to his chest. “No!”
I make a face. “I bet you’ll let Iris see,” I mutter.
“She gives better dating advice than you.”
“I’m the one who dated you!”
He laughs, and I barely resist kicking him again.
The sun is high in the sky. We laugh, and I breathe in the moment like it’ll be stolen soon, knowing that tomorrow, I’ll be doing the stealing.
— 66 —
August 19 (11 days free)
2 safe-deposit keys, 1 fake birth certificate
I’ve waited until it’s not a crime scene anymore and the smoke has cleared and the construction workers have moved in. The bank’s still closed, of course, but the two times I drive past it doing recon, Olivia-the-teller’s car is parked in the lot. So I make my move.
“Bank’s not open,” the construction worker up front tells me. But Olivia looks up from the desk where she’s sitting and sees me. She’s got her arm in a sling; he’d cut her, back in the bank. That’s what the screaming across the hall had been. But it looks like she’s healing up.
“It’s okay,” she tells him. “You’re Nora, right? That’s your name?”
I nod. “I guess we didn’t get formally introduced last time. How are you doing? Are you okay?”
“Just a little sore,” she says, her eyes tracking over the bruises and swelling that have mostly faded from my face. “What about you?”
It’s kind of weird being here with her, because last time, we were both the same amount of scared, but not the same amount of crumbling. And now we’re back here, she’s the adult again, and I’m supposed to be the kid. But I’m not really a kid, and she may be an adult, but she’s also the mark.
“I’m okay. I’m really sorry to bother you. I know the branch is closed. But my sister keeps the important papers in our safe-deposit box ever since the forest fire a few years back.” I pull out the keys. “I have a scholarship deadline in two days, and I need my birth certificate for the application.”