The Telling (41 page)

He gives me a sad, measured smile. “You've already figured it out. I can tell by the way you're frowning. It's your frown when you anticipate a twist in a story.” Those words bring on pain in my chest. I worry I won't be that surprised by what comes next. “I ordered a blood draw kit online. I researched the longest period of time blood could be frozen for there to be DNA to extract. Three and a half months at thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. I took three pints in the two weeks leading up to my trip. I stored it in the bottom of the freezer in the garage. No one ever uses it. I took two more pints in the five days I was home to make certain the cops would get enough fresh DNA mixed in. It was brutal but necessary.” He says this as one long monotone note. He doesn't take a breath, just sighs loudly when he's done, as if in relief.

“Necessary,” I repeat.

He meets my eyes, a glint of something I don't recognize in them. “To make them think I was dead.”

I am light-headed. Was I expecting that? Not in the cool tone or in such great detail. I round the cockpit's seat and grip the cold rail at my waist.

“Maggie helped me. Fitzgerald too. He was the man on the highway. He had my blood, and we made it convincing.” His voice is soft and precise at my back. My breath is turning gaspy. The wind and the mist roll off the waves, and I'm breathing in icicles. “I'd read a little about blood splatter. What it needed to look like to simulate a stabbing.”

I close my eyes. “You let me think you were dead for more than two months.” I whirl to face him.

His heavy-lidded eyes are wide open, no flirty squint to them. “I told you that I'd always come back for you.”

“Come back for me?” I push off the railing. I stab at the air with my shaking finger. “You were dead.
Gone.
” I believed him, though, didn't I? He swore on summer and I thought it was possible.

He takes my hand from where it points at him. “We can leave, me and you. We can go anywhere. I have everything we'll need.” He squeezes my hand. “They won't even look for us; there will be no reason to look for you. We ditch this boat.” He releases me and bends to unlatch the chest on the floor. Our summer provisions. In the light of the boat's lantern I see all the things I remember, with one addition: a transparent bag and plastic tubing on top; what must be a blood draw kit. He waves at it. “We take a pint of your blood, leave it smeared across the bow. The coast guard will put it together.”

I sag backward into the railing. “You want them to search for my body like they searched for yours? For my dad to think I'm dead? For Diane to?”

“We'll find a way to let them know that we're all right. I don't know how yet, but there has to be a way, when we're too far to be
found, when enough time has passed, when there's no risk. I don't want to hurt Cal—I never did. But my mother will probably be relieved that she doesn't have anyone left to take care of. That she doesn't have to try any longer for me; she can disappear into her head.”

“And who will supposedly be my killer?” I ask.

“Same as mine. My grandfather. They'll blame it on him,” he says.

“Your sick, twisted grandfather,” I whisper.

“God, exactly. I knew you'd figure it out. I knew that one way or another you'd find the beginning of my story.” He points. I hadn't noticed the vague outline of a rowboat, anchored off the shore of the tiny island and bobbing. “We'll row in. There's a car parked. We'll drive north. I have cash, new clothes, new IDs. The cops will figure that my grandfather had another way off the boat or maybe you took him down with you. You were his next victim.”

My stomach clenches. “That wouldn't work.” His brows draw up in confusion. “It can't. Your grandfather is dead,” I say. “The police know all about it.”

Ben's features sag and melt like he's a wax boy. He steps back and, in a burst of violence, kicks the chest. It jumps and rattles. His shoe leaves a divot in its metal. “When?” he asks, shaking his hands out at his sides.

I look from the dent in the chest to Ben. “Months ago. He died in a hospital in Switzerland.” I have the sense that I'm teetering on the edge. I'm at the spring and I've just realized that the water below has gone dry. And it doesn't matter; I will jump. “Why didn't you tell me about him?”

He gives an impatient, angry huff. “He was a phantom. A night
mare, Lana. Why did you need to know that someone like him existed?”

“Because he
did
exist,” I say. “Because you don't get to decide what I should and shouldn't know.”

“I didn't want you to think of me as a victim.”

