Every Single Lie

by Rachel Vincent

  But now I realize she didn’t get a thing for Norah. Come to think of it, I can’t remember Norah and Fletcher coming over to finish their extra credit project either.

  “Landry,” I call as I cross the yard, zipping my coat against the cold. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She looks up and angles her phone away from me as she types. Then she shoves it into her pocket and picks up the strand of lights she’s supposed to be winding around the trunk. “Norah’s just being a . . . pain.”

  “I’m sorry. Need help with the lights?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “I think I can handle winding a string of lights around a tree trunk.”

  “The evidence does not support your conclusion,” I tell her, my hands propped on my hips.

  “Ha ha.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” I ask as she resumes winding the unlit strand around the tree.

  “I’m fine.”

  So I take her at her word and I go back to help Jake and Penn.

  Half an hour later, I hear a muted buzz. I turn to see Landry reading something on her phone, but then she returns it to her pocket without replying. She finishes the tree trunk and heads toward the garage for an extension cord, but in the driveway, she stops and looks at another message. Then, again, she pockets her phone without replying.

  I follow her into the garage, and she doesn’t hear me as she rummages through a plastic storage tub, pushing aside a small spade and a broken hose nozzle, evidently unconcerned that she’s looking in Mom’s gardening supplies instead of Dad’s box full of spare cords and wires.

  Her phone buzzes again, and this time I snatch it from her hand before she can slide it back into her pocket.

  “Hey!” Landry spins around, angry for a second, until she sees that it’s me. Then she suddenly looks terrified. She grabs for her phone, and I backpedal until I hit a broken bicycle and send it crashing into the box she should have been searching for the outdoor extension cord. “Give me my phone, Beckett.”

  Instead, I read the text thread on her screen.

  Landry: delete it. NOW!

  Norah: no!

  Landry: its gone too far. delete the account!

  Landry: your going to get us in SO much trouble!

  Norah: stop being paranoid

  Norah: come over. we got another DM from that reporter.

  Norah: if you dont come over i’m gonna answer her

  “Oh my god.” My hand clenches around her phone, and it creaks in my grip. “You’re the Crimson Cryer. You and Norah are the fucking Crimson Cryer!” I don’t mean to shout. The last thing I want is for anyone to hear me. But this is . . . This is . . .

  “How—?” I can’t make the rest of the question come out. I can’t remember how words work. There’s nothing left inside me right now but so much anger that I’m afraid that if I move a single muscle, I’ll kill my sister.

  “Inside,” I say though clenched teeth. “Now.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Landry heads for the door into the kitchen, and on the way through the garage, she holds her hand out. For her phone. “Can I—”

  “Do not finish that question.”

  When the kitchen door closes behind her, I count to ten, mumbling through clenched teeth. Then I turn to the open bay door and shout into the yard. “Penn! Inside! Now!” And I follow Landry into the house.

  She’s sitting on the couch with her hands in her lap. Staring at the Christmas tree. Her foot is tapping on the floor, rapidly bouncing her right knee.

  “How—?”

  The front door flies open, and Penn appears in the doorway. “Beckett? What’s wrong?”

  “Come in and close the door.”

  Penn glances from me to Landry, who won’t look at him. Then he steps inside. Jake follows him in. “Everything okay?” he asks. “Should I go?”

  “You may as well stay,” I tell him. “This kind of involves you.”

  So Jake closes the front door.

  “What’s going on?” Penn looks nervous, probably because of how pissed I obviously am.

  I hand him our sister’s phone, which hasn’t auto-locked because I keep touching the screen. “Landry and Norah are the Crimson Cryer.”

  Penn looks skeptical for a second. Then he starts scrolling through the texts, while Jake reads over his shoulder, and his expression slowly morphs from disbelieving to angry. “What the hell were you thinking? How is this even possible?” He hands the phone back to me, but he’s talking to Landry. “How did you get access to all that information?”

