Counterfeit Son (12 page)

Should he just confess? Give up and turn himself in to Detective Simmons, and escape Cougar once and for all? But that would mean leaving the Lacey family exposed to Cougar's anger. And it would also mean giving up on himself, and his chance to stay with a family who could love him. Cameron couldn't bring himself to do that yet.

"You're losing it," he said shortly. "Of course I'm Neil."

"Give me a break. Neil was a bully and a jerk. He pushed me and Stevie around all the time. You're not anything like him. Neil wouldn't have played with Stevie while we were cooking out. He never liked fantasy like the
Dark Is Rising
books, and he wouldn't have cared about the price of doing the right thing even if he
had
read them. He'd never have taken the blame for going to the library—he would have told Mom it was all my fault, and he would have grabbed that amnesia excuse and said he didn't remember the rule. He would have weaseled out of it and left me to take the rap."

Diana looked away at the lake. "They'd have grounded me, you know," she added after a moment.

"They always let Neil off."

"You want me to be more of a jerk?" he asked roughly. "Well, forget it. I've seen enough bullying. I'm not the same."

"Definitely not," she said, smiling a little. "So, if you're not Neil, who are you? And what's your angle?"

"I'm Neil," he said flatly. "And I don't have any angle. Right now I just want to go sailing."

"Well, you
are
like Neil in that respect," she conceded. "He always wanted to be out on the water, away from everybody." Then her voice sharpened. "But if you really were Neil you wouldn't have waited for me today. You'd have cast off, and if Mom or Dad or Mrs. Pierson caught you, you'd have told them that I promised I'd be there and then didn't show, and they'd have blamed me—"

"Come off it," Cameron said, taken aback by her bitterness. "You've built me into some kind of monster in your mind. You said you wanted to be an actress—maybe you like blowing everything up into some great drama you can star in. I wasn't that bad."

"Neil was worse," she said flatly. "He told lies, and he blackmailed me and Stevie if we didn't back him up. He took things at school, and from us—and even from Mom and Dad. And they always believed
him
! Neil's the one who was such a great actor. Grown-ups always believed every story he told them."

Cameron turned away, wincing inside. If Neil was anything like she said, maybe he deserved the punishment Pop had given him, after all. But no kid deserved that.…

And wasn't he just as bad as Neil? He was acting, lying to the Laceys and to everybody. While he'd been sitting on the dock waiting for Diana, he'd been trying to figure out what he could take to pay off Cougar. He was as much of a thief as Neil, even if he was stealing to get rid of Cougar. After all, he'd already stolen Neil's future; and, if he was going to be honest with himself, he had to admit that the Laceys' money mattered to him. He wasn't sure that he'd have picked Neil if his family hadn't been so well off. He was worse than Neil—he was as bad as Cougar.

"I'm sorry," he said finally.

"Don't be," she told him. "It's not your fault, because you're not Neil. And I don't care about that—I'd rather have you for a brother than him, anyway. I like you—I can't imagine ever liking Neil. What I want to know is what you're doing here."

"Trying to forget," he said bitterly. "Trying to get back to life—trying to survive."

"Stop lying!" Diana snapped. "Stop pretending to be like Neil! Everything you do—you're pretending, and I can see it!" She was practically screaming at him, her voice hard and angry like Pop's. "Neil was always on the move, lots of nervous energy, talking with his hands and bouncing around, and you're so still and quiet!"

Pop liked him still and quiet. Cameron could remember Pop slapping his hands, then finally tying them and leaving them tied, to keep him from using them. Not handcuffs, though—Pop saved the handcuffs for special times, mostly for the boys at the very end. Pop had tied Cameron's hands with thick twine that felt scratchy at first, and then dug into his wrists until they bled. When Pop untied him at last, Cameron was so grateful he didn't want to move his hands anymore. But how could he put that into words that Diana would understand?

The girl was almost shouting, "You don't like the foods Neil liked, you don't read the kind of books he liked, you don't even remember any of Neil's jokes! You're
not
my brother! Admit it! Who are you? Tell me!"

