You Could Be Home by Now (3 page)

“That'd be nice,” his ex said. “Listen, there's a reason I called.”

“I figured.”

“Not that I wouldn't just call to—”

“It's fine, Veronica. What's up?”

“Rand needs to reschedule. He's got a lead—”

“A lead, really? Where? What? Should I come home—”

“Another client. No. Shit. Sorry. Ben, I didn't mean to get you thinking—He's heading out of town for a few weeks and I'm set smack in the middle. So I'm seeing him either tomorrow or at the end of the month. If the timing matters to you—”

“I'm sure you've got it under control.” Rand Danovic. They had to have paid for his summer home by now, not that he was a summer-home kind of guy. The ex-cop looked more like an ex-hippie and drank from a perpetual thermos of hay-scented tea. They'd considered another guy, innocuous and balding, the detective from Central Casting, but five minutes into the interview he'd known they'd go with Rand.

I'm not going to promise I'll find her. You seem like nice folks and an empty promise is the last thing you need. I can say I'll do my best and that I'm very good at what I do. I can say that, sure. But I'll also say this. I get even a hint she's running
from
something in this house instead of just running, the three of us are done.

Ronnie sighed. That sure as hell was readable over the phone. “I wanted to see if you had anything to contribute. Any questions.”

“There's only ever the one question.”

They owned a lovely craftsman in the hills off Washington Park; they remodeled the kitchen and hung a calendar on its wall; a housekeeper and landscaper came weekly and Ronnie wrote their names in the appropriate square. E. Mancera, P. Royal. And then, R. Danovic. Their cleaner. Their gardener. The private detective they'd hired to track down their only daughter. Every December 31
^st
, Ronnie chucked the calendar and every January 1
^st
, Ben fished it out of the trash. He squirreled them away, calendars dating back to 1995, R. Danovic appearing every other week, then once a month, every two months, every six. The only proof Ben had that it wasn't their fault.
I get even a hint she's running
from
something in this house instead of just running, the three of us are done.

“Ben,” said Veronica.

“Just—fill me in, okay? If he has any new strategies. Maybe with the Internet—”

“Of course.”

“And, you know, tell him hi. Did he ever wind up marrying that girl?”

“Mariah? Yeah, this April. We sent them a beautiful wood salad bowl.”

When she left, Tara was sixteen years old. Rand had been in their employ for nearly as long. The last time they'd met, Ben's things had been in boxes. I hate to see you split, the PI had said. And frankly, I hate to keep taking your money.

No, said Ronnie.

No, said Ben.

At least they agreed on that much. You had to think of it as tithing. You had to look upon the bank statements as evidence of faith.

T
HE
L
AWS OF
C
HEESE DICTATED
there were three possible ways for this visit to go down. One: Lily was going to fall hard for the scion of the richest family in town; he'd break her heart; she'd cry, then realize she was meant for the impoverished, edgy, and ambiguously ethnic guy who'd warned her off Mr. Daddy's Platinum Card in the first place. Two: Lily was going to discover an obscure shrew whose nesting ground was threatened by development, band together with plucky locals, and expose the developer as a palm-greasing old fraud. Or three: Lily would chafe under her grandmother's curfew; she'd sass and slam doors; she'd wind up learning some old-lady hobby that was an obvious metaphor for life, love, and the passage of time, then call upon her newfound inner strength to see said grandmother through a mild health scare.

Not going to happen. Not in a million years.

She'd
invented
the Laws of Cheese. Last fall, with Sierra, when they were supposed to be studying the laws of physics. Besides, Gran didn't knit or quilt anything like that, Arizona was one hundred percent golf courses already, and everyone knew that Lily liked girls.

She opened the fridge and helped herself to a piece of pineapple. It probably didn't count as a granny hobby, but Gran was really good at cutting fruit. There was a huge bowl full, every slice completely rind-less. Lily popped the pineapple in her mouth, then a piece of mango, then a piece of watermelon, and then something mysterious and yellow that was less tart than she'd expected. She grabbed a bottle of water and shut the refrigerator door. A familiar magnet held Gran's weekly schedule in place: the acorn-topped crest of the Forest Park Day School. Lily sniffed and inverted it so the pair of acorns hung like a dangling set of (not that she would know) testicles.

