The Dead of Summer (21 page)

Lindy shook her head. “I didn’t have much time. Your mama came back into the house. But this is huge.” She poked at me excitedly, further intensifying my desire to slap her in the face.
God, why doesn’t she ever shut up? Can’t she see how painful this is for me?

She might have not realized it, but Carson obviously did. He squeezed my hand and rose to his feet. “Come on,” he said to Lindy. “I think we should leave Kennedy alone. She has a lot to talk about with her mama.”

Lindy glowered at him like she
had
been slapped. “No way! I’m her best friend! I’m gonna be there when she confronts—”

Just then Lindy’s phone jangled. She glared at the screen and sighed. “It’s my mama.” She shoved the phone in her pocket.

That triggered a reminder in my brain. “Aren’t you supposed to go with her to listen to the band she wants to book for your party?” I asked. I vaguely remembered her chattering about it during our sleepover.

Lindy shook her head. “No, that’s Thursday,” she said confidently.

“Lindy,” Carson said, eyebrows cocked. “It
is
Thursday.”

“Oh my God!” Lindy gasped, and pulled out her phone. She stared at the text message. “Crap. It
is
Thursday!” Her eyes shifted between me and the cell phone several times—she was obviously torn between spending time with her mama and the juicy mystery in front of her.

“Damn it,” she muttered, chewing on her lip and getting up. “I’ve gotta go,” she said while dialing her phone. It rang loudly and then was answered. “Come pick me up at Kennedy’s,” she snapped at whoever was lucky enough to be on the other end of the phone. Whoever it was answered Lindy and she made a sour lemon sucking face. “Fine,” she said tersely, ending the call without as much as a good-bye. “David is down the block. I have to. . .
walk
,” she said as she rolled her eyes—like was a fifty mile walk across Death Valley rather than a hundred yard walk in Novella.

“But you better tell me everything your mama says.” She practically poked me in the chest as Carson helped me to my feet. “I mean it! Don’t leave a word out. Why, you wouldn’t even know you had a baby sister if it weren’t for me!” She offered me one of her toothpaste commercial smiles and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Adios beotch!” she called out affectionately, sauntering down the sidewalk.

When she was out of sight, Carson offered me a pitying smile. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Isn’t it every day you discover a body in your basement, have a mama acting crazy, and discover you have a sister you never knew about before? I’m downright peachy,” I snapped.

Carson shrank back from me—pretty difficult to do at his height. “Sorry,” he mumbled, staring down at his feet. I instantly wished I could take the words back.

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just really upset and confused and nervous and a whole bunch of things that I don’t know what to do about.” I offered him my attempt at a smile. It probably resembled the smile people gave their executioner before stepping up to the guillotine.

“Yeah, I can’t imagine,” Carson replied, reaching for my hand with trepidation. I accepted it—it sent a warm wave of comfort through my body, like a blanket carefully wrapped over my shoulders.

“I wish Lindy hadn’t found this,” I said, pointing to the album I had laid on the ground. I scooped down and retrieved it. “It really makes things more complicated.” Now on top of not knowing who the guy in the basement was, or what he was doing there, or why he was impersonating my dead daddy, I had a sister thrown into the mix. I really couldn’t trust my mama any more. How could I? How could she never tell me I had a sister? And why did she leave her behind when we came here?

“Maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t found the album. But I was looking at the picture of your daddy. He looked really familiar. . .like someone I’ve seen before. I lived in Texas, too. Maybe I saw him there or something.”

“He’s been dead for seven years, Carson.” I shook my head. “Be reasonable. You would have been ten years old. You didn’t know him.”

Carson wrinkled his brow and scratched. “I’ve seen that face. Or someone who looks very similar—” He jerked his head as if someone had snapped back his neck.

“What? Are you okay?” I squeezed his hand tightly.

“I just realized! The Mark Ryan looks a lot like the impostor! I bet it’s a family member or something! Maybe his brother or cousin. Did he have a brother?” Carson’s eyes lit up.

“I really don’t know. But why would a family member pretend to be him? That makes no sense.”

“Maybe it had something to do with your sister. Maybe something to do with why she was left behind!” He was excitedly bouncing on the balls of his feet, like he had cracked the code to a bank vault or something.

