The Almost Truth (3 page)

I looked down at the page and did a double take. I felt the blood fall out of my head. My ears started ringing, and it felt like I was going to either throw up or pass out, maybe both. I turned the page over in case something was written on the back. Nothing. I looked again in the envelope in case there was a note from the bank saying how they were just joking. Nothing.

The account balance read zero. All my money was gone. I was screwed.

I
practically flew out into the living room holding the bank statement above my head. Mom was rubbing her feet and watching a rerun of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
while rereading one of her historical romances. My mouth opened and closed, but I couldn’t form any words. I wanted to demand we call the police. I wanted to scream I’d been robbed, but deep down I already knew the truth. I’d opened that account when I was a kid. I was too young then to have an account on my own; there was only one other name on it.

Mom sat up when she saw me. “Oh. I was going to talk to you about that.”

“Tell me you didn’t take my money.” I held the statement in front of me like a shield.

“Your dad needed it. You know the court-appointed legal
assistance isn’t worth a nickel. For your dad to stand a chance at early release, we need a halfway decent lawyer in his corner, and the lawyer needed more money to keep working. Then last week when we had that big rainstorm, I saw the roof was leaking again in the bathroom.” Mom shrugged like she couldn’t even remember all the various amounts of money she owed. “The bank wasn’t going to lend me anything more.”

“So you stole from me?” I screeched.

My mom stood up. “You need to calm down.”

It felt like the top of my skull was going to blow off. “Calm down? Are you kidding? You took my college money.”

“Sadie, I know you needed that money for school, but I needed that money for our family. Yes, school is important, but so is keeping a roof over our heads and getting your dad back. You keep talking about ‘your’ money, but you forget that we’re a family, and that means we have to help each other out. You live here and I rarely ask you to chip in for costs.”

I took a step back. I couldn’t believe her. “You’re my
mom
. It’s not like you’re doing me some big favor by letting me stay here. Sorry that you had me, and then you had to do all sorts of horrible things like feed me and provide me with basic housing and clothes.” I motioned around the trailer. “And let me be sure to point out what a great job you’ve done, by the way, of providing me with everything my heart has ever dreamed about.”

“Don’t you
dare
imply I’m not doing everything I can,” Mom snapped. “I work six days a week at that hotel.”

“That money was my way out of here.” I could hear the tears in my voice, and I swallowed them back down. “This was my chance to do better.”

Mom walked into the kitchen, yanked out the rolls, and started to make sandwiches. She slathered the bread with generic-brand mayonnaise and deli ham. “Don’t start. This isn’t about you going to school. You could go to college in Seattle for free. This is about you going to some fancy school in California so you can feel important. You can still enroll in Seattle. You can live here and keep your job at the hotel on the weekends. If it still matters so much, then you can go away next year.”

I looked around the room as if I expected someone to jump in and point out how twisted my mom’s thinking was. “You can’t be serious.”

“You think you’re the only one who wants better?
I
don’t want to keep working at the hotel, and I’ve been there over twenty years. I don’t want to live in this trailer either. I’m sorry your life hasn’t been all sunshine, roses, and unicorns. Welcome to the real world, honey. This family needed that money and you’re a part of this family. Sometimes you don’t get what you want.”

“You’re acting like you did nothing wrong. You knew it was wrong or you would have asked me, but instead you just took it. You stole it.”

Mom slapped the knife she had been using to spread mayonnaise down on the counter.

“You stole that money first, so get off your frickin’ high horse.”

I dropped the statement and stared at her.

She laughed when she saw my face. “What? You think I don’t know what you and Brendan are up to all the time? You’re a real chip off the block. Your dad should be proud.”

“I’m nothing like him.”

“Why, because you haven’t got caught like he has? Maybe you’re better at it than he is, but a con artist is a con artist. Your bluffing some rich boys out of a few dollars with a card trick isn’t any better than your dad fencing hot car parts. You grew up with your dad; what else were you supposed to do? You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

“I’m not like him,” I said. She raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes, I pulled a few cons, but I did it because I needed money for school. There was a good reason for what I did.”

