The Deepest Secret (41 page)

His mom comes out to stand on the patio. She’s a dark shape against the brightness of the kitchen behind her. “Ty,” she calls softly. “Aren’t you hungry?”

He doesn’t care if he never eats again. Everything’s been chopped around him, slicing away big chunks until all that’s left is a narrow tunnel only big enough for him. And who wants that?

“Ty?” she tries again.

But he still doesn’t answer, and after a minute, she goes back inside. The sky’s darker now. The stars are coming out. Smells drift across the air. Someone’s barbecuing.

What if he could have a do-over? He’d have left the flashlight at home. He’d go back in time and stand behind the car so that Melissa couldn’t back out of the garage. Maybe he’d go all the way back and not be born at all.

A sob rises up from deep inside him. He misses Yoshi. He never even got to say good-bye. He’s crying, big choking gasps that roll through him, dragging everything up and up and up. She would be mad. She would tell him to cut it out, but he can’t. He just can’t. Furiously, he rubs his face against his sleeve.

Something’s standing there on the grass, staring at him through the little door of the fort. They’re only a few feet apart. The Beast.

He’s gray with white patches on his chest. His bushy tail hangs down. He’s just a coyote. A stupid, dirty dog. “What are
you
looking at?” Tyler hisses. He picks up a stick and hurls it with all his might. It clatters to the ground.

The dog whirls and runs away, melting into the darkness.

EVE

S
he sits on the couch by the front door, lamps burning like sentinels on either side of her. She has a direct line of sight to the stairs that lead up to Tyler’s bedroom. If she falls asleep—and the chances of this are remote, given how much high-octane tea she’s consumed over the course of the past few hours—she’ll be awakened by the click of the French door unlocking. If Tyler tries to sneak out the front door, she’ll feel the air swirling around her, the heat from the night coming in and dispelling the coolness of the room. She’s always been sensitive to temperature. If Tyler somehow makes it undetected to the kitchen and goes out the door there, the garage door will moan and creak along its tracks, and alert her to full consciousness.

In the morning, she’ll call a security company and have an alarm
system installed. Cost be damned. She won’t tell them she’s not afraid of people breaking in.

Melissa’s alarms go off and are smacked into silence. Ever since the dollhouse, her daughter’s been avoiding her. She’d left early for the bus; she’d gone to Brittany’s house after school. When she’d come home, she hadn’t wanted to hear Eve’s pathetic attempt at explanation.
Whatever
, she’d mumbled, and slammed her bedroom door.

Eve puts her feet on the cold floor and walks up to Tyler’s room. He won’t tell her why he’d gone over to the Farnhams’. He’s remained stubbornly stoic about it. It makes her wonder if he’s hiding something bigger, a deeper secret. She misses David with a piercing longing. He’s always been her partner. He’s always helped her find her way.

When Tyler slides into his chair at the table, he won’t look at her. He doesn’t answer when she asks if she can make him something to eat. He takes a banana from the bowl and peels it. With a pang, she sees the shadows under his eyes.

“Grow up,” Melissa tells him, as she slides books into her bag. Her eyes are red, her lips pinched. It’s hard on her, too, when another XP child dies.

“Mind your own business.”

She slings her backpack over her shoulder. “How could you be so selfish? After all that Mom’s done for you? She gave up her
life
for you.”

This is terrible, that she would think this. “I didn’t give up anything, honey. It’s okay. Tyler knows.”

Tyler pushes back his chair, leaving his banana half-eaten on the table. His footsteps thud up the stairs.

The phone rings as she’s getting ready to go to the store. She lets it go to voicemail. She can’t be sidetracked or distracted. This is how she gets through each day, by putting one foot down after another.
She’ll be in the grocery store and stand there, wondering. Why had she made the trip?

The garage door rolls up on another relentlessly sunny day. She flips down the visor and slides on her sunglasses. She looks into the rearview mirror. Someone’s there, blond hair flying. For a heart-stopping second, she thinks,
Amy?
But it’s not Amy. How could it be? It’s her older sister, Nikki, running barefoot down the sidewalk toward her.

