Every Single Lie

by Rachel Vincent

  CRIMSON CRYER

  @crimsoncryer · 3h

  You guys! The students at @CliffordHSOfficial are raising funds to give little #LullabyDoe a proper funeral! Click here to donate: bit.ly/2HPrzTu

  #RIP

  #GiveALittle

  399 1004 1267

  TEN

  “I can’t help noticing that you ate all your zucchini noodles,” Landry says as I stand from my bar stool and take her empty plate.

  It’s my night to do the dishes. I think. We’ve kind of stopped keeping track.

  “I have to admit, they were not bad. Firmer than I expected. Al dente.” I arch one brow at her. “Can vegetables be cooked al dente, or is that term reserved for real pasta?”

  “I have no idea.” She slides from her bar stool and pulls her apron over her head. “Don’t dump the leftovers. Mom thinks she hates zucchini too, so I want her to try this.”

  She opens the pantry door and hangs the apron on its hook.

  “I’ll save them for her,” I promise as I reach for Penn’s plate.

  “Wait!” He stabs at the last of his zucchini noodles, and his fork scrapes the plate with a horrible screech as I pull it away from him.

  “You’ve had three helpings! How can you still be hungry?”

  “It takes a lot of energy to run five miles a day,” he insists, making a grab for his plate.

  And the truth is that with his level of physical activity, he probably needed actual pasta. But he won’t complain in front of the chef. He’ll just carbo-load on his own later.

  “I’m going next door,” Landry calls from the living room, and I lean over the narrow island to see her stepping into her shoes as she shoves both arms into her coat.

  “It’s a school night!” I remind her.

  “I’ll be back in an hour. Norah and I are working on our science project.”

  “Without Fletcher?” Penn calls after her, but the only answer he gets is the click of the front door closing. “They’re not working,” he mumbles, already headed to the pantry for something else to eat.

  But I’m not really listening.

  “Hey. What’s up with you?” Penn pokes me with the corner of a box of Pop-Tarts, and I realize I’ve been staring into the sink, without seeing the dishes stacked in it.

  I open my mouth to tell him about what I heard in the salon. About the reporter. About Amira and Jake’s confirmation that pretty much all of Clifford thinks our dad was a redneck criminal and our mom is a dirty cop. But I can’t do it. Not while he’s wearing the cap the West Point recruiter gave him at the college fair, thinking about how great his life is going to be once he’s out of this shithole town.

  Unfortunately, what comes out of my mouth instead isn’t much better.

  “Hey, where’s your Titans shirt? The one you got on the senior trip to Nashville.”

  “What?”

  He sinks onto the middle bar stool and opens my last box of Pop-Tarts. They’re chocolate peanut butter. My favorite. He better not eat them all.

  “Your Titans shirt,” I repeat as I start loading the dishwasher, as if my question is no big deal. “I haven’t seen you wear it in a while.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” The wrapper crinkles as he rips open one of my Pop-Tarts. “Why do you care about my shirt?”

  I pull the sprayer out of its hole next to the faucet and rinse off the skillet Landry used to sauté the chicken. Or maybe the zucchini noodles. I’m a little fuzzy on how this whole meal came together.

  “Beckett. You have the subtlety of Godzilla on a rampage. What’s going on?”

  I turn, leaning against the sink with my arms crossed over my chest. “Mom’s trying to find the owner of a Titans shirt just like yours.”

  “And by Mom, you mean the cops?” Penn drops his half-eaten Pop-Tart onto the open wrapper still containing its twin. “This is about that baby? Do you seriously think I have anything to do with that?”

  “No.” Maybe? I feel like a bitch for even asking, but . . . “Basically any of the senior guys who bought that shirt are going to be questioned. I just thought you should have a heads-up.”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell me that, instead of trying to interrogate me on the sly?”

