“They were in the same graduating class. Only . . . your dad didn’t graduate. He got arrested and joined the army.” She shrugs again. “I guess he got his GED.”
“Are you sure?”
Why don’t I know this? How can I know how he liked his eggs and how he made his coffee, but not know he was arrested as a teenager? How can I know the nuance of every smile he ever shined on me, but not know that he didn’t graduate high school?
Amira shrugs as she takes a left-hand turn. “Well, I believe my mom.”
“What was he arrested for?”
I’m not sure I believe her. Yes, my father had problems, but it doesn’t seem fair to his memory to apply one more black mark on his permanent record, when he isn’t here to defend himself. Yet I need to know.
“I don’t know, Beckett. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask for details. At the time, that felt . . . invasive.” Amira pulls into the school parking lot and heads for my car, which stands all alone now in a sea of cracked concrete. “This was right after your dad died. I was trying . . . I was trying to understand what you were going through. My mom was trying to help.”
Mrs. Bhatt was three degrees removed from the tragedy of my father’s death, but she had the time and energy to help Amira figure out how to help me. When my mother was burying herself in work to avoid having to exist in rooms haunted by my father’s memory.
Not that it worked. One day, Amira just stopped coming over. She stopped snapping and texting me. She basically ghosted me, and I let her go, because what was the point of trying to keep someone around when that someone didn’t want to be around?
My father taught me that lesson.
“What else did she say?”
“Not much.” Amira pulls into the spot one over from my car and shifts into park. She twists in the driver’s seat to face me. “I didn’t ask much. But, honestly, what she did tell me about your dad was pretty much in line with what that lady in the salon said.”
“What about the rest of what that lady said?”
My voice sounds as hollow as I feel, as I silently beg her to say something warm. Something validating about my father, or the rest of my family. Something to fill this void inside me so it will stop sucking at the world around me.
“The rest of it?”
“I know my dad had issues when he got back from Afghanistan that last time. But my mom’s not a crooked cop. Even if my dad had gotten into some legal trouble—and he didn’t, as far as I know—she would never have broken the law to get him out of it. I don’t think she even could.” I shrug. “I mean, that’s not really how it works. Cops don’t decide who gets prosecuted.”
“I only know what I’ve heard, Beckett.” Amira looks worried now. There’s something she doesn’t want to tell me.
“Which is what?”
With a sigh, she pulls her keys from the ignition and drops them on her lap. “Last year there were all kinds of rumors about your dad.”
“Because he went into rehab?” And because I called the fire chief? I know he tried to fill his void with pills and alcohol. And I know that that killed him.
Amira shrugs. “Cabrini’s mom works at the hospital. She said your dad came in through the ER all the time, and that he kept asking the doctor for a prescription. She called him a ‘frequent flyer.’ ”
“Because he was in the ER a lot? He broke his leg in three places, Amira. He was in constant pain, even after the cast came off.”
“I know!” She nods, eager to agree. To sympathize. “But that’s not what her mother meant. Cabrini said frequent flyers are the people who come in complaining of pain just to get a script. They’re . . . notorious. Because they’re there so often. Some of them even hurt themselves on purpose just to get pills.”
“My father never did that.” My jaw aches from clenching my teeth. “He would never.”
“I know. But Cabrini said . . .” She takes another breath, and I can see her steeling herself to forge ahead. “I mean, Cabrini wasn’t the only one saying it. But she said he stole a prescription pad and tried to forge a script. That he might have sold some of them. That’s why he was arrested last year. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
There’s a sound building in the back of my head. It’s a roar, like an oncoming train. Or, like a tsunami about to crash over land. Whatever it is, it’s coming. Fast and hard.
I can’t be in this car when it hits. I can’t be with Amira when this thing demolishes me. But I have to know.
“And my mother? What did they say about her?”
Amira shrugs, as if it’s a casual thing for her to talk about my family like this. To string our shames out in a neat row, like laundry pinned to the clothesline behind my grandmother’s trailer.
“They say she fixed his problems. I’m not sure what that means. Maybe that she buried evidence?” Another shrug. “She made it so that he was never officially charged.”
“And everyone thinks that? They all think my mother is crooked? That my father was a criminal?”
I knew there were rumors. I could feel the stares and hear the whispers for months on end. But I thought it was about my dad being in rehab. Losing his job.
Beckett Bergen, daughter of an opioid addict. Until I wasn’t.
Beckett Bergen, daughter of a dead opioid addict.
But I had no idea it went beyond that. No idea they were talking about my mother too. Or that they thought my father was a criminal.
Amira lays her hand on mine, and I swear her fingers burn. “I don’t think that.”
When I can’t figure out what to say, she frowns. “Doesn’t that matter, Beckett?”
Does it?
When I get home, Landry is in the kitchen, and the whole house smells amazing. Like garlic and cheese. It’s almost enough to make me smile.
Almost.
“Hey! What’s for dinner?” I set my backpack on a bar stool and steal a pinch of shredded parmesan from the bowl on the counter.