He remembered Pop's orders.
You tell me the truth, boy—you come right out with it and admit what you'Ve done and take your punishment. If I ever find out you failed to admit the truth to me
… And Pop would glance meaningfully at the cellar. Diana sounded just like him. She'd lost that dispassionate expression that made her look so like her father, and now she looked like Pop—angry, unforgiving. She looked murderous.

Cameron's mouth opened. Part of him screamed,
Admit who you really are and take your punishment!
But part of him whispered,
She doesn't know anything—shes just hurt, and angry. Don't do anything. Just keep quiet.
He knew that voice all too well. It was the voice that had always kept him silent as Pop got more and more impatient with the boys. It was the voice that kept him silent when Pop said he had to teach them a lesson, once and for all. It was the voice that kept him silent when the police came to question him about Cougar.
Just keep quiet. Survive. And don't think about what it costs anyone else.

He closed his mouth. He took a deep breath. Then he said, "I'm Neil Lacey. I
am
your brother."

"You're not!" she exploded. "Even the way you're sitting! Neil hated sitting cross-legged. He said it was a stupid way to sit. He used to get in so much trouble from teachers in assemblies. I always did it right, but I could hear Neil's teacher scolding him about it."

Cameron remembered Pop ordering him to sit cross-legged on the floor to listen to him, or to watch television. It wasn't the most comfortable way to sit, and after a while his knees always hurt, but Pop beat him if he moved. He stared at Diana, thinking that if the teachers had beaten Neil instead of scolding him, the kid might have shut up and sat still. But all he said was, "People change. You don't expect me to still do every dumb thing I did when I was eight, do you?" He was relieved that his voice sounded steadier than he felt.

"Of course not," she said. "I don't expect you to pick your nose, or make gross armpit squeaks, or even watch stupid cartoons. But some habits you don't break."

He straightened his legs and stood up. "All habits can be broken," he told her. "It just takes enough punishment." But he wondered again how many little things he'd slipped up on that he didn't even realize yet. When his father studied him, was that what he was thinking?
Neil always did this or that—why don't you?
How many allowances would the Laceys make for him before they stopped believing he was their son, and started believing Detective Simmons?

Cameron swung down from the dock into his Sunfish, not caring whether Diana followed him in hers. He just wanted to be on the lake while he still could, while the adult Laceys, at least, still believed him. And maybe Diana had actually helped him—if he was going to be Neil, he might as well act more like him. Apparently, if you didn't live with Pop you didn't have to obey the rules all the time.

"Hey," she said suddenly. "What happened to your face?"

The bruise was starting to darken where Cougar had struck him, though it wasn't very bad.
Stupid,
Cameron thought. Pop never hit him where it showed, only where his clothes hid the bruises and scars. But Cougar wasn't smart enough for that.

"I fell off Stevie's bike," he told her. "I threw out my hand, but I was too near the curb and it smacked me on the cheek. No big deal."

"I don't believe you," she said slowly. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"So what else is new?" Cameron retorted. "You don't believe me about anything." He released the mooring line.

"What are you going to do?" he challenged her as he pushed away from the dock. "Tell Dad I went sailing alone? Tell him you think I'm lying? Tell him you don't believe I'm Neil? Because he believes me!"

"Sure he does!" she shouted after him. She stood up and hurried to her own boat. "He always believed Neil—he loved Neil, and he never cared about me or Stevie. And now he loves you, whoever you are." She dropped into her boat and cast off before he was ten feet from the dock. "And if I don't go sailing with you, it's not
you
who'll get in trouble, anyway—it's me!"

"Don't worry," he told her. "I wouldn't get you in trouble. I don't care if you believe me or not, but I don't ever want to see anybody punished for me."

Cameron turned his back on her and hoisted his sail, careful to cleat the halyard securely. Then he dropped the daggerboard and hauled in the mainsheet so that the sail caught the wind and filled out. He grabbed the tiller and turned the bow away until he was almost running downwind.

The air rushed past him as the boat picked up speed, roaring in his ears to drown out Diana's words. Cameron didn't care if she was behind him or not. He didn't care if she got out of her boat and went back in the house. He didn't care if she blamed him for sailing alone. He didn't even care if Neil's father had another talk with him about breaking rules.

