Dangerous Lies (2 page)

“What about when I needed her?” I snapped. “I stopped holding my breath for her to get better a long time ago. She’s the reason I’m here, not home with my friends in a world that actually makes sense.” My breath caught in the back of my throat.

Price held his tongue several minutes before saying, “After I introduce you to Carmina, I have to head back, but she knows how to reach me. Call me anytime.”

“She is not my family. You are not my family. So let’s not play this game either.”

He grew very still, and I knew my remark had stung. He was putting his life on the line to protect me; the least I could do was show a little gratitude. But I’d told the truth. I was a job to him. We weren’t family—I didn’t have a family. I had an estranged father, who’d turned down the U.S. attorney’s offer to place him in WITSEC with me. I was never to contact him again. And I had a mother in rehab, who I hoped I never saw again. Family implied love, commitment, a sense of solidarity. At the very least it implied living together.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. I shifted away from Price, watching the sun melt below the horizon. I’d never known the sun could take up so much space. Out here, without buildings or woods or hills to block the view, the sun wasn’t merely a sphere; it seemed to spread like shimmering gold liquid, a fat brushstroke of paint on the skyline. It was as dazzling as it was alien.

After dark, Price turned onto a rural road. Plumes of dust clouded the windows. I jostled in my seat as the tires bounced over potholes. Towering, gnarled cottonwood trees framed the road, and I briefly wondered what it would feel like to climb their thick, sloping branches all the way to the top. As a little girl, I had dreamed of having my own tree house with a tire swing. But I was too old to wish for those things now.

I could just make out the silhouette of a two-story house. It had the biggest lawn I’d ever seen, with more cottonwood trees soaring over the roofline. The lawn gave way to open fields, and past those, I could see nothing but a sapphire sky powdered with stars.

It was almost overwhelming, the sheer vastness of it all. I felt completely alone. I had traveled to the edge of the world; there was nothing beyond this place. A few steps farther, and I might drop over the end of the earth.

Unnerved by the thought, I cracked my window again for fresh air, but the breeze was sticky and humid. Night insects droned in a soft, monotonous rhythm. It was an eerie, empty quiet, unlike anything I had ever heard. Suddenly I longed for the familiar sounds of home. I would never get used to this place.

Price slowed at the mailbox, checking the number against the document in his hand. Having confirmed we had the right house, he pulled into the driveway of a stately white clapboard farmhouse.

The house had a porch on both the main and second levels, two white railings running the entire width of the facade. A large American flag hung down from the second level and rippled gently in the breeze. Several smaller flags staked into the lawn created a pathway from the porch steps to the driveway running alongside the house. Bunches of colorful flowers bloomed from whiskey barrels at the top of the drive.

“We made it,” Price said, turning off the engine. He popped the trunk, where my suitcase waited.

I knew I had to get out of the car, but my legs wouldn’t move. I stared up at the house, unable to picture myself inside it. I thought of my real home. Last year as a birthday gift—or, more accurately, to apologize for failing to register me for driver’s ed because she was too busy getting high, and the timing had just happened to work out nicely—my mom had hired a decorator to refinish my bedroom. I got to pick everything. White-painted bookshelves, a vintage chandelier, Tiffany-blue walls, and a Victorian mahogany desk we’d bought on our last trip to New York. My diary was still locked inside the top drawer. My life was back there. Everything was back there.

As we climbed out of the car, a woman rose from the porch swing and descended the steps, the heels of her red cowboy boots coming down hard on the weathered wood.

“You found the place,” she called out. She wore jeans tucked into the boots, and a denim shirt with a few buttons open at the top. Her platinum white hair hit just above the shoulders, and she studied us with snapping blue eyes. “Just enjoying a glass of lemonade and listening to the cicadas. Can I offer you a drink?”

“Now, that’s an offer I can’t refuse,” Price said. “Stella?”

I glanced between them. They watched me with careful, braced smiles. Feeling my head begin to spin, I blinked a few times, trying to right the world. The woman’s red boots began to swirl like a kaleidoscope, and I knew I’d lost the fight. Suddenly I was back in Philadelphia, a man bleeding out on the floor of our library, human tissue splattered on the wall behind him. I felt the weight of my mom’s head cradled in my lap, strange, hysterical sobs breaking from my throat. I heard police sirens wailing up the street and my own pulse roaring in my ears.

“Perhaps you’d like me to show you to your room, Stella?” the woman said, jerking me out of the flashback.

I felt myself sway, and Price caught me by the elbow. “Let’s get her inside. Long day of travel. A full night’s rest will do a world of good.”

Regaining some of my senses, I ripped out of his hold.
“Don’t.”

“Stella—”

I whirled on him. “What do you want from me? Do you want me to drink lemonade and act like any of this is normal? I don’t want to be here. I didn’t ask for this. Everything I know is gone. I’ll—I’ll never forgive her for this!” The words came choking out before I realized it. My whole body felt tight and slippery. I swiped at my eyes, refusing to cry. Not until I was alone and could risk falling apart. I pressed my fingernails deep into my palm to draw the pain out of my heart and focus it somewhere manageable.

Before I dragged my luggage up to the house, I saw the woman’s—Carmina’s—mouth pinch at the edges, and Price flashed her an apologetic grimace as if to say there was no accounting for teenage behavior. I didn’t care what they thought. If they believed I was selfish and difficult, they were probably right. And if I made this summer a living hell for Carmina, maybe she’d let me move out early and live on my own. It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had.

Price trotted up the porch steps to hold the screen door for me, and Carmina said, “Maybe we’ll put off a tour of the house until tomorrow. Bed might be just the thing.”

“I can’t be the only one who’s dog-tired,” Price readily agreed.

