The Deepest Secret (6 page)

What was important was keeping Tyler safe. “Other families live apart.” Military families, for instance.

“We’re not like other families.”

No, we’re not
.

The front door opens behind Eve. Melissa’s standing there. “What are you doing?” she demands.

“Talking to Dad. Go inside. I’ll be in in a minute.”

“I’m taking a shower.” Melissa slams the door.

Eve looks down the street to Charlotte’s house, the lights there shining through the murk. Brave Charlotte, always smiling, picking through the debris of her broken marriage. “I wish I could do it, take a deep breath and risk it, but I just can’t.”

She misses the carefree person she used to be, that joyful girl. Being Tyler’s mother has turned her into someone who’s endlessly vigilant. She tortures herself with horrifying scenarios just so she can come up with a plan. What if there was a fire and they had to evacuate the house? What if she had an accident taking Tyler to one of his doctor’s appointments? What if a tornado touched down and tore off the roof? The sun’s a powerful enemy. It’s much stronger than she is.

“I know,” David says, and she hears the misery in his voice. Who else knows their suffering but the two of them?

He had stood in the doorway of her dorm room, grinning down at her as she sat cross-legged on the floor, and the rest of the world had fallen away. She remembers everything: how he’d clasped the doorknob, easy, his untucked blue shirt and sockless sneakers, the light behind him so that, for a moment, until he moved, she couldn’t see his face. His voice, the way he’d looked at her—she’d known in that instant. He’d never actually proposed marriage. He’d never had to.

“I miss you,” she says simply.

“I’ll be home soon.”

“Don’t forget Tyler’s camera.”

“I’ve got it right here.”

And on this uneasy truce, they hang up.

The shower’s going in the hall bathroom, the water splashing against the tiles. Eve remembers when she had to fight to get Melissa into the bathtub; now she has to fight with her not to use up all the hot water. She takes the chicken out of the refrigerator, the sprigs of fresh rosemary, the round yellow onion. The rain intensifies, the wind hurling it against the windowpanes and making them tremble. She assembles everything in a glass baking dish, then presses a sheet of aluminum foil on top. She’ll ask Melissa to pop the casserole into the oven while she’s gone, and it’ll be ready by the time she and David return.

She goes upstairs and knocks on Tyler’s door. “I’m leaving.” She waits, knowing he has to go through his tapping ritual first. A minute later the door swings open and her son stands there, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his black curls, his sunglasses shielding his eyes from view. His sleeves fall to his wrists, hiding the sunburn, but it’s there. So close. They’d come so close.

“You can come out if you want,” she says. “But keep an eye on things, okay? If the rain looks like it’s letting up, run another UV check.” What sort of treat is it for him to be allowed a little extra freedom if he spends the whole time safeguarding it?

He follows her down the stairs and stops in the kitchen. “Wow,” he says, looking through the rain sheeting the windows. “It’s really coming down.”

She glances around for her car keys. She usually hangs them on the hook, but there they are, tossed on the counter beneath a dishtowel. “Traffic might be slow,” she says, pulling her raincoat from the closet. “And I have to get gas, so don’t worry if it takes a little extra time.”

Tyler stands in the kitchen doorway, watching her. She feels all the threads connecting them. She could go a hundred miles, a thousand, and those threads would never snap.

“Love you,” she calls, as she slides behind the steering wheel. She
waits for him to step back and close the door after him before she presses the garage door opener to raise the door. The wind and rain rush in.

Does she dare leave him? He’s safe, isn’t he? But she’d thought he was safe last Saturday night. Thirty minutes. That’s all she’d been gone, just long enough to pick up milk and bread. And then the car had appeared and David hadn’t even thought to mention it. Tyler had kept it from her despite knowing that it might have needed emergency care. She grips the steering wheel. Her life is a carefully constructed house of cards, every piece precisely balanced. All it would take is one gentle nudge for everything to come tumbling down.

GONE

A
red patch, two inches square. Small enough that Tyler had been able to hide it from his mom all week. Small enough that he’d pulled on a short-sleeved shirt that morning, unthinking. How stupid that something so freaking small could loom so large. Still, when his mom had texted him to say that Dr. B had cleared him, Tyler had felt sick with relief.

