Nicholas sat down stiffly in his usual chair, which was next to Patrick, who sat at the head of the table. I sat beside Lex, who passed me a container of green chicken curry, and dinner began. I was more acutely aware than ever of what a farce it all was. I was an impostor who didn’t belong here at all, something most of the people around this table knew but pretended not to. Across from me was Nicholas, who was keeping my secret as well as his own, that he was leaving in just a few shorts months with no intention of coming back. Then there was Lex, the consummate actress and drug addict, and Patrick, the apparently upstanding lawyer with the history of violence. And of course Jessica, the alcoholic and the drunken driver who’d killed her own child. Even Mia, through no fault of her own, was the child of secrets and lies.
But on the outside we looked so perfect. When Mia told a story, our smiles all seemed genuine. When Lex shot me an affectionate wink as she passed me the rice, the warmth in my chest felt real. How could it feel so true when it was all built on bullshit?
I watched Jessica closely. Out of nowhere a thought occured to me. She was drinking a sparkling water instead of her usual glass of wine. Why had I believed her when she told me she’d killed Danny? It was the first time I’d asked myself the question, and I could hardly believe it. Jessica had done nothing but lie since I stepped foot in this house, but on this point I believed her unquestioningly? How I could I be so stupid? Maybe she was still trying to protect Danny’s real killer, another son she could save, one with a criminal past and a promising future. That’s what she’d been doing ever since I’d gotten here, wasn’t it? Protecting Danny’s killer by pretending to believe my act? Maybe her confession was just one more fa?ade.
“You okay?” Lex asked me softly while Patrick told the table about something that had happened at work that day.
I nodded.
She smiled and reached for my hand under the table, giving it an affectionate squeeze. My stomach turned over at the touch. Because it was fake and because I was so, so scared of the moment when I would lose it.
As soon as dinner was over, I ran up to Danny’s room, hands trembling as I locked the door behind me. I wanted it to be real. This stupid sham of a family. I wanted it to be real and to be a part of it more than I’d ever wanted anything, and it was killing me.
I saw Jessica smiling at me from across the table at Mélisse, and then I blinked and saw her crumpled car smoking from its collision with the planter in the driveway, its collision with a red and gold bicycle, its collision with the body of a little boy. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Saw Patrick’s hand fisted around the gearshift of the Jag as he took us for a joyride down the Pacific Coast Highway and saw his fist slamming into someone’s face. Danny’s face, maybe. Just a little boy who could never deserve something like that. A little boy who’d been hit before, so many times that he flinched whenever he heard a loud noise. A little boy hidden in the back of a closet, biting his lip to try to stop himself from crying, because he knew crying would only make it worse . . .
I was shaking all over. My arms prickled with gooseflesh. It was always so fucking cold in this house with this goddamn air-conditioning. I’d grown up in the snow, and my blood and bones were cold enough without it. I couldn’t remember ever having been warm.
There was a knock at my door.
“It’s me,” Nicholas said. “Open the door.”
“Go away,” I said.
“Open the door!”
I opened the door.
“You okay?” Nicholas asked. “You rushed off pretty suddenly.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well then let me in,” he said, pushing his way into the room, “because I’m freaking out a little here, and you’re the only one I can talk to about it.”
He must have been freaking out more than a little if he wanted to talk to me. He went to the window and then the desk and then the bed, like he was looking for something but couldn’t remember what it was.
“That dinner was extra weird, right?” he said. “I’m sitting there and everyone’s being nice and getting along for once, and all I can think about is how they’re all liars and one of them killed my brother. I’m, like, mesmerized watching Patrick cut his chicken, and for some reason I keep thinking about the time Dad took us boys camping and Danny and Patrick spent hours building a raft to send down the river and wanting so bad to join them but being afraid to let them see it.” He sat down on Danny’s bed and buried his hands in his hair. “Maybe you were right before. Maybe I don’t want to know what really happened.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor, facing him. This was an opportunity. Nicholas was usually so calm, so certain, nothing like the half-wild boy on the bed. With his walls in ruins at his feet, I could convince him to give up on his search for the truth of Danny’s fate or to search twice as hard. Whichever would keep me here longer, if I only knew which one that was.
But I was just . . . too tired. Too weary of games and of having nothing real to hold on to. Of bracing myself to lose everything when the truth was I didn’t really have any of it in the first place.
“It’s up to you,” I said, “but I think you know what you want.”
He sighed heavily. “I need to find the truth. For Danny.”
“You’re a good brother,” I said. If I’d had a brother, would he be trying to find out what had happened to me? Would he have kept watching TV when he heard I’d died?
Nicholas’s smile was bitter. “Try to convince Patrick of that.”
“You’re only doing what you have to.”
“I guess,” he said. “It’s nice of you to say, at least.”
“I’m never nice,” I said.
“You’re not that bad,” he said. “Not always.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked. “You’ve been totally civil to me lately, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
He lay back on the bed. “I guess I just don’t have the energy to hate you right now, not when I need your help. I mean, don’t get me wrong. What you did was fucked up and I can never forgive it, but . . . it just pales in comparison to what they did.”
I looked down at the rug.
“Plus . . .” He continued, propping himself up on one hand and looking down at me. “I think, deep down, you’re probably not a completely terrible person. I might have even liked you if we’d met a different way.”
There was a brutal burning in that spot in my chest that used to be a wonderfully numb hole that never pained me.
Maybe if I wanted this to be real—for anything in my life to be real—I had to do something about it.
“Nicholas,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I want to be honest with you,” I said.
That laugh again, the humorless little huff of air. “Really?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He looked at my face and then sat up. “Shit. What is it?”
“Your mom told me something,” I said. “She was wasted and she thought I was Danny and she . . . apologized.”
His face was like something breaking in slow motion. “For what?”
I took a breath. “For hitting me with her car.”
Nicholas slowly curled in on himself, resting his forehead on his knees until his face was hidden from me. I told him every word Jessica had said to me about how she’d warned Danny not to ride his bike in the driveway after dark, and for a minute the room was still and silent except for his harsh breathing. Then he looked up, something fierce and fragile in his expression.