I take his face in my hands and gingerly lean in to kiss him. “I know you would, sweetie.”
“I shouldn’t have been in California. I should’ve been here to take care of you.”
“I think I did a pretty good job of it myself.”
“Not according to your daughter. She says you’ve turned into some kind of neighborhood watch lady. She says I should give you a good talking-to about the dangers of getting involved where you shouldn’t.”
“We’ll discuss this when we get home.”
But when we do get home, when we walk through the front door, I don’t feel like talking about any of that. So we don’t. Instead I bring a bottle of Chianti into the living room and I fill two glasses. I kiss him and he kisses me back. Being away in California for a month has not been good for him. His belly pokes out from all the fast food he’s been eating and from being cooped up indoors with his sister. And he looks tired, so tired, from the flight. We wrap our arms around each other and it’s as if my world has suddenly righted itself again and all the craziness of the past few weeks never happened. This is the way things should be: Vince and me, sipping wine, with dinner in the oven.
Through the window a movement catches my eye. I look across the street and see Jonas, who’s once again pumping iron. He doesn’t look my way because he knows that I know his secret. He’s not who he claimed to be. There are so many secrets I’ve discovered about my neighbors. I know who had an affair with whom. I know who is not really a Navy SEAL. I know which one was terrified for her life. And most important, I know who I can count on to gamely rush into battle at my side, even if she has to do it wheezing and coughing.
Yes, I’ve come to know them all a little better and they’ve come to know me, and even though we don’t always see eye-to-eye, and we sometimes stop talking to one another and occasionally even try to kill one another, this is my neighborhood. Someone has to keep an eye on it.
It might as well be me.
Six Months Later
Her blond roots were growing out. Every time she looked in the mirror she could see the hairs sprouting like a golden crown bursting free from her scalp. As long as she could remember, her hair had been black, her pale roots obsessively painted over every few weeks by her mother. It’s what we have to do to stay safe, Julianne would say. And staying safe was the reason why they did what they did. The dyed hair. The moves from town to town. The repeated warnings: Never trust anyone, Amy. You never know who will betray us.
But then they moved to Boston and her mother found a job in the café across the street from the hospital and she met Dr. Michael Antrim. They fell in love and Julianne cast aside her own advice. They became a family. They had a home, a permanent home, one they would never have to leave. They were finally safe.
Until a completely random hit-and-run accident sent Amy to the hospital, where a nurse named Sofia saw the scar on Amy’s chest and the rare blood type listed in her chart and the blond roots peeking out beneath her dark hair.
And their safe little world imploded.
Now her blond roots were longer than they’d ever been, longer than they’d been allowed to grow. Amy dipped her head, ran her fingers through the bicolor strands. This time she would not bother to darken them. She would let them grow; it was part of her transformation, back to the girl she used to be, a girl who was still a stranger to her. Every week she will surrender a little more of herself, a little more of Amy, until the real girl reclaimed it all.
There was no longer any reason for Lily to hide; everyone knew the truth now. Or part of the truth.
No one would ever know all of it.
Julianne had confessed to killing both Sofia Suarez and James Creighton. She had little choice but to confess; the evidence was there, in the record of the phone call she made to Creighton, a call in which she promised he would finally spend time with his long-lost daughter, Lily. He did not stalk them to Lantern Lake. He was invited there.
DNA had proved he was Amy’s real father, but that only meant it was his sperm that fertilized the egg. He did not watch her grow up. It was Julianne who fed her and clothed her and sang to her. Julianne who protected her.
And who, in the end, sacrificed herself for her. Julianne pleaded guilty to both murders so Amy could walk free, all charges against her dropped. Amy, after all, was merely a victim, an abducted child who over the years bonded so thoroughly with her caregiver that loyalty clouded her judgment. She loved her mother; of course she would fetch her mother the gun. Of course she would lie about the death of James Creighton. Of course she would protect Julianne.