“Don’t!” Landry scowls at me as if I just threw the whole thing on the floor. “That’s the good stuff. Eight dollars a pound. It is not to be scarfed with abandon before dinner’s even done.”
“Mom let you spend eight dollars for a pound of parmesan?”
“No, our food budget would only cover the green canister full of the powdered crap. I bought this myself. But this was only an eight ounce block, so . . .” She shrugs, as if her purchase were no big deal.
Penn and I do dishes and clean the bathroom, but Landry’s only household chore is to make dinner five nights a week. In part because no one else wants to do it. She gets an allowance of ten dollars every week, just like we do. Which means she spent nearly half her allowance—her own money, outside of the grocery budget—on this cheese.
“What’s wrong with the stuff in the green canister?”
Again, disdain bleeds from her eyes. “That stuff is crap. This stuff is good.”
“It sure is.” I steal another pinch, and she moves the bowl out of my reach. “What’cha makin’?”
She turns back to the skillet sizzling on the stove, to stir whatever she’s sautéing. “Garlic lemon chicken, with zucchini noodles.”
I groan. “What is it with you and vegetables?”
“They’re good for you. And they taste good. You’ll see.”
“You know what tastes good?” I don’t wait for her to ask, because she clearly isn’t going to. “Spaghetti. Actual noodles.”
“Well, when you cook dinner, you can boil as much starchy pasta as you want. But tonight, you’re having zucchini noodles,” she says, pointing to a big bowl where the fake noodles in question sit next to a canister of salt. “We eat in twenty minutes.”
“Great. Need any help?”
She props her hands on her hips, over the ties of a worn, stained kitchen apron. It was dad’s, so it’s big on her. “Do you know how to juice a lemon?”
“Um . . . Ask it nicely to release its tart nectar?”
Landry rolls her eyes. “No, I don’t need
any help. Thanks, though.”
I steal one more pinch of parmesan on my way out of the kitchen, then I text Jake.
call?
His reply comes as I close myself into my bedroom.
just a sec
My phone rings a minute later.
“Hey,” I say into it as I sink onto my bed and lean back on my pillow.
“Hey,” Jake says. “What’s up?”
We haven’t spoken since his parents basically kicked me out of his house last night.
“Did you hear rumors about my parents last year?”
He huffs into my ear. “You have a strange way of starting conversations.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Over the line, I hear the familiar creak of his bedsprings. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I mean, yeah, I heard things.”
“What things? About my dad?”
“Yeah.” I can practically hear him shrug one shoulder, the way he does when he doesn’t really want to tell me something.
“What did you hear? Was it more than just the rehab thing?”
“I feel like you’re fishing for something specific, Beck.”
“I’m trying to figure something out. What did you hear?”
Jake sighs. “I heard your dad got arrested for stealing drugs from the hospital.”
“Drugs?”
“Prescription painkillers. Oxy. Vicodin. Stuff like that.”
“Hmmm . . .”
“What? Is that not what you thought I’d say?”
“Amira heard he was arrested for stealing a prescription pad and forging signatures.”
I’m not sure if this means that neither version is true or that both of them are. Or that life is like that game of Telephone from when we were kids. The one where you’d whisper something from ear to ear around a circle, then laugh over how the final product hardly resembled the original statement.
“When did you hear that? About the pills?”
“I don’t know, Beck. I’ve slept since then. Several hundred times.”
“Guess.”
Jake exhales again. “I think it was around the time your dad lost his job with the fire department. That’s the only reason I listened. It kinda . . . It kind of seemed to make sense. At the time.”
“So you believed it?”
“I mean . . . ,” Jake says, and I can almost hear that silent shrug again. “I gave it about an eighty percent credibility rating.”
“And you didn’t think you should tell me?”
“Beckett, I don’t know what you want me to say. Why would I want to tell my girlfriend that her father may or may not have been arrested for stealing prescription pain pills? Besides, I figured your mom could handle it.”
“Handle it?” I sit up straight, fire sparking in my veins. “You think she got the charges dropped? Did you hear that at school too? That my mother’s a dirty cop?”
“No!” Jake groans. “I mean yes, I heard that she fixed things for your dad, when he was arrested. And that maybe that wasn’t the first time. But that’s not what I meant by ‘handle it.’ I meant I figured it was up to her to decide what to tell you. Her, and your dad.”
“Why? Why would you think that? Parents try to protect their kids. That’s their job, even if that means lying. Or omitting. I expected the truth from you. I needed the truth from you.”
A bitter feeling of déjà vu overwhelms me, and my eyes close. I can feel the echo of this plea to him reverberating backward through our relationship. Me begging for the truth. Him withholding it. Or trying to explain why he can’t give me what I need.
Just like with the texts he didn’t want me to see.
“That’s not fair. No one wants to get in the middle of someone else’s family drama. Besides, I liked your dad, and I didn’t know for sure that any of it was true. I still don’t. And back then, you and I had just gotten together. If I’d started accusing your dad of criminal shit with no proof, you’d have dumped me. After you kicked in my teeth.”
Fact-Check Rating: One hundred percent true.
