I shrugged. “I don’t now. Why?”
“I have to drive Lauren to the dance school in Pleasant Plains.” He tugged on his knit cap. “There’s a Waffle Hut across the street, so I always just wait there until she’d done instead of driving back…and now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m realizing how sad it is that I eat by myself every Saturday. So please come.”
“Waffle Hut,” I said. “I already ate.”
“No one is ever too full for waffles. Meet us in the car if you want to come.”
I thought about it for a beat. The alternative was sitting around doing nothing, possibly until my dad woke up. Then we’d be alone, and I wasn’t ready for that.
I tugged my boots on. Threw on my jacket and scuttled outside, where Andrew’s car was warming up. Lauren was in the front seat; through the glass, I saw them bickering. When I climbed into the backseat, she clammed up.
“Thanks for letting me come,” I said.
Lauren nodded and took out her phone. She was silent for the entire fifteen-minute ride to the dance studio, even when Andrew tried to get her to talk about why she made the trek to Pleasant Plains every Saturday. She was a teacher’s helper for a baby ballet class.
“How old are they?” Andrew prodded, when we were finally in the parking lot.
“Little,” Lauren snapped. “You know that.” She leapt from the car and hurried into the studio, pink dance bag slapping against the back of her leotard.
“She hates me,” I said.
“Nah, she always says she’d rather have a sister,” he’d said. “At least on the days she wants me to drown in hellfire.”
Andrew paused, holding the door to the Waffle Hut open for me. “She’s shy. Once she warms up, you won’t get her to stop talking and you’ll miss the quiet. Counter or booth?”
“I don’t care,” I said. Andrew picked the booth. As the waitress brought us menus, I felt a stab of homesickness. I thought of my mother and me, in our usual booth at the diner next to her bank. The tables were grimy and the plastic seats would stick to your thighs, but they had the best silver dollar pancakes. Always with strawberry syrup.
After the waitress took our order I slid the sugar shaker in front of me. Played with the top flap, eyeing Andrew. “Did you and Lauren even know about me?”
Andrew slid the shaker out of my hands and poured a tiny pyramid of sugar onto his spoon. “I did.”
My throat felt tight. Andrew’s gaze flicked to mine. “They thought it was for the best—Lauren wanted a sister so badly, and it would have been too hard to explain to her why we didn’t even know you.”
“And why was that, exactly? I just want the version you got.”
Andrew hesitates. “Your mom wouldn’t let your dad see you.”
Our food came out—we’d both ordered waffles: his with fresh strawberries, mine with a scoop of ice cream. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Maybe it was hearing someone confirm that my mom had lied to me my entire life.
I watched as Andrew administered an even sprinkle of sugar on each strawberry. I wondered if he did the same thing every week.
“My mom and I—my life before was really screwed up,” I said. “The last thing I want is to screw someone else’s family up.”
He looked up at me and said, simply, “I don’t think you could ever do that.”
After that, before I started working at Milk & Sugar in the summer, I went with Andrew to drop Lauren off every week until dance ended for the year. My sister thawed, started to pout that she couldn’t join our Saturday-morning waffle jaunt, like Andrew and I were attending a club meeting.
Really, we just talked. And one morning, when he caught me playing with the scar on my lip, he didn’t look away.
“How’d that happen?”
I sipped my coffee. Set the cup on the saucer with a clink. “I bit through it when my mom pushed me into a wall.”
He didn’t react. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I pushed her back.” I looked out the window to the parking lot; the hostess was standing behind a Buick, helping the elderly woman behind the wheel back out of her spot. “It’s why we can’t live together. I’m just as bad as she is.”
“You’re really not,” Andrew said, after a beat. “I mean, she was the mom. It should have been her job to keep you safe.”
I picked up my cup. Set it back down. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I hadn’t told anyone the truth before, not even Dawn. But that’s the problem with letting someone slowly chip away at your walls—when you let too much of yourself out, there’s no way to get it back.
—
I have got to keep my shit together. The last thing I need is for Detective Dickhead to find out that I assaulted an eighth grader. By now, Chloe has probably told anyone who’ll listen what I did to her.
I wait until Andrew leaves with Chloe to tiptoe back into the den. No Lauren. I head upstairs, past my dad’s room and the sound of waves rising and swelling. His noisemaker, so he can sleep through our bullshit during the day. Ashley jokes that he wouldn’t wake up if Led Zeppelin reunited and started performing at his bedside.
I knock on Lauren’s door; instead of snapping at me to go away, she lets out a delicate “What?”
I inch my way in. She’s on her laptop. I think of scrolling through her browser history and swallow back guilt. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Chloe just really pissed me off.”
“It’s okay.” Lauren looks up from the computer. “She pisses me off too, sometimes. She said Bailey was killed in the barn in a satanic ritual.”
“I don’t think Bailey was killed in the barn,” I say. “There wasn’t a lot of blood.”
Just a streak to mimic the one found in the barn the night the Leeds family was murdered. I think of what Jade said earlier: someone wanted the police to find the phone on Cliff Grosso’s lawn. Whoever left it there earlier could have easily made the streak of blood to throw the searchers off more—make sure they look in the wrong place.
I sit on my sister’s bed, inches from her desk chair. “Lauren, I told you not to tell anyone what we did in the barn.”
Lauren’s face pinches. “Chloe is my only friend.”
“I’m your friend. Andrew’s your friend.” I sigh. “Chloe has issues. I think she really believes that stuff.”
“The blood.” Lauren’s voice is a hush. “Was it really in the same spot?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It could just be someone playing a sick prank.”
Lauren pulls her knees up to her chin. After a beat: “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
She looks out the window, the one that looks out over our road, Sparrow Hill visible in the distance. “That I’m never going to see you again.”
What a bizarre thing to say. Does she think that whatever happened to Bailey is going to happen to me too? I shake the thought out of my head.