“Even the devil has an excuse for doing wrong. You’re not special there. The truth is, the villain of every story actually thinks he’s the hero. Your dad has a good reason too. He takes care of this family. It’s not like he’s going to get some fancy job making big money. He does the best he can. We’re all doing the best we can.”

My entire body was shaking as if I was attached to a live wire. I was either going to melt down in full-on tears or start throwing things.

Mom sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Sadie, I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight with you, and I don’t think you’re a bad kid. I wish we’d done better by you, but your dad and I have done
our best. I promise, even though it might feel like it, your world isn’t falling apart. This is a hurdle, and while I wish I could save you from every hard thing that is going to happen in your life, I can’t. You’re going to have to learn how to pick yourself up when the world knocks you down.” She stepped out from behind the kitchen counter and took a step toward me, as if she was going in for a hug.

I stepped back quickly out of her reach. “The world didn’t knock me down; you did. You’re not trying to save me from a hurdle; you’re throwing them out in front of me. I figured out early I’d better do whatever I had to, because no one in this family was going to help me.” I yanked open the door. “And you know the biggest wrong of all, Mom? You apparently knew I was up to something all this time and you never even tried to stop me.”

I slammed the screen door behind me and took off.

T
he problem with living on an island is that you can’t run away; you just end up running in circles.

I heard the ferry horn when I jumped onto my scooter and knew if I raced I had a chance to make it. I sprayed gravel from my back wheel as I came around the last corner. The ferry worker saw me coming and held the gate, giving me a chance to pull onto the ferry car deck.

“Cutting it close,” he said, snapping the chain behind me. He pushed the red button that told the captain the boat was loaded and ready to go. The horn blew again, the sound bouncing off the water. Most people stayed in their cars for the short, twenty-minute crossing, but the car deck always smelled like stale gasoline to me, and not being able to see the horizon made me nauseated. I usually stood at the front, letting the wind blow my
hair into a giant, knotted beehive, but today there was a group of kids from my high school there. Everyone was dressed up, so they must have been headed over to the clubs. Susan Warren was wearing high heels that had to be at least six inches high. She was going to regret that plan in a few hours, and unless she had magical abilities, there was no way a pair of comfortable shoes could be crammed into her paperback-book-size silver purse.

I climbed the metal stairs up to the passenger lounge. “Lounge” might be a bit fancy for what it really was: a few rows of plastic benches, a bathroom that was always out of order, and a row of vending machines. It was a small metal cell crammed between the ferry bridge and the car deck. I sat in the first row with my back pressed against the wall so that I could look out the windows. I could see the lights of the city, with the Space Needle lit up. Unlike the island, where to feel alone I had to find an isolated spot, I tended to feel alone in Seattle by being in a crowd. The ferry would dock just a couple of blocks from Pike Place Market. It would be closed by now, but I could walk down to Pioneer Square and perch in a coffee shop for a few hours. Maybe seeing normal people would make me feel more normal. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and felt the change from the grocery store. Turns out, this was all the money I had in the world now.

I couldn’t believe my mom had compared me to my dad. He and I were never close. I suppose it’s hard to bond with a parental figure when he’s in prison for most of those important formative
years. I flashed on second grade, when Burke Huntington had teased me for saying my dad was at camp.

“Grown-ups don’t go to camp, stupid.” Burke had laughed with his beaklike nose in the air. “Your dad is in jail!” The other kids crowded around the swings laughed too, and in that instant I knew he was right and I felt crushing hot shame. I ran out of the playground and down the five blocks from the school to the hotel. The front desk clerk called my mom when I burst into the lobby crying, with snot running down my chin.

My mom had hustled me out of the hotel lobby before the manager could spot me and get her into trouble. Guests at the Keppler paid far too much per night to be disturbed by unpleasantness. She steered me into the giant industrial kitchen and bent down to talk to me behind the racks of clean, pressed tablecloths. Puffs of steam from the giant pots on the row of stoves hung in the room like fog, and there was a constant clatter of knives coming from the line of prep cooks. I had managed to spit out what had happened in between gasping, hiccuping sobs.

