His closet was fairly spare and took her only a few minutes to search. She was starting to wind down, draining of adrenaline. And she felt foolish, sticking her hand into his winter boots to check for contraband. At least she hadn’t found any drug paraphernalia.
Hands on hips, she stood there for a moment, staring at his bed. She got on her knees and peered under it, pulling out the two shallow bins she’d stashed under there, stuffed with every drawing and craft and award he brought home from school. She also found her old tablet. That would have angered her a week ago. Even a day ago. But now she didn’t care at all.
There was one last place to check. Lily took a deep breath and slid both hands beneath her son’s mattress. Her fingertips found a smooth edge of plastic.
Praying it was something innocent like porn, she tugged it free. Then she frowned. She stared at it for a long time, her heart sinking as she realized what it must mean.
In her shaking hands lay a Batman comic from the ’70s, encased in a protective sleeve. This wasn’t something a friend would give him. Kids exchanged comic books that were beat up and creased and reread a hundred times. This comic looked pristine and valuable. Exactly the kind of item people kept in storage.
She slipped her hands under the mattress again, and this time when she touched something, she growled and wrenched the mattress up, tossing it onto the floor so she could see the second comic hidden on the bed slats. And next to it, a clear plastic case that contained four coins. Two silver, two gold. There was also a video game disk inside its packaging, and she knew she hadn’t bought it for him.
The last item was a thin notebook of brown leather that gleamed with the quality of something expensive. A journal more than a notepad. The kind of expensive gift business people or writers bought.
Her knees giving way, she slumped down over the bare slats of his childhood bed and wept. Because her son was a thief. He’d lied right to her face, promising he never took anything, but he had. He was only twelve, and he’d already started stealing other people’s belongings, just like his father.
Oh God. Oh no.
No, no, no.
She’d get Everett into counseling right now. That would help. It had to. Maybe he was just trying it out to see what it was like, see if he felt closer to dear old Dad.
Feeling like a weeping toddler, she rubbed her eyes hard, as if she could grind the sight of the evidence from her vision. Because maybe this was all her fault. She’d tried so hard to keep him from Jones that she’d forced Everett toward his father instead of away.
Her tears finally subsided. She breathed, sniffed, waited for the anxious buzz in her ears to stop.
She could fix this. He was still a good boy, and she could fix this.
Lily got up, gathered the stolen prizes her son had stashed away like a raven, then fixed his bed. She shut his closet and his door, carrying the five small items to the office. It wasn’t so much, really. Her reaction was totally overblown. She could see that, but only from a distance, as if she were a cool ghost floating over her own heated body.
Lily deleted the minutes from the two times she’d caught him at Alex’s locker, and then she sat down to review as many other cameras as she could. If Gretchen asked any questions about these missing times, she’d complain about the system glitching. She’d rather be fired for a suspicion than provide proof to them that her son was a delinquent.
One more hour and she’d find out.
CHAPTER 24
“What are you going to tell your mom when she asks about the big robotics competition in May?” Josephine teased as they left the fire station and strolled down Main Street.
He shrugged. “Next week I’ll tell her I caught the other kids vaping so I quit.”
Her laugh rang out so loudly it bounced off the awning of a shop and rained back down on them. “Couldn’t you just say you were going to the library again?”
“She could have said no to that and told me to go another day. But she can’t say no to a future in STEM.”
“You are devious, Ev.”
He looked down at the little blue circle of their location on her phone. After tracing the route, he handed it back to her. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Okay, my dad is off at four, and he’ll pick us up at the library. We should get there early and pick out books so we look legit.”
“Got it.”
“So do you really think this Alex guy is lying?”
“I don’t know. He told Mom his uncle is in the nursing home in town, but he could have made all that up to protect his family. Somebody else was in that house, and it belongs to his uncle.”