“I know.”
“I believed in you, that you believed…that you honestly wanted to find out the truth…”
“I do.”
“I did exactly what you said…”
“I know.”
“I spent the night in a hotel, waiting by the phone, praying you’d call…”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I took two days off work.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“How? I’m not flying to Calgary again.”
“I’ll come to you.”
“What?” Caroline was suddenly aware of a figure standing in the doorway.
“Who are you talking to?” Michelle asked, stepping into the room.
Caroline waved her away.
“I said, who are you talking to? It’s her, isn’t it?” Michelle marched to the bed and wrestled the phone from her mother’s hand. “I told you she’d call again,” she said, eluding Caroline’s frantic efforts to get the phone back. “Listen to me, you lying little bitch…”
“Michelle, please…Don’t…”
Michelle ignored her. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what sick game you’re playing, but I swear that if you ever call this house again, if you try to contact my mother in any way, I will call the police and have you arrested. Do you hear me? This shit stops now. Am I making myself perfectly clear?” She paused for breath, then threw the phone angrily to the bed.
Caroline immediately lunged in its direction, grabbing it and pressing it to her ear. “Lili? Lili?”
“She hung up. And of course she blocked her number. There’s no way to check…”
“What have you done?” Caroline stared helplessly at the phone, then at Michelle.
“What have I done? What have I done?”
“You shouldn’t have talked to her like that.”
“Really? How was I supposed to talk to her? Oh, hello, Lili. Or would you prefer I call you Samantha? So nice to meet you. I’ve really missed having a sister. Is that what you wanted me to say?”
“You didn’t have to call her a liar.”
“Why not? That’s what she is.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know. And so do you. Didn’t I tell you this was going to happen? Didn’t I? What did she say? That she was sorry, that she’d make it up to you, that she’d come to San Diego…Shit, is that the water I hear running?” Michelle ran into the bathroom.
Caroline heard the bathwater suddenly shut off.
Michelle came back into the room, wiping her hands on the front of her black denim jeans. “Well, that was lucky. The damn thing was about to overflow. Good thing I was here.”
“Good thing you were here,” Caroline repeated without conviction.
“Yeah, well. Hurray for me. Another crisis averted.” She pried the phone from Caroline’s hand and tucked it into a back pocket of her jeans. “For safekeeping,” she said. Then she walked to the bedroom door. “I’ll be in my room. Shout if you need anything.”
“I won’t need anything.”
“That’s what I figured.”
The next time Caroline looked toward the doorway, Michelle was gone.
“Mr. Wolford will see you now.”
Caroline smiled at the young woman, the youngest and prettiest of the three secretaries sitting behind the reception counter in the main office of Washington High School. Bidding a silent goodbye to the gum-chewing teenage girl slouched in the seat beside her, she pushed herself out of her uncomfortable wooden chair, one of four resting against the wall of the small waiting area in which she’d been sitting for the better part of twenty minutes. She tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened the creases of her dark blue dress, then followed the apple-cheeked young woman into the office of Barry Wolford, ignoring the veiled stares of the other secretaries, and almost crashing into a lanky six-footer who was just leaving the principal’s office.
“What do we say, Ricky?” a man’s voice boomed from inside the room.
“Excuse me,” the boy said to Caroline, eyes resolutely on the floor.
“It was my fault,” she acknowledged in return. Everything, my fault.
“Teenagers,” Barry Wolford said, motioning for Caroline to sit down in the chair in front of his desk. He was about fifty and balding, with noticeable stains under the arms of his pale yellow open-necked shirt. “Close the door, please, Tracy.”