“What made you say he was at camp?” Mom smelled like the industrial lemon cleaner they used.

I shrugged. I thought about all the visits to my dad, sitting on the picnic tables out in the yard. He and all the other guys wore gray uniforms with orange reflector strips along the sleeves and pant legs. My dad always had something he’d made for my mom, a crocheted afghan, a wooden plaque with her name in cursive letters burned across the top. They’d never told me he was
in camp; it must have been something I’d just assumed. Burke was right. I was stupid. I shrugged and buried my face in my mom’s shoulder. She called the school and told them I was sick. She had one of the chefs make me a grilled cheese sandwich. I spent the afternoon in the laundry room, squishing myself between the backs of washers and dryers, waiting for her to finish her shift, surrounded by the smell of clean sheets and towels. The other maids had stopped by every so often to check on me. They told me goofy knock-knock jokes and slipped me candy. I had stuffed myself with the chocolates that were supposed to lie on the guests’ pillows until I’d felt like throwing up.

Even when my dad wasn’t in jail, we weren’t particularly close. It was obvious he was crazy about my mom, but I always had the sense that he was looking at me from the corner of his eye as if he wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there. It was like he was somewhat surprised to see me. I felt like a houseguest who had long outstayed her welcome whenever he was around. A few years ago my dad had busted in on me in my room making out with some boy I’d met on the beach. My top was off and the berry lip gloss I’d been wearing was smeared down my chin. The boy had jumped up, no doubt panicked that an enraged father was about to pulverize him, but instead my dad had backed out of my room looking as if he had discovered a nest of roaches. He never mentioned it again. No heart-to-heart talk about how I should value myself and my body. No warnings about getting pregnant and ruining my life, or even
a lecture about how he expected more of me. It was like he couldn’t be bothered.

If I ever took the time to talk to our school counselor, Ms. Lee, about my actual feelings, instead of avoiding her whenever possible, she would no doubt tell me that my tendency to pull cons was a plea for attention. I was a pathetic psych textbook example of a girl who didn’t get enough attention from her daddy. If there were any decent guys to choose from on the island, I would probably be a slut, trying to spread my legs into feeling loved. I might not have a lot else going for me, but I had enough self-respect not to sleep with the guys on the island. Except for Brendan. Although I was willing to admit that had been a huge mistake, at least he wasn’t an asshole.

The horn blared, indicating we were about to dock. I slid off the bench and headed for the stairs. I paused, looking at the wall of notices stuck to the bulletin board. A Volkswagen Bug for sale. Babysitting services—References available! Piano lessons. I looked closer at a flyer advertising puppies for sale. Westies. I ran my finger along the phone number. I would love to have a dog. I even had a name picked out: Lloyd, after Frank Lloyd Wright. Someday.

I was about to walk back downstairs to get my scooter when I saw a photo of myself on the board.
MISSING
was printed in bright red letters across the top. There was a photo of a little girl directly below the photo of me. That’s when I realized it wasn’t me. It was one of those age-enhanced Photoshopped pictures.
There was a note that this might be what Ava, the little girl, would look like now, fifteen years after she’d gone missing. I backed up and squinted at the two pictures. I suspected if poor Ava had been missing for fifteen years, she looked a lot more like a corpse than like the aged photo. I’d watched enough
Dateline
to know missing kids didn’t usually come to a happy ending. It was weird how much the aged photo looked like me . . . or
would
look like me if I didn’t dye my hair. I couldn’t decide if it was neat or kinda creepy.

The ferry horn gave another blast, rattling the cheap plastic chairs. We’d be disembarking in minutes. I had to get downstairs so people wouldn’t be stuck behind my parked scooter. I started to walk away, but on sudden impulse I turned back. I tore the flyer off the board and stuffed it into my pocket. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I wanted it.