Deadly Little Sins (3 page)

A detail surfaces in my memory: Ms. C had a Bruins pennant hanging in her office.

“She says she’s from Georgia, she went to school in North Carolina … yet she’s a Boston Bruins fan?” I say.

“I thought it strange, too. I asked her about it, and she got very defensive. Said it was a friend’s. Then she didn’t call me for a few days.” Muller traces the rim of his teacup with his fingertip. “I knew something was off with her, then, but I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. We all have things in our pasts we’d like to hide from.” Muller hesitates. “But I’ll admit I was curious. I broached the subject with Jess. I didn’t accuse her of anything; I simply said I thought it was unusual. She was angry with me for insinuating she was hiding something, and said she needed time apart. A few days later, I found out during a faculty meeting that she’d resigned.”

I’m quiet as I digest all of this. Muller must have confronted Ms. C around the same time I’d asked her to help me find out what happened to Vanessa Reardon, the girl Matt Weaver assaulted. So Ms. C’s disappearance may have had nothing to do with helping me, like I initially thought, and everything to do with Muller figuring out that she was hiding something.

“I did some searching around, and found that there really was a Jessica Cross of Cliftonville,” Muller says. “So the woman we knew was an impostor.”

“Like identity theft?” I ask. “How did no one figure it out?”

“It’s actually quite easy to assume the identity of a deceased person,” Muller replies. “It’s called ghosting. All you need is his or her social security number. It’s even easier if you can obtain a duplicate of the person’s driver’s license or birth certificate.”

“But Ms. C—why?”

“It’s more common than you’d think,” Muller says. “There’s any number of reasons why someone would want to disappear and become someone else. Abusive ex-lover, massive amounts of debt, criminal charges—”

“That doesn’t sound like her.” I realize how dumb the words sound as soon as they leave my mouth. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like the person I thought she was.”

“It just goes to show you can never really know a person.” There’s sadness in Muller’s voice. He must really care about Ms. C. My stomach clenches as Anthony’s face works its way into my mind. I know what it’s like to feel connected to someone, only for them to be gone as quickly as they came—to have that intense, staccato burst of feeling, followed by just … nothing.

“Do you think she’s okay?” I ask.

“I stopped by her cottage,” Dr. Muller says. “Everything looked secure. Nothing suspicious.”

I let out a breath. “So she’s not in trouble or anything.”

“Oh, I absolutely think she’s in trouble.” Dr. Muller’s eyes meet mine. “But in danger? I’m not quite sure.”

Frustration gnaws at me. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” he says. “They call it ghosting for a reason—how are you supposed to find a person who technically doesn’t exist?”

Ghosting.
The word sends a chill up my spine.

I glance at Dr. Muller’s watch. If I don’t get back to the office soon, Leah may send out a SWAT team. I thank Dr. Muller for meeting me, even though I have more questions than I showed up with.

“It seems I have the rest of the day to myself,” he tells me as we release our handshake. “Any tips for a newbie in New York?”

“Stay far, far away from the people dressed as Elmo in Times Square.” I smile at him and turn to leave.

“Anne.” He’s holding up my takeout bag. I’d almost forgotten it.

“You know,” he says, his face thoughtful as he takes me in. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about her. Jessica. Sometimes the best we can do is stay in place and hope whatever we’re running from doesn’t catch up with us. Remember that.”

I think of the blood blossoming around the hole in Travis Shepherd’s chest. Of the promise Anthony and I made to each other not to tell anyone we were there that night. Of the fear that someone else already knows.

I don’t know if Dr. Muller would feel the same way if he knew what I was running from.

CHAPTER

THREE

My dad is supposed to be in court all week, so I know something must be wrong when I get home from the office that afternoon and find him and my mom next to each other on the love seat in the foyer.

“Sit,” he says.

My mother throws my dad a look, like
Why do you have to be so abrasive all the time,
as I silently lower myself onto the chaise. Abby, my dachshund, bolts over to me and leaps onto my lap. Her nails catch on the lace overlay of my skirt.

