I hold my head high.
“—I’m going to recommend that we start her on—”
“Yes. Call in a prescription. I’ll pick it up this afternoon.”
Evidently I’m going on birth control. I didn’t ask for that, but I’m not going to turn it down either.
This is the strangest moment of my life.
“Mom,” I say as we head toward her car. A truck is pulling into the lot, with a woman behind the wheel. Dr. Baker’s office opens in half an hour, though she’ll be closed starting tomorrow for Christmas.
“Please, Beckett. I’m tired and I need coffee.” She tugs her blazer closed against the cold wind and crosses her arms over it. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Yeah.” But we won’t. I already know we won’t, because there’s nothing left to say. She’ll bring home the pills, and I’ll start taking them, and I may or may not sleep with Jake again.
But none of that will change the fact that I’m not Lullaby Doe’s mother. And I don’t quite know how to feel about the realization that my mom is really, really upset about that.
Mom drops me off in the driveway with a whispered apology, then she heads straight to work, and for a couple of minutes, I just stand there on the porch, shivering. I want to call her back. To convince her to talk to me. I have the completely irrational urge to apologize for not getting pregnant in high school.
I head inside to go back to bed, but the aroma of coffee draws me into the kitchen instead, where I find Penn on the center bar stool, hunched over the old, second-gen iPad we all share. He’s holding a steaming mug and his earbuds are in, so at first I think he’s watching a movie. But when I get close enough to see over his shoulder, I realize he’s staring at his West Point application.
“Hey,” I say, and he jumps, so badly startled that he sloshes coffee onto the screen.
“Damn it, Beckett!”
“Shh . . .” I lurch for the roll of paper towels next to the microwave and toss them to him. “I need to talk to you before Landry wakes up.”
“I already got her a new cookbook. A nice, hardback one.” He rips a paper towel from the roll and blots at the screen with it. “If you want in on that, your half is eleven dollars.”
“No, it’s—” I shrug. “Okay, sure. Thanks.” I’ve been so distracted by the disaster my life has become, of late, that I’ve hardly even thought about Christmas shopping. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”
“Well, whatever it is, can it wait? The deadline on this application is—”
“No.” I pull a mug down from the cabinet over the microwave and half fill it with coffee. “It can’t wait, Penn.”
He frowns at me. “Why are you up so early? And already dressed? And why are you drinking coffee?”
I’ve always loved the scent, but hated the taste, a fact I try to fix by dumping powdered creamer into my mug until my coffee is the color of melted vanilla ice cream.
“I didn’t get any sleep.” I take a sip and grimace at the taste. Still bitter. “And Mom dragged me to the gynecologist at seven this morning.”
“Okay, I don’t need to know that.”
“Yes, you do.” I grab the sugar bowl and scoop several spoonfuls into my coffee. “Because now that Mom knows for sure that I’m not Lullaby Doe’s mother . . . she’s pretty sure Dad is—was—her father. The baby’s, I mean.”
I shake my head and try my coffee again. Not bad.
“Sorry. I’m too tired to make much sense. Did you follow any of that?”
“Not a word.” Penn pushes the iPad back and snags a chocolate-covered pretzel from the gingerbread house fence. “In your sleep-deprived delirium, you almost made it sound like Dad was Lullaby Doe’s father.”
I take my mug and sit next to him. “That’s how it’s starting to look.”
Penn blinks at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I take another sip, and this stuff really isn’t too bad now. Maybe a half-and-half mix with hot chocolate . . .“Did you ever hear anything bad about Dad? Like, at school?”
He sets his own mug down and swivels on his stool to face me. There’s a weary kind of dread playing over his features. “Beckett, none of that matters anymore. Can’t we just let him rest in peace? Can’t we just remember him the way he was before?”
“That’s not . . . I’m not talking about the pills, Penn. I’m talking about an affair.”
The word tastes bitter. It sounds ridiculous. Yet this is where we are now.
“Did you ever hear anything like that? Right before he died, maybe?”
“No. No, Beckett, there was never anything like that, that I know of. There’s no way he’s that baby’s father.”
“How do you know?”
“With all the crap people were saying about him by the end, I definitely would have heard something about an affair. About a baby.”
“Maybe not, if it was too new. He would have died before the pregnancy was far enough along for anyone to know about it.”
“Then why are you asking what I heard?”
Good point. I shrug. “I thought that if he cheated, this might not have been the first time.”
“No, I never heard anything like that.” Penn drains his mug, then he gets up to pour himself another cup of coffee.
“What did you hear?”
“Beck—”
“Please. Tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you why Mom thinks Lullaby Doe was our sister.”
Penn groans. Then he scoops sugar into his mug and returns to his bar stool. “Fine. But I’m only dragging our father through the mud posthumously under duress.”
“Noted.”
“Okay. Beckett, Dad had issues.”
I huff. “I am aware. Because of Afghanistan, that last time.”
