Two Can Keep a Secret(75)
We’re arranged stiffly on her uncomfortable furniture, watching Channel 5 news coverage scroll across the screen. Meli Dinglasa is standing on Echo Ridge Common, her dark hair whipping across her face as the leafy branches behind her rattle in the wind.
She’s been talking nonstop since we turned the TV on, but only a few phrases sink in: … dead for more than a week … foul play suspected but not confirmed … yet another taunting message found this morning near Echo Ridge High School …
“Great timing, Katrin,” Ezra mutters.
Malcolm’s sitting next to me on the couch. One side of his jaw is bruised and swollen, the knuckles on his right hand are scraped raw, and he winces every time he moves. “Someone needs to pay this time,” he says in a low, angry voice. His right hand is resting on the couch between us. I take it in mine, being careful to avoid the cuts. His skin is warm, and his fingers wrap around mine without hesitation. For a couple of seconds I feel better, until I remember that Brooke is dead and everything is horrible.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Working the shooting range at Fright Farm, trying to stand up to Vance. Wandering the halls at Echo Ridge High looking sad and worried. Swaying and rambling her way out of the Fright Farm office on the night she disappeared. I should have pushed her harder to tell us what was wrong. I had a chance to change the course of that night, and I blew it.
When my phone rings with the familiar California number, I almost don’t answer it. Then I figure, what the hell. The day can’t possibly get any worse.
“Hi, Sadie,” I say tonelessly.
“Oh, Ellery. I saw the news. I’m so, so sorry about your friend. And I saw—” She pauses, her voice wavering. “I saw your email. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until I zoomed in on the uniform and saw … his name.”
“Did you think it was Ezra at first? Because I sure did.” I’m surprised to find that beneath the heavy misery of Brooke’s death, I can still manage to spare an undercurrent of anger for my mother. “How could you not tell us? How could you let us live a lie for seventeen years and think our father was José the freaking stuntman?” I don’t bother keeping my voice down. It’s not like anyone in the room doesn’t know what’s going on.
“It wasn’t a total lie,” Sadie says. “I wasn’t sure, Ellery. The stuntman happened. And, well … Gabriel Rodriguez also happened, a little while afterward.” Her voice drops. “Sleeping with a married man was a huge mistake. I never should have gone there.”
“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have either.” I don’t have any empathy to spare for the man in that photograph. He doesn’t feel like my father. He doesn’t feel like anything. Besides, keeping the marital vows was his job. “But why did you?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. My father was gone, memories of Sarah were everywhere, and I just— I made a bad choice. Then the timing of the pregnancy fit better with the, um … other situation, and I wanted that to be true, and so … I convinced myself that it was.”
“How?” I look at Ezra, who’s staring at the floor with no indication that he’s hearing any of this. “How did you convince yourself of that when—what was his name again? Gabriel?—looked exactly like Ezra?”
“I didn’t remember what he looked like,” Sadie says, and I snort out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m not kidding. I told you before, I drank my way through the entire funeral.”
“Okay. But you remembered enough that you knew he was a possibility, right? That’s why you were so shifty the first time I mentioned Officer Rodriguez.”
“I— Well, yes. It rattled me,” she admits.
“So you lied to cover it up. You made up a story about Officer Rodriguez at Lacey’s funeral, and you made me suspicious of him.”
“What?” Sadie sounds bewildered. “Why would that make you suspicious of him? Suspicious about what?”
“That’s not the point!” I snap. “The point is it did, and then I didn’t ask him for help when I could have, and now Brooke is dead and maybe—” I stop, all the anger suddenly drained out of me, remembering how I hadn’t told anyone what we’d found in the Fright Farm recycling bin for an entire weekend. Keeping secrets that weren’t mine to hold. Like mother, like daughter. “Maybe I made everything worse.”
“Made what worse? Ellery, I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t blame yourself for—”
“Ellery.” Nana sticks her head into the living room. “Officer Rodriguez is here. He said you called him?” Her eyes fasten on the phone at my ear. “Who are you talking to?”
“Just someone from school,” I answer Nana, then turn back to the phone. “I have to go,” I tell Sadie, but before I can disconnect, Ezra holds out his hand.
“Let me talk,” he says, and his voice holds the same dull fury that mine did. It takes a lot to make the two of us mad, especially at Sadie. But she managed.
I hand Ezra the phone and tug Malcolm to his feet, so we can follow Nana into the hallway. Ryan is standing in front of the door, his face sad and haggard. I don’t know how I ever thought he looked young for his age. “Hey, guys,” he says. “I was just heading home when I got your message. What’s so urgent?” He catches sight of Malcolm’s swollen jaw, and his eyes widen. “What happened to you?”