  Landry’s leg bounces even faster. There are tears in her eyes. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to get mad.”

  “The hell I do!”

  “Beckett.” Penn takes a deep breath. Then he sits on the coffee table facing Landry, and he better be playing good cop to my bad cop, because he has almost as much right to be mad about this as I do. “Landry, just tell us what happened.”

  “She’s not on Twitter.” I scroll through her phone, and there’s no Twitter app. And that third-party app I caught her on the other day won’t let her post anything. “Start talking, Landry.”

  She glances at me, then her gaze falls back on Penn, and I can’t really blame her. “Norah has a burner. She’s not allowed on social media, and her parents check her phone, so she got a burner a couple of months ago. Walmart has them. You just buy them off the shelf, and—”

  “Get to the point,” I snap.

  “Yeah. So anyway, the day you found the baby, I stayed the night at Norah’s. I got a notification on my phone that our cloud storage was full, and that we should upgrade to a paid account or adjust our settings. Or something like that. So I went to see what was even on our cloud account, and I found that picture you took of the baby.”

  “Wait, what?” Penn spins on the coffee table to look up at me. “You took that picture? I thought it was leaked from the police.”

  “That’s what everyone thought. But I found it in the backup of Beckett’s phone.” Landry shrugs. “Turns out our whole family shares a cloud account, and a lot of our information is set to back up automatically. Some of Dad’s pictures are still on there too.”

  That feels like a punch in the gut, intended to distract me.

  “Why would you take a picture of a dead baby?” Penn asks.

  “Because she recognized my bag,” Jake tells him. “She took the picture to show me.”

  “Do you have any idea of the damage you’ve caused?” I demand, and more tears fill Landry’s eyes.

  “Just let her finish.” Penn spins around on the coffee table again to face the couch. “Where did the rest of the information come from?”

  Landry shrugs. “Mom’s texts back up to the cloud too. Including the ones from work.”

  “Jesus, Landry.” I lean back against the wall, trying to wrap my mind around it all, while the Christmas tree blinks in glaring shades of red and green on the edge of my vision. “So, you had the intel, and Norah had the Twitter account? And you just gave her all that information and let her post it? Completely out of context?”

  “No! At first, we did it together. Anna Weston was on the high school newspaper staff her freshman year, which is where we got the name, and—”

  “Why?” I demand. “Why would you even start something like that?”

  “Because there was a dead baby!” She sniffles and swipes tears from her eyes as they spill over. “I found the picture and showed Norah, and we . . . ​Well, we thought people should know about her. We thought the world should get to see her. To know that she existed.”

  “It doesn’t sound like they meant to hurt anyone,” Penn says.

  “But they did hurt someone! Why would you drag me into it? Why would you accuse me of being the mother? That’s a flat-out lie! I’m getting death threats, Landry! Our school got a bomb threat! Penn got fired from his job, and no one’s ever going to let me babysit again!”

  “I didn’t get fired,” he interjects. “It’s a
temporary leave of absence.”

  “I’m sorry!” Landry cries. “I didn’t mean for any of that to happen. And I didn’t write that about you. Norah did it. Her real account only has a couple dozen followers, but the Crimson Cryer got hundreds and hundreds of them, in just a few hours, and she figured that would all go away if we didn’t keep posting. So she just . . . made it up.”

  “Oh my god! Landry, lies like that can ruin someone’s life!”

  “I know! We had a huge fight about it, and she promised never to do that again. Then I used the account to tell people to leave you alone.”

  Well, that explains the contradictory nature of the Cryer’s posts about me.

  “What about the latest tweet?” I demand. “Is Norah the one who lied about the police having evidence that I’m the mother?”

  “That wasn’t a lie, exactly,” Landry says, staring at the coffee table. “Just a misinterpretation. Some doctor texted Mom about Penn’s paternity test results, saying that he might be the baby’s uncle. And Norah just kind of jumped to that conclusion.”