There are creases at the corners of my mother’s eyes that I never noticed before. Still, no one believes she’s fifty. She and my dad are the same age, but sometimes they get weird looks from people in public who think there’s some sort of Alec Baldwin situation going on.

My mother is beautiful, in a classic movie actress way. I got her dark brown eyes, but not her raven hair or high cheekbones. People say my mom looks like my grandma Theresa, who died before I was even a seedling on the Dowling family tree. Every now and then my mom will drop a detail about my grandma into conversation, like how she would randomly lapse into Portuguese.

The sound of our voices is the greatest difference between my mother and me. No matter how hard I try, I’m so loud it’s impossible not to know when I’m in the room. My mom sounds like a baby bird.

“How was your day, Annie?” she asks.

“Okay.” I don’t have the heart to ask her not to call me Annie. Annie is who I used to be—the little girl who practiced her pirouettes on the wood floors of the hallway and got out of trouble by grabbing her dad’s leg and yelling, “I love you!”

Annie sounds like guilt, and I can’t bear to hear it.

“Honey, we made a couple phone calls this week,” she says. “To schools.”

My dad puts a hand on her knee and cuts in. Obviously he planned to have my mom start off this conversation, but forgot that it takes her ten minutes to dole out a thirty-second piece of information. “We feel as if the city is not the best place for you to spend your senior year.”

My stomach dips to my feet. He really means that no private school in the city will accept me, and public school won’t be an easy adjustment for someone with my reputation. Suddenly, I’m back where I was seven months ago, after I burned the auditorium at St. Bernadette’s down and my mother told me they were sending me to …

“You can’t mean you want me to go back to Wheatley.”

My parents look at each other.

“Jackie agreed to remove the suspension from your transcript. Your grades were decent there.” My dad ticks off each point on his fingers. He has his defense argument voice on now. “Right now, consistency is your best chance at graduating strong.”

“That’s not exactly a compelling argument, considering that the vice principal murdered my roommate and tried to kill me, too.” I know how painful it is for my parents to hear it, but I don’t care. “Have you even been paying attention to the other messed-up shit going on up there?”

Dad doesn’t even yell at me for cursing. “Wheatley is over a hundred years old. One bad year doesn’t change the fact that it’s the best of the best.”

My father leans forward, forcing me to make eye contact with him. “You are my only child. You are my life. If I thought there was
any
chance I was putting you in danger, I wouldn’t even think about sending you back there.”

The worst part is that he means it. For all his huffing and puffing, I’ve always known it’s because he loves me and wants the best for me. He’ll always be the man who ran five blocks to scream at a cab driver who almost mowed me down when I was six. He really believes I belong at Wheatley. He doesn’t know what I’m running from.

He knows that a former Massachusetts senator walked into a Fortune 500 CEO’s home in Cape Cod and killed him for revenge. Everyone knows that now.

But they don’t know that I was there; that I’m the reason Steven Westbrook figured out that Travis Shepherd and Larry Tretter killed his wife to cover up their involvement in Matt Weaver’s death thirty years ago.

Thirty years.
Dr. Muller was right. You can’t run from some things forever. The best you can do is hold your breath and hope they never, ever catch up to you.

I finally find my voice. “What choice do I have?”

My parents stand up. My mom puts her arm around me, leading me into the living room. “It’s entirely up to you. Registration at RFK High runs through the end of the month. But if you want to go back to Wheatley, we have to let them know by tomorrow.”

“And we have something that may make your decision easy,” my father says.

That’s when I notice that Abby’s disappeared. And that Remy Adams is sitting at my dining room table eating a macaron from Ladurée.

She’s on her feet as soon as she sees me. There’s a huge smile on her face; I can tell that she wants to shriek and hug me in typical Remy fashion, but she’s restraining herself in front of my parents. So I shriek and hug her, and we cling to each other and do that weird hopping up and down thing. I don’t care how stupid we look—Remy’s here and that simple fact makes me happy.

And I believe in that moment that maybe there’s enough good waiting for me in Wheatley to block out the bad.

