I have been waiting since yesterday to get Andrew alone to confront him about the phone calls and the lie about where he was yesterday, but Ashley has been watching over us like a hawk, keeping vigil in the den to make sure I don’t leave my room in the middle of the night.
But my grounding is suspended: for today, at least. Sunday is the busiest day of the week at the café and the usual register girl called out sick, so Ashley begrudgingly admits that she needs me to come in and help out.
Paula Schulz, who works here when she’s not calling PTA meetings and ferrying her kids to dance and soccer, and I share register and coffee-filling duties for the morning throng of regulars. When they file out, Paula ducks into the kitchen without a word to me.
An unsettled feeling comes over me. I busy myself wiping down the coffee bar with a wet rag, trying to hear Paula and Rob’s conversation in the kitchen. Or at least, I hear Paula talking at Rob:
—surprised people are coming in, considering—
My heart crawls into my throat. I bag Tom Cornwell’s leftover toast for him and he leaves, and then I corner Paula as she’s coming out of the bathroom.
“So, what’s up?” I ask her. “We haven’t worked together in a while.”
Usually this is enough to invite an avalanche of gossip; Paula knows what’s going on at the high school even before I do. Who’s failing AP French. Which couple of the week is breaking up.
Paula doesn’t look at me. “Nothing really. You mind if I take my cigarette break now?”
I nod, my throat tight. “Sure. It’s pretty dead.”
Too dead for a Sunday. When Ashley comes out of her office at the end of the day to count out the registers, she frowns at the number on the receipt. “It’s bitter out,” she says. “Everyone is probably staying home.”
I think of Paula’s dismissal of me and have to sit down. It’s not the cold keeping people away from Milk & Sugar.
It’s me.
—
At the end of the day, we sit in the SUV in silence until Ashley finally speaks.
“I’m having Lauren see Andrew’s therapist next weekend.”
I use my teeth to scrape away a flake of dead skin from my lips. “I’m sorry.”
“No. I wanted to tell you it’s not your fault.” Ashley sounds like she’s going to cry. “It’s been a rough couple of years for all of us. With Andrew’s issues, and your father not being around—I don’t think some stupid sleepover trick in a barn is making Lauren this way.”
I think back to what Jade said at Bailey’s the other day. How my moving in couldn’t have been easy for Lauren. “It’s my fault. Out of nowhere she had to start sharing you and my dad with some messed-up girl.”
“Do not say that.” Ashley takes my ice-cold hand in hers. “I wouldn’t trade you moving in for anything. It’s just—I thought I’d have a couple more years before I had to parent a teenage girl. I thought I’d have help.”
Meaning, my father hasn’t done shit to parent me since I’ve moved in.
“Andrew was two when I met your father,” Ashley says. “We had only been engaged a few weeks when he found out about you. I didn’t think I could do it. I wanted to call everything off.
“He convinced me that nothing would change, that Andrew and I and our family would come first. He fought for me, and I stayed, because I was young and I had a fatherless toddler and I wanted someone to fight for me.” Ashley wiped her eyes. “It wasn’t until we had Lauren that I realized you should have come first.”
I won’t let myself cry.
“And then I met you, and I just knew you belonged with us. You’re not who you think you are, Kacey. There’s good inside you.”
I start to cry.
Ashley squeezes my hand. “If you know anything, anything at all about what happened to Bailey, please tell me. I promise I’ll still love you, no matter what.”
A fissure splits down my middle. All of the shit with Burke and the rumors finally got to her. She thinks I killed Bailey, or at least know who did.
Andrew called her. He left the house. I think he was involved. The words are on the tip of my tongue. I don’t owe Andrew anything, but it still feels like an unforgivable betrayal even to consider that he had something to do with Bailey’s disappearance.
So I keep my mouth shut, thinking how that’s the truly inconvenient thing about having a family: even when you don’t owe them anything, you feel like you owe them fucking everything.
—
Monday morning. Getting dressed for school feels like prepping for my own execution. Jade hasn’t called or texted me since our argument on Saturday, and this place is so damn small that everyone probably knows we’re sort of fighting by now.
I stuff myself into jeans and a fleece pullover. I haven’t showered since Saturday and I couldn’t give less of a fuck.
As I stand over the bathroom sink, dabbing concealer over the blemish on my chin, I hear Andrew and Ashley arguing in the kitchen. She wants to drive us to school, but Andrew insists she’s being ridiculous. She’ll have to pick Andrew up from track practice and rush back to the house to get Lauren and bring her to her five-thirty dance class.
Ashley relents. She watches us from the kitchen window while Andrew backs out of the driveway. The opening chords of a Tom Petty song thrum under the classic rock station’s DJ’s complaints about another cold Monday morning. I wait until Andrew swings out of the cul-de-sac before I turn the radio off. “Why didn’t you tell me you called Bailey the night she went missing?”
I expect some bullshit excuse to tumble from his lips, but he sighs. I smell his toothpaste. “How do you know about that?”
I logged in to your phone bill because I don’t know if I could trust you anymore. The irony is too much right now. “I just heard, okay? Why did you do it?”
Andrew keeps one hand on the wheel. Uses the other to wipe a piece of crust from his eye. “The cops brought me in to ask why I called her, and I said they must have been butt dials while I was driving.”
“I didn’t know you even had her number.”
“She was my friend too. I’ve had it for ages.” Andrew scratches the back of his neck.
I tilt my head to the window and shut my eyes. I think of how the calls to Bailey were deleted on his actual phone. I’m not ready to admit that I snooped through it while he wasn’t home. I don’t want to add gross invasion of privacy to my list of recent crimes. “A butt dial. That’s really the best you can do?”
“The best I can do? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I’m supposed to believe your phone just happened to call Bailey while you were out driving around the same time she went missing?” The cold crawls up my neck to the part my scarf doesn’t reach. “I hope you at least came up with a better story for the police.”
“Hold up. You think I had something to do with this?” Andrew finally sounds angry. “You’re not serious, right?”
I loop a piece of scarf around my finger. “I’m just thinking of how it must look to the police.”
“Well, don’t. Because I had no reason to hurt Bailey, and I can’t believe I even have to say that to you.”
I swallow. “Were you really at Tyrell’s yesterday?”
“What the hell—of course I was.”