  “Why would you show her that?” I can’t seem to stop shouting. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe my own sister would—­

  “Because she’s my friend!” Landry sobs. “You tell your friends things. Especially when you can’t tell anyone else.”

  “Some friend,” I snap. “She used you to get Twitter-famous.”

  “Beckett.”

  Penn gives me a look. But screw him. I’m the one getting death threats.

  He turns back to Landry. “We have to explain something to you. About those test results.”

  I groan when I realize he’s right. We can’t keep hiding things from her; her efforts to find information on her own are what led to the Crimson Cryer destroying my life.

  I sink onto the love seat, on the side nearest the couch, and Jake sits with me. “Should I go?” he whispers.

  “No.” I take his hand. “But promise me you won’t tell anyone any of this.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What’s going on?” My sister swipes her fingers across her cheeks again, wiping away more tears.

  Penn takes a deep breath. “Landry, the baby being my niece was only one of the possibilities. The other reason Lullaby and I could share nearly a quarter of our genetic material—the only reason that still makes sense—is if she were my half sister. Our half sister.”

  Landry blinks, and I can see her trying to puzzle through that. “But Mom didn’t—”

  “Not Mom,” I tell her.

  “Dad?” She shakes her head. “You think Dad cheated on Mom? He didn’t. He wouldn’t. And anyway, he was already dead before the baby . . . I mean, wasn’t he?”

  “There’s a possibility the baby could have been conceived up to two weeks before he died,” I explain.

  “No,” she says. Penn and I just look at her, waiting for her to process what she’s hearing. Jake squeezes my hand. “So . . . ​she’s our family?” Landry says at last.

  Penn nods. “Looks that way.”

  “So then, we’re her next of kin. We can claim her . . . body.”

  I glance at Penn. Somehow, neither of us has thought of that. Not that it matters. “It’s too late for that,” I explain. “The coroner released her yesterday. She’s at Dunley’s Funeral Home now.”

  “Oh. Well—”

  Landry’s phone buzzes in my hand—the one not currently clutching Jake’s. I’d forgotten I was holding it. There’s a new text from Norah.

  landry i can see that you’ve read my texts

  I reply.

  come over. bring the burner. front doors open

  “Norah’s on her way over with that phone,” I say.

  Landry’s eyes go wide and scared again. “Just let me talk to her.”

  “I think you’ve done enough of that,” I snap, and Penn gives me another look. “I’m just going to get the phone from her and delete the account.”

  “You’re not going to tell anyone?” Landry asks.

  “Of course not.” The last thing I want is another news alert about the Bergen family of Clifford, Tennessee. Especially knowing what we now know about my dad.

  The front door opens, and Norah steps into the living room. She freezes, her hand still on the knob, when she sees all of us waiting for her.

  “They found out we’re the Crimson Cryer,” Landry explains before I can even make it off the love seat.

  Norah tosses white-blond hair over her shoulder and gives me a defiant look as I approach her. “Give me the burner.”

  “No! It’s mine. I’ll delete the account, but—”

  “Give me the phone now, or I’ll go next door and tell your parents—”

  “No!” Landry and Norah both shout. “Just give it to her,” Landry says. “Please.”

  Finally, Norah digs a cheap smartphone from her pocket and slaps it into my palm. “We didn’t mean any harm,” she says, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Landry shake her head. Telling Norah to shut up.

  Smart kid. They’re both in enough trouble without digging that hole any deeper.

  “Password?” I hold out the phone, and Norah taps four digits into the lock screen.

  “Don’t touch anything but—”

  I look up, and it must not be holiday cheer Norah sees in my eyes, because her jaw snaps shut.

  While she watches, I open her Twitter app and delete not only the Crimson Cryer account, but her personal, secret account too. But I’m too late to stop the Cryer from tweeting about Lullaby Doe’s funeral. Which means we can probably expect another media circus.