“Okay. . .
maybe
. . .but why would Mama kill him?” I asked, Carson pulling me back toward the swing.

“I don’t know. We need to get a better look at that guy on Facebook. See if we can figure out who he really is,” Carson said. “Can you look it up on your phone?”

My shoulders sank. “I don’t have a phone that I can check the Internet on. I don’t have a data plan on my phone.” That fact had never bothered me until now. “How about yours?” I asked.

Carson shook his head. “I told you. I don’t have it with me.”

We sighed in unison, as we leaned back on the swing. I glanced longingly up the road where Lindy had disappeared a few minutes ago.

“One time we could use Lindy,” Carson said, as if he were reading my thoughts.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” I said with a grin. Carson cracked a smile, his dimple deepening on his cheek. I curled my hand into a fist to prevent myself from lovingly stroking his cheek.

“We could go back to the library,” Carson suggested, but I promptly shook my head.

“No way. Marnie will be all hover-y and motherly after I passed out. There’s no way we’ll have any privacy.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, trying to figure out how we were going to get access to a computer. I rose to my feet, stepping on Colt’s tail by accident. He was so well behaved, I forgot he was there half the time.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said sheepishly. Then I tugged Carson to his feet. “Come on. I’ve got an idea.”

“Where are we going?” he asked as I handed the book to him. “Tuck that album under your shirt,” I said. “We’re going into my house.” I was praying the body wasn’t propped up on the couch in the living room.

We entered the foyer as quietly as possible. I glanced around, relieved that there was no dead body in my line of sight. I tip-toed to the couch, intending to grab the laptop and sneak upstairs. As I reached for it and tucked it under my arm, Colt barked. Within seconds, there was Mama, standing in between the kitchen and dining room, apron on, mixing bowl in hand, flour dusting her cheek. She looked like an ad for a Betty Crocker cake mix. “Hi guys! I’m making cookies! You want some?” Mama chirped. The smell of bleach still permeated the air.

I took a step toward the kitchen and glanced around suspiciously, looking for signs of disarray. Not that she never cooked or anything; quite the contrary. She obsessively made meals for me, as if she was over feeding me to make up for what she lacked otherwise in the realm of motherhood.

Baking, however, was a sign she was headed for a breakdown. Once I saw those beaters come out, I knew we were headed for a week of eating chocolate chip cookies on the couch and extra hugs with tears in our eyes. Quite frankly, I did not have the energy for one of Mama’s breakdowns right now. Especially one that started off oddly enough with a sunshiny smile and a sing song-y voice.

“What’s the occasion, Mama?” I raised my eyebrow just enough to let her know, I didn’t have time for a nervous breakdown.

“Oh, nothing! Just Thursday!” Mama waved her spoon in the air, splattering the wall with batter and offering us a smile that anyone else would call genuine. But I saw the fear lurking underneath her words and shining in her eyes. I suspect she had been desperately concocting a plan to get that body out of the basement before I asked about it again. And she had run out of ideas, so now, she was baking to distract herself from the disaster that she found herself on the precipice of.

“What are you kids up to?” Mama asked, her voice bordering on shaky as she followed us into the kitchen.

“We need to use the computer,” I said. I was not asking, I was telling.

“Um, well…how long?” Mama’s lip was nearly quivering.

“Don’t know,” I shrugged as I headed toward the stairs leading up to my room.

“Where are you going?” she asked, voice rising several octaves.

“To my room. We need privacy. And peace and quiet. And we certainly can’t get that here in the kitchen while you sing Disney songs to woodland creatures and bake cookies.” I watched Mama’s face crumble as I practically spat out the words.

Okay. That was mean
. But I had never been one of those teenagers that constantly battled my mama and screamed and threw things. Hell, I hardly rebelled at all. Last night was the first time I had ever even snuck out of the house for God’s sake. Most of my acquaintances from school—I could hardly call them friends—snuck out on a regular basis. I wasn’t snippy, snarky, or any other fancy word that means bitchy. I didn’t suffer PMS and I put up with
a lot
of my mama’s inexplicable quirks. But damn it, I was going to go up to my room with Carson and this laptop and I was going to stare her down if I had to. It’s not like we were going up there to make out. Hell, that was the last thing on Carson’s mind, I’m sure. We had a mission and we didn’t need Mama hanging around while we tried to complete it. She would just mess everything up. If I needed to crush her little heart for a moment to accomplish that, so be it. And I was going to have a fit of teenage behavior if I had to.