The four of us go out for Persian food. My parents tell me they got Remy’s contact info from Dean Tierney: Back before I was even suspended, Remy had requested me for a roommate for this year. Her parents called mine, and arranged for Remy to come spend two weeks with me in New York before we go back to Wheatley together. We have to go back a week before classes start, for something called Senior Week. Most of it will be leading freshman orientation.

When we get home, Remy gives me the nonparent version of how Senior Week is going to go down as we’re changing for bed in my room.

“There’s only one RA in each dorm for the week, so we can basically do whatever we want when we’re not at orientation.” She’s talking a mile a minute. “The guys already hid a handle of vodka in the locker room during summer drills.”

“What?” she says when I don’t respond.

“Nothing.” I run my fingers through my hair, undoing my fishtail braid. “It’s just … I might have to sit out all the fun. I’m kind of on thin ice already.”

That’s actually not true. I
was
on thin ice. But I smashed my foot through the ice, and now I’m treading water, trying not to drown in failure and my parents’ disappointment.

Now Remy’s the one who’s quiet. I watch as she examines the things on my dresser: a glass ballet shoe from my grandmother; a ton of rosebud salve; and Eleanor Pigby, my china pig from a trip to London a few years ago. I’m struck by the familiarity of the way Remy floats around, soaking in the novelty of someone else’s room. As if we’re in my dorm in Wheatley and I never really left at all.

I flip on the light on my nightstand as Remy and I crawl into bed. My mom’s already left a towel and washcloth out for her for tomorrow morning. I have to take inventory of the events of the last few days just to remind myself that this is really happening. I’m going back to Wheatley.

Remy launches into a monologue about everything I missed since May, punctuated by yawns. Kelsey and Cole went to a music festival together the last week of school, but they haven’t hung out since because Kelsey went home to Berkshire County for the summer.

“I’m happy for them,” Remy says, with her trying-too-hard smile. “Really.”

Cole is Remy’s ex. She quickly changes the subject.

Phil, who lives in California, got caught buying weed by his parents while on vacation in Los Cabos and isn’t allowed to row crew this year now. And last week, Remy, Cole, and Murali did a 5k run in Boston where people dressed as zombies chased them.

I don’t know if she purposely left out Brent. I’m too proud to ask, but Remy rolls from her back onto her side and faces me.

“None of us have heard from him much. Brent,” she says.

Just hearing someone else say his name brings back the sensation of falling in my stomach. It’s a reminder that for every good memory I have of Brent, there’s a shitty one to go along with it, and I’ll have to face them all when I see him in seven days.

“I haven’t either,” I admit. “I just … hope he doesn’t hate me.”

Remy props herself up onto my pillow. “Why would he hate you?”

I search for the appropriate answer. It’s tiring, this life I’m leading, where I have to switch between versions of the story based on who knows what. I want to spill everything to Remy, right here. Tell her that I would deserve it if Brent hated me, after I all but accused his father of being involved in Matt Weaver’s murder.

“Why wouldn’t he hate me?” is what I settle on.

“Is this about … Isabella’s brother?” Remy’s doelike blue eyes probe mine.

I wish it were dark in here so she can’t see how my face flushes. Of course Remy remembers the night she basically caught Anthony in my room. “It wasn’t like that at all. I swear.
Nothing
happened with Anthony while Brent and I were together. Does he believe me?”

“I don’t know what he believes,” Remy murmurs. “I mean, I’m sure he
does
believe you. But you know how he is. It’s like there’s this distance between him and all of us, and it got bigger when you left.”

For the first time since I got home, I’m forced to confront the fact that I hurt Brent as badly as he hurt me. Possibly worse.

And Anthony—I don’t even know where to begin. It wasn’t the first time I hooked up with another guy to get over a nasty breakup. And seriously, it’s not like I’m the only girl who has
ever
done that. But the problem is that I hooked up with Anthony first, before Brent and I were together.

Anthony wasn’t a remedy for my breakup with Brent; he was a symptom.

I made a huge mess and left it, like a kid who drops a gallon of milk and hides under her parents’ bed. But now I have to go clean it up.

“I can’t believe I’m going back,” I finally say. “I can’t believe my parents are
letting
me go back.”