He scrolls through his camera for something to put on Facebook. The one of Zach jumping on the tramp is a good one, with his eyes squeezed tight and his mouth stretched in a crazy grin. Not this one of Mitch, smacking at a balloon that bounces away from him and looking bored. Tyler deletes it.

He’d forgotten he’d taken this one of Robbie and Charlotte. Charlotte’s talking, her hand in motion, her rings sparkling in the flash. Robbie’s watching her with a squinty look. He’d really fooled
Tyler. He’d seemed so friendly, even though he was old, like maybe thirty-five, showing him how to grip a baseball bat and giving him cool things from his restaurant—colored plastic stirrers and cork coasters. He could game for hours, swearing and pounding his knee when he’s losing, leaning back and throwing up his arms when he wins. He has a tattoo of a sad-faced angel on his shoulder and another one of barbed wire twisted around his calf. He’d once showed Tyler how to mix gin and tonics. Fill the glass with ice, pour in a third of gin, two thirds of tonic, cut and squeeze a slice of lime and drop it in. Stir with a forefinger and suck. Robbie had winked at this step. Then he’d laughed when Tyler took a nervous sip before running to the sink to gulp water and wash the nastiness down his throat.

Delete.

Next is the picture of Melissa leaning against the patio table and texting, her head bent. She looks nice. This is the Melissa he used to know.

Tyler had been hoping for a film camera for his birthday, but he knows they can be expensive. His mom’s explained that he can borrow one from school while he’s taking Photography 101. She’s met the teacher and come home to tell Tyler how much she liked him. But sometimes his mom likes people who turn out to be lame, or doesn’t like people who Tyler thinks are hilarious. So he’ll wait until school starts before he decides whether she’s right this time.

He doesn’t know why he took these pictures of Amy. It wasn’t like she’d been doing anything interesting. Her Hello Kitty nightgown’s too tight around her baby boobs and so short that he can clearly see her bright pink underpants. Gross. He wishes he could scrub his eyeballs. He holds his thumb over the delete icon and hesitates.

His laptop sounds, letting him know he’s gotten another hit on his blog. He’d posted the deer photograph and gotten a bunch of
comments right away.
Sweet! How did you do that?
Then,
Your stuff is shit
. He traces the IP address, hunts down the poster.
Fuck you, Jersey boy
, he thinks, and bans him from the site.

His dad’s plane should be in the air now. His mom took Tyler to an airport once, parking the car outside the metal fence. He remained huddled beneath the sleeping bag while his mom ran the UV meter. Then she came back to the car and opened the door.
Come on out, you two
, she said. She spread a blanket on the grass and he and Melissa and their mom sat there, sunglasses on, arms wrapped around their knees, watching the planes roll down the runways and glide skyward. They looked like fat-bellied lizards, blindly nosing up to the stars.
Where do you think that one’s going?
his mom asked, and it was a race between him and Melissa to come up with some crazy place name. Twitty. Bugwash. Middle Wallop. Beziers, which was especially hilarious because it sounded so much like
brassieres
.

He gazed up at the red and white blinking dots, all those planes filled with people, heading to another city, or coming home after being away.
I wish I were going somewhere
, he said, and Melissa reached over to tickle him and he laughed so hard, he rolled off into the grass.

Zach chats him on Facebook:

Hey dude you get your schedule

yeah did you

I got jenkins for math she’s so hot

I got drago

that sucks brian says she’s a real bitch

Oh dang why

Brian failed her class she’s really unfair

Why is she unfair

Tons of homework and she doesn’t grade on a curve

Brb

Tyler shuts his laptop and goes down the hall. Melissa’s in the
bathroom, leaning close to the mirror, holding a tiny brush against her lashes, and scrolling it up. He watches, hypnotized by her deft motions, until she snarls, “What, perv?”

This is prickly Melissa. This is cactus Melissa and if he gets too close, he’ll get stabbed. “Zach says I got the crappy math teacher.” He’s not really worried about the teacher. It’s the kids he’s thinking about. Some of them may not like having him in their class. He wants to tell Melissa this. He used to be able to tell her everything.