“No, you'd rather I think of you like this.” I gesture at him. “You're okay with me knowing now. You wanted me to find out who he was and where you came from. Now that it's a part of this . . . this . . .”

“What good would it have done if you'd known earlier?” Ben asks. “I kept tabs on him. I read about some stroke he had on the Internet, and then he vanished. No records of what happened to him at any hospitals.” He snorts. “Guess now I know why.”

He braces himself against the rail, bows his head into the wind, and then shoves off. He's all mad steps and sharp pivots. “It doesn't matter that he's dead. Once you disappear, they'll have to look past Fitz. They'll let him go. That's the big thing. He was only supposed to be a red herring.” He stops in front of me abruptly. He's knocked the cap from his head. “Fitzgerald bought me more time. I couldn't be sure that the cops would buy that it was my grandfather, and I needed to stick around to wait for you. I couldn't do that if the island was crawling with cops looking for suspects. I needed them to believe it was Fitz so they'd let their guard down.” He rubs the back of his neck, scowls darkly at the island, and then nods resolutely. “It'll go unsolved. They won't have a fucking clue what's really happened.” He smiles to himself.

Another pain in my chest. I press my hand to stop it.

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “God, you don't look like you,” he says.

“You don't look like you,” I reply.

He faces me straight on. “I watched you that day at the spring, when you went back to find evidence, and I thought, fuck,
it's working
. I did all of this for us.” His tone warms to tender as he slips closer.
“For you.”

I
was watching you disappear. We were kids and you were all bright colors, steady hands, and guts, and you taught me to be brave. Shit, I was such a weakling. You didn't know how fucked up I was. We'd been running. Diane”—he says her name like she's no more than a former acquaintance—“she dragged me from place to place. ‘Don't make friends. Look out for strangers.' Strangers”—a bitter laugh—“which was everybody.”

His eyes go round and scared like they were when we were kids, and I recognize him fleetingly. My arms twitch to hug him; I don't. “She was paranoid. Making me hide if someone knocked on the door. Never letting me play outside or over another kid's house. My grandfather was a fucking sicko, and yeah, something serious would have happened if we'd stayed, and it might have happened to my cousins because they did, but I don't know for sure that he ever tried to follow us. I never saw him. I mean, he was old even before we left. He hit me once”—he points to the bend in his nose—“because I tried to protect my younger cousin. He was weaker than his sister, an easy mark. The old bastard liked an easy mark.”

“Why?”

“He was always . . . off. My mother was sure he hired investigators and tracked us along. She'd been traumatized, so who knows what was in her head and what wasn't? Didn't matter; it was real for her and she made the fear real for me.” He rolls his shoulders like he's knocking Diane off them. “I didn't get that until I was older, until I felt safe”—his hand cuts across the air to me—“with you. You taught me to be brave. Fearless.” I remember Ben, head dipped low, backpack hiked up, as Dad dropped him off for his first day of school. I threw rocks at bullying boys when they rode their bikes by our front yard to shout names at him. No doubt they ended up worshipping Ben once he grew into himself. Ben's right. I was fearless. I vaguely remember egging Ben on that day on the dock when he dunked Mariella's son's head under the water. Did I tell him to do it? Am I partly responsible for our particular brand of justice?

“I was watching you get stomped on,” Ben says. “Middle and high school you got quieter, kept your head down, and what was worse, you wouldn't talk to me about it. I thought, maybe this is what she wants? You had Willa, and you guys had plans, and if it made you happy, what the hell.” He glides along the rail until our arms meet. “But I could hear it in your voice. Willa was authentic. She only cared about getting away from her mother. I heard you whispering about that dumb fuck Josh Parker. I saw the way that monster with her yapping harpies froze you out. I knew what Holland was doing to you. And it was obvious that you wanted to belong.” He nudges my shoulder until I meet his eyes. “Why didn't you tell me?”

I break eye contact.

