Nobody spoke up.
“It must’ve been on silent then,” Sasha said.
“Don’t even try to lie to me. I’ve been onto you since day one and I know you’ve been deceiving my parents ever since you got here.”
“Mallory!” Callie hissed. “What are you talking about? Why are you going after her so viciously? Who cares if she was looking at your dad’s phone?”
“I care!” Mallory said. “Especially since we know that Sasha–”
“Mal,” Taylor said, stopping her with a warning look, “we agreed that we weren’t going to bring this up untilafterwe talked to mom and dad privately.”
“Talk to us about what?” David asked, but nobody answered his question.
“Yeah, well that was before I caught her going through our dad’s phone.” Mallory held the phone up in the air as if it was all the evidence she needed. “She wasn’t just looking at the screen. It was unlocked and everything!” She narrowed her eyes at Sasha. “How did you even know his passcode?”
David cleared his throat awkwardly. “I—I don’t have a passcode on my phone.”
“Oh, dad,” Taylor groaned. “That’s like rule number one of technology safety. Are you trying to give me a stress ulcer?”
“See!” Mallory said, throwing an accusatory finger at Sasha. “No passcode! It would’ve been so easy for her to get into his phone and—I don’t know—do whatever it was she was doing on there. Probably looking for banking information and doing a money transfer or something!”
“I wasn’t!” Sasha cried out. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Mallory, really,” Callie insisted. “I think you’re overreacting a little.”
“Don’t defend her mom,” Mallory said with an icy look in her eye. “She’s not who you think she is. I know you want to believe that she's a perfect little angel who just needed help, butshe’s a liar! She’s using you. She was never even in a women’s shelter before she came here.”
Callie and David shared a look of surprise, but everyone else in the room, including Sasha, seemed strangely unaffected by this comment. Callie knew she should probably say something, but she was too stunned.
“It’s true,” Mallory went on, breaking the tense silence. “We found out that there’s not a single women’s shelter in California that has a record of someone named Sasha Sommers being there. That means she either lied about the shelter or gave you a fake name.” Mallory folded her arms and glared at Sasha. “So then, which is it?”
“I—I—” Sasha stuttered and just then Dot woke up from her nap, screaming from the play pen on the other side of the room. “I have to get her.”
“I’ll get her,” Ariel said, already halfway out of the room. “You stay here.”
If Sasha had any qualms about letting Ariel fetch her baby, she kept them to herself. She probably didn’t want to rock the boat any more than it was already rocking. It was obvious to Callie that the poor woman was terrified, and her first instinct was to comfort Sasha. But what if Mallory was right?
“Oh, god,” Callie said, rubbing her temples. “This is too much. Will someone please explain what’s going on? Sasha, maybe you’d like to shed some light on this situation?”
Sasha looked around nervously.
“Go ahead,” Mallory prompted her. “Tell them. Tell my parents how you are not who you said you were. How we were right to suspect you of trying to scam them!”
“That’s not what I was trying to do,” Sasha insisted. “It’s… more complicated than that.” She inhaled sharply and then went to Ariel and Dot, who’d just come through from the kitchen. Dot was still howling, but she calmed down a bit when Sasha tookher into her arms. “I promise, I’ll explain everything. Just let me go change her. She’s not going to stop screaming until she has a clean diaper.”
Ariel—or someone else—might’ve jumped in and offered to do it themselves, but Sasha darted out of the room quickly. Mallory stared wide-eyed at her parents after she disappeared around the corner and said, “You can’t just let her go upstairs alone! Who knows what she’s going to do. Taylor, follow her.”
“No thank you,” Taylor said with a furrowed brow. “That’s very creepy.”
“But—”
“Hang on a second,” Callie said in a soft tone, moving towards the couch and doing her best to remain calm. “Nobody needs to follow her. What’s the worst she can do?”
“I don’t think you want me to answer that question,” Mallory muttered. “Because I have a long list of ideas.”
Callie chose to ignore that comment. “Let’s all take a deep breath. Things are getting a little crazy, and nothing is going to be accomplished if we all end up screaming at each other. Now—” She looked up at her three children from her seat. “I want you to sit down and tell meexactlyhow you came to find out that Sasha wasn’t in a women’s shelter.”
Chapter 7
