Sorry, she typed. I can’t talk. I didn’t want to say it like this.
?
But this situation with my sister. Life is short.
What are you saying?
I love you, Ben.
It almost felt true. Even though she wondered if she would recognize a true feeling within herself. She waited, a little breathless.
I love you, too. I wanted to tell you in person.
Soon. I promise.
Looking at the words on the screen, she felt the utter disconnection of the text message. How it floated in space, no touch, no tone, no expression. It was perfect for the con, a blank slate that others could fill with meaning. But so flawed for true connection. And, yet, she felt a connection to Ben. Didn’t she? She wanted to tell him her real name. Her real story. But how could she now?
“Wow,” said Pop. “I stand corrected. You’re the master. Keeping him on the line, driving that hook in as deep as it can go.”
Her other phone pinged. She picked it up. It was from Selena.
Who are you? it read. What do you want?
Good questions. Truly.
“Too many balls in the air,” said Pop. “Didn’t I teach you never more than one? How many do you have going—three?”
It was just two now. Ben and Selena. She’d let the others go—the family who thought she was a long-lost cousin, the guy who thought she’d hacked his camera and caught him watching porn.
“This is it, Pop. Just this one last thing. And I’m done.”
“Yeah. That’s what they all say.”
The silence expanded between them. She almost killed Ben’s burner phone, but then didn’t. He was her escape hatch. She could easily become the woman he thought she was. She could disappear into that life if she wanted to, couldn’t she? Maybe she could even stay there. Maybe she even wanted to.
“So, who are you, kitten?” said Pop. “What do you want?”
She caught a reflection of herself in the window over the kitchen sink. Just a dark form, lit from behind.
“Maybe it’s time for me to find out.”
He issued a soft chuckle.
“Start peeling back those layers, you might not like who you find.”
THIRTY-ONE
Oliver
Stephen was stupid. He was snoring, mouth wide open, arms flung over his head, cheeks flushed. Oliver watched him, wished he was sleeping, too. But he couldn’t. Because his mom was in the room next to them, and after an evening of closed doors, and lowered voices, he heard her crying through the wall. She’d come in to read to them, give them kisses. She lay with them a while, as long as they promised not to talk. He knew when his mom was upset—when she was sad, when she was tired and cranky, when she was mad at Dad. When she was mad at them. He knew. Stephen never noticed anything because he was stupid.
Oliver wished that he was stupid, too.
He knew that something was wrong, and no one would say what. He’d talked to his dad earlier that day. Take care of your mom, he’d said, his voice on the phone sounding strange and far away.
Where are you, Dad?
Don’t worry. Everything’s okay. You’ll see. A couple of days and things will be back to normal.
But he’d never heard his dad sound like that. There were unfamiliar noises in the background of the call—a ringing phone, voices he didn’t recognize.
Everything’s okay. Just hang tight.
His mom had said that, too. But Oliver was old enough to know that when grown-ups kept saying that, then it wasn’t true. Things were not okay.
And, then, after Mom left their bedroom, went back to the room next door where Jasper and Lily slept when they were all visiting together, after they’d been quiet for a long time, he heard his mom crying. Not just getting teary, the way she sometimes did. Not yelling-crying the way she sometimes did when they were really being “little assholes,” as their dad liked to say. Just crying. Stuttering breaths, little sighs. Crying the ways girls did, long and sad. She cried for a while, probably didn’t think anyone could hear her, and then she was quiet.
He got out of bed and walked through the jack-and-jill bath （why did they call it that?）， pushed the door open. He walked over to the bed. He was going to ask to climb in with her. But the bed was empty. Mom was gone.
Maybe she went downstairs the way Grandma did sometimes. Sometimes Grandma went down and made warm milk. A couple times he’d followed her. And they sat and talked, about whatever—school or comic books, things his mom and Aunt Marisol did when they were younger. The tree house that used to be out back of what was now Grandpa’s house, what trip Grandma and Paulo were taking. Why Grandma and his real grandpa weren’t married anymore. Sometimes people fall out of love, and they’re just better off apart. Sometimes that happens. And it’s hard at first but then, after a while, everyone adjusts. It sounded like another lie that grown-ups told. Zander said that it sucked, even with two birthdays, two Christmases. But Oliver’s mom wasn’t a kid when Grandma and Grandpa got divorced. And his real grandpa was way less nice than Paulo.
He figured that his mom and his dad were splitting up. And somehow it had something to do with Geneva, who didn’t come back to work.
He walked back through the bathroom and got his iPad.
He heard sounds from downstairs, so he left his snoring brother and sneaked down, creeping on the stairs. He figured maybe he should show his mother the pictures he took when Geneva left. He had so many pictures—pictures of Geneva, pictures of the neighbor’s dog, a picture of Stephen’s naked butt, his own butt. He had pictures of his mom in the kitchen. His dad in his study, staring at his computer, which is where he usually was. He had a picture of his dad’s butt crack as he bent over to try to fix the wall. Cut that out, you little stinker, he’d yelled. Delete that picture. But Oliver had laughed so hard that Dad started laughing, too. His mom always held up her hand. I’m a wreck! Stop, Oliver! Ugh, that’s the worst angle for me. He had a whole catalog of backward slow-motion footage of Stephen jumping off the bed, the couch, the front stoop—one where he fell and started to cry. That one always cracked him up, how fast Stephen’s face changed—happy one second, then wailing at the camera in pain and misery.
Oliver crept down the stairs, past the gallery of photographs on the wall—pictures of his mom and aunt as kids, Oliver, his brother, his cousins, Grandma and Paulo on trips, the time they all went to Disney. He liked looking at them; he didn’t remember a lot of the moments. But the photographs were like a memory, he could almost remember being there because he saw the picture so many times, heard the stories told again and again. There was one picture of his mom holding a puppy—their old dog Chewie. She was ten, Grandma said—which seemed impossible. How could his mom ever have been a kid like him?
At the bottom step, he saw the light on in the kitchen. Oliver thought he’d find his mom, bent over her phone, or staring off into space the way she sometimes did, the expression on her face unreadable. But instead it was his grandmother. She was at the stove, wearing the same pink robe she did most nights, the smell of warm milk meeting him at the door frame. She would put honey in it, some other spices—weird things like pepper and something else he couldn’t pronounce. She called it golden milk; it was maybe his favorite thing ever. He took his seat at the table. Grandma never got mad at him for getting up.