Charlotte’s in her front hall closet, going through coats, yanking them off hangers and dropping them on the floor. “Where the hell are they?” She doesn’t look up as Eve and Nikki come in. Nikki gives Eve a look.
See?
As if Eve is the sane one. As if she can take control.

“They’re not in your pockets.” Gloria’s picking each coat up, a bundle of black and tan and brown and red in her arms. “Tell her, Eve. Tell her to forget her car keys and sit down.”

“Stop, Charlotte,” Eve pleads. “Just stop for a minute. Tell me what’s going on.”

Charlotte shuffles through a pile of mail on the hall table, pulls open a drawer. “Detective Irwin’s arrested
Robbie
.”

Which is what Nikki had said, but that makes no sense. “Are you sure he didn’t just bring him in for questioning?”

Charlotte turns in a circle. “Where
are
they?”

“The police aren’t going to let you see him, Charlotte,” Gloria reasons. “What do you think you’re going to do—hang around the police station until he’s released?”

Charlotte pulls things from drawers, drops them on the floor. Batteries go rolling, coins. “I have to see him. I have to see his face when he tells me he didn’t do it. Because that’s what he’ll say. That’s exactly what he’ll say.”

“But maybe he didn’t do it,” Eve says before she can stop herself.
Isn’t this what she wants, for the finger of suspicion to be pointed somewhere else?

“Let the police handle it.” Nikki’s huddled in a corner of the sofa.

“You need to try and calm down,” Gloria says. “This isn’t helping.”

Charlotte upends the magazine holder. Magazines go sliding. “I never saw a thing, not one thing. What kind of mother does that make me?”

“It’s not your fault, honey,” Gloria says. “It’s his fault. He tricked you. He tricked all of us.”

“Not Aunt Felicia,” Nikki says. “She guessed. She said Robbie was a creep. She asked me if he’d ever been alone with me.
God
.”

Eve stares at the girl in horror. Nikki’s holding a pillow against her chest. Tears slide down her cheeks. Had Robbie
touched
Amy? Had he
hurt
her? She feels sick. “No,” she says, shaking her head. It can’t be true. It’s impossible. She stops herself. Isn’t that what people always think?

After Nikki’s boyfriend comes to pick her up, Charlotte and Eve sit alone in the kitchen. Gloria’s lying down in an upstairs room. She’s aged these past weeks—the heavy way she goes up the stairs, clutching the banister, the measured click of the bedroom door.
Let me know if the police call
, she’d told them.

“Detective Irwin wouldn’t come right out and say it,” Charlotte says, “but I’d have to be an idiot not to put it together.”

Eve takes Charlotte’s hands, icy cold in hers. She tries to rub warmth into them. How could things be any worse? Somehow, they are.

“He asked me if I’d ever left Amy alone with Robbie. Of course I had! I wanted them to be close. Close!”

Eve had judged Charlotte for this. Privately, she had thought Charlotte didn’t know Robbie well enough to be trusted watching a
child. She had worried about neglect. She had never once considered
this
.

“He asked if Robbie had ever handled Amy’s backpack. I said no. I’d just gotten it for her that afternoon.” No need to explain which afternoon she meant.
That afternoon
would forever mean only one point in time. “Robbie hadn’t come over that day. So why would he ask that?”

“I don’t know.” Eve doesn’t. She can’t imagine.

When Charlotte swallows, it’s a hard motion, like stones sliding down her throat.

“He wanted to know if Robbie had ever driven Amy anywhere in his truck. I told him, all the time. He picked her up from soccer practice if I was with clients. He took her to the movies if I had an open house. He was trying to make Amy like him. He wanted us to be a family. That’s what he said, and I believed him. What an idiot!”

“But you would have known if something was going on—”

“Would I? Would I really? I don’t think so.”

“Yes, yes.” Eve believes this. “Amy would have told you.”