“Like he’d know.” She tilts her face and flutters her lashes experimentally, then leans back in with the brush to apply another coat. She’s wearing her red shirt that hangs off one shoulder, her black bra strap showing, and her jeans with the big holes cut across the thighs and knees. She’s drawn eyeliner all the way around her eyes. It makes her look mean.

“His brother told him. He says she doesn’t curve.”

“What do
you
care about grades?” She doesn’t even look at him.

Her phone buzzes, jiggling across the counter, and she snatches it up to read the incoming text. She frowns, bites her lower lip. “Shit.” She drops the tube of mascara into her cosmetics bag and pushes past him.

He steps back to let her go. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

That’s a lie. She’s in her room, pawing through the clothes heaped on the floor of her closet. She yanks her purse free. Turning, she sees him standing there in the doorway. “Look,” she says. “I have to go out. Don’t set the house on fire.”

He’s
not the one who set the dishtowel on fire making popcorn while their mom was at the store. “Did Mom say you could?”

“Sure.”

Another lie. He tries again. “Is Brittany taking you?”

Brittany’s always over. She’s only interested in horses because Melissa is. His mom says some people are leaders and some are followers.
What am I?
he’d asked, and his mom had looked thoughtful.
You’re an independent thinker
. Which means he’s neither. Once again he slips through the thin crack where no one else goes.

Melissa doesn’t answer. She reaches for the car keys hanging from the hook beside the back door. He’s shocked.

“Melissa, you
can’t
.”

She slides on a jacket and flips her hair out, over the collar. “Make good choices,” she says.

This is what their mom says when she leaves them to run to the store or the library. When his mom says it, it feels good. But here Melissa is, making bad choices. She’s going to that party even though their mom said
no
. She’s taking the car even though she doesn’t have her driver’s license. “I’m going to tell,” he says, and at this she stops and glares at him. She’s taller than he is and he feels small.

“Go ahead.” Her eyes are narrowed. Then she smiles. “Who do you think Mom’s going to believe?”

She climbs into their dad’s car. The garage door shudders up. Wind gusts in, rustling the newspapers stacked in the corner. Rain falls in heavy gray sheets he can’t even see through.

There’s a bright fork of lightning over the houses and, without thinking, he steps back, behind the door. One of the XP moms told his mom that lightning has UV in it, and so he’s never been allowed out in a rainstorm.
Big deal
, Melissa said when he complained about having to stay inside.
No one’s allowed to go out in lightning storms
.

He risks another look. Tiny red taillights shine up at the top of the street, then wink out, swallowed by the storm.

The phone rings in the kitchen behind him.

EVE

S
he screws the gas cap on tight and climbs back into the car to start the engine. Which way should she go? Right is the shortest route, but the highway will be jammed. Left, then, along the less-traveled roads. She waits for a lone car to pass before pulling out behind it onto the road. It’s the same model as David’s. What was it he’d said?
We can drive in tandem at night
. As though that could create a protective bubble around them. One of the XP moms had been driving her daughter somewhere and her tire blew. She’d awakened in the hospital, with her little girl in the bed next to her, shrieking in pain as the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong.

The rain’s falling harder now, hammering the car roof, smearing the windshield. The wipers can’t keep up. She switches on the defogger. In the distance ahead, twin taillights glow red. Damn. She forgot
to ask Melissa to take care of the chicken. She reaches into her pocket for her cell phone.

Put chicken in oven at 350

She presses the arrow to send the message and looks back up.

There’s something right in front of her, growing larger.

She clutches the steering wheel, mashes her foot against the brake pedal. A sudden bump sends the car spinning. Her headlights pick out tree trunks, pavement, something pale, tree trunks. She jolts to a stop. She’s gripping the steering wheel, breathing hard.

What was that she had glimpsed as she spun around—an animal? It had been larger than a dog, maybe one of those baby deer she’s spotted at dusk. How awful. She fumbles for the door handle, gets out of the car. She’s facing the wrong way. She turns, puts her hand up to cover her eyes, squints through the lashing rain. There’s nothing in the road. Maybe the poor thing limped off into the woods, wounded. She needs to call animal control. Automatically, she reaches into her pocket for her phone, but of course it’s not there. She’d been holding it.