• • •
It all made sense once Nicholas explained it to me. For Mia to be B positive, one of her parents had to be. Ben McConnell, as evidenced by Lex’s blood type, was. And as Nicholas had already told me, Jessica and Ben had stayed close even after their divorce, which made his death all the more devastating for her.
“They were having an affair,” Nicholas said. “They must have been. That’s why he was around the house all the time. He wasn’t just helping my mom out by babysitting. He wanted to be close to her and to Mia.”
“Do you think your dad knew?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I think I should stop assuming I know anything about my family.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I wonder if this has anything to do with Danny.”
“I don’t see how,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. The only thing is . . .”
“What?”
Nicholas sighed. “Well, Danny was a snoop. One of his favorite games was to find out something about you didn’t want anyone to know and then hold it over your head. Our lives were kind of chaotic the last few years before he disappeared, and I think he liked feeling like he was in control of something, you know?”
As a matter of fact, I did.
“Or maybe I’m just making excuses for him because he was only a little kid, and he’s . . . gone now,” he continued. “The truth was, as much as I loved him, Danny was sort of a jerk. When I was ten, he guessed the password to my computer and found this journal I kept on it.” Nicholas adjusted the way his glasses sat on his nose, a nervous habit of his. “I wrote a lot about thinking I was gay and what that would mean for me, really private stuff like that. I know it was obvious to everyone else from pretty much the moment I was born that I was gay, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone or to talk about it, so I just wrote it all down in that journal. Danny printed the whole thing out.”
“Shit,” I said.
Nicholas nodded. “He used it to blackmail me for months, right up until he disappeared. It was just kids’ stuff, like making me do his math homework or give him my Halloween candy, but it was this constant shadow hanging over my head. And it made me hate him.” His hands were clenched into fists, but there was no anger in his expression, only grief. “After he was gone, I hated myself for hating him. Like I had made him disappear somehow.”
Watching the Tate home movies had put a little tarnish on the image of Danny the Innocent that had been created in the wake of his disappearance, but this was a little too real. It was probably no worse than what many siblings did to each other as children, but Danny had never gotten the opportunity to grow up and out of it. He probably would have matured into a good person, but he’d died as a brat. It made me think of how I’d be remembered—if I was at all—if I died tomorrow. Made me wonder if there was any chance I could change it.
“So if Danny had somehow found out about Mia, or about your mother’s affair . . . ,” I said.
“I know it sounds insane, but maybe he tried to do the same thing to Mom that he did to me,” Nicholas said. “Maybe she’d been drinking and lost her temper. Or maybe he told Dad, and Dad . . .” He suddenly slammed his fist in the floor. “I hate this! I hate having to suspect everyone in my family of something so fucking horrible. I wish I didn’t know any of this.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“Move to the other side of the world and never come back.”
“Okay.” That was an impulse I could empathize with. “But what do you want to do today?”
He sighed. “Same thing as before. Get close to my mother. Find out what she knows.”
“What about your dad?” I asked.
“I’m working on that,” he said. “I also want to try to find the file my dad kept on Patrick. I remember him getting into trouble a lot when I was young, but I never knew the details. It might mean something, and I’m sure all the information is in that file.”
“You bet,” I said.
Whatever he wanted, as long as it kept him from busting me.
• • •
But getting close to Jessica wasn’t going to be easy. I needed help.
I went to Lex’s room later that night. When she found me standing at her door, she smiled, and I could have sworn it was real.
“Hey, Danny,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Of course.” She opened her door wider. “Come in.”
I sat on the low, silk covered sofa at the foot of her bed, and she sat beside me.
“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” she said, crushing the hem of her shirt between her fingers. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the other night.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Yeah, I do,” she replied. “I’m so sorry for putting you and Nicky through that. You never should have had to see me that way or deal with a situation like that. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Of course,” I said softly.
She took my hand and squeezed it. “I feel so stupid. I’d been drinking and lost track of how many pills I took, and then I was waking up in the hospital and . . . It was just a stupid accident. It had nothing to do with you. You know that, right?”
I wondered if she really believed that. Maybe Lex was as good at lying to herself as to others.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“Good.” She pulled me forward into a hug. “I need to thank you too. You guys probably saved my life. You’re the best brothers anyone could ask for.”
I patted her back uncertainly. “You’re the best sister.”
Lex’s breath hitched, and I realized she was crying again. She held me tight, burying her face against my neck, where I felt her hot tears against my skin. God, she was laying it on thick.
“I missed you, Danny,” she said, and it occurred to me that maybe she wasn’t faking after all. Maybe she just didn’t mean it in the past tense.
The feeling of the hug changed as it lingered. At some point it became more than a sum of the body parts involved, more than just warm arms and the sweet smell of Lex’s shampoo and the cold calculation I was sure was behind it all. I felt suddenly young and small and surrounded, in a nice way that made me feel safe. If it was all an act, well, maybe it didn’t really matter. Because I couldn’t feel the difference.
