In Her Skin(48)

In front of the courthouse on busy New Chardon Street parked illegally is Gerry holding a puppy. The puppy licks his face, and he holds it as far away from himself as he can without dropping it, and people crowd around him, which makes him even more uncomfortable than the puppy, and the puppy is that cute.

“Gerry got a puppy?” I say, incredulous.

“No, silly!” says Mrs. Lovecraft, flushing with joy. “It’s yours!”

“It’s a King Charles spaniel,” says Mr. Lovecraft. “A she. Hypoallergenic: we weren’t sure if you had allergies.”

“She looks like she should be in a calendar,” I murmur, eyes fixed on the puppy. “Can I touch her?”

“Can you touch her? You can hold her! She’s yours!” Mr. Lovecraft says.

I am cuddling this precious ball of fluff now, and she is shaking, and warm, and something about this sweet creature unlocks my heart, and I am crying into her fur. People around us are making aww noises and they might be crying, too, and Mrs. Lovecraft is definitely crying, and Mr. Lovecraft is swooping us up in his big hug-thing again. I peek out for a moment to see you standing outside our circle, a tightening under your eyes, which are locked on me.

It’s been sixteen days since I found the Lovecraft’s private investigator’s report. Sixteen days, too, since you told me you knew who I was. The four of us live in a strange pretend world where I know the Lovecrafts know I’m not Vivi, but I can’t act like it.

Three is my number. Nothing good comes from four.

When I ask you if your parents know I know, you shut me down by saying it’s irrelevant: I am theirs now. I do not ask what “theirs” means. If the first part of my time with the Lovecrafts consisted of you giving me experiences, this second half, this After the Knowledge half, is all about the Lovecrafts giving me stuff. In addition to the puppy that still has no name, I have an Apple watch, a credit card of my own, and a hoverboard that only you are capable of riding.

I become their daughter with each accepted gift.

The puppy pees everywhere. Because you complain loudly about the smell, I keep the puppy in my bedroom most of the time. Not including Gerry, you are the only human not brought to your knees by the puppy’s adorableness, though this does not surprise me.

“Haven’t you named her yet?” asks Zack Turpin every day. I am starting to like Zack more than I did before, possibly because he is the only person who does not seem to want anything from me, and maybe because I’m feeling nostalgic now that I know our time is coming to an end. Zack doesn’t even seem to notice that I’m too good at algebra for a kid locked in a shed for seven years.

“I’m calling her Wolf.”

“That’s cute. She looks like a Wolf,” Zack says, and I like him more.

“Can I ask you a legal question?”

“Sure, but I’m not a lawyer yet, so I can’t exactly give out legal advice,” he says.

“I get that. But what is the advantage of adopting a child when the parents have given you legal custody anyway?”

“Hmm. Well, I guess that’s what’s so cool about what the Lovecrafts did. There isn’t any advantage.”

At my feet, Wolf whines in her sleep.

“So why would they do it?”

A strange look passes over Zack’s face. “Um, they love you?”

I laugh awkwardly. “Of course, I know they love me. I just wondered: I mean, the Lovecrafts are smart people. Might there be, you know, some financial—maybe a tax—advantage? Or a legal reason? Something like that.” See, it came outta nowhere, Zack. And in my old world, the one I spent the longest in, no one does something without an angle.

“Yeah, there are tax advantages, sure. I don’t exactly think the Lovecrafts are looking to save money on taxes, though. I guess if there was some reason you got called to court to testify against them, they’d be safe, because Massachusetts is one of the few states that recognizes parent-child privilege.”

“Say that again?”

“Parent-child privilege. You’ve probably heard of spousal privilege: that’s a big one for TV shows like Law and Order, where someone gets married to avoid testifying against their spouse. In Massachusetts, a child cannot be made to testify against a parent.”

“So if I knew the Lovecrafts did something against the law, I couldn’t be called to court?”

“Right.”

“What if it was something really bad, and they didn’t have any other witnesses?”

“Actually, that’s the only time you really hear about that kind of thing being invoked, in the big cases. You know, murder, that sort of thing.” Zack sits back and runs his hand through his thinning curls. “Vivi, why are you asking me weird questions?”

I reach down and pull Wolf to my chest and bury my face in her fur. Zack is pure and kind and way too close to the truth, and I’m feeling easily broken these days. “No reason.”

“Do you feel like someone is trying to hurt you?”

He says it so tender and kind and tender things must not stay tender, they need to be rubbed until they aren’t anymore. When I don’t answer him right away, he takes it as not-no, and this is not going in the right direction, not for Zack’s own good. “Is it Temple?”

I nearly drop Wolf. “No.”