Her. Our other mother. The one who jumped. The one who was murdered. If it were another time and another place, I’d ask Lily why she can’t say Mom. Right now though? I think I might get it. Sometimes you can’t name your pain, but it lives with you anyway.
“Trust me,” Lily continues. “If I had known then, I would’ve happily raided whatever stash he had to buy groceries or keep the lights on.”
“I believe you. I just . . .” I scrub one hand over my numb face. “Why now?”
“We needed the money. Mom needed the money. And it was there. I didn’t think anyone even knew about it. I mean, Dad was in jail and Joe was dead and then you were gone . . .”
“I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t have said something before. All that time, all that work I did trying to raise money in case we had to run—”
“I didn’t believe it would work!” Lily huffs into the phone as a bell rings. Homeroom must be close to starting. “After Detective Carson arrested Dad, everything was supposed to be gone. Detective Carson said everything was gone, and what did it matter? We had a new life. We had money. We had Mom. We didn’t need any of our dad’s stuff. I didn’t even really believe him.”
Because she didn’t need to. I force myself to take a deep breath. “How bad is Bren—Mom?”
“I don’t know. She cries a lot. Not when I’m around, but I can tell. I notice.”
I wrap one arm around my middle and still feel like I’m crumbling in half. “So you took care of it.”
“Yeah.”
“How? Tell me how you got the money.”
“I accessed the account he talked about and then just . . . transferred the balance.”
Nausea sweeps through me. “Lil, where’d you transfer the money to?”
“Your account. The offshore one.”
The one I told my sister about in case something ever happened to me. The one I created to safeguard the money I earned from my hacking. The one I guarded in case we ever needed to run.
My head goes helium light and fuzzy. This is why Michael’s chasing me. My sister accidentally made it look like I stole from him.
“Lil, you have to transfer the money back. All of it.”
“I can’t.” My sister sniffles again, louder this time. “I mean, I can transfer almost all of it, but I already paid some of our bills. The mortgage statement was on the table so I used Mom’s log-in and paid everything through the end of the year.”
“How are you going to explain that? She’s going to notice someone paid the mortgage.”
“I don’t know! What was I supposed to do, Wick? You’re not here and she won’t talk to me and everything is ruined! I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how to help!”
“It isn’t your job to help. Bren has to take care of this.”
“And she can’t so I did.”
“Lily—”
“You took care of me.”
I pause. “It’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not.” Lily’s voice ratchets into something smaller again, more like my little sister and less like the girl from seconds before. “But it feels kinda like it. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be anymore, Wick. When we were with dad, I knew what my role was.”
I wet my lips, swallow. “What’s that?”
“Leverage. He kept me around to keep you in line.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t know which was worse: getting hit to keep you going or watching you watch me get hit to keep you going.”
I open my mouth and can’t say a word. All this time, all this worry, everything I’ve done to protect her and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t erase what she saw. I can’t erase what we went through.
“Wick, you did what you had to do so we could survive and that’s what I’m doing too.”
My eyes sting with tears and I dash my hand against them. She learned that from me. It’s another relic from our past. How many times have I thought that? How many times have I behaved that way? I wanted to spare her, and instead, I taught her how to be just like me. “I’m sorry, Lily. I’m so sorry.”
She hiccups and I wince. Crying. My sister’s crying now and I’m miles away. I can’t save her. I never could.
“Wick, I looked at other stuff too—just like you used to. I searched Looking Glass’s name and I get why our therapist is down as a company owner, but I don’t understand why Alan Bay is.”
I go still. “What?”
“When I searched the company information, the state site said Allison Norcut and Alan Bay are owners and Alan Bay is Judge Bay, right? The one that handled our cases?”
I swallow. “Right.”
Another bell on Lily’s end and she groans. “Crap. I have to go. That’s the late bell. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“No . . . of course not.”
“I won’t tell Bren you called. It’ll be our secret. I love you. All this stuff muddies everything, but they can’t take that.”