I thought suddenly of my mother, the real one. How she didn’t even flinch when she heard I was dead. I wondered if she ever cried for me this way and was pretty sure I knew the answer.
Lex pulled back and laughed, swiping at her eyes and my neck. “Sorry! Sorry for blubbering all over you. I’m such a mess these days. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Actually, I was wondering if you could help me with something,” I said.
“Of course. What is it?”
“I want to do something for Mom,” I said. “I was thinking dinner, just the two of us. It’s almost Mother’s Day.”
“Oh.” Lex shifted. “I don’t know, Danny. You know how Mom is these days.”
“Yeah, but I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “We haven’t been able to spend any time alone together since I got back.”
I could tell from her lack of response how hard Lex was working to conceal her discomfort.
“It’s a nice idea,” she said, “but I’m not sure—”
“She must want to spend time with me, too,” I said. “She is my mother, after all, right?”
When Lex smiled, I saw, for the first time, the effort behind it. She nodded. “Okay.”
“Will you help me?” I asked. “I want to make it a surprise.”
“Of course,” she said. “Let’s surprise her.”
• • •
By that weekend, everything was arranged.
One of the main problems with Jessica was getting—and keeping—her in the same room with me. It was impossible to talk to her and try to get to the bottom of what she did and didn’t know when she spent a
ll of her time out of the house or locked behind her bedroom door. But Jessica didn’t like to make a scene. When she left the house, she was always freshly made-up and impeccably dressed. If I could just get her to a restaurant, her desire to keep up appearances might keep her there.
Not that it would do any good. Jessica would never open up to me, and even if she did, that wouldn’t involve her confessing that she’d killed her youngest son. I knew this. But Nicholas was insistent, and since he had the power to put me in prison, Nicholas was the boss.
On Sunday morning Mia woke Nicholas and me up around dawn and dragged us downstairs to the kitchen to help her make breakfast. Lex and Patrick drifted in later, heading straight for the coffee maker while Nicholas and I helped Mia cut fruit and flip pancakes. When everything was ready and laid out on a tray with a bud vase containing a flower Mia had plucked out of the fresh arrangement in the foyer, we headed up to the third floor as a group to surprise Jessica with breakfast in bed.
Mia was the first one through the door, and she took a flying leap onto the giant bed where Jessica was so buried under covers and pillows that she was almost invisible. Mia unearthed her, and Jessica blinked slowly, emerging from sleep like a swimmer from an undertow.
“What is it?” she slurred.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” Mia said. Nicholas stepped forward with the breakfast tray.
Jessica looked shocked. She took the tray delicately, like she half expected it to crumble in her hands.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” Patrick said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. Nicholas and Lex did the same, so I did too.
Jessica began to cry.
“Oh, Mom, it’s okay!” Lex said.
“Don’t cry,” Patrick told her.
“It’s just . . .” She wiped her eyes with the napkin from the tray, leaving a smudge of old mascara behind. “This is just . . . so nice of you all.”
“We love you, Mom,” Nicholas said.
“All your kids,” Patrick said, “back together again.”
All eyes turned toward me. Even Jessica’s, although her gaze dropped from mine when she started crying even harder. Mia hugged her mom fiercely, joined by Patrick and Lex, and then Nicholas and me. A family hug, the Tates reunited, and almost everyone involved knowing it was bullshit.
• • •
Lex and Mia had planned an entire day of activities. This was key to my plan. They took Jessica for mani-pedis, and then we all met in Santa Monica, where it had been Mia’s idea to charter a yacht to take us looking for dolphins. Jessica, apparently, loved dolphins.
The structure of the day ensured that she never got a break and never had the chance for a drink. Hopefully, by the time I got to her, she’d be ready to crack.
Jessica looked impeccable as she approached the boat. Her armor was firmly in place, and there was something else there too. A smile. A real one. It faltered a little when I offered her a hand to help her on deck, but she replaced it so quickly, no one else would have noticed.
We saw a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins, as Captain Ron informed us, just moments after leaving the harbor. Jessica had her arms around Mia, helping her to lean as far as she could over the rail to watch them riding the wake of the boat. The sight made something twist painfully in my chest, and when my eyes met Nicholas’s, I could tell he felt it too.
But maybe it was just my impending sea sicknesses. I’d never been on a boat before. I spent the rest of the ride below the deck, curled up in a fetal position, trying to keep my insides from becoming my outsides. Lex came and sat with me, pushing the hair off my hot forehead with a damp towel.
“Poor Danny,” she said. “You never did like boats.”
Which was a blatant lie. I’d see more than one video of Danny clowning around on the boat Robert used to own. But at that moment I didn’t give a good goddamn. I took her hand and let her soothe me and speak to me in that soft voice and closed my eyes against the unexpected stinging I felt at the back of them.
“Thank you, everyone,” Jessica said after we had returned to dry land and were on our way back to the car. “That was a wonderful day.”
