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Lex didn’t say another word about what had happened. I had to assume that meant she hadn’t taken Singh’s concerns to heart. She took me for that ice cream, and we drove back to Hidden Hills with the windows down and the radio cranked up, arriving home in time to watch Sabine shoot her twin sister for poisoning her husband. Lex wasn’t much of an actress; she wore every feeling right on her sleeve. If Dr. Singh had ignited doubts about me inside of her, I felt sure I would have seen it.
But when Patrick came over after work that night—which was unusual for him, since he usually spent weeknights in L.A.—she immediately said to him:
“Will you take a look at my car? It’s making that weird knocking sound again.”
“Sure,” he said, and followed her out to the garage.
I hadn’t noticed any knocking sound.
The back of my neck got hot. They were talking about me; they had to be. Had Lex fooled me? Was she telling Patrick right now that she wasn’t sure I was Danny? I turned and saw that Nicholas had also watched them go. Our eyes met briefly, and he looked back down at his laptop. He hadn’t asked me why I’d left school early. Either he didn’t care or he’d heard from someone else.
Mia flung herself into the seat beside Nicholas and hung her head on his shoulder. “I’m bored. Will you play with me?”
“I’ve got to finish this paper,” he said, carefully edging his shoulder out from under her cheek.
“I’ll play with you,” I said. I couldn’t just sit there staring at the door to the garage, driving myself crazy wondering what was happening behind it. And I felt bad for the kid; she was so often overlooked by the rest of them.
Mia’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
I smiled. It took only the smallest thing to make her happy. “Sure. Want to go swimming?”
“Yeah!” she said. “I’m going to go put on my suit!”
“Mia, Mom doesn’t want you . . .” Nicholas sighed and let the sentence drift away as Mia bolted from the room. “Mom hates it when she swims in the brace. The hinges tear up the towels, and she tracks water everywhere.”
“Well, Mom’s not here,” I said. Jessica’s car was already gone when we left for school this morning, and she still hadn’t come home. It was cruel to let a kid grow up with a swimming pool in their backyard they weren’t allowed to use, and if the cops were going to show up and haul me away from here any minute, I could think of worse things to do with my remaining time than swimming with Mia.
She changed into a ruffly purple swimsuit, and I put on the trunks that had been part of the haul Lex got for me when I first arrived. After glimpsing my bare chest in the mirror in Danny’s bathroom, scarred and maybe a little too developed for a sixteen-year-old, I also pulled on a T-shirt.
Nicholas stopped me on my way out to the pool.
“You’ve got to keep a really close eye on her, okay?” he said.
“I will,” I said.
“Seriously,” he said. “She doesn’t swim very well.”
“Got it,” I said. I didn’t swim too well either, but the pool wasn’t that deep.
Mia ran across the patio and leapt into the pool with a screech. She came up spluttering, and I immediately jumped in after her, catching her under the arms and making a motorboat sound as I pulled her to the shallower water, where she could stand on her toes. My eyes burned from hitting the water with them still open.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded and wrapped her wet arms around my neck. “Can we play Washing Machine?”
“We can if you teach me how.”
Mia taught me Washing Machine and Sharks and Minnows and obliterated me in a half a dozen underwater handstand contests. She graciously promised she’d help me get better, for which I thanked her. I stayed within an arm’s length of her, because whenever she struggled, her braced right leg lagging behind the left one, she reached out for me. She was trusting that I’d be there, and the idea of her reaching for help and not finding any made me sick to my stomach. Each time her little hands closed around me, I felt this warm, tight feeling in my throat that I didn’t want to look at too closely.
I looked back toward the house. The light in the garage was still on, and, just like he had been for most of the past hour, Nicholas was still standing in a window, watching us.
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It was starting to get dark by the time Mia’s fingers got pruney enough for her to decide it was time to get out of the pool. I’d been covered in gooseflesh for a while but hadn’t had the heart to bail on her.
I ran into Patrick at the foot of the stairs as I was headed up to my room to change. The light in the garage had gone out only a few minutes earlier.
“Hey, if that school counselor bothers you again,” he said, “you call me, okay? What she did today was unacceptable.”
“Okay,” I said, instantly relieved. That’s what they’d been talking about. How Singh had overstepped her bounds, not how I was a con artist posing as their brother.
“I don’t think she’ll cause problems again though,” he added. He must have laid some lawyerly smack down already, or would be soon. “You have plans this weekend?”
I shook my head.
“Want to go to the Dodgers game with me? The firm has a box.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. It seemed like a very brotherly thing, going to a baseball game together. I thought of Danny’s room with his baseball posters and the signed ball in the plastic case. Danny loved baseball. I loved baseball. “That would be great.”
“Don’t tell Lex,” Patrick said, leaning close to me, “but I was thinking I might also give you a driving lesson. What do you think?”
“Yeah,” I said. Finally, something I wouldn’t have to pretend about. I couldn’t drive worth a damn. “Can we take the Jag?”
Patrick laughed. “Sure. But only because your dad won’t be out for another year.”
“Cool,” I said. Being rich was fun.
“Okay, go change,” Patrick said. “You must be freezing.”
I remembered that I was. I headed up the stairs, but stopped on the landing when I heard raised voices to my left. My first thought was Jessica; she was the only Tate I’d ever heard yell. But the voices were coming from Lex’s room.
“. . . like some stupid child,” Nicholas said as backed out of the room.
“Then grow the fuck up, Nicky!” Lex replied from inside.
“Bitch!” Nicholas turned to stalk away but froze when he saw me.
“And don’t you—” Lex appeared in the doorway and stopped in her tracks. The scowl instantly disappeared from her expression, and her voice was soft and sweet when she said, “Hey, Danny. Are you hungry?”
Nicholas gave her a look that was part incredulity, part disgust, and then he brushed past me on his way to his own bedroom. The click of the lock was audible in the silent hallway.
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