If You're Out There(70)

The man’s eyes land on the gun at our feet. “Um, is everything okay?”

Priya takes a long breath. “You know what? I think so.”

In the living room, we sit by the fire, police lights flashing through the windows. The cops have been pulling us aside, taking statements one by one. The EMTs examined Priya in the back of an ambulance and cleaned a few cuts from her scuffle with Ben. They gave me ice for my chin and want me to watch for signs of concussion.

Ben’s probably halfway to the station by now, his hands cuffed behind his back. They let Amanda ride along. Someone will have to set her up with a nurse again when all of this is done. Priya says she’ll visit. She’s a better person than I am. Though I don’t know. Maybe she’s right. Maybe Amanda did the best she could.

Priya seems okay, but dazed. I think everyone is. At the moment, she’s reclining against a needlepoint pillow in my lap, with her legs outstretched on the couch, an arm slung over her head. She’s been explaining bits and pieces of the whole sordid ordeal, between long, exhausted silences.

We all sat, frozen, as she told us about the weeks she and Ben spent on the run, before she wound up in the basement.

I couldn’t help but grin as she explained the other stuff. Like how once she knew Ben was keeping up her social media, she decided to feed him inspiration. “I must have asked for twenty crates of blueberries, just to make sure it got through.”

“And the selfie by the lake?” I asked.

“That I just suggested,” she said, shrugging. “Honestly, it felt too easy. I told him people would get suspicious if I never showed myself in front of all those beaches I was supposedly going to. I knew that picture would be backed up on the cloud. I hoped you might recognize the earrings I left behind.”

“What about all the cheesy sayings?”

Priya sighed happily. “Your girl was a walking Bed Bath and Beyond for a while there. I guess it wasn’t a great sign for Ben’s mental state that he didn’t catch on. It’s not like I was subtle. I wanted those phrases to stick in his head, but do you know how hard it is to fit Dance like no one is watching naturally into a sentence?”

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” I told her, “but that one never came up.”

“Really,” she said, sounding vaguely disappointed. “Well, what did make it?”

“Oh, you know. Stuff about seeing rainbows after rain and stars through the darkness.”

“Ah,” she said with a serious nod.

“Oh, and everything happens for a reason.”

She sighed. “Right. I’d like whoever coined that one to please explain what just happened to me.”

“I am so sorry it took me this long.”

“Are you kidding?” She scoffed. “I’m just glad you got the message.”

Logan is on the phone with his aunt now. I can see him through the open door, pacing the porch with police lights at his back. He’s cute when he’s serious. Well, cute all the time. He said he’d call my parents, too. I want to stay with Priya. As long as she wants me to.

“So, Julian,” I say to the man seated across from me.

“So,” he says, appearing generally (understandably) overwhelmed by the past hour. “We meet again.” He laughs, sort of, and no one quite knows what to say. Priya still hasn’t explained this piece of the puzzle. And I don’t want to press, but . . .

“I was going to tell you,” she says after a minute, sitting up to face me.

You’d think I’d be hurt, but I’m not. Definitely curious, though. I want to understand. “When did this all . . . ?”

“Last spring,” she says. “Something was nagging at me. More and more, I felt . . . lost. Like I didn’t fit anywhere. Or . . . come from anywhere. I barely knew my mom’s side. I went with her to India for that one visit when I was little, and everyone was really nice, but I felt so completely foreign.”

“Is that why you wanted to get involved with GRETA? To connect?”

“Maybe,” she says. “A little bit. And at the same time, I had this whole other half, you know? I would talk to your mom about it. On nights I stayed over, if I couldn’t sleep. After a while, I started to get the feeling there was something she was holding back. So I did some digging. Turned out I was right.”

I hesitate. “What do you mean?”

“You know the girls’ trip story?”

“I do.”

She grabs a stray pillow and fiddles with its tassels. “Well, there were a few omitted details. Like Julian wasn’t a random guy. Their friend Tasha knew him from MIT. My mom could have called him up anytime. She chose not to tell him. Not to let him in my life. I guess she wanted to be free. No strings attached.”

“Huh.” I take this in. “So. How did you . . .”

She draws a long breath. “I had this huge box of cards and other stuff my mom had saved over the years. One day I started combing through it, and I came across this picture. It was a group shot of our moms and some other people. There was a note from their friend Tasha on the back. It said something like, Julian crashing girls’ night. There was a guy off to the side, wearing an MIT sweatshirt. I recognized the periodic table menu in the background.”

For a minute I just stare at her, the realization landing like a thud. “So my mom knew?”