“Our kids don’t tell us everything. They don’t. You know that. They keep things from us, secrets.”

This is true. Eve had thought she’d made a safe place for her children to confide in her, but they had slipped from her arms and wandered away. Maybe, at some level, they had not been fooled by her. They had seen her for what she truly is.

“Remember when Amy begged me not to let Robbie pick her up from school? I thought she was just being stubborn and I had a closing. I told her that either Robbie picked her up or she’d have to walk home.”

Is it possible that Robbie’s determination to win over Charlotte was rooted in his secret desire to win over Amy? Eve’s stomach roils. Her mouth goes dry. “Oh, Charlotte. I never saw it, either.”

“I let him into my house. I let him near my little girl. She was just a baby, and he
killed
her.”

“Wait.” Eve needs to think. This doesn’t make sense.

Charlotte won’t stop. “Detective Irwin asked how long Robbie had played semipro ball. Years, I told him. He wanted to know if he had a temper. I had to admit it, sometimes Robbie could act like a little kid. He wanted to know if Robbie kept a baseball bat in his truck. Yes, I said. He did. An aluminum one. It’s not there anymore.”

None of this is true.
She
had struck Amy.
She
had gone down the side of the ravine and found her lying by the river. This had all happened.
She
had killed Amy, not Robbie. Hadn’t she? She feels something green and growing inside her. It’s been so long since she’d felt it, or anything like it, that it’s a moment before she recognizes it.
Hope
.

Charlotte snatches back her hands and stands. “I went up to Amy’s room. I thought that maybe she’d have left something behind, some clue that would tell me if this was true. But I just stood there. I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t know. God help me. Owen’s right. This is all my fault.”

Eve’s treacherous heart lies heavy and inert in her chest. She gets up and goes to Charlotte. She faces her. She doesn’t dare touch her. “No, no. It isn’t.”

“I can’t live with this.”

“Charlotte, look at me. I need to ask you something.”

Charlotte’s pupils are black as buttons, large and unfocused. “Tell me this isn’t happening. Tell me my boyfriend didn’t molest and kill my daughter.”

Eve had felt that impact. She had seen the damage to her car afterward. “The medical examiner said Amy had been hit by a car.” Say it fast, make it meaningless.

“No. He said injuries consistent with a hit-and-run.”

Eve stares at her. The green and growing thing is taking root; it’s
reaching for the sky and spreading. Maybe she’d been wrong all this time. “How did Detective Irwin find out about Robbie?”

“I don’t know.” Charlotte’s gaze is wandering, dragged away by the distant wail of sirens.

“Listen to me. Please listen to me.” Eve has to know. She has to understand. She grabs Charlotte’s arms, so thin within her grasp. “Why did Detective Irwin ask you about Amy’s backpack?”

Charlotte looks at her with confusion. “I told you. I don’t know.”

The back door opens. Sirens shriek. Nikki comes in with her boyfriend, a gangly boy who ducks his head hello. The sirens are louder now, pulsing right outside. Eve turns her head to see.

THE FLASH

H
is teachers have been emailing short little notes asking where he is and if he’s okay. Tentative, like they’re afraid to know the truth.

He’s got his vents wide open. He can hear
everything
. The rumble of a lawn mower starting up, whining away into the distance. The peculiar puttering of the mail truck circling around the cul-de-sac. Melissa had once videotaped it for him so he could see what it looked like when their mail arrived. She’d done it on a day when she’d mailed him something, a funny card with a pack of regular, full-sugar gum inside.
Shh
, she’d said.
Don’t tell Mom
.

His mom can’t keep him a prisoner forever. She can’t stay awake all night, watching the door. He tells himself to be patient, but still he feels panic rising up in his chest and pushing into his throat. This can’t be it. This can’t be all he gets. His dad might understand. His
dad’s constantly wanting his mom to relax, take a few chances. But Tyler’s always felt safer with his mom. He feels like he’s split into two people—the one wanting out and the one wanting to be safe—which is why he’s pacing.