“It’s not over yet. We have a surprise for you,” Lex said.
“Another one?” Jessica asked.
In the parking lot there was a town car waiting.
“That’s for you,” Lex said. “You have reservations at Mélisse.”
“Oh! My favorite,” Jessica said.
“You and Danny will go to dinner,” Lex continued, “and the rest of us will meet you at home.”
Jessica’s flash of panic was palpable. “We’re not all going?”
“No,” Lex said. “This is a special trip just for you and Danny.”
“We thought it would be nice for you two to have some time alone together,” Nicholas added.
I actually saw Jessica swallow. Could see the calculations happening behind her eyes as she tried to think of a way out of this that wouldn’t make a scene. I almost felt a little sorry for her.
But then the mask was in place again, and, knowing she had no choice, she smiled. “Great.”
We all said good-bye. Lex pulled her mother into a hug, and I heard her whisper, “Be nice. He’s your son.”
Nicholas and I exchanged a look, and then Jessica and I climbed—alone—into the town car.
• • •
Mélisse was dark and refined, filled with the soft tinkle of crystal and silver, the kind of place where Jessica’s façade was at home. As soon as we sat down, she asked for the sommelier and ordered a glass of wine.
“I’m so happy to get to spend this time with you,” I said as Jessica downed almost half of her glass at once. “I wish we were able to do more things together.”
“Mmm,” was her only response.
I resisted the urge to shake her. “When was the last time you came here?”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I’m not sure. Years ago.”
It was going to be a long evening. Ever since we’d gotten in the car, conversation had been stilted at best. No matter what I said, Jessica answered with the shortest words and sentences possible. I’d anticipated this, but what I hadn’t expected was how difficult I would find it to play the role of the loving son. For one thing, it was a role I had little experience with. And more than that, Jessica had never figured much into my thoughts about the Tate family since she was little more than a ghost that haunted the household. But now that I was in such close quarters with her, I realized how angry I was at her, for ignoring her children, maybe even hurting one of them. I just wanted to hurt her back.
“I don’t remember this place,” I said. The doting son act was exhausting and wasn’t getting through to her. Maybe needling her about this charade we were both playing would. “Did you ever bring me here?”
She was reading the menu carefully. “Once or twice, I think.”
“Well, I don’t remember,” I said. “My memories of that time are so spotty. I guess tonight will be like I’m eating here for the first time.”
She didn’t look up, but her jaw tightened. “I suppose it will.”
She finished her glass of wine before we’d even ordered. The waiter asked her if she’d like another, and she turned him down. Wanted to keep her head about her, probably, which was the last thing I wanted. When she excused herself to go to the restroom to freshen up, I flagged the guy down and told him she’d changed her mind and to keep them coming. If she was surprised to find the full glass waiting for her when she returned, she didn’t mention it.
She picked at her food and mostly managed not to talk to me outside of the occasional comment about the meal or monosyllabic answer to one of my questions. The evening was going to be over soon, and I was going to have nothing to show for it. Nicholas would not be happy, and more than anything, I needed to keep Nicholas happy.
At least she was still drinking.
“So, w
here do you go?” I asked after a particularly lengthy pause in the conversation. Might as well just get down to it.
“I’m sorry?”
“When you’re gone from the house,” I said. “I just realized I don’t actually know what you do when I’m at school. Where is it that you go?”
“I have commitments,” she said, pressing her fork down hard into the plate beneath it, trying to spear a salad leaf. “I’m on several boards.”
“You’re gone awfully late sometimes,” I said.
“I . . . I like to go for long drives,” she said. “It relaxes me.”
Yeah, “relaxed” was definitely the first word that came to mind when I thought of Jessica. “Where do you drive?”
She blinked a little too fast and I knew that whatever she said next would be a lie.
“The beach, mostly.”
There’s no orange dust at the beach.
I ate as slowly as I could while Jessica got drunker and drunker. I was hoping the wine would loosen her tongue, but it only made her slower and quieter. Once our entrées were finished, I insisted on ordering dessert. The waiter brought a list of cocktails along with the dessert menu. There was a notation under the tangerine soufflé that it required twenty-five minutes to bake, so I ordered that.
“And you, madam?” the waiter asked Jessica.
She hesitated.
“Go ahead,” I said. “It’s a special occasion. Mom.”
It was all the push she needed.
“I shouldn’t, but . . . ,” she said, “double bourbon, neat.”
When the waiter was gone, I leaned closer to her over the table.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell Lex.”
Her lips curled into a bitter smile. “Ah yes, she’d be very ashamed of me.”
“Like she has room to talk,” I said, hating myself for even saying it, but . . .
Jessica actually laughed. It was a soft and mean-spirited laugh, but it was real.
This was a tack I hadn’t tried. The common enemy strategy.
“Sometimes I think Lex wishes she could just put me in a little box,” I said, “so she could control everything I do.”
“I know the feeling.”