According to the schedule, Gran was off at yoga. She'd invited Lily to tag along, but a dozen old-lady butts in Downward-Facing Dog? Thanks, but no. So Lily had the house to herself, miracle of miracles. Better warn the National Guard; Cyber-Bully Birnam was momentarily unsupervised. Lily gave the magnet the finger. A tasteful finger, manicured with OPI's Mod About You, since being an official delinquent should in no way eradicate the possibility of elegance. Then she smiled, adjusted her bikini straps, slung her bag over her shoulder, and stepped out into the sunlight.

It felt good. Maybe she'd run away and go nudist, ha ha. Talk about an
actual
scandal. Imagine. An eensy-weensy hint of sarcasm was all it took to turn the collective minds of a rigorous college preparatory program into a wad of chewed up Hubba Bubba. If Lily ever actually
did
anything, so many heads would explode they'd have to hike tuition to cover the janitor's overtime.

Only, she'd last about eight seconds as a nudist. Consider the size of her suitcase. “Seriously?” Mom had said at the airport. “We're going to have to pay to check this. Gran has laundry. Who are you trying to impress, anyhow?”

No one. Everyone. Herself. Mom would never get it. Just because she was into girls didn't mean she had to stop looking like one.

Lily was pretty: petite, even-featured, bulge-less, zit-less.

And it mattered, being pretty. She worked on it.

Which apparently made her Little Miss Vapid.

Even Sierra had thought so, at least a little bit. “You're different than I thought you'd be,” she'd said, maybe a month after starting at Day. “I thought you'd be all does-this-mascara-make-my-eyelids-look-fat?”

“Nah. My eyelids are perfect.”

“They are. You should do a whole post about how to get eyelids like that.”

Sierra had been following
Lipstick Lillian
, Lily's beauty blog, since before she'd even moved to St. Louis. When someone—someone's troll mom, probably—picked a fight, Sierra had fully slaughtered her in the comments.

Lily liked Secanthelpit. Like Secanthelpit, Lily was equally adept at math and makeup. She began to keep an eye out for Secanthelpit in the comments. And then, let the trumpets sound, there she was, Secanthelpit herself, Sierra, the only other sophomore in AP Calc and a girl who got it: Pretty wasn't everything, but it was enough of a thing to be worth the effort. Lily had thought about using something like that as a new tagline but didn't. The least little change turned her readers rabid.

Or once upon a time it had, back before the All-Powerful Parentals canceled her cell service, confiscated her iPhone and laptop, and made it clear they'd be monitoring
Lipstick
for new content.

They hadn't even let her post a farewell.

Classic case of parental amnesia. Up till the minute Headmistress Brecken phoned them, they'd been going on about how key it was to be conversant in the new media, how pleased they were she was coming out of her shell, and how the blog probably had something to do with her stronger grades in all those classes that required essays.

She was going to flunk them next year on purpose, just to show them.

Well, not flunk. Not considering how important junior year grades were. But she'd fudge a little in her footnotes.

Lily shut the front door with more force than was wholly necessary. Across the street, that guy, the vet, Mr.-Thales-but-you-can-call-me-Ben, came out of his house and waved. He'd come along on her walk with Gran this morning, bringing with him the distinct vibe that it was actually
Lily
coming along on
his
walk with Gran. He'd asked all these weird questions. Where did she go when she wanted to be alone? Had she ever hitchhiked? Did her PE classes cover self-defense? What a creep. You could tell even before he opened his mouth. A veterinarian without pets of his own, enough said. And then Gran had gone and invited him over for barbecue. Lily scowled. He waved again and called her name. She didn't wave back. They'd had a self-defense speaker last semester. Don't feel you have to be nice. That's conditioning. Trust your instincts. Better rude than dead. Pretending he wasn't looking—but she could tell he was, the guy was probably going to wind up in the ER with one of those four-hour Viagra erections, God, penises were
disgusting
—Lily approached the trellis beside her grandmother's front door. The Commons' map showed a pool nearby, but there was no way she was going to walk past and give the vet, no, wait, the
per
-vet, a free show. Lily shook the frame, tested her weight against it, and climbed. When she'd first moved down here, Gran had tried to train wisteria—a cutting from the old St. Louis place—up the trellis, but the vine had shriveled in the Arizona heat. Midascent, Lily kicked away a last, thirsty, brown coil.

