The Safest Lies (12 page)

There were only two people in the world who knew the code. It didn’t matter how many times Jan had said it was safer to have a backup, or to be sure to write it down—
What if we got locked inside, knocked unconscious? How would someone get us out?

That fear, apparently, didn’t measure up to the other. Only my mother and I knew the code.
Meaningless, and therefore unbreakable,
she had said. As far as I knew, my mother hadn’t been in there in years—not since Jan came into our lives. She was getting better. She
was.

But. If the alarm shorted, somehow taking the gate offline with it, and she didn’t feel safe, she could’ve locked herself down in the basement, and then inside the room. She could’ve gone to my room first, trying to bring me there with her. But there were limitations to her bravery. It all made sense. And when she couldn’t find me, maybe she left the front door open for my return.

My mother in the panic room would be a setback. My mother in the panic room might be a reason to have our living arrangement reassessed. My mother in the panic room would be reason to lie.

Hope and dread, swirling in the pit of my stomach.

Ryan narrowed his eyes at the dial.

“Turn around,” I said to Ryan. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because my mother would want it this way. If she was in here…If she was in here, it was a problem.

I
spun the wheel three times, in a way that was second nature even though I hadn’t tried it in years. As the locks clicked open and the door unlatched, I pushed gently on the door and said, “Mom? It’s me. I’m coming in.”

The door was thick and the room dark and stale, and even before I had it open, I knew it was empty. The lights flickered on automatically, a crass fluorescent compared to the rest of the basement. The blue rug that my mom had put down so we could sit comfortably, playing cards. The shelves full of any possible emergency precaution, ordered from every end-of-the-world vendor site. It was, I could see now, nothing more than a sterile closet, with too-close walls, fluorescent lights, bottles of water and food that would keep. A fire extinguisher, fire blankets, and a black-and-white video feed from the security cameras, beside a phone.

I stayed in the entrance—I could see everything from here. I could see it was empty. It looked small, and cold, and I understood why Jan would be worried if my mother had kept us in here. I pulled the door shut, my hand on the wall until I felt it latch.

“What was that?” Ryan asked.

I shook my head. “The safe room. For emergencies.” Not looking at Ryan, not wanting to see what he thought of that. Whether he saw it as a safe room or a panic room. Like the black iron gates, it looked different now, from the other side.

A chill ran over me, but it could’ve been from the basement itself.

“I need to check my phone,” I said. “Maybe she called.” But even I could hear the desperation in my voice.

Ryan led the way back upstairs, followed me back to my room, for my phone.

The first thing I saw was a string of messages from him:

I’m outside. Can we talk?

I’m sorry about earlier.

There are things I have to say to you.

I turned to look at Ryan, and he was cringing to himself. “Yeah, um, you can ignore those….”

But Mom hadn’t tried to call me. Neither had Jan.

Ryan was rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt, keeping his hands busy, trying to find something to do. The impossibility of this moment only worked to increase my dread:
Ryan Baker is standing in your bedroom, and nobody cares.

I closed my eyes, trying to think like my mother. If she knew I was missing, who might she call? She knew I’d talked to Annika. Maybe she’d called her, maybe Annika had tried to cover for me and ended up making it worse.

Ryan leaned against my dresser as I dialed Annika.

I heard music in the background when she picked up. “Back so soon?” she answered.

“Did my mom call you?” I asked.

“Did your mom…what? No. Did she find out? Are you in trouble?”

“No, I can’t…” I ran my hand down my face. Too many people knowing about my mother was still a fear of mine. I didn’t want the whole world knowing the extent of her condition. “Did you happen to see her? I’m not asking if you were spying, but you know, you can see my house from the wall, and maybe you were sitting on the wall or something….”

The music was off now. “Kelsey, is everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not here, and it’s not…like her…not to tell me.”

“Just like it’s not like you to tell her when you’re leaving, right?” I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Annika, it’s important.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Eli picked me up at eight, and we’ve been out since then. I didn’t see her. She didn’t call me.”

I heard someone say something in the background, and I assumed it was Eli. “It’s my neighbor,” Annika responded, her voice muffled though the receiver.

“Maybe she called your mom?” I asked.

“My mom’s driving Brett back to college. Nobody’s there.” She paused. “Do you want me to come over? We’re in the car already, I can be there in thirty,” she said.

“No, it’s okay. Enjoy your date, Annika.”

Ryan moved to sit beside me on the bed—and again I thought of how ridiculous this was:
Ryan Baker is on your bed.
And I started to laugh.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

I shook my head. “You’re sitting on my bed, and my mother is missing. And I kissed you ten minutes ago.”

His lips quirked up in a half smile. “I know you did.” And now he was staring at my mouth again, like he was replaying it. “I liked ten minutes ago.”

But he didn’t understand—everything about ten minutes ago was gone. Everything from then to now was impossible.

“This can’t be real,” I said. I stared at the phone in my hand, because I knew what I had to do. I had to call Jan. I had to find out if she knew something, without giving anything away.

White lies. Little lies. Like my mother taught me.
Careful.

I called Jan’s cell, but it went to voice mail after a single ring. Which meant she saw it was me and hit End. Which meant she was probably in a late meeting with a patient. Or at the class Cole had mentioned. If she knew something about my mom, she would’ve picked up. I was sure. I was pretty sure.

