Two Can Keep a Secret(59)
Peter puts a hand on her shoulder, like that’ll stop her from spinning out. “I’m sure Malcolm will let us know if he has any pressing technological requirements.” He gives Ellery the full Peter Nilsson smile experience as she unwinds a scarf from around her neck and stuffs it into her bag. “Very nice to meet you, Ellery. Your mother was one of my favorite people in town while she was here.” He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “I even took her to the movies a couple of times, although I think I bored her to tears. I hope she’s doing well, and that you’re enjoying your time in Echo Ridge, even though …” A shadow passes over his face. “We’re not at our best right now.”
I keep my expression neutral to hide how much I wish he’d shut up. Way to remind everyone that half the town thinks I did something to Brooke. Which I guess is the other reason I didn’t ask Ellery to homecoming. I’m not sure she’d say yes.
“I know,” Ellery says. “We moved here at a strange time. Everyone’s been really nice, though.” She smiles at me, and my bad mood lifts. Her hair is long and loose around her shoulders, the way I like it. I didn’t realize till now that I had a preference, but it turns out I do.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Mom asks. “We have seltzer, or juice, or—” She looks ready to document the entire contents of our refrigerator, but Peter starts gently steering her toward the balcony staircase before Ellery can reply. Thank God.
“Malcolm knows where everything is, Alicia. Why don’t we finish up the Burns documentary upstairs?” He favors me with a smile almost as warm as the one he gave Ellery. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but points for trying, I guess. “Give us a shout if you need anything.”
“Sorry,” I say when the sound of their footsteps on the stairs has faded. “Mom’s a little rusty at the meeting-new-friends thing. You want some popcorn?”
“Sure,” she says, and grins. Her dimple flashes, and I’m happy I texted her.
I lead her into the kitchen, where she hops onto a stool in front of the island. I open the cabinet next to the sink and root around until I find a box of microwave popcorn. “And don’t worry, your mom’s cool. Your stepfather, too.” She sounds surprised as she says it, as if she wasn’t expecting that from Katrin’s dad.
“He’s all right,” I say grudgingly, extracting a bag of popcorn and tossing it into the microwave.
Ellery winds a curl around her finger. “You don’t talk about your dad much. Do you see him, or … ?” She hesitates, like she’s not one hundred percent sure he’s even still alive.
The sound of popping kernels fills the air. “Not really. He lives in southern Vermont now, near Massachusetts. I spent a week there over the summer. Mostly he emails sports-related articles under the mistaken assumption that I’ll find them interesting. Peter tries a little harder than that.” When I say it, it surprises me to realize it’s true. “He talks a lot about college, what I want to do after, stuff like that.”
“What do you want to do?” Ellery asks.
The popping sounds slow. I pull the bag from the microwave and tear it open, releasing a cloud of buttery steam. “I don’t have a clue,” I admit. “What about you?”
“I’m not sure. I have this idea that I’d like to be a lawyer, but— I don’t know if it’s realistic. I didn’t even think till this year that college was a thing that might happen. Sadie never could have sent us. But my grandmother keeps talking about it like she will.”
“Same for me, with Peter,” I say. “You know he’s a lawyer, right? I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you about it. Fair warning, though—ninety percent of his job sounds really boring. Although maybe that’s just him.”
She laughs. “Noted. I might take you up on that.” My back is to her as I hunt in a cabinet for a popcorn bowl, and when she speaks again her voice is much quieter. “It’s weird, but for the longest time I almost couldn’t … see myself in the future,” she says. “I’d think about what happened to my aunt and imagine that one of us, out of me and my brother, might not make it all the way through high school. Like only one Corcoran twin gets to move on. And Ezra’s so much more like my mom than I am, so …” I turn to see her staring out our kitchen window into the darkness, her expression reflective. Then she shivers, and flashes me an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. That got morbid fast.”
“We have screwed-up family histories,” I tell her. “Morbidity comes with the territory.”
I lead her into the Nilssons’ living room and lower myself into one corner of the sofa, the bowl of popcorn next to me. She curls up beside it and hands me my drink. “What do you want to watch?” I ask, flicking on the remote and scrolling through the channel guide.
“I don’t care,” Ellery says. She plucks a small handful of popcorn from the bowl between us. “I’m just glad to be out of my house for the night.”
My channel-hopping lands us on the first Defender movie. It’s past the part where Sadie appears, but I keep it there in her honor anyway. “Yeah, I get it. I keep thinking how it was almost exactly a week ago that I dropped Brooke off.” I unscrew the top of my seltzer. “I’ve been meaning to thank you, by the way. For, you know. Believing me.”