He felt free. Out here on the lake, Diana couldn't remind him that he was a liar and a thief. Cougar couldn't touch him. He doubted that Cougar could even sail, and felt a surge of relief that they really were different in some ways. Then he gave himself over to the Sunfish and the water, and time ceased to exist as he ran before the wind. Here it didn't matter that he couldn't remember the past too clearly, or that the future was a minefield of lies and discovery.

Was this why you liked to sail?
he wanted to ask Neil.
To escape from being a liar and a bully? To escape from yourself? Did you feel cleaner in the lake, in the wind? Did you feel safe?…So why did you go to the arcade that day when you knew you could come home and go out on the lake? Why did you go with Hank Miller?

There was no answer as the far side of the lake rushed toward him. Reluctantly Cameron moved the tiller, tightening the mainsheet and ducking under the boom as the boat came about. He tacked upwind, avoiding Diana's hurt expression along with her bobbing boat, and came about for another run.

But this time the rushing air and the sense of surfing on top of the waves couldn't erase the worries. Cougar had said he'd find Cameron on Thursday, and that gave him less than two days to come up with some way to pay the man off. And Diana had made up her mind that he wasn't really Neil, just as Detective Simmons had.

He'd thought the Laceys had accepted him as Neil. He'd thought he might be part of a family at last. Now, faced with Cougar's threat and Diana's and Simmons's disbelief, and his own fear of what the lab evidence would disclose, even flying across the water couldn't wash out Cameron's fear that instead of being safe, he was cornered.

He got up his nerve to ask Diana if the Laceys had kept anything of Neil's. To his surprise, she told him right away that Stevie had been given most of the books and toys, and the clothes had been discarded as the years had passed and Neil would have outgrown them. But Diana said that her mother had saved the books and games and models that Neil had liked best; she just hadn't been sure he was ready for them yet. When she came home from the museum that afternoon, Cameron asked to see them.

His mother's eyes softened, and she reached to embrace him. He automatically warned himself not to flinch, but found himself leaning into her arms instead. She no longer squeezed him as tightly. Her arms felt secure, and he found he liked feeling them around him. He wondered if he had wanted her to hug him again, and if that was why he had waited for her to come home, instead of getting Diana to show him Neil's things.

She took him into the bedroom he'd been in only once before, when he'd asked his father about his punishment. The question of what was bothering him about the man's explanation still nagged at him, but he couldn't concentrate on it now. His mother was pulling a cardboard carton out of the closet.

"I hope we kept the right things," she said, sounding both worried and hopeful at the same time.

"I'm sure you did," he said uncertainly. She looked a little let down, as if she'd expected a different response, so he added, "I mean—it's been so long—I didn't think you'd still have anything."

"Of course we saved your things!" she said, shocked. "Oh, Neil—we always knew you'd come back to us. We wanted everything to be just the same for you." She looked away, embarrassed that so much was different. But Cameron knew it wasn't their fault things were different. It was Neil's, for going with Pop.

"It's just been too long," he said gently. "I'm glad you gave a lot of my stuff to Stevie when he was the right age for it."

She smiled at him and hugged him again. Then she stepped back, uncertainly. "I know—I hug you too much. You don't like it." She laughed a little. "Stevie doesn't like it, either."

Before he stopped to think, Cameron said, "I do like it, actually." He blushed, wishing he hadn't said anything. But it was the truth, however unexpected. He did like her arms around him, and he liked breathing in her flower scent as she held him.

This time her smile was tinged with tears. "You don't have to say that, Neil. It's just that it's been so many years for me, not being able to hug you."

Cameron leaned into her arms. "A lot of years for me, too," he told her. But he thought,
Too many years since the mother I can't remember—did she hug me? Did I like it or not? Could Neil's mother really love me in place of her son?

Finally she released him. "There—take the box into your room. I know you want to look at your things by yourself."

He carried the carton away, leaving her sitting alone in the bedroom with a peaceful expression on her face.