“Do you think that’s a wise idea?” Mama asked, her voice wavering. She knew very well that it wasn’t a wise idea (at least not from her point of view), but she would never go as far as saying it. She wanted me to turn around and say, “You know what Mama, you’re absolutely right. We’ll sit here at the kitchen table so you can watch us like a hawk and make sure they’re plenty of room between us and our skin doesn’t touch. Please, hover so you can see what we’re doing on the big bad Internet. Oh, and I won’t say anything about the body festering in the basement again!”

Nope. Wasn’t going to happen. I waved coyly at her over my shoulder as I sailed up the stairs, actually enjoying my moment of teenage rebellion.

“Leave your door open!” Mama called up. I knew if she didn’t have bigger fish to fry—with a dead body impersonating my long deceased daddy in our cellar and all—she’d be hovering around my bedroom door, not letting us have a moment to ourselves. It was her only chance of exerting control over me because once I set foot outside of the house, she was helpless and I was out of her grasp. At least, I thought I was. Her display of bravery this afternoon left me scratching my head, wondering if perhaps she might be breaking free on a more regular basis. And I wasn’t sure if I liked that idea or not, despite wishing for it for years.

“Sure!” I called back down as we stepped into my bedroom.

“This is my room,” I told Carson, despite the fact that it was obvious from the purple flowers and wicker décor and the letters on the wall that spelled out
Kennedy
. “Sorry about the mess,” I added, eying the bed I had not made that morning. I quickly kicked a bra underneath my bed. I had to get used to putting them away and not tossing them on the floor. Especially if I was going to be in the habit of bringing boys in my bedroom. “You can—” I was about to offer Carson a seat on the bed, but then I realized that might be rather forward. I wasn’t sure if that’s what I was supposed to be doing. I’m pretty certain I wasn’t following the Lindy Lincoln guide to having a boy in your bedroom.

I blushed, trying not to look at my bed as I pointed to my desk chair. “You can sit here,” I mumbled to Carson as I placed the laptop on the desk.

Colt sailed in after us, jumped up on my bed, and quickly made himself at home—after turning in a circle several times before settling down with a contented sigh. He pushed his snout underneath my covers so we couldn’t see his head.

“Wow, you don’t waste any time, do you buddy?” Carson chuckled as he plopped down on my desk chair. “I usually try to get to know a girl before I get into her bed.”

I instantly turned bright red—I felt the flush from the tips of my ears down to my toenails. Okay, I know toenails can’t
actually
blush, but you can bet if toenails
could
blush, mine would have been on fire right then.

“Um, okay,” I stammered, trying to ignore Carson’s allusion to sex, which was difficult to do. We were in my bedroom—a room where I had maybe one too many fantasies that involved Carson and what sex might be like with him. Speaking of sex, I remembered the book in my shorts. I pulled it out and leaned down, tossing it under my bed with the bra. No need for Carson to see
that
. “You can put the album on the desk,” I said.

Carson pulled the album out from underneath his shirt and laid it on the desk next to the computer. Then, his fingers hovered over the laptop keys.

“Password?” Carson asked, causing me to laugh. For all the time Mama spent on the computer, she wasn’t exactly what one would call computer savvy. She didn’t even have it password protected. Well, not really. Her password was ABCD, so as soon as you hit the A button, the rest was filled in the blank. A three-year-old could have broken into the computer.

“Her password is ABCD,” I told him. “I figured that out in about thirty seconds.”

Carson quickly entered it and within minutes, pulled up the Facebook page. I leaned over his shoulder to look.

He scooted over in the chair. “Here, sit next to me and we’ll look together.”

I stared at the chair that was obviously intended for one butt, certainly not two (one of them being my big ole behind). “I don’t think we’ll fit,” I stammered. “I’ll just stand.”

Carson slapped his thighs with his palms. “Sit here then.”