“What about later? When we’d been together awhile? Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because after the rumors died down, I didn’t think it mattered. People seemed to forget. Until your dad died, and they started talking again. But then, there was no way I was going to ask you if he’d been arrested. I wasn’t raised to speak ill of the dead, Beck.”
That’s fair. Jake didn’t do anything wrong. So why am I so mad at him?
This feels like the cosmic version of having spinach stuck in your teeth. Wherein spinach is a father who may or may not have been arrested for stealing a prescription pad and forging prescriptions. Or stealing actual drugs. But who was definitely in rehab at least once, and who definitely died of an overdose of alcohol and painkillers.
Why would no one tell me I had cosmic spinach in my teeth? Why would no one give me a chance to find out for myself whether or not my father was the man I believed him to be?
“It doesn’t matter, Beck.”
Jake’s voice is soft in my ear. So soft that he could be here with me. Curled up around me, with my back resting against his chest, while he leans against my headboard. And suddenly I want that so badly.
“It doesn’t matter whether any of the rest of that shit is true. Even if it is, that isn’t who he was to you. He was the man who taught you to tie your shoes and sing the alphabet song. The man who came back from Afghanistan with a tiny hourglass filled with sand on a silver chain, so that the next time he was in the desert, you would have a little bit of that same desert to keep near your heart.”
I’d forgotten I told him about that.
“He was your dad, even if he was someone else’s criminal. Don’t take that away from him when he isn’t here to defend himself.”
I don’t know where the sob comes from. One minute, I’m remembering that I had a very similar thought half an hour ago, in Amira’s car. The next, I’m crying. And I don’t know why.
God, I wish Jake were here right now. Almost as badly as I wish my father were here.
“Hey! You okay?” His bedsprings creak again, and I know he’s sitting up. “Beckett?”
I sniffle and wipe my eyes. “I’m fine. Sorry.”
When is this going to get easier? When will it not hurt to think about him?
“Can I come over?”
Yes. God, yes, come over and hold me.
“No.” The word burns my tongue, but I say it anyway.
“You’re upset. I just . . . I want to help you. I want to be there with you.” He sucks in a deep breath, and the rest comes out like a confession. “I miss you, Beck.”
I shove my face into my pillow and scream into it for a second. Then I pick up my phone again. “I can’t. I’m so sorry, Jake, but I just can’t.”
“Why not?”
Because everything is so complicated right now. Because I love him, but I don’t know how to move forward if I can’t count on him to tell me the truth, about what he heard about my parents or about whatever he doesn’t want me to see in his texts.
Because I can’t be sure I won’t throw myself at him the minute I see him, despite all of that.
“Because you were right,” I tell him. “My timing sucks.”
Silence echoes between us, and I think he’s going to hang up. That he may never call back. “Okay,” he says at last. “Um . . . At the risk of making everything worse . . . I think I remember where I left my duffel bag.”
The abrupt switch of gears throws me off balance for a moment. But then I swipe my cheeks dry with one hand and sit straighter. If I come to my mother with more information about the case, she might be more inclined to reciprocate.
“Where?”
“There,” Jake says. “I think I left it at your house, about a month ago. The last time I remember having it was when I took you home after the last football game. I brought it in with me so I could change my shirt. It rained that night, remember
?”
I do remember. And he definitely had his bag with him that night. I don’t remember him leaving it here, but knowing that I might have had access to that bag would make me look even worse to everyone harassing me with the babykiller hashtag.
“I don’t . . . Jake, I don’t think it would help the police to know that.”
“So, you’re asking me not to tell your mother?”
I exhale slowly, well aware of the hypocrisy I’m about to commit. “I can’t tell you what to do. All I’m saying is that I don’t think that’ll help the police, and it definitely won’t help me.”
Silence stretches over the phone again while he considers.
“Okay,” he says at last. “I’m not going to lie if they ask me, but I won’t volunteer the information either.”
“Thank you. I—” I close my eyes and exhale slowly. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to get my shit together, and I feel like I’m running around in circles in my own head. But I miss you too.” Admitting that feels like letting go of a breath I’ve been holding for years. “Maybe . . . Maybe we could talk more tomorrow? At school?”
“Dinner!” Landry shouts from the kitchen.
“That would be good.”
Jake’s voice echoes in my ear, and a smile sneaks up on me. “I gotta go. Say hi to your mom for me. Tell her she raised a real peach.”
He laughs. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear your opinion on the subject.”
He thinks I’m joking, because his parents were on the “Beckett Bergen is going to hell” bandwagon long before the rest of the world got on board. But there’s one thing his mom and my mom have in common, both with each other and with every other mother on the face of the planet. They love to hear how great their kids are.
In this case, it happens to be true.
On my way out of the room, I stop and grab the tiny vial of sand on a chain from where it hangs over the corner of the old wooden jewelry box my grandmother gave me years ago. I drop it over my head and tuck the vial into my shirt, where I can feel it against my skin.
My dad may have fallen for the last time here in Tennessee. On the living room floor. But we all know that he really died two years ago in Afghanistan. With the other three men in that jeep.
Every Single Lie Page 11