Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (9 page)

“Dr. Banerjee has treated Becky several times over the years, when she’s been in town,” he explained.

She nodded slowly. “How did she end up in here today?” she asked Dr. Banerjee.

“She was arrested,” Nisha’s father explained.

Mr. Mercer rubbed his face, as if trying to scrub the information away. Finally, he looked up at Dr. Banerjee again. “Did she hurt anyone?”

The other man sat down across from him and took what Emma recognized as a police report from the file. “No, thankfully. She pulled a knife on a man at the mall downtown. She was confused, agitated. Several shopkeepers reported that she’d been in their stores earlier in the day asking bizarre questions. But mall security managed to get the knife from her without anyone being hurt.”

I remembered the eerie look on my mother’s face in the canyon the night we met. If she could wave a knife at someone, maybe she could do worse. Maybe she
had
done worse.

“When was the last time you saw her?” asked Dr. Banerjee.

Mr. Mercer shook his head. “About two months ago. She checked out of her hotel, so I assumed she’d left town, like she usually does. But then she called me from a motel just last week, so I’m not sure where she’s been.”

Dr. Banerjee wiped his glasses on the sleeve of his coat. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but she seems to have been living out of her car—the police found it in the parking lot. She’s off her medication again. I’m not sure for how long, but you know how bad she gets.”

Mr. Mercer and Dr. Banerjee continued to talk in low voices about Becky’s prognosis and a potential treatment plan, and Mr. Mercer asked whether he should talk to an attorney in case anyone at the mall pressed charges. But Emma was only half listening. She glanced back to the room that held her mother, drugged and silent. Then her eyes fell on the folder on Dr. Banerjee’s lap, bristling with medical records and arrest reports.

Emma imagined her two worlds, side by side like the twin images in a stereoscope. Was Becky her sad, beautiful mother, loving but tragic? Or was she a knife-wielding maniac, a woman so wild she deserved to be strapped to a bed? Her hands closed into fists. She wasn’t the adoring little-girl Emma anymore, and she couldn’t
afford
to be a bitter teenage Emma coming to terms with her mother’s sudden reappearance. She was a different person altogether. She was the Emma who’d been channeling Sutton. She was a tough and practical Emma who had to fight to survive, who had to ask difficult questions and learn truths she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She was the Emma who was going to solve a murder, and to do that, she knew she had to find out what was in that file.

I wanted to see whatever was in that folder as badly as she did. Now she just had to figure out a way to get it.

9

It was just after midnight when Mr. Mercer pulled the car into the driveway and killed the motor. The lights were on in the kitchen—Mrs. Mercer had obviously waited up for them—but he made no move to get out of the car. He and Emma sat in silence, neither one looking directly at the other. With the AC off, the air quickly became heavy around them.

Mr. Mercer took Emma’s hand in his and squeezed. “That really wasn’t how I wanted you to meet your mother,” he said.

“Yeah,” she muttered, looking out the passenger window. She could just make out the hole Mr. Mercer had dug in the lawn before his accident. He’d been planning to plant something there, but in the dark it looked like a fresh grave.

“I’m so sorry,” Mr. Mercer went on. “It must have been hard to see her like that.”

Emma didn’t say anything. Her body felt bruised and weak. She’d always imagined she might look for her mother someday, track her down with a private investigator or maybe by herself, with her own research skills. Sometimes in her fantasies, she told Becky off for abandoning her. Sometimes she ran to her, threw her arms around her neck, and all was forgiven. But never in all her daydreams had she pictured it like this.

After a long pause, Mr. Mercer spoke again. “I’m going to visit her tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll have stabilized her a little and she’ll be more coherent. Do you want to come with me?”

Emma bit her lip. She had questions she wanted to ask Becky, but nothing she could ask in front of her grandfather. And what if Becky kept calling her Emma? Someone might start trying to figure out whom Becky was referring to. In her deluded state, Becky might say anything—even that Sutton had a twin named Emma. And then what?

Mr. Mercer gave her an understanding look and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to decide right now.” He undid his seat belt. “We’d better go in. Mom’s probably worried.”

Emma squinted in the harsh bright light in the foyer. Down the hall, she saw Laurel perched on a stool at the kitchen island, wearing her favorite terrycloth robe. Mrs. Mercer was standing behind her, pouring tea into two pineapple-shaped mugs. She almost dropped the kettle when she saw them.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s after midnight. Why didn’t you call? I tried you a thousand times.”

Looking abashed, Mr. Mercer pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolling through the missed calls. Emma didn’t have to look at hers to know that there were probably a dozen calls from her mother on the screen. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he mumbled.

Laurel narrowed her eyes at Emma, giving her a long, scrutinizing look. She pointed to something on Emma’s jacket. “What’s that?”

Emma looked down. The hospital visitor badge was pinned to her lapel. She caught her breath. She’d been so tired on the way home that she hadn’t remembered to take it off. She tried to slide it into her pocket, but it was too late.

