Lies I Told(76)

LOCAL BOY ARRESTED IN POSSIBLE PLAYA HERMOSA ROBBERY

An eighteen-year-old boy was arrested Friday night after vandalizing a local security company in the affluent community of Playa Hermosa. A spokesperson from Allied Security alleges the boy has engaged in a months-long campaign of vandalism against the company. A source inside the local police department told WBHC News that the FBI had been dispatched to investigate the possibility that the vandalism was a cover for a robbery that occurred last night on the peninsula. Stay tuned for updates as they become available.



I put the phone down and stared at the carpet. So they knew. Logan and his family knew they’d been robbed, and they knew we’d been responsible for it.

“We have to go.” Cormac picked up my bag, gathering the other stuff in the room, including the gold bar.

“We can’t leave Parker. Not now! He needs us!”

“What do you propose we do, Grace? Walk into the Playa Hermosa police department, past the FBI, and tell them it was all a misunderstanding?”

I scrambled to come up with an answer. “We can hire a lawyer, post bail . . .”

“He hasn’t even been arraigned yet,” Cormac said. “And it’s not as easy as you make it sound. They know something happened at the Fairchild estate. Which means they probably know we were part of it. We can’t do anything until we get out of here. Find some cover. Then we can hire an attorney to help Parker.”

He was still moving around the room, wiping doorknobs and light switches, erasing his prints from anything he might have touched to give us a little more time if someone were to trace our steps.

My mind clamored for some kind of answer, something that would refute what he’d said, that would give us a way to help Parker without leaving him behind. But I had nothing. I was hollowed out, empty of all my usual reason.

I was only delaying the inevitable, avoiding the moment when I’d have to admit that he was right: We were no help to Parker if we were picked up, too. To help him, we had to escape and regroup.

“Where will we go?” I asked. Obviously our plan to flee the country was out. If the FBI was involved, we couldn’t risk it. Our window of escape had closed faster than we’d expected because of Parker’s arrest.

Cormac walked to the door, put his hand on the knob. “North, probably. I’m not sure. We just need to get in the car, keep moving.”

“And we’ll come back for Parker?” I asked.

“We’ll help him however we can once we’re safe.”

“Promise?” The question sounded childish even to me. What good were promises when you couldn’t count on the only woman who’d ever been a mother to you?

He sighed. “I promise. Now can we go? Before the police show up and we’re thrown in jail?”

Resignation settled over me like a shroud as I stood and walked to the door. “Thank you,” I said, taking my bag from Cormac’s outstretched hand.

He nodded, holding open the door. A shaft of sunlight eclipsed him, and for a moment it was like he’d disappeared, like he’d never been there at all. Then, all at once, he was back, his face grim.

We hurried to the car, and Cormac backed up, heading out into traffic. I looked out the window, tears stinging my eyes. I couldn’t even begin to process my mother’s abandonment, but the loss of Parker thrummed through me like an instrument out of tune. I heard his voice in that final, frantic phone call.

It’s you and me. No matter what.

Parker wouldn’t leave me. I knew he wouldn’t. But here I was, speeding away from Los Angeles like the coward I was. Would he forgive me when I came back for him? Would he understand? And what would I say to justify my defection? What could I say?

I saw him as he had looked that day in the early-morning fog, the day we’d stared out over the water, trying to find a way back to each other even as our loyalties in Playa Hermosa had ripped us apart. He’d been so sure we were someone else. Sure that we weren’t liars and thieves and cowards. That we’d only become those things because of the way we were raised.

And even though I’d tried to deny it, there had been a tiny part of me that hoped he was right. That might have believed.

But I had been wrong, and so had Parker.

As Cormac got back on the freeway, I finally accepted the truth: it was too late for me. I was done looking for a better part of myself that didn’t exist. Parker and I were family, partners. I would go back for him, but there would be no more delusions about who and what I was.

I leaned my forehead against the window, my breath fogging up the glass as the city passed by on the other side. It wasn’t complicated. I was a thief. I was a con artist. I was a coward.

Believing anything else was just another lie.





Acknowledgments


Thanks always go first to my agent, Steven Malk, without whom I would not still be writing full-time. I don’t know what I did to deserve such a tireless and insightful advocate, but I’ve lost track of the number of times your guidance and support have kept me going—in more ways than one. I hope you like me, because you’re stuck with me for life!

Thank you to everyone else at Writers House, all of whom go above and beyond for their authors on a daily basis. Everything is a little easier knowing you have my back. You are the best of the best.

Heartfelt thanks go to Jennifer Klonsky, who believed in me when I was beginning to wonder if anyone still did. It’s tough to articulate what that belief has meant—both personally and for my little family—but there aren’t enough words in the world to thank you properly. That you are an extraordinarily talented editor and a joy to work with has been an added bonus. It is not an exaggeration to say that you have restored my faith in publishing.