CHAPTER Twenty-Three
The intensive care unit is on the fourth floor. I tap my foot, willing the elevator to travel faster.
Second floor.
Third floor.
The doors slide open, and a pretty nurse with red hair pushes a wheelchair into the small space in front of us. She gives us a suspicious look, probably wondering why we’re not in school. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid.
My father works on the sixth floor, and I’m banking on the fact that he spends most of his day behind steel doors, carefully working to make sick babies well again.
Finally, we reach the fourth floor. The nurse pulls the wheelchair sideways to let Rollins and me get off the elevator. We walk into a waiting area. There’s a desk off to the right side. Beyond that, the hallway that leads to the patients’ rooms.
“Wait here,” I say.
I’ve been at the hospital enough times to know that you can go almost anywhere, as long as you act like you have a right to be there. The only place security is really tight is in the maternity ward, where the guards are constantly watching out for baby snatchers.
I give the lady behind the desk a bright smile and start to walk past her, toward the hallway.
“Who do you need to see, sweetie?” she asks.
Crap. Of course I run into the one nurse who follows protocol.
I stop in my tracks. “Hi, um, I’m a friend of Scott Becker’s sister. Her phone is off, and I have something urgent to tell her.”
The nurse gives me a strange look. “His sister isn’t here. She left about twenty minutes ago. His parents are here, though. I can call them for you. . . .” The nurse lifts the phone from its cradle and poises her finger, about to dial a number.
“Oh, no. That’s okay. You say she left? I’ll go find her.”
The nurse frowns at me. Before she can say anything else, I turn on my heel and head toward Rollins.
Go! I mouth at him. He turns back toward the elevator and jabs the down button with his thumb.
“Miss?” I hear the nurse call behind me.
I pretend not to hear.
The elevator doors open up. Rollins and I hop in, and I hurriedly press the button for the lobby. As the doors close, I risk a look back at the desk. The nurse, annoyed that I ignored her, is glaring at me. But there’s someone else standing beside her—another nurse, with her hair pulled back into a bun.
My heart races when I recognize who it is.
Diane.
“So that was the woman who gave you a ride home after your accident?” Rollins asks, steering his car back toward the school. “Strange that she just happens to be working in the same part of the hospital where Scotch is being kept.”
“Yup,” I reply. I’m lost in thought, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing there. It doesn’t compute. Could it really be a coincidence that I met her the same night I got into an accident, on the same road that Scotch was driving on only minutes before? It just doesn’t make any sense.
“It’s almost three thirty. Do you want me to just drop you off at home?”
I snap to attention. “What? Crap. Lydia’s supposed to pick me up. If she sees us, she’ll know I skipped school and will report back to my father. He’ll be even madder at you than he already is.”
Rollins taps the steering wheel with his fingertips. “I could drop you off at the back entrance. Then you can go in and get your books and come out the front.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I say.
Rollins pulls up to the curb at the back of the school. Distracted, I lean over to give him a quick kiss.
“Don’t forget to call me tonight,” he says.
“I won’t,” I promise.
I slam the car door shut and hurry into the school.
Sure enough, Lydia’s yellow car is waiting outside the school for me at three thirty. She’s got sunglasses propped up on her forehead, even though the sky is overcast, and I notice she took the time to swipe on some bright red lipstick before leaving the house.
“Hey, honey. How was your day?” she asks when I open the passenger door and scoot inside. She sounds chipper, like she’s playing the part of a mother in some sitcom from the fifties. I get this creepy feeling, like a house centipede has curled up on the back of my neck.
“Super,” I say. “Another day in paradise.”
My sarcastic remark dampens her cheer. She starts the car. “Come on, Vee. I could do with a little less attitude. How can we have any fun together if you’re pouting the whole time?”
I stare at her as she pulls out of the parking lot. She doesn’t make any sense. First, she swirls into our lives like a hurricane, out of nowhere. Then she spies on me until she finds some dirt. She tries to get on my good side by swearing she won’t tell my dad I snuck out of the house. And then she blabs and gets me grounded. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell she wants from me.
“Do you mind if we take a detour?” she asks, signaling a turn that would take us downtown.
Something warns me to be careful about where I let this woman take me. After all, what do I know about her? She lied about her fiancé back in California. She was living her life with a false name. I caught her going through my father’s drawers. And there’s just something about her that gives me the creeps—something about the way she seems so desperate to fit into our family. Still, I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe this is my chance to find out more about her.
“Um. Okay?” I say finally.
She gives me a sideways glance and bursts out laughing. “Don’t look so freaked out, Vee! I just want to go grab some pie.”
She parks in front of a small diner. My dad used to bring us here when we were little, but I haven’t eaten here in years. It’s one of those faux fifties restaurants with a jukebox and all of the waitresses wearing poodle skirts.
Lydia plugs a few quarters into the meter on the sidewalk, and then I follow her inside. She drums her fingers on the little podium as we wait for someone to seat us, seeming a few degrees more nervous than she did in the car. I wonder exactly what she wants to talk to me about.
A girl a few years older than me sidles up and flashes a big grin. “Hi, ladies. Just the two of you?” I can smell the watermelon from her chewing gum. She looks familiar. Her long, blond hair is swept up into a high ponytail, and her face is fresh with only a dab of pink lip gloss. I realize she played Annie Oakley in the school production of Annie Get Your Gun when I was a freshman. Melody, I think her name is.
