Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(76)

That makes me remember that I used to make them for Mom, and she’d sit and listen with me and say, Oh, I like that one, who is that? And she wasn’t just playing along, she’d remember later. That memory hurts now, and it makes me feel sick and wrong for doing this. But it’s not my fault.

Mom left us.

I go out onto the porch and sit down in the chair.

Lanny comes to a stop when she sees me, and I see her hesitate before she throws the stick again for Boot and nods to me. “Hey. What are you doing out here, goofus? It’s cold.”

“Reading,” I tell her. It’s not a lie. “What are you doing?”

She’s got red in her cheeks, and I don’t think it’s from the cold. “Nothing.”

“Meeting your girlfriend?”

“No!” she immediately shoots back, and in a way that I think might even be true. But the red in her cheeks gets darker. “Shut up, you don’t even know what you’re talking about. Besides, we know we’re not supposed to go anywhere people can see us. Right?”

“Right. And we always do what we’re supposed to do. Right?”

“Well, I do,” she says, with an older sister’s superiority. “You know, you’re going to ruin your eyes squinting out here. It’s dark.”

“I was just going in,” I tell her. “And that’s not how you ruin your eyes. If you’d read more, you’d know that.”

“Stop reading a book, is what I’m saying. Come on. Let’s go in.”

“Wait,” I tell her. “Are you okay? Really? About Mom?”

“Sure,” she says, and I see the stubborn shift of her chin, the angry level of her eyebrows. “I’m glad she’s gone. We agreed. We talked about this, Connor.”

“Do you want her to come back?” I ask her. “I don’t mean now. I mean . . . like, someday.”

“No. Never. She lied to us.”

“Everybody lies,” I say.

“Who told you that?”

“I heard Kezia saying it. Everybody lies.”

“She means when they’re talking to the cops. Not to their kids. Not to each other.”

But you just lied to me about where you went. And I lied to you about the video. Everybody does lie. So now you’re lying about that. It’s making my head hurt, thinking about it. I miss Mom. I miss having a normal place to go where I knew it was safe.

I miss having a home. A for-real home.

I miss Mom.

No, I don’t. I don’t miss Mom. She’s a liar and she left and I’m not going to cry about it, because crying doesn’t fix things, it just makes a mess. Dad said that to me once, and like some of what he told me, it’s even true.

I’m glad Lanny was doing something that made her feel better. My minutes I spend on that phone don’t make me happy, exactly; they make me feel something, but it isn’t that. I’m just less alone. Less confused.

Maybe I’m not built to be happy. Like Dad isn’t. I want to ask Lanny about Dad, but I know she’ll just yell at me and tell me Dad’s a monster.

“Come on,” Lanny tells me, and I follow her to the steps and up into the house. Boot follows us inside and runs to jump into his fleece bed next to the fireplace. I pat him on the head, and he gives me a lick before sitting up to look out the window.

Javier isn’t inside. Well, he isn’t anywhere I can see him, which isn’t the same thing, I guess, but it feels weird. I go into my room and look out the window, and I see him out by the barn, pacing. He’s talking on the phone. It seems kind of intense.

I feel like a ghost. Like nobody sees me anymore. Mom did, once. But Lanny just mostly sees me as someone who takes up space, I think. She still sometimes calls me ALB, Annoying Little Brother. Sometimes she means it.

I matter to Dad, though.

And though it isn’t smart, I keep taking the phone out of my pocket, wondering what it would be like to hear his voice.



It’s after dinner, and I’m in my room reading, when I overhear Lanny talking to Javier. It’s not like she’s particularly loud, and normally I wouldn’t pay attention anyway, but she’s talking about Dad. I guess Javier and Kezia are still trying to do therapy for us. I hate to tell them how long my sister resisted saying anything to anybody the last time she was seeing a counselor. She doesn’t share.

Well, that’s not really true. She doesn’t share about herself. But she’s sharing about me.

“. . . not really a big deal for me,” she’s saying when I start listening and put my book facedown on my chest. “Dad, I mean. He never really scared me, exactly. He never cared much about me. It was always Connor more than anything else. He babied him, when he paid attention to anybody at all.”

Liar, I think. The idea of Dad scares her a lot. And the rest, about me? That’s kind of a lie, isn’t it? I’m not sure. My memories of Dad all have a weird flexibility to them, like I might have made them up.

Maybe Lanny’s are like that, too.

I can’t make out what Javier says. He’s farther away, and his voice is too low. But I can hear my sister’s reply.

“He’s always quiet, but since we left our house, it’s been way worse. He’s being weird. Maybe it’s just that he’s still dealing with being scared so bad, or maybe being in a strange place. I don’t know. Connor never says what he feels. He can be kind of sneaky.” She laughs a little, but it sounds flat.