I wasn’t tired, but I wanted to close myself behind a door just as badly as they did, so I didn’t argue. I didn’t care if it made me look compliant. Carmina would find out soon enough that even though the Justice Department had given me a cover story and a new life, I wasn’t going to pretend like anything about this was okay with me.

Inside, the house smelled like rosewater. Dainty flower–printed wallpaper peeled away from the walls, and I caught a glimpse of the sofas in the living room—battered blue corduroy. There was an antlered head of some species of deer mounted above the fireplace. I’d never seen anything so backwoods or tacky.

Carmina led the way up the worn staircase. Nail holes pitted the wall going up, but the portraits had been taken down, and for the first time, I wondered briefly about Carmina. Who she was. Why she lived alone. If she’d had a family, and what had happened to them. Instantly, I shut off the questions. This woman meant nothing to me. She was a government-issued stand-in for my mom until I turned eighteen at the end of August and could legally live on my own.

At the top of the stairs, Carmina pushed open a door. “This is where you’ll sleep. Fresh towels on the dresser, basic toiletries in the bathroom next door down. Tomorrow we can swing by the store and pick up anything I missed. Breakfast’s at seven sharp. Any dietary restrictions I need to know about? Not allergic to peanuts, are you?”

“No.”

She gave a satisfied nod. “See you in the morning, then. Sleep tight.”

Carmina closed the door and I lowered myself onto the edge of the twin bed. The springs squeaked an off-key note. The window was open, letting in a warm, muggy breeze, and I wondered why Carmina wasn’t running the AC. She wasn’t going to leave the house windows open all night, was she? Was that safe?

I shut and locked the window and yanked the blue cotton curtains shut, but right away the hot, stuffy air felt suffocating. I lifted my hair to fan the back of my neck. Then I peeled out of my clothes and flopped back on the bed.

The room was small, barely wide enough to hold the bed and an oak dresser. The pitched roof made the walls seem to squeeze even tighter around me. My eyes traced the patchwork of blue rectangles on the faded ceiling where posters, now gone, had preserved the original paint color. Blue paint, blue curtains, blue sheets. And a dusty baseball glove on the top shelf of the open closet. A boy must have lived here. I wondered where he’d gone.

Somewhere far away, surely. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was going far away from this place too.

Reaching into the front pouch of my suitcase, I pulled out a small bundle of letters. Contraband. I wasn’t supposed to bring anything from my old life, any proof that I had come from Philadelphia, and I felt a thrill at this small rebellion—accidental as it was. Call me sentimental, but lately I’d been carrying Reed’s letters with me everywhere. The more unstable my home life had become, the more comforting I’d found them. When I felt alone, they reminded me that I had Reed. He cared about me. He had my back. Up until three nights ago, I’d stored the letters in my purse. I’d moved them to my suitcase to keep them from being discovered. Some of the letters were recent, but others were from as long ago as two years, when Reed and I first started dating. Vowing to ration them, I took one from the top and returned the others to their hiding place.

Estella,

Don’t know if you’ve ever had someone leave a note under your windshield wiper, but it seemed like the kind of thing you’d find romantic. Remember that night on the train, when we first met? I never told you, but I took a candid picture of you. It was before you left your phone on your seat and I chased you down to give it back (hero that I am). Anyway, I was pretending to text so you wouldn’t know I took your picture. I still have it on my phone.

I love you. Now do me a favor and destroy this so I can keep my dignity intact.

xReed

I pressed the letter to my chest, feeling my breathing slow.
Please let me see him again soon,
I silently begged. I didn’t know how long the letters would tide me over. But tonight’s letter had done its job; the loneliness drained from my body, leaving a deep physical exhaustion.

I rolled onto my side, expecting sleep to come quickly. Instead, I grew more aware of the quiet stillness. It was an empty sound, waiting to be filled. My imagination wasted no time inventing explanations for the soft creak of the walls, shrinking as the day’s heat wore off, or the occasional thud on the floorboards. I couldn’t shake the picture of Danny Balando’s dark eyes as I slipped into restless sleep.

THE RUMBLE OF A LAWN
mower carried through the bedroom window, which I’d opened in the middle of the night after waking dizzy with heat and bathed in sweat. The whine of the engine grew nearer, passing right under the window, then droned to the far edge of the lawn. I cracked one bleary eye and found the clock on the nightstand.

Annoyance and outrage shot through me. Kicking free of the sheets, I stuck my head out the window and shouted, “Hey! Check the time!”

The guy pushing the mower didn’t hear me. I slammed the rickety window shut. It muffled the noise fractionally.

I flipped the guy off. He didn’t see it. The first rays of dawn were behind him, illuminating thousands of flecks of pollen and gnats buzzing around his head like a halo as he pushed the mower across Carmina’s yard. The toes of his boots were stained green from the grass, and he wore a tan cowboy hat low over his eyes. He had earbuds in, and I watched his lips move to the lyrics of a song.

I dropped a nightshirt over my head and stepped into the hall. “Carmina?” I padded to the end of the hall and knocked on her bedroom door.

The door cracked. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

It was so dark in her room, I couldn’t make out her face. But I heard the anxiety in her voice and could hear her fumbling for something, clothes most likely, on the floor.

“Someone’s mowing your yard.”

She dropped the clothes and straightened. “And?”

“It’s only five.”

“You woke me up to tell me the time?”

“I can’t sleep. It’s too loud.”

Her mattress springs creaked as she settled back into bed. She let out a sigh of exasperation. “Chet Falconer. Lives down the road. Wants to finish work before it’s too hot—good for him. Don’t you have one of those little music gadgets? Turn on a song and you won’t hear a thing.”

“I wasn’t allowed to bring my iPhone.”

“An iPhone isn’t the only thing round here that plays music. Try the bottom drawer of the dresser in your room. Now, go back to bed, Stella.”