The Safest Lies (24 page)

“Come on,” Ryan said, a hand on my back. Once we were out of the room, he said, “She’ll come around. Give her some time.”

When we rounded the corner to the lobby, Ryan stopped in his tracks. A man faced him—same height, same hair, broader-shouldered and softer all around. “Dad,” Ryan said.

“Son.” His face was impassive, and then he reached for Ryan, pulled him closer, brought Ryan’s head down to his shoulder, his large hand around the back of his head. The distress on his face broke through only when Ryan couldn’t see. He took a shuddering breath before releasing him. “You
call
me—”

“Dad, I’m—”

“Oh, I know. You’re an adult. You’re part of the company. It’s part of the job.
I know.
But I’m your father, and I got a call from the captain, and I had to pretend that it was no big deal in front of your mother so she wouldn’t lose it. So don’t
‘Dad, I’m an adult’
me, okay? I know the game. I know it.”

Ryan swallowed. “Okay.”

“Okay,” his dad said. He rolled his shoulders, let out a long breath. “You guys okay, then?” He looked between the both of us.

Ryan looked at me, then his dad. “We’re okay,” he said.

“They had Kent bring your car down. If you’re all done here, follow me home. Your mother has insisted that she see you in the flesh.”

And then I felt it. The emptiness. That Annika’s mother was coming, and Ryan’s father was here, and Cole was at the hospital with his parents and Emma—and who did I have? Where was my mother? The room tilted and spun, and I couldn’t ground myself. I grabbed on to Ryan’s sleeve, as if I might slip through the cracks otherwise.

“I will, Dad. I’ll be right home. But I’m driving Kelsey to where she’s staying first.”

A muscle in his dad’s jaw twitched. “All right. We’ll see you at home, then.” We were almost out of earshot when he called, “And, Ryan?” Ryan paused, turned back. “Drive safe, son.”

—

It felt like déjà vu, getting into Ryan’s car, directing him to the house I’d be staying at. That same silence sat between us, because there was too much to say and not enough to make sense of. I couldn’t give voice to any of the terrible things I was thinking: my mother was gone, and there were no witnesses. And wondering…what if the same had happened to me? Could I just disappear like that? Would people give explanations and let me fade away in their memories? Would anyone even notice?

Ryan stopped in front of Jan’s two-story blue house. The street was dark, except for a few porch lights on the block. Jan’s house was closed up and completely dark.

“No one’s home,” he said.

“I know. They’re all at the hospital.” She had told me to let myself in. That someone would be bringing Emma back soon. “I know where they keep the spare key.”

I reached for the seat belt, and his hand covered mine. “Yeah, not going to happen,” he said.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re not staying here.”

“It’s Jan’s house.”

“It’s empty,” he said.

“They’ll be home later.”

“Tell her you’re staying with a friend,” he said.

He shifted the car into drive, and I tried to find the words to explain that I had nowhere else to go. Nobody else who would take me in.

“Me, Kelsey. You’re staying with me.”

I pictured his father at the station, his worried mother at home. “Your parents will let me?”

He kept driving, didn’t look at me when he answered. “I find it’s sometimes better not to bother them with such questions.”

—

I discovered how this was possible when we arrived at his place—a ranch set pretty far back from the road—and pulled into the detached garage at the end of a winding driveway. He held a finger to his lips and opened a door at the back of the garage, leading me up the stairs to an apartment over the top.

“Ryan? Is that you?” a voice called from down below.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

He jogged down the steps, and I heard him talking to a woman. His mother, I assumed. “Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, and I smiled—my mother would be the same way. There were some similarities in our family after all.

I stood in the middle of the room. There was an unmade bed in the corner, just under the window. A couch against the other wall, a small television across the way, and a low table in between. A bathroom behind me, and slanted roofs on either side, so you could stand upright only in the middle third of the room.

When I turned back around, Ryan was standing at the top of the steps, watching me. He didn’t come any closer.

“So,” I said, “this is where you live.”

“Sorry, I know it’s not much. But there are people here, and my dad is kind of a badass for an old guy. I promise you’ll be safe.”

As if he could see straight through me.

“Thank you,” I said.

He was still watching me from across the way. “Um. I’m gonna, um.” He went for his dresser, pulled it open, reached a hand in, and froze. He raised his hands and backed away. “No, you do it. I don’t want to be creepy. This is the T-shirt drawer. And there are sweats below but I don’t know if they’ll fit, but you can try, and I’ll just…run to the kitchen….”

I looked down. I was covered in blood still. As soon as he left, I stripped off my jeans and purple shirt, and threw on the top shirt from his drawer, which fell almost to my knees and, honestly, probably covered more skin than most of what I’d wear all summer. I used his bathroom and scrubbed at my hands and nails with the bar of soap, watching as the pink water swirled down the drain. The tips of my fingers were cold, and no amount of hot water was able to change that.

Ryan still wasn’t back, so I sat on his couch and tucked my legs up inside the long shirt, trying to calm the ever-present nerves.

I heard a door from somewhere in the garage, another at the bottom for the steps, and my spine stiffened until I heard his voice from just out of sight. “Okay if I come in?”

“Yes,” I called. He came through the open doorway with two bottles of water and a bag of chips, which he placed on the table in front of me.

Then he dragged a canvas bag from his closet. “Here,” he said. He opened the bag, which was full to the top. “I’ll put in a load of laundry, so you have something to wear tomorrow. Before we can see if we can get into your house.”

I crammed my ruined clothes into the bag. “You do your own laundry?” I asked, and then I blushed.

He almost smiled. “Part of the arrangement. If I’m going to claim to be an adult, I kind of have to do the adult stuff.”