“I realized it was Becca spreading rumors,” he says. “A girl in my
class overheard her and told me. It was the end of my senior year, when I really started paying attention. I couldn't believe that I'd missed it. You avoided walking through halls where certain girls had their lockers. You never came into the quad. You ate lunch in the library. If I touched you, you jumped away. You dropped astronomy second semester; you were a freaking nerd for astronomy. Then I saw you hurrying out of the classroom on your last day. Your face was red and Ford was on your heels, sneering at you. He was in that class, and you hated him more than you loved astronomy.” Hearing Ben recount these times I made myself small makes me feel even smaller.

“I kept waiting for you to come clean. To ask for help. It was obvious you didn't want me to know. And then I graduated and I hoped that would make it easier for you.” He wasn't wrong. Once Ben had graduated, it was harder for those girls to make my face red. Ben couldn't overhear any of it, and a large portion of me stopped caring. Carolynn had been mostly ignoring me, Becca may have continued spreading lies without me knowing, and girls who just liked spreading rumors didn't see the sport in teasing me if I didn't give a crap.

“And then Maggie,” Ben groans. “You don't know what she said. We broke up, last September, and she told some underclassman stoners she smoked with that she broke it off because you kept making passes at me. She said . . . she said some really screwed-up stuff.”

I cover my face for a moment. Ben was gone from school, I was good at making myself small, and yet for a week kids were snickering when I walked by. Fragments reached me: Desperate Lana . . . naked . . . in Ben's room . . . Maggie walked in.

“I confronted her. She was manipulative.” He laughs bitterly. “She kept saying that maybe it was true. Why else would I be pissed that she told people? She said she knew you were the reason I kept breaking up with her. I don't know. I lost it.” His hands drift to his forehead as he shakes his head, regretful. “I looked at her then, and I hated her because she wasn't wrong. Jesus, Lana, I wanted to hurt her in the way she'd been hurting you. I told her she was right. You were who I wanted. I lied, Lan.” He stares wearily at me, chest heaving. “Not about wanting you. I lied and told her we'd been screwing all along.” I swallow. Ben's eyes flick to my throat.

“She went nuts. She said she'd tell everybody—she'd tell Cal. I freaked. I begged her to forget it. I was a lying shit. She took me back, but I don't think she ever believed me.”

Things changed their second year dating. If I entered the room, Maggie would find a seat in Ben's lap, rock her hips, make me squirm. She spent the night. I slept with a pillow over my head to block out her giggling. If Maggie and I were in a room alone, she'd obstinately kick the chair I was in or slam the fridge in my face as I looked inside. Obviously, I hated her for having Ben and for despising me for no reason. But there was a reason. She had what I wanted and I had what she wanted.

“It wasn't the Maggies of the world or those bitchy girls at school or that loser Holland. There'd be more of them,” he says. “It was that you weren't yourself and you were letting them change you. The Lana I knew would have flipped those girls off. She would have kicked Holland in the balls. It was killing me to see you like that. You made me brave once. I thought I could do it for you.”

“Lana the brave,” I say. How comic it sounds.

“You needed an out.”

“I didn't need you to rescue me,” I say firmly. “I wasn't an eagle in a cage.”

“No, you needed to rescue
me
. I wasn't trying to change you, just . . . just remind you who you are. I gave you a villain.”

I stand, motionless, terrified of his next words.

“I faked my death because I thought if anything would jolt you awake, it would be that. I let you grieve. I was going to leave you clues once you came out of it.” His voice goes desperate and hoarse. “That's all it was supposed to be. You'd follow the clues. I told Maggie about my grandfather. I made her think I was doing this to get away from him—he was days away from here. I told her I had to disappear and needed her to be able to move around Gant, to help me. I thought that it would be easier if people believed we'd broken up. I was worried about the cops piecing together that it was staged. I thought they'd be less likely to go in that direction if a burned ex-girlfriend gave a statement. No one would think she'd lie for me.” Maggie and Ben planned the highway together. In the jaundiced glow of the boat's lantern, he isn't golden but yellow. The tendons protrude from his wrists as his hands run over his scalp. The sweatshirt drapes at his sides. He's depleted; emptied of magic.