“You were at the hospital?” Mrs. Mercer demanded.

Mr. Mercer and Emma exchanged glances. He waited a beat too long before speaking. “Look, I didn’t want to bother you, but I was feeling a lot of pain in my knee. I went in to have it checked out and see if I could get some meds from the pharmacy. I’m so sorry we didn’t call, honey. The signal in the hospital is awful, and we lost track of time.”

The clock over the kitchen table ticked noisily. Drake, the family’s Great Dane, rose from his dog bed, shook out his coat, and then lay down again. Mrs. Mercer stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Emma wondered if this was how Mrs. Mercer had spent her evenings when she was raising Becky—up late, making tea she was too nervous to drink, waiting for bad news to come in the door. She felt a flare of guilt for making her grandmother worry.

Finally Mrs. Mercer sighed and turned to Emma. “Well, it was your night to walk Drake, Sutton. It’s too late for that, but the least you can do is to take him out to the yard.”

Emma nodded. “Come on, boy.”

The Great Dane lazily stood once more. Emma slid open the door to the backyard and followed him out into the night.

While he sniffed along the fence, Emma flopped into a wrought-iron chair and stared at the stars. As a little girl, she’d had a habit of naming the stars after things in her own life. There were the Teacher Star, a pretty twinkling one she’d named after Ms. Rodehaver, her beloved third-grade teacher. There were the Bully Star and the Brat Star, which she’d named for particularly awful classmates, stars consigned to the edges of the sky and washed out by light pollution. And then there was the Emma Star, and the Mom Star, and the Dad Star, three stars twinkling close to one another but not quite together. She had made up stories about why they had to exist apart from one another—one in Orion’s Belt, another just a little left of what Ethan had told her was Venus. In her stories, they were apart because they had to break a curse or solve a riddle or go on a pilgrimage in order to reunite. They always ended up together in the end.

After seeing her mother tonight, Emma was no longer so sure her story would have a happy ending.

“So what were you
really
doing tonight?”

Emma jumped and turned, catching a whiff of tuberose lotion. Laurel stood behind her, the porch light making a halo around her honey-blond head.

“Was Dad’s knee actually acting up?” Laurel asked. “Or was he covering for you, just like old times?”

Emma squinted, trying to read Laurel in the darkness. “There was nothing to cover up,” she said in a clear, firm voice. “Dad’s knee hurt, we went to the hospital. Why would I lie about something like that?”

Laurel shifted her weight. “Gee, I don’t know, Sutton. I don’t know why you lie about half the things you lie about. You only invented a whole, you know,
game
about it.”

“A game you begged to be in, if I remember correctly.”

“All right, all right, touché.” Laurel pulled her robe more tightly around her shoulders, then sat down in a chair next to Emma’s. A light breeze riffled through the wind chimes hanging over the patio. “You know you can trust me. What are these secrets about?”

In the porch light Emma could see Laurel’s face, earnest and hopeful, and for a minute Emma considered telling Laurel about Becky. Maybe not the whole truth—not about Becky calling her by her real name—but what would it hurt to tell Laurel that she’d met her birth mother? Sutton might have told her adopted sister, too, once she got over the initial shock.

But if Becky really
was
responsible for Sutton’s death, the less Laurel knew, the safer she’d be. Emma gazed out over the yard, where Drake was circling the birdbath.

“Okay. You’ve found me out,” she said. “We were rehearsing for the Father-Daughter Roller Derby. His derby name is Doctor Feelbad, but I’m torn between Paris Hellton and Nicole Bitchy. What do you think?”

“Liar!” Laurel punched her in the arm, but she was laughing. The tension dissipated.

“I’m not sure we have a shot with Dad’s leg in a brace, but we’re going to go for it. Reach for the stars, that’s what I always say,” Emma went on with a smile.

Laurel grabbed a cushion from the porch swing and hit at Emma with it. Emma ducked and squealed, grabbing a pillow of her own in retaliation. By the time Drake trotted up to the patio to investigate, they were both giggling and throwing cushions at each other from opposite sides of the deck chair.

“Girls?” Mrs. Mercer’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing? You’re going to wake up the neighborhood. Drake, get inside. Laurel, Sutton, go to bed.”

The door shut firmly. Emma and Laurel exchanged glances, and then collapsed into silent laughter.

I watched my sisters with a sad pang, wishing I were there between them. I marveled at my twin’s ability to defuse Laurel’s frustration. I’d never been able to do that.

“Sutton,” Laurel whispered, pushing her away so she could look into her eyes. “Whatever’s going on … just tell me if I can help, okay?”

Emma thought about denying that there was anything going on, but then she bit her lip. “Okay,” she said.

Then they stood and strode toward the brightly lit kitchen while I, their silent third sister, trailed unseen behind them.

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