It took me a second to realize that’s what the sound had been. My mouth snapped shut. The girl was grinning.
“What’s funny?” Lex asked as the barista handed her a latte.
“Nothing,” I said.
I looked back as we left the coffee shop, but the girl was concentrating on her laptop again.
? ? ?
Patrick came over for dinner that night. Jessica wasn’t in the house. No one but Mia seemed worried or curious about her absence, and she still wasn’t home when Lex convinced Patrick to stay the night, and everyone headed to bed. If I’d thought becoming Danny Tate would mean getting a more loving and attentive mother than the one I’d grown up with, I would have been disappointed, but I was relieved. I could play Lex like a fiddle, but Jessica made me uneasy. I didn’t get her, and I wasn’t good with mothers.
I didn’t go to sleep when everyone else did. Instead, I sat on the floor of Danny’s room with everything Lex had bought me that morning spread out in front of me. It was all I needed to make a decent attempt at getting away from here. Clothes, including a new coat that would be warm enough even in Vancouver, and several good pairs of shoes to choose from. A laptop and a smartphone that would get me a nice chunk of cash at any pawn shop. The passport with Danny Tate’s name on it next to my picture. If I moved fast enough, flying back to Canada before the Tates realized I was gone and raised the alarm, I could use it to get across the border if I wanted.
I had everything I needed to go.
But, after more than an hour of staring at the supplies in front of me, I got up and started to put them away. Clothes hung in the closet, laptop plugged in on the desk, new toothbrush dropped into the cup by the sink in Danny’s bathroom. I was going to stay. If I was honest with myself, I had made the decision the night before as I floated in the pool and looked up at the sky. I was going to see the con through, take this chance to have a real life.
I was going to become Danny Tate.
I had a million rationales. Staying was actually, weirdly, the safer choice. Right now they believed I was Danny, with the possible exception of Nicholas. If I ran, they would all know I wasn’t. The power and wealth of the Tates had cut through government bureaucracy like a hot knife through butter to get me out of Canada, and that the same influence would be brought to bear on finding me and putting me in prison for impersonating their son. For years I’d relied on my ability to read people, and I was confident that if they started to suspect me, I would see it coming. There would be time for me to get away if I needed to. And in the meantime I’d live like a king.
Because I’m just as good at lying to myself as lying to other people, I even believed those were my real reasons.
I wasn’t sleepy, so I decided to go through the house again while everyone was asleep. I walked the upstairs halls, quizzing myself on what lay in the room behind each door, and then moved downstairs. I went through each cabinet and drawer in the kitchen, learning where the Tates kept the forks and cookie sheets and what kind of cereal they ate. I was in the fancy living room—the one no one ever seemed to use—going through the drawers in a side table when headlights swept across the windows.
Jessica was home.
Seconds later I jumped at a sudden loud noise from outside. A plastic crunch-pop and the yelp of a car horn.
Shit. As quickly as I could on silent feet, I headed for the stairs. But I was too late. I heard a door open and close and the pounding of footsteps above my head, and I ducked back into the living room as Lex and Patrick came running down the stairs together.
“Son of a bitch,” Patrick was saying as he headed for the front door.
“She’s got to stop this or . . .” Lex’s reply was swallowed up by the night as she followed Patrick out of the house. I followed silently behind them, and, hidden by the shadows of the open doorway, looked out over the driveway. Jessica had driven her SUV up onto the lawn and into a concrete pillar that held a large planter overflowing with flowers. The front end of the vehicle was crumpled and steaming.
“Mom?” Patrick called.
Jessica wobbled out of the SUV.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re not fine!” he snapped. She was obviously wasted.
“Jesus, Mom,” Lex said. “You could have killed yourself!”
Patrick stepped toward his mother, taking her arm as she stumbled. She tottered on sharp heels that sank into the grass, and tried to push him away.
“What’s going on?”
I spun. Nicholas was standing behind me. He was even stealthier than I was.
“I . . .” I didn’t have a lie prepared for this. “I’m not . . .”
He looked past me through the open door and sighed. “Great.”
“I won’t . . . ,” Jessica was saying as Patrick maneuvered her back toward the house, and Lex climbed into the wrecked car to kill the engine. “I won’t go back.”
“You should get upstairs,” Nicholas said to me. Then he stepped outside to help Patrick with their mother. She was crying now, mumbling words I couldn’t make out.
I watched, transfixed, seeing ghosts of my own superimposed onto Jessica’s beauty queen face.
Then I heard her say it.
“He’s not my son,” she said, the words slurred but unmistakable.
? ? ?
My heart dropped like an anchor to the sea floor. This was it.
? ? ?
“Mom!” Patrick barked. “Stop it!”
“He’s not my son!” Jessica said to Lex.
Before the last word had died on the warm April air, the crack of Patrick’s hand meeting her face replaced it. Jessica reeled backward. He hadn’t hit her that hard—I could tell—but she took the blow like it was a fatal one and crumpled to the lawn. Lex screamed at Patrick, slamming her hands against his chest, and knelt beside their mother, who was now moaning on the grass. Nicholas turned and looked right at me.
“You shut your mouth,” Patrick said as he towered over his fallen mother.
Jessica looked up at him, then at Nicholas. She followed his gaze to me, standing in the doorway, and Lex and Patrick turned to look at me too. For a moment everything was frozen and silent, me staring at Jessica, them staring at me.
Jessica looked down at the ground, her nails digging into the grass as she struggled to stand.
“You’re not my son,” she said again, but when she raised her head, it wasn’t me she was looking at. She was looking at Patrick. Lex grabbed her arm and tried to help her up, but Jessica pushed her away. “You’re not my daughter. None of you are my children! A mother’s children wouldn’t treat her this way!”
A painful shudder of relief went through me.
“None of you are my children!” she sobbed.
Patrick looked down at her as she struggled. His body cast a shadow over her face, obscuring her expression.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” he said. Then he turned and walked back into the house, brushing past me on his way, leaving me cold in his wake.