The roof was flat and so hot she could hardly touch it, but the towel she'd snagged from the guest bath was spongy and thick. She unrolled it and lay down. Spring had come late in St. Louis and she was pale enough to signal ships at sea. In the interest of avoiding lobster mode, she'd lie out for thirty minutes per side at the absolute max. Or as close to thirty minutes as humanly possible, considering she didn't have a
phone
to keep track of time. Think how bad the parentals would feel if she died of melanoma because they'd thought one little blog post was a back-to-the-Bronze-Age worthy offense.

Lily stretched, relishing the one-hundred-percent-genuine privacy. Gran was Madam Popular here and they must have paused their walk a dozen times to have the same basic conversation. She should've printed out business cards. Lily Elinor Birnam, Visiting Grandchild. In answer to your questions, I am (a) not sure how long I'll be staying, (b) almost sixteen, (c) going to be a junior, which, yes, is unusual but I skipped second grade, (d) not sure where I want to go to college, and (e) having a lovely time, thank you. If any of them sensed that Lily had been sent down so that Gran wouldn't be alone on the anniversary of Grandpa Gary's death, they didn't show it. Gran had to know; Dad and Aunt Manda hadn't been exactly subtle. But she wasn't making a big weepy deal about it. Gran was tough, and it rocked having those genes.

Lily rolled onto her stomach, checked that the per-vet had retreated into his lair, and unhooked her bikini. She surveyed the neighborhood. The house next door had a hot tub in its courtyard. Gran's just had a grill and patio furniture, herbs in terracotta pots. I keep thinking I should set up a pink flamingo there, she'd told Per-vet Ben on their walk. Just because the HOA won't be able to see it. They'd laughed and raised an imaginary glass to the Flamingo Police. It was possible, but not probable, that to outsiders her and Sierra's inside jokes were just as dumb.

Sierra. Le sigh. If Sierra were here, she'd probably talk Lily into sneaking next door for a midnight soak, because Sierra always brought the fun. Last year had been twelve times less boring than the sum of the fourteen preceding it, and Sierra pinky-swore that junior year would be even better.

And it would, even though Sierra-like-the-mountains-not-the-truck had gotten together with Rocky-like-the-mountains-not-the-boxer over Winter Break, which, by the way, was an absolute violation of the Laws of Cheese.

“Don't sulk,” Sierra'd said. They were studying in her room, which smelled of the incense she lit because it made her stepdad paranoid that she was doing it to mask the smell of pot. “You knew I liked the boys.”

“I'm not sulking.”

“And if I was going to experiment, I wouldn't with you. You're too good a friend to mess with like that.”

“Fine. But Sierra and Rocky? Kill me now.”

“Just wait till we find you a nice femme named Rose.”

And it
was
fine; it was, though even an amateur cheeseologist could anticipate the insane degree to which Sierra's heart was going to get shredded.

Lily stretched then resettled, contorting to resecure her bikini straps. She took a swig from her water bottle and watched a woman jog along one of the winding cart paths. A woman-woman, not an old woman, with a long ponytail and breasts that jostled about as a single entity. Sierra would have something to say about that. Ponytails were lazy and generally uncute, and Sierra had a thing about proper bra fittage.

Urgh.

Just thinking about it triggered utter depression, because Sierra plus bra issues equaled a surefire candidate for a Fixit. Lily used to post them each Friday—a makeover in three easy steps. They'd been
Lipstick Lillian
's biggest draw and Sierra could even be relied upon to shut up about Rocky long enough to help draft them.

Down below, the runner veered off the path and ran through the sprinkler. She stopped, resecured her ponytail, then made for a prickly clump of succulents. She'd probably appreciate the Fixit. Everyone did (well, everyone minus one). They were funny, yeah, but they were meant to help. Look better, feel better, be better. It was as simple as that. Like Sierra said: the most noble and magnanimous Headmistress Brecken should have given her community service credit instead of summoning her parents. But no one would listen that day in la Brecken's office. Lily wasn't picking on anyone. She didn't go around looking for Fixits. Girls sent in their
own
pictures. And she was careful. She'd listened to the bajillion assemblies on Internet predators. The policy was right there on her blog. She'd only consider photos with the heads cropped off.