I shook myself from my thoughts. “Sorry.”
She squinted at me. “No teachers ever write up the miracle boy for being tardy, do they?”
“You’ve got it,” I said.
“You’re shameless and I kind of love it,” she said. “Now get out of here.”
“Hey, you want—” I took a breath. “Want to do something? After school?”
She smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
I nodded, and we went our separate ways.
? ? ?
At the end of the day I met Nicholas at the glass doors to the student parking lot to tell him I didn’t need a ride, but he forestalled me.
“Lex just texted,” he said, already more words than he’d spoken to me all week. “She wants us to come straight home.”
“Oh,” I said, and there was my old friend Disappointment. “Okay.”
I texted Ren on the way home, said a family thing had come up. She texted me back a picture of a man sticking out his tongue. When Nicholas and I arrived home, I went to look for Lex. She was in the kitchen, making a snack for Mia.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Not sure,” she said. “Patrick’s on his way over.”
My hands suddenly felt cold. If Patrick was leaving work in the middle of the day, something was wrong.
“Sit down, Danny. I’ll make you something to eat while we wait,” Lex said. She handed Mia a plate of apple slices with a spoonful of peanut butter.
Nicholas sat down beside Mia, and I frowned at him. On the rare afternoons he didn’t spend at Asher’s, he usually went straight to his room.
“I’ll take an apple too,” he said. Apparently, he’d decided to wait with us.
Lex had the line between her eyebrows that indicated annoyance but dutifully started to cut up another apple for him. I sat down on the other side of Mia. She was knocking her heel against the chair leg in an erratic pattern that mirrored the beat of my heart, and we waited.
Patrick walked through the front door only a few minutes later. His face was flushed, probably from driving here with the top of his convertible down. His eyes sought out Lex first, and something wordless passed between them.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s no big deal,” Patrick said, which meant that it was. “We knew this was coming. The FBI needs you to come in for an interview.”
Lex closed her eyes. Nicholas looked over at me. My stomach dropped.
“I put them off for as long as I could, Danny,” Patrick continued, “but they won’t let me delay them anymore. I told them that you’re in no state to discuss what happened yet, but they’re insisting. They want you to come in on Thursday.”
“It’s okay,” I said, shoving down the sudden surge of fear that went through me. I could handle this. “I’m ready.”
“No! You shouldn’t have to do this. Not yet,” Lex said. She looked at Patrick with the big eyes that had probably gotten her her way more times than not. “Isn’t there anything else you can do?”
“I’ve done everything I could to get us this much time,” Patrick said.
“Why can’t we just say no?” she pressed.
“You remember Agent Morales. She won’t let anything go, and I don’t think we really want to piss off the FBI.”
“Why not?” Mia asked.
“You’d think you’d want to talk to them,” Nicholas said. “You know. Help them catch the people who did this to you.”
Fuckfuckfuck.
Lex shook her head. “It’s not—”
“Don’t you want that?” Nicholas said. “Danny?”
“Why don’t you want to piss off the FBI?” Mia asked.
“Don’t say ‘piss,’?” Nicholas told her.
“Of course,” I said. “It’s okay, Patrick. I want to go.”
“No!” Lex said again.
“Lexi, he’s got to,” Patrick said. “I’ll call in sick tomorrow. Danny, you stay home with me and we’ll prepare for your interview.”
“What’s to prepare?” Nicholas said. He picked up his plate and dropped it in the sink on his way out of the kitchen.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized no one had answered Mia’s question.
? ? ?
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I went back down to the basement to watch more home movies. There were still a couple I hadn’t gotten to, and I had to learn as much as I could about Danny and his family before the FBI interview. I had scammed my fair share of law enforcement officials before, and it never used to make me nervous, but the stakes were a lot higher now. If I couldn’t be Danny Tate for them, I’d be trading this mansion for a jail cell.
I found a DVD labeled BARBADOS 2009/AS YOU LIKE IT 2010. After that, the volume of home movies dropped off considerably. Danny had disappeared in the spring of 2010, so I was betting these were the last videos taken of him.
The first half of the DVD was yet another family vacation to a beautiful and exotic location. This time it was New Year’s in the Caribbean, the family surrounded by white sand beaches and glassy turquoise water the likes of which I’d only ever seen as backgrounds on computer desktops.
But this wasn’t the same family I’d watched skiing in the Swiss Alps. Robert Tate’s voice sounded strained as he narrated behind the lens of the camera. Jessica was noticeably distant and was often filmed with a cocktail in her hand. Danny and Nicholas fought constantly, and Lex had dark smudges under her eyes and was shockingly thin in her bikini. Mia wasn’t present, probably left at home with some nanny, and neither was Patrick, whose absence wasn’t commented upon. I could explain some of these things. Jessica’s first husband—Lex and Patrick’s father, Ben McConnell—had recently committed suicide, which explained Lex’s appearance. Robert Tate was probably already getting himself into the financial trouble that the SEC would nail him for in a few years’ time. Mia had been born with a congenital defect of her right leg that had probably been very stressful for her parents. It was not a good time for the Tate family, and things were about to get a lot worse.
I was surprised at how sorry I felt for them.
The second event on the DVD started here at the house. Robert had Nicholas, who was wearing a suit and had his hair slicked back, explain to the camera that they were going to see Lex perform in the school play. The camera panned to Danny, who was sitting on the floor playing blocks with Mia. It was the first time I’d seen a video of Mia when she was little, and I felt myself smile. She had wispy brown curls and incredibly fat cheeks and she shrieked with laughter when Danny knocked over her block tower.
I felt a sudden, sick lurch of jealousy deep in the pit of my stomach.
I wished that were me.
I didn’t know if I was capable of love, but if I was, then Mia was the person I was closest to loving. I liked who I was when she was the one looking at me. I wanted her to be my sister. I wanted to be her brother, and not just because Danny came from a family that lived in a mansion and vacationed in Barbados. Not because he’d never gone to bed hungry or been slapped around or been told he was worthless, but because—
“Danny?”