Fucking Mendelson. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go in before you catch cold.”
She ushered him inside to the couch and tucked the throw tight around his pale skin. “You want some milk?” When he nodded, she went to pour milk into a mug, then warmed it in the microwave before adding a little sugar and vanilla. His hands were still shaking when she delivered the treat, but his cheeks grew pinker when he caught the scent. “Thanks, Mom.”
All of this bullshit with Mendelson and Jones seemed to have tapped into the same overwhelming fears he’d felt as a little boy. She scooted in next to him on the couch and snuggled close. “Your dad isn’t coming to take me away, Everett. No one is.”
“Not Dad,” he said, nose half-buried in the mug.
“What?” She stared down at him in surprise. “Then who?”
He shot her a wary, sideways glance, and Lily realized what was wrong. “Honey, that was just a nightmare you had. No one was outside your window, so you don’t have to worry—”
“It’s Alex,” he blurted out, sounding defiant.
Lily froze. “Alex?”
“It’s him I’m worried about.”
“Everett,” she said carefully. “Alex is just someone I had dinner with. That’s all. I didn’t even mean to tell you about that, because he has nothing to do with our lives.”
“Something is weird about him.”
She tried to keep her brows from tugging down into a deep frown at that. “Baby, you don’t even know him. I’m sure it’s strange for you, but—”
“There’s a bunch of creepy stuff in that storage unit, Mom. Stuff about missing women. And I looked it up and those women have never been found. They’re probably all dead.”
Lily pulled sharply back, her frown finally overcoming her efforts to keep it contained. “What in the world are you talking about? How would you know what’s in his storage unit? That’s his private property.”
She watched him chew the inside of his cheek before he spoke. “I just . . . I looked in there once when he was working. That’s all. There’s a big board with pictures of missing women, and his uncle wasn’t a cop or anything like that. So why would he collect pictures and files about missing girls?”
“What?” she yelped. “How do you know who his uncle is? Did you go into his space? Everett!”
“I didn’t take anything!” he cried in a panicked response that confirmed her fears. “I only looked! And I checked out his uncle online, and that guy used to work for the school system. He worked at schools and he’s obsessed with missing girls? What the hell, Mom?”
She let the cussing slide, tamped down her rising panic, and thought of the eighteen-year-old Mendelson had mentioned. “What missing girls?”
“They disappeared from here a long time ago, like in the ’90s.”
Lily felt one brief moment of relief, but that only cleared the way for her deeper, darker fears. Fear for Everett. Fear over who he was or could be. “How do you know any of this?” she asked quietly. “How did you know his name to look him up?”
“Uh,” he grunted in response, and then his eyes darted back and forth, searching for a solution. “I don’t know,” he said, lying.
And what did it mean that her son was lying and sneaking around and trespassing? What did it mean about how she’d raised him or who he was?
He’s not his father, she reminded herself in a desperate wish. This isn’t about his father.
“Did you go into that storage unit? And how did you get his name? Tell me the truth. Now.”
His big brown eyes filled with tears. “I don’t take anything. I just look.”
“Look at what?”
“Sometimes . . . sometimes people leave their locks open. That’s all.”
Lily thought her eyes might bulge right out of her head and bounce across the floor. Her whole body went hot with a toxic mix of anger and that not-so-deeply buried fear exploding to the surface.
“You don’t have any right, Everett! I asked you to check locks to keep people’s belongings safe, not so you can break in and—”
“You said I could talk to you,” he shouted. “How am I supposed to talk to you about important stuff if you just get mad?”
She took a deep breath, and then another, trying to control her horror. He was like his father. She’d tried so hard to make sure he wasn’t. “You can talk to me. I’m not yelling, am I?”
He huffed out a sigh that sounded clogged with tears. “You’re mad.”
“Of course I’m mad, Everett. How could you have broken my trust that way? It’s illegal. It’s trespassing. It’s a violation, and I’ll be fired if anyone finds out.”
“All you care about is your stupid job.” He jerked away, sliding the half-filled mug onto the table with a reckless shove. “And it’s not even a good job.”
That burn of terrified anger rose higher, warming her face. “It’s the job I have, and I’m thankful for it, and you should be too. Nothing is guaranteed in this life. Nothing. We have a place to sleep and food to eat, no thanks to your fa—”
She cut herself off, her breath coming too fast and hard, anger pushing her to say something awful about his dad. She wouldn’t do that to him. She never had, and she couldn’t start now when he was finally wrestling with all those questions. After a few deep breaths, the anger had faded enough for her to push past it. “Have you stolen anything?”
“I told you already I didn’t!”
“And are you telling the truth?”
He glared at the wall, his little chest rising and falling with gulps of air.
“Everett? Are you lying to me?”
“Who cares if I am? You lie to me all the time, don’t you?”
Lily jerked back as if she’d been struck, but this blow hurt all over; there was no specific injury she could clutch and protect. He knew. Oh God, he knew that she’d spoken to his dad. This week, last month, a year ago. How many times had Jones called in the past few years? Four? Five?
She felt none of the relief of having a terrible secret exposed; she felt only fear. “Everett . . .”
“I heard you tell that cop you never went outside at night, but you left the night before. You left for a long time, and I was worried, and you pretended it never happened. And then tonight? Why was that cop here again? What are you lying about?”
He was crying now, and Lily pulled him into her arms before he could resist. She wanted to cry too. Cry because she’d scared him, but also because he didn’t know. He still didn’t know the truth.
“Oh God, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“What’s wrong? Something’s wrong and you won’t tell me! It’s about Dad, isn’t it?”
She could give him a little truth, anyway. She could stop lying about one thing. “I was helping Zoey,” she whispered.
“Zoey?” He went still. “With what?”
“I . . .” She cleared her throat. “You’re right. I did something wrong too. I let a woman stay here . . . more than once, actually. I let women stay here overnight when they needed to hide. I’m not supposed to, and that’s why I was hiding it from you and from that detective.”
“That’s illegal?”
“Not . . . not really. Except that I used a customer’s vehicle, and that was wrong, and I could get in a lot of trouble. It’s a violation, just like going through their things. So I’m sorry I acted like you were risking my job when I was already doing that. That wasn’t fair.”
He sniffed, pulling away from her a bit, but he seemed calmer now. Spent from his outburst. His anger about her other lies wouldn’t be so easy to assuage if he found out. When he found out. Like a child, she wanted to put off the consequences as long as she could, hoping they might just disappear into ash.
“You did something wrong to help someone,” he said.
“Yes.”
His gaze dropped to his lap, to the fingers he’d twisted together into a knot of worry.
Now that her initial alarm had faded, she could think about what he’d told her. “Everett, what did you mean about seeing pictures in Alex’s storage unit? What kind of pictures?”
He shrugged.
“Scary pictures?”