  “Okay. Look.” I push off from the sink and lean against the island across from him, pointedly ignoring a few drips of lemon garlic sauce. “Jake thinks he left his duffel bag here. And you came back from the senior trip with one of those shirts. And your girlfriend has missed nearly a week of school. So . . .” I shrug, feeling like an ass.

  “You should jump to conclusions in the Olympics, Beckett. Do you really think Daniela and I are the parents of a dead baby abandoned on the floor of the locker room?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just . . .” Another shrug. “Is there any chance you mistook Jake’s bag for yours? Did you maybe carry it by accident? Leave your shirt in it? Would Daniela have had access to it?”

  Penn blinks at me, stunned. “I can’t believe you! No, I didn’t use Jake’s bag. Not that I know of, anyway. And I don’t know where my shirt is. I ripped it beneath the armpit a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t exactly been looking for it since then, because until I learn how to sew, I can’t wear it anymore.”

  “Okay. I’m—”

  “And Daniela has the flu. Like I told you this morning. She’s never been pregnant. She’s on the pill, and we’re very fucking careful, Beck. Because West Point won’t even consider applicants with children, and I am not going to get stuck here slinging tires for the rest of my life. I have plans. Big ones. People who go to West Point become federal judges. Four-star generals. President. So there’s no way in hell that’s my baby. It’s not Daniela’s either. Fuck you, if you don’t believe me.”

  With that, Penn storms out of the kitchen with my entire last box of Pop-Tarts, flipping me off with his free hand, just for good measure.

  I kick the dishwasher shut.

  When my mother hasn’t come home by midnight, I sneak into the kitchen and eat her leftovers, standing over the sink. She probably grabbed cheap tacos at work anyway.

  As I swirl zucchini noodles onto my fork—they warm up surprisingly well—my phone beeps with an alert that the Crimson Cryer account has posted something new.

  Yes, I’ve set up alerts.

  Though I’m just now getting the notice, when I tap to open it, I discover that the tweet was posted several hours ago. It’s a link to the GoFundMe that the Key Club started, along with an appeal to the public to donate. It already has more than twelve hundred likes, a thousand retweets, and nearly four hundred comments.

  And the Crimson Cryer account itself has several thousand new followers since I last checked. Including half a dozen reporters from national news networks, according to their two-line bios.

  If that keeps up, much bigger sharks than WBBJ will be swimming in our little pond again, trying to take a bite out of me.

  I click the link to the GoFundMe and nearly choke on my zucchini.

  We’ve already received more than twice our donation goal. Seventeen thousand four hundred dollars, and some change. There’s no way all of that came from the good people of Clifford.

  It appears, whether I like it or not, that the Crimson Cryer is a bona fide celebrity.

  On the bright side, we have plenty of money for Lullaby Doe’s funeral. And I don’t even care that Sophia Nelson will get credit for the fundraiser.

  Wait, yes I do. No one’s accusing her of being a baby killer. A little good press could go a long way for me. But I know better than to push my luck with karma. Or the media.

  The front door opens as I’m setting the empty leftover dish in the sink, and my mother comes in dragging her feet.

  “Hey!” I call, leaning over the kitchen island so she can see me.

  “Hey.” She drops her keys in the bowl on the coffee table, then she comes into the kitchen. “What are you doing up?”

  There are bags under her eyes, and those little bab
y hairs around her face have long since won the battle against whatever product keeps them in place for the first half of her workday.

  “Couldn’t sleep. So I thought I’d eat.”

  “Oh, to be sixteen again.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” I warn her.

  When she was sixteen, there was no social media “justice” and no viral death threats.

  She sinks onto the right-hand bar stool and scrapes at a dried bit of sauce on the island. “What was this?”

  “Lemon garlic chicken with zucchini noodles.”

  My mother’s grimace looks eerily familiar. Why is it that I see the resemblance between us only when something unpleasant crosses her mind?

  “It was surprisingly good. I just had the last of it. But I’m fine with letting Landry think you ate it.”

  “Agreed.” She folds her arms on the island, heedless of the dried sauce, and leans over to lay her forehead on them. “I’m too tired to go to bed.”