Penn nods. “I mean, a seed can’t grow where the soil isn’t fertile, so I doubt that was the very start of it, but as far as I know, Dad really had his shit together until then. But after that last deployment . . . I mean, he saw three of his friends die. He nearly died himself.”
“You don’t have to defend him, Penn. I know what he went through.”
“But you’re mad at him. He’s been dead for seven months, and you’re still mad at him. And that has nothing to do with Lullaby Doe.”
I have to think about that for a second. It never occurred to me that you could be mad at someone who isn’t even alive anymore. I mean, it’s not like he just ran to the store, and I can yell at him when he gets back.
He’s not coming back. Ever.
But I think Penn’s right. I think I am mad at my dad. I think I’m pissed at him, and that I’ve been pissed at him for a long time. And I think I’m pissed that I never got a chance to tell him I’m pissed, because he died, and you can’t yell at someone who’s dead. You can’t say bad things to or about someone who’s dead. You can’t be mad at someone who’s dead.
Yet that’s exactly what I am.
“Okay. You might be right.” I take another sip from my mug. “But I’m not mad at him for having problems. Or for taking Oxy in the first place. I know he was in a lot of pain.”
“Not all of it physical.”
“Yes! That’s it, exactly. And he knew that pills and alcohol can’t make that kind of pain go away. But he took them anyway. What I’m mad about is the fact that we weren’t enough to make him stop.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . how could he see us every day? How could he see Mom and Landry every day, and decide to keep taking pills? To keep buying whiskey? How could we not be enough to make him try harder?”
“I don’t have that answer, Beck. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just tell me about the rumors. Please.”
“Most of what I heard was about the pills. Our third baseman’s dad is a doctor. He said Dad went to several doctors at the same time, including his father, to get multiple prescriptions. Evidently there’s some kind of database that doctors can use to
check for stuff like that, if the patient is suspicious.”
My father was suspicious. Great.
“I also heard that he stole drugs from the hospital. But the worst of it was people saying he was arrested, a couple of months before he died, for forging a prescription. Arrests are public record. It was in the paper, Beck. In print and online. I checked.”
So, Dad was in the paper for saving dogs during a hurricane and for forging a prescription. Maybe my father was one of those jigsaw puzzles that has a different picture on each side. Maybe that’s how he could be both a soldier and a criminal, at once. A father and an addict.
“I heard he stole a prescription pad from one of the doctors at the hospital.”
Penn shrugs. “I heard he tried it with an online pharmacy. Either way, I know he was never prosecuted.”
“Why?”
“No idea. But I don’t think it had anything to do with Mom, no matter what you heard.”
I wish I could believe that. But I know how much she loved him. I’m not sure there was anything she wouldn’t have done for him, or for any of us.
“Is that it? Is that all you heard?”
Another shrug. “Yeah. I mean, those are the only ones I thought might actually be true, other than the actual true ones. That he went into rehab. That he lost his job at the firehouse. Once I heard that he’d been dishonorably discharged, which is not true. And there was one asshole who claimed that Dad killed those three men who were in the jeep with him in Afghanistan.”
“What is wrong with people?”
“I don’t know. Obviously that was a flat-out lie. So why shouldn’t I believe that some rumor about Dad being Lullaby Doe’s father is just another lie?”
“Because this isn’t just some rumor we heard at school. Mom didn’t tell you the whole truth about your paternity test. It does say you’re not the father, but it also says that you share around twenty-five percent of your genes with Lullaby Doe. Mom says that means she’s related to you. Probably either your niece or your half sister.”
“Wait, seriously? Shit.” Penn pushes his bar stool back, his coffee forgotten. “That’s why she took you to the doctor. Because if the baby isn’t yours . . .”
“She has to be Dad’s.” I give him a second to process that. “I don’t think Mom’s ready to deal with that.” Not that I can blame her. “But your test results are an official part of the police’s attempt to ID Lullaby, so I don’t think this is going to stay quiet for very long.”
“Shit. That’s what the Crimson Cryer was talking about. Somehow, that asshole got ahold of my test results and thinks that means you must be the mother.”
“I guess so.” Honestly, I’d forgotten about that tweet after my mom’s bombshell.
“I can’t believe he would cheat on her. I can’t.”
I shrug. “Things were tense there at the end.”
“Because he was using, not because he was cheating.”
“We don’t know that, Penn.”
“Well, if he was, Mom didn’t know about it.”
“Or she didn’t want to admit she knew about it. Even to herself.” My coffee has grown cold, but I drink it anyway.
Penn frowns, and I can practically see his train of thought derailing, as his hand clenches around his mug handle. “So, if Dad is Lullaby Doe’s father . . . who’s the mother?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. I told Mom that it was probably a teacher, rather than a student. That she might have hidden the pregnancy, because of the affair. But I’m not sure that really holds water. If she’s married, she could have told her husband the baby was his. If she’s not . . . no one would really care who the father was. At least, no one would come right out and ask. And even if she were hiding the pregnancy, why would she give birth in the locker room? Why not call an ambulance or drive herself to the hospital?”
