The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(22)

What if the police don’t believe them? What if they have to take lie detector tests or something?

If that happens, she might be so nervous she’ll fail. Not because she’s lying, but because . . .

Well, lying, and not revealing something you know—something no one has asked you about—that’s not the same thing, is it?

Just a little while ago, you thought that it was, she reminds herself. When they told you about Mom being sick again.

It was the female detective who brought up her mother’s illness, addressing Beck in a straightforward fashion that made her uncomfortable.

“Can you tell us about your mother’s cancer treatment?”

“She’d had surgery, and then chemo and radiation. She went through that twice,” Beck said, pretty sure they’d gone over this already, “and she’s been back in remission since last year . . .”

At that, Detectives Burns and Schneider exchanged a glance, and that was when Beck realized.

Her first reaction was that Mom had lied.

Now that she’s had some time to digest the information—and to compare it to her own situation, to the fact that she’d neglected to tell the police every single thing she knows about her father . . .

Well, it’s not like I ever came right out and asked Mom if she was sick again.

If I had, and she’d told me she wasn’t—well, that would have been a lie.

But I didn’t ask her that, so she didn’t tell me.

And today . . . the police didn’t ask me certain things, and I didn’t tell them.

That’s not lying.

Protecting, maybe . . . but not lying.

Beck cried when the detectives informed her that her mother’s cancer had come back a few months ago, and spread.

They were uncomfortable relaying that news, she could tell. Dad must have told them that she and her brothers were unaware, but the detectives had apparently decided it was time that they knew the truth.

After they were done questioning her, Beck found her father back in the den, staring into space once again.

“Dad,” she said in a choked voice.

He turned toward her, said nothing. She couldn’t read his expression.

“Mom was sick again?”

Still he didn’t speak, just nodded bleakly.

“So you knew? Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t she?”

“You know your mother. She didn’t want you to worry.”

Yes. That makes sense.

She wasn’t lying. She was protecting.

“So it was . . . was it terminal?”

Again her father nodded. She saw tears in his eyes.

Maybe the revelation should be, in some bizarre, twisted way, a source of comfort. Mom was spared the dreaded ordeal of an extended terminal illness. That’s the last thing she would have wanted.

And this? Would she have wanted this?

Beck turns away from the closed door and heads on down the hallway to her childhood bedroom, with the cheerful blue and yellow decor she and Mom had chosen together years ago.

She sits on the bed and opens her laptop. Clicking on the recent browsing history, she brings up Mom’s blog site.

The detectives had mentioned that they’d seen the entry Beck posted there last night.

“You had to have the password to do that,” Detective Schneider pointed out. “Did your mother share that kind of information with you?”

“No,” she said. “I just guessed it.”

A few months ago she’d helped Mom change the PIN number for her new ATM card.

“I always use our phone number and my initials or Dad’s whenever I need a password for something,” Mom said.

“Bad idea. Too easy for someone to guess. You should use something else.”

Mom waved her off. She never worried about things like identity theft, or hacking. Until, of course, her personal e-mail account was hacked, not long after the PIN number conversation.

She told Beck about it on the phone, and Beck advised her to close that account, set up a new one, and again encouraged her to make up a unique password no one would guess.

Remembering that incident last night as she tried to figure out the blog account password, she nailed it on the third try. It was her father’s initials followed by the four-digit home phone number in reverse order.

When the detectives asked her for the password, she gave it to them, reminding herself that it isn’t a violation of her mother’s privacy.

This is, after all, a homicide investigation. They’re trying to get a search warrant for the electronic records, but that process takes time.

“Do you know your mother’s password for her most recent e-mail account?” Detective Burns asked. “Or did you try to guess it?”

The answer was no on both counts. But she mentioned that both passwords were most likely saved on Mom’s own laptop and cell phone, which were among the electronics that had been stolen in the robbery.

“Are you sure the passwords were there?”

“I assume they were because my mother mentioned a while back that she was having trouble remembering things, and that it was a good thing she didn’t have to reenter her passwords every time she wanted to check mail or write a blog. She said she always used some combination of initials and the phone number, and I told her she should use a made-up word you wouldn’t find in the dictionary, not a name or initials. Or that if she did use a dictionary word or initials, she should substitute a zero for an O, or a symbol for a letter—the at symbol for an A, or a dollar sign for an S. I also said she should put the phone number in reverse so that it would be harder for someone to guess, and she said—”