“I should—I should probably get a room ready for her, then. Oh! Oh, you don’t—” A panicked look flashes across my mother’s face. She reaches across the table, grasping for my hand. “She’s never been here before. We moved while she was gone. You don’t think that will upset her, do you? She might want her old room.”
Damn it. I feel like telling her that all Lexi cares about these days are the entourage of hairy bikers she’s been riding around with, marrying, and getting herself shot with. “No, Mom. I don’t think she’ll mind. She’ll understand—”
The front door slams, cutting me off. Mom’s eyes, pale blue and still tear filled, grow wide. “Oh, my. That’ll be your father.”
“Hello!” Sure enough, Dad’s voice rings out in its over-the-top, cheery fashion from the front porch. The sounds of heavy bags being thrown down and shoes being toed off reach us in the kitchen.
“In here,” my mom calls.
Shit. I suddenly feel very sick. I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not. Lying to Mom is one thing, but Dad? On the few rare and pointless occasions I tried to lie to him as a teenager, he saw straight through me right away. He makes an appearance in the doorway, smiling, thick grey hair sticking up all over the place. His glasses are perched on the very tip of his nose, where he generally likes to keep them. It drives me mad. His eyes light up as soon as he sees me.
“Oh, hey, pumpkin!”
Pumpkin. Still, he insists on calling me that. “Hey, Dad.” I’m relieved when I see blonde curls behind him—Lacey. The girl’s cheeks are flushed, a healthy pink tinge to them, and she’s smiling. She seems shy about it, but still…the expression is genuine enough. She’d been stoic when I left her. I’ve been worried about leaving her behind with my folks, but it seems as though the few days she’s been here haven’t done her any harm.
“Hi,” she says, giving me a small wave with one hand. I give her a smile back, returning the wave.
My mom doesn’t even bother to say hello to either of them; she jumps right in with both feet. “Sloane’s found her sister, Al. She’s found Lexi.” Her voice breaks as she says my sister’s name, and I feel a belated surge of remorse for being angry with her. This is huge for them. Huge. Their daughter has been missing for so long—it’s only natural that she would be emotional.
My dad’s face goes sheet white. “What?”
Mom starts laughing, smiling through a completely fresh onslaught of tears. “She’s had some kind of amnesia or something. Sloane, tell your father exactly what’s wrong with her.”
And this is another tricky part. Not only am I lying to Dad, I’m also trying to pull the wool over his eyes medically. The man has thirty years of doctoring on me. He’s pretty much seen everything, heard of everything. I’ve never had an amnesia patient. I’ve only ever done studies for my Board exams, and that was all theoretical. My dad’s eyes laser in on me, adopting an instantly professional, assessing look. A look that causes me to break out in a cold sweat.
“Yeah. She was in a car accident. She got sideswiped by a motorcycle—ironically this is kind of true. A guy on a motorcycle sure as hell does seem to have sideswiped her—and she hit her head pretty hard. She was diagnosed with retrograde amnesia. Been recovering ever since. She had a breakthrough about five days ago and began to remember. She found me at the hospital.”
Lies, lies, lies. I can practically hear Dad chanting it in his head as I rattle out my over-rehearsed speech. He wants to believe the best in people, though—that they’re innately honest—and so his brow furrows as he tries to make sense of my story.
“But…if she were hit by a car, wouldn’t she have ended up at St. Peter’s? Someone would have seen her. Everyone knew her face. They’d have told me right away. And even if she’d been taken to a different hospital, the police checked every medical provider within a fifty-mile radius. A girl with no memory would have raised a red flag for sure.”
Damn him for being so fucking logical. Damn him. I say the only thing I can think of. “She doesn’t really remember much from the accident, Dad. She thinks she was up and walking for a while. Really confused. Apparently a trucker picked her up on the side of the road in New Mexico and took her to see someone. She’d been hitchhiking or something.” At least the New Mexico part is true; she did end up there eventually.