  With both of Norah’s accounts deleted, I delete her Twitter app as well. A scroll through her screens shows me that she’s also on a couple of other social media sites, but I’m not her mom. I resist the urge to delete them all, out of revenge. “If the Crimson Cryer makes another appearance, on any social media platform, I’ll know who to come looking for. Understood?”

  Norah nods. She looks over at Landry, then back at me. “Is that it?”

  “What more would there be?”

  “I don’t know.” She glances at Landry again. Then back at me. “Just . . . Can I go?”

  “Please do,” Penn says.

  Norah snatches her burner from me and flees out the front door.

  “Are you . . . ​Are you going to tell Mom?” Landry asks as the slamming of the door echoes in my head.

  I look at Penn, and he shrugs. “I don’t see any reason to add to what she’s going through right now,” I say.

  “Works for me.” Penn stands and brushes his palms on his jeans, and suddenly he looks so much like our dad that I feel like someone just punched me in the chest. “It’s getting dark,” he says. “Let’s plug in all those lights we just hung and scrounge up some holiday joy. Who wants the honors?”

  “The Crimson Cryer deleted his account,” my mother says. “Or maybe Twitter finally got around to processing our requests to have it removed.” She stands in my bedroom doorway, watching as I tuck the hourglass pendant into my black blouse. It’s the same shirt I wore to my dad’s funeral, though I wore a skirt with it then. Today, I’m wearing slacks.

  “I saw. But his last tweet was a link to the funeral announcement. So we’re expecting a crowd.”

  “The Clifford PD has been informed.” My mother’s wearing dark slacks too, but not for the funeral. She’s dressed for work, in a wine-colored button-down blouse and a gray blazer, with her badge on her hip, as usual. “We can’t keep reporters out of the cemetery, but they’re generally pretty respectful at funerals. But there may be more protesters.”

  I can’t imagine what today must be like for her. How can you ever truly be ready to protect and serve—to keep the peace, in case of protesters—at a funeral for your dead husband’s illegitimate child?

  Lullaby Doe was evidently my half sister. But to my mother, she was a tragedy and a police matter, who became proof that the last bit of faith she’d had in her hu
sband was misplaced.

  I don’t know how she’s handling this so well.

  Wait, yes I do. She’s wearing the badge. She’s not a widow or a mother today. Not really. She’s Detective Julie Bergen.

  I wish I had a badge. Or better yet, a shield.

  “Mom?” I sit on the edge of my bed to step into the black flats we bought for my dad’s funeral. It’s weird to be wearing them again, especially for another funeral. Especially for this funeral.

  “Yes?”

  “Was Dad a thief?”

  “What?” She frowns, clearly caught off guard. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I know he was arrested a couple of months before he died. Penn told me. It was in the paper.”

  My mother sighs as she steps into the room and leans against the top of my dresser, arms crossed over her chest. “Prescription drug fraud. He was arrested for asking two different doctors to prescribe the same painkiller within a thirty-day period, without disclosing the first prescription to the second doctor.”

  “That’s it? He didn’t forge a prescription? Steal a doctor’s pad, or something?”

  “No. He asked an emergency room physician to write him a prescription for pills his general practitioner had already prescribed. Which shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The ER doctor checked with the GP, then she called the police. But the charges were dropped.”

  “Why?”

  My mother holds my gaze. “Ask me what you really want to know, Beckett. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.”

  I exhale slowly. “Did you do it? Did you get the charges dropped?”

  “Did I break the law to help your father? No. I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to. And the truth is that I did want to. There were times when I would have done anything to help him, if I could. But I had nothing to do with that. The DA dropped the charges because they were for a Class A misdemeanor, and his plate was full of felonies. And because he’s a vet, himself. He knew what your father went through. What he was still going through. And because your dad promised to go back into rehab. He never got a chance, though. There was a waiting list at the only one we could afford, so he tried to get clean on his own. And I tried to help. But . . .”