Behind Every Lie(79)

I had to keep Seb talking. I was too weak to fight him off.

“It wasn’t Rose, Seb.” My voice was thready. “It was me. I opened the window.”





forty-two

eva




JACOB’S ELBOWS WERE PROPPED on his knees, chin cupped in his hands. He was staring at the green shag carpeting, his forehead crumpled as a tissue. He hadn’t moved in a few minutes.

“Jake, please say something,” I pleaded.

He shook his head, dazed. “You never said a thing.”

“I know. I’m so sorry, Jake. You deserved better than that. I was so messed up and—”

“Where is she?” he cut me off.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was a closed adoption.”

“What?” Jacob stood slowly. “You gave up a baby who might have been mine to a closed adoption?”

“I didn’t know whose baby it was! I thought about getting one of those prenatal paternity tests, but they’re expensive. Plus I would’ve needed a swab from your mouth for them to analyze your DNA, and how was I supposed to explain that to you? Besides, you left. You left, Jake. I didn’t know where to find you!”

“Don’t give me that bullshit story, Eva. You know you could’ve gotten in touch. You should’ve tried harder!”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. But how could I say those words? I’m pregnant, but I was raped and I don’t know if the baby’s yours or his.” I dashed at the tears brimming in my eyes. “I’m not saying I was right, but try to understand what I was going through.”

Jacob stared down at his clenched fists, his shoulders heaving. He wouldn’t speak now. His reaction to anything uncomfortable was to go into lockdown, retreating into silence.

I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. I was done apologizing for things that weren’t my fault. “Look, I just wanted to do the right thing here. I thought you should know the truth.”

I grabbed my coat and picked my way back over the piles of broken plaster and shattered fragments of wood to the front door and let myself out.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The trees that lined the road bent and swayed in the increasing wind. Rain mingled with the tears on my cheeks as I ran to my car. I wrenched the door open and threw myself in. Icy rivulets dripped from my hair down the back of my neck, making me shiver.

I turned the key in the ignition. The starter made a raspy clicking sound. I tried a few more times, but no luck. And then I realized what the problem was. I’d left the headlights on.

“No!” I shrieked. I smacked the dashboard with my palm and dropped my forehead to the steering wheel.

What now?

I couldn’t call Liam. There was no way I was going back in to Jacob. And I couldn’t call the detective to pick me up right here. It would be too mortifying. Maybe Uber or Lyft? I’d never needed to use them on Whidbey Island and had no idea how they worked.

The darkness wrapped around me, pressing on the windows. I shivered as drops slipped off my hair and dove down the collar of my coat. I looked across the road at Mom’s house.

I was cold to the bone and soaked when I let myself in the back door. First I went upstairs to Mom’s office where I remembered seeing an electric heater. I unplugged it from beneath the desk and straightened. My gaze fell on her telescope. I smiled, remembering how baffled she’d been when I chose the arts over science.

I peered through the eyepiece and pulled back in surprise. It was looking directly into Jacob’s living room. I could see where his lanky frame was slumped like a question mark on the shabby brown couch. I flushed, embarrassed that Mom had been watching Jacob and his dad.

A sudden chill crept into my skin as I thought of the night I found Mom’s letter. How Jacob had come into the house without knocking. I remembered thinking it had been a long time since we were kids and could come into each other’s houses unannounced. I looked again into the eyepiece. Maybe I should be asking why Mom was looking into Jacob’s house.

Back downstairs, I tugged on a sweater of my mom’s I found draped over the back of a kitchen chair. Her smell gusted off of it. I pulled it tight around my body and surveyed the living room. The bloodstain on the floor near where Mom’s armchair had been was still there. Swirls of fingerprinting dust stood out on the fireplace mantel. I picked up a picture of my brother when he was about a year old. No wonder Mom had no pictures of me when I was a baby.

I set the picture down and dialed my brother’s number.

“Eva? What’s up?” Andrew’s voice was low. Voices filtered in the background, the tinkle of piano music, the clatter of silverware against porcelain.

“Andrew, I need help.”

A woman’s voice floated through the phone. Andrew hushed her; then a door clicked and there was silence. For so long, Andrew had been just my little brother. Then he was my competition for love, time, attention from our parents. Then he was my judge, my number-one critic, and the benchmark I held myself against. But for the first time I thought of him as an adult with an actual life. A girlfriend, maybe children down the road, happy dinners and laughter with good friends.

God, I could be awfully self-involved. No wonder he was angry at me.

“I-I’m so sorry,” I stuttered. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”