I thought of all the firsts that were supposed to be so important. Realized nothing had prepared me for this one:
First time a guy does your laundry.
It suddenly felt bigger than all the rest. More intimate, more meaningful. Everything within me warmed.

Ryan headed back down the stairs with the laundry sack, and I stared at my phone on the coffee table. Jan hadn’t called. There was no sign of my mother. And the people who had come—who had tried to take me—were out there still.

There was a window into the night, and people that could be watching. There were no alarms, or bars, or gates. No first or second or third line of defense. Just me and the empty night, every possibility on the other side of the thinnest window.

I stood across from the glass, but all I saw was my face in the reflection. My hair that was falling in a mess past my shoulders. A girl disappearing in a too-large shirt, with too-wide eyes staring back.

Ryan’s reflection appeared behind me, and I felt his hands move to my arms. “Hey,” he said. “I got you.”

His eyes met mine in the window reflection, and I sank back into his chest, let him wrap his arms around me, felt his breath on the side of my face, his fingers trailing down my arms.

I shivered, and he stepped back.

“Sorry,” he said. He took another step, cleared his throat. “I’m gonna watch some TV. Over there. On the other side of the room. And you can take the bed. And try to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep,” I said. “I can’t close my eyes.”

“You can,” he said. “I’ll be right there. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody.”

I wasn’t sure whether I should take that as a comfort or not.

—

In my dream, I saw his face. The shape of his mouth, his eyes, the way he looked straight into me. In my dream, like in reality, I knew exactly who he was. The poison in his voice, my name dripping from his lips.

He was the mirror from which I came.

I woke gasping for breath. There was a hand on my arm, and I jerked back.

“Hey, hey,” Ryan said, hands held up. “You were having a nightmare.”

I stared at the walls, the shadowed corners. The dark window, the sloped ceiling, trying to orient myself.
You are sleeping in Ryan Baker’s bed, because you have nowhere else to go.

“You’re safe,” he said. “We’re safe.”

I stared into his eyes, trying to latch on to his compassion. But I felt a tear roll down my cheek, and he pulled me closer. The nightmare existed whether I was sleeping or awake. My mother was gone, and I was alone.

No gates or bars or alarms would change it. No words or promises.

He repeated the words “We’re safe” until I felt them in my head and in my body, but what he didn’t know, what he couldn’t know, was that the words weren’t real. It was a temporary sentiment. All pretend. Nothing more than a beautiful illusion.

I
woke before Ryan, who was sprawled on the bed beside me. I wasn’t sure exactly how that happened, or what that meant, but he was here, and I was okay, and the world kept turning, despite the fact that my life would never be the same.

The first thing I thought was:
My mother.
But what could I do, except wait to hear? Who could I call, and where could I look? I had never felt so helpless—not when I was trapped in the safe room, and not when I was hanging over the edge of the cliff in my car.

There was a bird on a branch outside the window, and it quickly took flight—a beating of wings in the crisp air. My body shuddered as it disappeared from view.

I stared out the window, the glass cold against my bare hands, and wondered if anyone was out there. If they knew where I was. If they were watching me back. From Ryan’s window, I had a good view down the driveway, and I could see the top of a house somewhere next door, but much of the yard was hidden in trees.

Surely the fact that nobody had come for me in the middle of the night was a good sign. Surely there would be answers today. Jan would know what to do and would convince the police how to find my mother, and we would be okay.
We would be okay.

An alarm began faintly buzzing beside the bed, and Ryan stirred beside me. I felt my face heating up as he reached an arm over to the bedside table to hit the clock. He was slow to wake, which surprised me, based on how much energy he seemed to have in class and at the Lodge.

He rolled over, grabbed a pillow, placed it over his head and moaned. Then he froze. He slowly lowered the pillow and tilted his head to my side, staring directly at me. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

I decided Ryan-in-the-morning was my new favorite kind of Ryan. Vulnerable and unsure, a small smile as he reached a hand over to mine, on top of his comforter.

We heard a noise downstairs, and my first thought was,
Them. They’re here. They’ve found me.
I searched for alternate exit strategies: the bathroom, the phone, this window—

But Ryan cursed, bolted out of bed, and was running
toward
the stairs.

I heard the door at the bottom open just as a woman’s voice said, “Oh, I was just coming to see if you wanted breakfast before school.”

School.
As if I could do something that normal. As if my life would ever be that simple again.

“I’m not feeling so hot,” Ryan said. “I was coming down to tell you.”

“Okay,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if…Well, I’ll be home after dropping Jay at school, so if you need anything…”

When I heard the door for the garage close, I crept out of bed and checked my phone, but nothing. Nothing from the police, or Jan. No news of my mother.

Ryan stood just at the entrance to his room. He didn’t come any closer. “You can go ahead and use the shower,” he said. “She’s taking my brother to the middle school. She’ll be gone for a while.”

“Okay.”

I was standing in Ryan Baker’s bedroom in his T-shirt and nothing else, and he was looking at me like…

“Hey, Ryan?”

“Yes, Kelsey?”

“I’m not going to break.”

“I know you’re not,” he said.

“So you can stop looking at me like I might.”

“That is definitely not why I’m looking at you.” He gave me that same small morning smile, and continued, “You’re in
my clothes
and you’re in
my room
and I’m thinking,
Don’t be a dick, Ryan, she’s having the absolute worst day of her life and this isn’t the best time to tell her you like the way she looks in your clothes, in your room.
”

My face heated up. “You’re thinking all of that?”

“I am.”

“Oh.”
Oh.
“Well, I’m thinking,
You’re standing in Ryan Baker’s room, wearing Ryan Baker’s clothes, and you really shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than the fact that your life has gone to shit and you don’t know where your mother is, but Ryan is there and he’s making it better.
”