“Also, someone would have noticed if a teacher just disappeared in the middle of the school day.” Yet Penn still looks unconvinced. “If Dad was sleeping with a high school student, there definitely would have been rumors.”
I can only shrug. “There weren’t any rumors about a pregnant student, other than Lilly.” I groan with a sudden realization. “Penn, they’re going to start asking questions. They’ll probably start with our friends.” I fold my arms on the island and lay my forehead on them. “The police are going to ask my friends if they ever slept with my dad! Not that I have many friends left . . .”
Penn puts one hand on my shoulder. “No they won’t. The investigation is over. They’ve released the body, so the police are no longer looking for a next of kin. Which means that as messed up as this is for us, chances are good that no one else will ever know.”
“I really hope you’re right.”
“What’s wrong?” Landry asks, and I pop up from my bar stool to find her standing in the kitchen doorway in green plaid leggings and a baggy red nightshirt, the same Christmas pajamas she’s worn for the past two years.
“Nothing.”
Fact-Check Rating: Lying through my teeth.
“Want some coffee?” I ask her.
“Yuck, no.” She pads into the kitchen in fuzzy red socks and heads straight for the fridge. “Why are you guys up so early?”
“West Point application. It’s due by midnight.” Penn pulls the iPad close again and wakes up the screen.
“I woke up to pee and realized I haven’t done any Christmas shopping.”
Landry turns away from the open refrigerator, eyes wide. “Me neither!”
“Great. You whip us up some french toast while I take a quick shower, then you and I can go shopping in Daley while Penn finishes part one of his diabolical plan to become an American supersoldier and leave us all behind.”
Penn rolls his eyes at me. Landry grabs a carton of eggs from the fridge and a loaf of bread from the counter.
“You have fifteen minutes to shower,” she says.
“I have to find a real job,” I groan as I set our bags on the coffee table. It took us two hours and the entirety of my savings—except the eleven dollars I now owe my brother for half of Landry’s new cookbook—to get gifts for Mom and Penn. I couldn’t afford anything nice for Jake and Amira, so I got ingredients for another batch of cookies, hoping that my time and the willpower it will take me to resist eating them all myself will qualify as giftworthy. Because I’m now broke.
Of course, no one’s going to hire the #babykiller, and if I’d had a real job before, they probably would have asked me to stop coming in, just like my babysitting clients did when the world decided I was small-town Tennessee’s version of the Antichrist.
“What’d you get me?” Penn emerges from the kitchen with the iPad in one hand and a huge smile on his face.
“Hey!” Landry plants herself in front of our bags so he can’t see them.
“I take it you finished your application?”
“I did.” And while his relief is real and obvious, I can’t help noticing that his smile looks a little forced. Like my mom’s has for the past couple of days.
Finding out your dad might have fathered a baby with one of your classmates can do that to you.
“Let’s have some lunch. Jake’s going to be here in an hour to help us string up Christmas lights.”
“You invited him?”
“More like I begged for an extra set of hands.” Penn’s smile finally reaches his eyes. “But I doubt he’s doing it for me.”
Landry and I hide our gifts in my room, then we make sandwiches. Jake rings the doorbell as we’re loading the dishwasher after lunch, and he’s holding a staple gun.
“Does your dad know you borrowed that?” I ask as I let him in.
“Yes. But it’s possible he doesn’t know which friend I’m helping out today.”
“Thank you.” I hug him, and I don’t want to let him go. “I’m sorry your parents hate me.”
“They don’t hate you,” he whispers into my hair as his arms wrap around me. “They just don�
��t want my name associated with a scandal.”
I roll my eyes as I shrug out of his embrace. “They think I sullied their precious angel, and that grudge predates Lullaby Doe.”
Jake’s brows arch as he pulls me close again. “Want me to tell them that any sullying definitely went both ways?”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
He laughs, and when my brother and sister emerge from the kitchen, he finally lets me go.
Penn pulls a cardboard box of Christmas lights from the garage, and we spend about an hour sorting through them, plugging them all in to check for outages. Between the old lights that are still functioning and the new ones Penn got on clearance, I think we have enough to string along the front edge of the roof, and maybe enough to wrap the trunk of the tree in our front yard.
We haven’t put up lights in a few years, because Dad was either deployed, in rehab, or not feeling up to it. But Penn used to help him decorate, and Jake helps his father every year, so I feel like we’re pretty well prepared for the challenge. Except that we only have one ladder.
We give Landry one of the new strings and assign her the tree trunk, while Jake, Penn, and I take turns on the ladder, stapling strands of white lights in as straight a line as we can manage. After about an hour, we’re halfway done, but Landry’s hardly made it a foot up the tree trunk.
When I turn to find her on her phone again, I whisper to Penn, while he holds the ladder steady for Jake. “What’s going on with Landry?”
Penn glances at her. “She and Norah are having another fight.”
“Really? She didn’t say anything.” I’d offered to let Norah come shopping with us, and when Landry didn’t seem to want that, I’d assumed she was going to be buying something for her best friend.
Every Single Lie Page 21