We Told Six Lies(31)

I glanced down at the money for only a second before racing after you, leaving the waiter with an enormous tip.

“Molly,” I yelled when we spilled out onto the sidewalk. You powered forward, not looking back. Not remembering that our car was in the other direction. “Molly, wait!”

I reached for your hand, but you ripped it from my grasp. Spun around and glanced over my shoulder, searching for someone. “What do you want from me?” you snapped.

It was the first time I’d ever seen you truly angry. Your body was a ball of smoldering black coal. I wanted to hold you in my hands and see how long I could stand the pain.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

You jabbed a finger into your chest. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Everything.”

You winced and looked down at your feet. “People only love me because I fill a hole in their life. I’m…useful.”

I grabbed your hands again, and this time I held on too tight for you to pull away. “I am not your mother, Molly.”

“What about my father?” you said so quietly I almost didn’t catch it.

Surprise shook me, because you never talked about him. It had been an unspoken rule. Don’t ask. And so I didn’t. But now…

“I don’t know your dad,” I said. “So I don’t know whether I’m like him or not.”

“What about me?” you said, speaking to yourself but raising your eyes to mine. “Am I like him?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either.”

Tears threatened to spill down your face, and I took a step back, aghast. Seeing you cry was like watching a statue weep blood. It was unnatural. Bone-shaking.

I wanted to tell you that you were nothing like your father. That you were most likely born from Immaculate Conception. But one look in your face said you already knew the answer to your question. This was the reason there were two halves to my girl.

“You should break up with me,” you said.

“You’d have to try and kill me first,” I said.

“I might.” You laughed, just a little. Then the smile fell from your face. “You can’t like me as much as you think you do. It’s just that I’m the first person your age who’s paid attention to you in a long time.”

Your words stung, but I knew you were only testing me. Trying to get me to admit that I didn’t really want you.

“Molly, I could name a hundred reasons why—”

Your eyes lit up, and you grabbed my other hand. Pulled me against the side of the restaurant, several steps into a shadowy alleyway. You’d seen him again, that same man who was snapping pictures of us in the restaurant.

“I want to get away, don’t you?” you asked me suddenly, manically. Your eyes darted across my face, and you looked certain but afraid. Like you were admitting something you weren’t prepared to share yet. “I just…I just want to escape.”

I interlocked my fingers with yours. Glanced to the side, looking for the man. “Molly, who is that guy? Why was he watching us?”

Your chin quivered, and my bones stretched and cracked with the need to repair you. To murder and maim if that’s what it took to see you smile again.

“Cobain,” you said, your voice soft enough to split me in half. “Take me away from here.”

“Okay.” I buried my head in your neck. Without you, what did I have? A father who gazed at me with a hopeful, never-ending smile? A mother who said she loved me, but couldn’t stay in the same room with me for more than ten minutes? A brother who was never around? “Okay.”





NOW


Nothing is as unsettling as the smell of disinfectant.

My nose stings and my head swims from the chemicals, but the police officer sitting in front of me doesn’t seem to notice.

“How have you been, Cobain?” Detective Hernandez asks.

I shrug.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” she says. “I know it probably wasn’t easy learning that your girlfriend ran away.”

“Better to learn she ran than to be suspected of doing something to her,” I clip. “Why am I here? I figured you wouldn’t be looking for her anymore.”

The detective frowns her bulldog frown. “Do you want us to be done looking for her?”

Anger fires through my body. I lay my forearms on the table, grip my hands together until I’m afraid my fingers will break. “No. It’d be nice if someone besides me believed there’s more to the story than her needing some time away.”

Detective Hernandez nods, looking at me in a way she hadn’t the last time I was here. I move my hands to my lap, uneasiness swimming through my gut. I wasn’t surprised when the cops showed up as I was walking home from school. I figured I’d pissed Nixon off enough to tell them I’d snuck into his house. I hoped they’d found Molly and wanted to let me know. But as I sat across the table from Detective Hernandez, I knew this was something more.

“As I said before,” Detective Hernandez begins, “I want to bring Molly home. She’s a minor. And I don’t want something bad to happen to her while she’s out there, alone. If she is alone.”

If she’s alone?