“Just the two of us,” Lydia says brightly.
Melody motions for us to follow her to a booth. She waits for us to get settled and then asks for our drink orders. I order a Coke and look at Lydia, who is sitting across from me, looking blankly at Melody.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” Lydia asks. She must be planning on bringing up something big if she can’t even pay attention to the waitress.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Just an ice water,” Lydia says.
Melody nods and then heads behind the counter to prepare the drinks. I grab one of the menus, staring but not comprehending.
“So there’s a reason I brought you here, Vee,” Lydia says. Her voice is tight.
“Nostalgia for a golden age?” I ask, not able to look her in the eye now that I’m sitting across from her.
“Nope. That’s just a perk. I have something to give you.” Lydia plops her purse on the table and starts going through it, searching for something. Finally, she pulls out a red velvet box. I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s the box my dad keeps my mom’s wedding ring in.
She offers it to me, the fancy box sitting in the palm of her hand. For a minute, all I can do is stare at it. Since my mother died, I’ve never seen it outside the context of my father’s bedroom. This whole situation is surreal.
“Take it,” she says.
Shaking, I reach across the table and grab the box out of her hand. I hold it in my lap, enclosed in both hands, as if it might grow wings and fly away from me.
“Aren’t you going to look inside?”
“I already know what’s inside,” I say coldly.
My icy tone doesn’t register with her. Melody brings us our drinks, not seeming to notice the tense vibe at our table, and asks what we’d like to eat. Lydia orders a piece of banana cream pie. I say I’m not hungry.
When Melody leaves, Lydia says, “You don’t know. Open it.”
I force myself to look her in the eye. There is a challenge in her expression. So I muster up the strength and crack the box open and see—
“What the hell?”
A gorgeous necklace is nestled at the bottom of the box. With one hand, I lift the thin silver chain and examine the pendant. Set in the center is a beautiful diamond surrounded by rubies in the shape of a heart. It takes me a minute, but then I realize the diamond is the same one that was in my mother’s ring.
“What is this?”
“It’s a necklace,” she says with a teasing smile.
“Uh, yeah. I see that it’s a necklace. Where did you get it?”
“Your father told me he’d been considering having the ring made into a necklace for you. I begged him to let me design it. He’s a man. He doesn’t know about jewelry. Do you like it?”
I remember the day I found her in my father’s bedroom, fingering my mother’s ring. Is it possible she was examining it to design this necklace? I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.
“It’s beautiful,” I say flatly, dropping the necklace back into the box.
“You don’t look happy,” Lydia observes. “I thought you’d love this.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” I say, thinking that I really would love the gift, if only my father had given it to me.
Melody sets a piece of banana cream pie before Lydia and returns to the front of the restaurant to wait on a couple of little old ladies.
“I think I know what your problem is,” Lydia says, stirring the ice in her water with a straw.
“Oh yeah?” I challenge her.
“Yeah. I think you’re mad at me because I dated your father in high school. But you don’t have to worry about that. It’s ancient history. Any feelings I had for him died long ago.”
My mouth falls open.
Lydia dated my father?
Does that mean that he was the one my mom and aunt were fighting over? I feel myself getting nauseous.
“Is that why you’re angry?” Lydia looks at me expectantly.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” Melody’s voice causes me to jump.
“Could we get the check?” I ask.
I have to get out of here.
Now.
When we get home, Lydia says she has a headache and goes upstairs to lie down. I find Mattie sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal.
“Where were you guys?”
“At that old diner Dad used to take us to. Mattie, I have something to tell you about Lydia. Something you’re not going to like.”
I expect Mattie to look worried or upset. Instead, she takes another bite of her Lucky Charms. “I bet I already know what you’re going to say,” she says, her mouth full. “Dad dated Lydia in high school, right?”
“How did you know?” I stare at her.
Mattie swallows. “She told me.”
“How could you not tell me?”
“Um, because I knew you’d freak out? It’s really not a big deal. It happened ages and ages ago. Besides, it’s not like she still has feelings for him. She has a fiancé back in California.”
“You knew about that, too?” I stand up, my cheeks growing warm with anger. Suddenly, I want to tell Mattie something she doesn’t know about Lydia. I need to show her that she doesn’t know our aunt as well as she thinks she does.
“Did you know that Lydia has been going by a different name in California?”
Mattie looks confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I went through her suitcase one day after school when she was out. I found her wallet. There were credit cards and an ID with the name Lila Harrington on them. I was able to find her fiancé online by Googling her fake name. I called him, and he doesn’t even know where she is. If Lydia is as trustworthy as you think, why would she leave her fiancé without telling him where she was going?”
Mattie shakes her head. “She must have a good reason for not being truthful. Maybe he was abusive or something. Maybe she’s hiding from him.”
I throw my hands up in the air. If Mattie still trusts our aunt, even with the evidence that she’s been lying to the people closest to her, I don’t know what to say.
“Did she give you the necklace?” Mattie asks.
“I can’t believe this. You knew about the necklace too?”
A smile plays upon Mattie’s lips. “Isn’t it pretty?”
I don’t respond. Instead, I stalk out of the kitchen. It kills me, the fact that Mattie and Lydia are acting like besties out of nowhere. Brushing each other’s hair. Talking about Mom. Discussing my private business.
Mattie’s my sister.
I’m supposed to be the one she shares everything with.
And I was.
Until Lydia came along.