  “Why were you out so late? Was there a break in the case?”

  I don’t expect her to answer. And maybe she’s not planning to. But then I pull out the left-hand bar stool and she looks up, surprised, when I sink onto it.

  “Actually, as it turns out, there is no case.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her brows dip and she presses her lips together. I can practically see her internal debate as she tries to decide whether or not she can trust me.

  “The coroner’s report came back,” she finally says, twisting on her bar stool to face me. “The baby died without ever taking a breath.”

  “So, what does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means there was no murder. The baby was stillborn, which means she died either in utero or during labor.”

  “Okay, but why did she die?”

  “The coroner wasn’t able to tell us that. Science doesn’t have an answer for everything, Beckett. And this case is more frustrating than most, because this baby doesn’t appear to fall into many of the high-risk categories for stillbirth. There’s no sign the mother smoked or took drugs. There’s every likelihood that she is young, whoever she is, and most stillbirths occur to older mothers. The only likely risk factor is a low socioeconomic status, which the coroner said can lead to poor prenatal care. But it seems just as likely to me that in this case, the lack of prenatal care was in an effort to keep the pregnancy secret.”

  “So then, would she have lived if her mother had gone to the doctor? Or called an ambulance when she went into labor?”

  Was there any truth to what that woman at the salon said, even if she was wrong about me being the mother?

  “Possibly. But there’s no way to know that for sure.” My mother sighs, hunched beneath the weight of her job. “Sometimes there are just no answers.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  “Now, I try to get a little sleep, so that I don’t look like a zombie when I hold another press conference tomorrow to tell the world that the role of the Clifford PD is now limited to identifying and notifying the next of kin of the baby now officially known as Lullaby Doe. Speaking of which, Jake’s test results came back today too. He’s not the father, Beckett.”

  My relieved exhalation practically blows her hair back. I didn’t really believe it was Jake’s baby. At least, I didn’t think I believed that. But having it confirmed is such a huge relief.

  “Oh, thank goodness. I didn’t think you’d get the results back so quickly.”

  “Me neither. It seems the press coverage has made the Lullaby Doe case the lab’s top priority.” My mother clears her throat. “Normally this isn’t information I could give out, without permission from the subject of the test. But I’m sure Jake is planning to tell you himself anyway. And when he does, I suggest looking a little less relieved. As if you were never in doubt.”

  “Wait, he already knows?”

  “We called him out of class this afternoon to tell him. I figured he deserved to know as soon as possible. I mean, he already knew, presumably. But I thought he deserved to know that he was no longer a person of interest in the case. Which no longer exists, anyway, as of about three hours ago.”

  Jake’s known for half the day, and he didn’t tell me. Not even when I spoke to him on the phone this afternoon. Why wouldn’t he want to clear his name, after I practically accused him of being Lullaby Doe’s father?

  Unfortunately, Jake isn’t the only person I hurled that particular accusation at.

  “What’s wrong?” my mother asks. “I thought you’d be happy about all of this.”

  “I am. But I kind of . . . ​also accused Penn of being the baby’s father.”

  “Beckett!”

  “I know! I’m sorry! It’s just that at the time, it seemed like a legitimate possibility.”

  She stands and rounds the island, where she runs water into a glass at the sink. “You’re going to have to walk me through that one.”

  “Daniela’s been absent from school for several days. And Penn can’t find his Titans shirt.”

  “What?” My mother turns away from the sink holding her glass. “What’s wrong with Daniela?”

  “He says she has the flu. And to be fair, her Insta has been full of artfully focused pictures of cold medicine and tissue boxes for days now.” I lean over the island and pull open the junk drawer, so I can hand her a packet of antacid tablets. She definitely grabbed tacos at work. “Would it be paranoid of me to point out that anyone can take pictures of cold medicine and tissue boxes and claim to have the flu?”

  Am I out of my mind to suspect my brother’s girlfriend?