I typed:
Did my mom call you?

And then:
Did something happen?
But I changed my mind, deleting the second line before hitting Send.

But it was too late—all those
somethings
started working their way into my head, circling and circling.

My phone beeped in response, and my heart jumped along with it.

Text from Jan:
No. Is everything okay? In a seminar.

Was everything okay? Not even close. My mother didn’t call Annika, or Jan, or me. The possibilities were shrinking. Wherever Mom was, she was not okay.

“Kelsey?” Ryan asked, reaching for my hand.

Ryan was watching me closely. Between the ceremony and this moment, his hair had gradually become disheveled, like it usually was at school, and his dress shirt had turned casual, with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up, and he was beginning to look, once again, like someone who had been playing a part—stuck in someone else’s clothes—who was slowly unmaking himself.

He looked, all at once, both uncomfortable and unsure, alone with me in this house where something was very
not right.
Like my thoughts were catching. I remembered his face the moment we fell. His words as he crawled inside my car. But I also remembered the way he’d held on to me, promising we’d be okay. The way he thought that
I
was the brave one.

Think, Kelsey.
If my mother noticed I was missing, would she try to come after me? Was it possible? Would she
try
? “The front booth,” I whispered. “And the backyard. We need to check them both.”

—

The booth near the front gate was not made like the rest of the house. It was wooden and painted white, but the grain was starting to show, with weather and time. The door didn’t have a lock. Though small and enclosed, nothing about this booth was safe. Even the floorboards echoed. As a kid, I’d been afraid to play inside it.

The windows to the front and side were thin and rattled when I pulled the door open. The room was empty.

Inside, it smelled of must and gasoline and exposed wood. Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust and pollen. There was only room for one person to sit, in a chair that was no longer here. Red plastic containers of gasoline for the generator were stored under the control panel—and had been for as long as I could remember. Everything about this room was undisturbed.

There were no safe answers left. My mother had not tried to come after me and then lost her nerve at the gate.

I quickly shut the door again, staring at Ryan.

He must’ve read something in my face, because he said, “There’s still the whole yard.” As if we might find her curled up in the weeds, hidden from our sight, just waiting to be found. As if words alone could turn into hope. He reached a hand out for me, and I took it.

I followed him in the darkness, and I felt the vastness, as my mother called it. All the danger, all the possibility, existing in the places I could only imagine.

“Mom?” I called repeatedly, as we made our way along the edge of the gate, until we could be sure there was nowhere left to hide.

I shivered in the night air, and I felt too exposed all of a sudden. Like my mother would be, standing in this very spot. My eyes darted from shadow to shadow in the darkness. There could be people watching, from every corner of the woods. My blood was thrumming.

Inside.
Inside was safety.

“Let’s go,” I whispered. I led the way back into the house, locking the doors behind me on instinct. I wandered down the hall, my hands trailing along the walls, trying to orient myself. Like I was waking in a strange place for the first time.

The alarm was off, and she was missing.

What the hell was going on?

—

I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at my cell, hoping it would miraculously provide answers. Ryan hopped up on the countertop, like he used to do at the Lodge. Like my two worlds were overlapping. As if I could be both people at once.

“Should we call someone else?” he asked.

Ryan was not nearly as worried as I was—because Ryan didn’t understand how improbable this situation truly was. The fear was too great. It had no boundaries. It seeped into every aspect of our lives, binding her here. I imagined it like the ivy, creeping up the iron gates. Tangling together until you couldn’t see one without the other.

“Kelsey?”

Ryan Baker, who asked you out, is hanging out in your kitchen in suit pants and a button-down shirt, two feet away from you, with his brown hair falling in his eyes, waiting for you to do something. Snap out of it, Kelsey.

I didn’t want to explain how delicate my situation in this house was already. I was always just one moment from being pulled. One call from Jan, or one call to the police, and the whole thing might tip too far, my whole life might slip away from me.

“She doesn’t have a car,” I finally said. And then I gave voice to the thought that had begun in my room when I was texting Jan. The thought that dug in and circled and wouldn’t let go. “What if someone broke in and hurt her?”

Lightning striking twice. Her biggest fear.

He pushed off the counter. Surveyed the room. “Is anything missing?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

Because that was why people broke into homes, in Ryan’s world. Not to take people. Not to keep them, and hurt them, and ruin them.

He looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the closed doors, the locked windows. “It doesn’t look like a break-in to me, Kelsey.”

I nodded. Except. Except we had locks and security and a panic room for a reason. What if her fears were not so ungrounded? What if she knew the danger was real? That someone was still out there, just waiting for a chance?

The fears started skittering along my skin, threatening to shut me down. I wanted to give myself over to them. Crawl into bed, stare at the walls, surround myself with them.

Ryan grabbed my shoulder, crouching beside me so his face was just inches away, his eyes wide and worried. “You okay? You look pale. Like you might pass out.”

My mouth had gone dry, and it felt almost like my throat was closing off, the air scratching along the surface, and I was a balloon, drifting farther and farther away….

“Kelsey?” he called, but his voice was on another planet. Didn’t he see?

My mother was gone.

My mother was gone.