  Mom tears open the packet and drops two white tablets into her water glass, where they fizz vigorously. “Beckett, I think it’s time to consider the possibility that a career in law enforcement may not be in your future.”

  “Mom, I have no intention of becoming a cop.”

  She gives me a surprised look as she lifts her glass. “So, what’s the deal with Penn’s shirt?”

  “He says he hasn’t seen it since he ripped one of the armpits. But that he hasn’t really been looking for it, because he can’t wear it now anyway.”

  Mom sets her glass down without taking a drink. For a second, she only stares at it, her eyes half-focused. “I’m sure Daniela really just has the flu, hon.”

  “I know. And Penn’s shirt is probably buried at the bottom of his hamper.”

  We both know he prioritizes gym clothes when he does his laundry.

  My mother nods. Then she takes a long gulp from her fizzing water. “And the duffel bag you found wasn’t Penn’s.”

  “I know. But this afternoon, Jake told me he thinks he left his bag here.” Me telling my mother that isn’t the same thing as Jake telling the police in an official interview. “Which means Penn could easily have grabbed it thinking it was his at any time in the past month. Like I said, at the time, it all seemed to make sense. But now . . .” I shrug. “Penn’s really pissed at me, and he has every right to be. Still . . .”

  She takes another drink. “Still what?”

  “I need to know, Mom. People are out there accusing me of hiding a pregnancy and killing a baby. Demanding my arrest. I can’t answer my own phone. Reporters are following me down the street. I’m getting death threats on Twitter.”

  “I told you not to look—”

  “That’s a lot easier said than done. I’m wrapped up in this, and it feels like that’s not going to change until we figure out who that baby’s parents really are. Until I can show the world that it’s not me.”

  My mother sets her glass down and captures my gaze from across the countertop. It’s a mom-gaze, not a cop-gaze. “Beckett, there will always be someone out there willing—even eager—to believe the worst of you. That’s true for all of us. Admittedly, what you’re getting is more baptism by fire than the gentle sprinkling of unfounded hatred most people will experience over the course of a lifetime. But the principle remains the same. You’re never going to be
able to completely clear your name. Even if you had ironclad proof, someone would refuse to believe it. There are people out there who still don’t believe we ever landed on the moon, Beck. If you spend your life trying to prove yourself worthy of someone else’s respect, you’ll run yourself into an early grave.”

  “I just don’t want some wack job to think the Clifford baby killer got off too easily and decide to take matters into his own hands. Chances are that those dogs are all bark and no bite. But it only takes one psycho to—”

  “That’s fair,” my mom says. “And I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t something I’d thought of. But so far, none of the threats against you have proven credible.”

  “You’ve looked into them?”

  My mother blinks at me. “Of course I have. Every last one. I’ve already had nearly two dozen accounts suspended from Twitter for policy violation—threatening physical harm—and I’m reporting every single one of them to the FBI.”

  “Holy shit.” I stare at her, stunned. “Why haven’t you told me any of that?”

  “I assumed you knew. I’d do that for anyone in Clifford who was being threatened. That’s my job. And you’re not just anyone, Beck.”

  “So, I’ve been going around accusing people, basically at random, of the very thing the internet is accusing me of, and you’ve been out there tracking down test results and reporting threats against me to the FBI. Mom, that is badass.”

  My timing is bad. My mother chokes on the sip she’s just taken. But then she smiles.

  “Thanks. I guess.” She coughs again, then she takes another drink. “You need to get some sleep, hon.”

  “I know.” I slide off my bar stool as she grabs the empty antacid packet to throw it away. “Tell Landry you liked the zucchini noodles. Use words like ‘al dente’ and ‘filling.’ ”

  “You want me to lie to her?”

  “It’s not a lie. The words are true; you just didn’t experience them. So just think of yourself as a speaker broadcasting words that I recorded.”

  My mother frowns as I walk backward out of the kitchen. “I’m a little worried about your definition of a lie, Beckett.”