“Listen,” Gramma Sharon says, getting serious now. “How do you feel about me coming over to see you when you’re home alone? I know your brother’s there, but his friends’ll all be coming home from school soon—save for that burnout JT. But maybe I can come by and see you when you don’t have anything to do? We can go see a movie or play cards or go to the library. What do you think?”
I shouldn’t feel like my heart is going to burst, yet here I am. This woman is a stranger to me, but my association with grandmothers and libraries has gotten the better of me. Having Gramma Sharon here has made me feel safe. Even Former Agent Grant’s stalking and insinuation that he knows something is up gets pushed aside. Because Idowant to spend time with her. So I answer her before the logical side of my brain can interject—the one that’s trying to bust through the wall I put up.
“I think that sounds good to me.”
But that wall breaks just a bit. Enough for the voice of that logic to whisper through the cracks how wrong this is. How I’m lying to this woman.
Twenty-Five
After Gramma Sharon drops me off at home, I text Miles and tell him to meet me in the backyard. He’s already there when I get outside, Chardonnay sniffing along the ground behind him.
“Grant knows something is up,” I say, holding out the card. Miles looks at it, running his finger across it.
“How do you know?”
“He followed me to the library today and cornered me.”
Miles’s eyes go wide. “Does he know you’re not really Nate?”
“He didn’t say explicitly but he definitely implied it. I think he also might have implied that he thinks there’s more to Nate’s disappearance than everyone is letting on.”
Miles chews on his lip and hands the card back to me. “So he’s investigating. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”
I don’t tell him everything because he doesn’t need to know how my teeth hurt from the dentist or how I had to lie and deflect for an hour during therapy.
But when I get to the part where Grant sounded a little skeptical when talking about Nate’s family, Miles flips out.
“Holy shit. He suspects Marcus and Valencia.”
“What makes you say that?” I didn’t make that connection; I assumed he knew I was lying and wanted to expose me.
“Because he doesn’t think you’re—no offense—smart enough to do all this on your own.”
“’Kay, little hard tonotbe offended here.”
“I mean he’s overthinking it. He thinks Marcus and Valencia... I don’t know, hired you? Found you somewhere and convinced you to pretend to be Nate.”
“What about the life insurance money? If they hired me to be Nate, they’d have to pay the insurance company back.”
Miles pinches the bridge of his nose like I’m annoying him. “Darling—” Oh. My stomach does a little flip at the way he calls me that. But I’m quick to remind myself it’s just Miles being Miles and focus back on what he’s saying. “Don’t be a riff killer. When we’re spitballing, we push the other theories aside because we don’t know how true they are. You can’t be stuck on one premise; you’ll miss the others and might overlook what’s really going on.”
“Fine. Ignoring the insurance money, why would they hire me to be Nate?”
“Because then they don’t have to be the suspected child murderers anymore. The police focused the investigation on Nate’s parents for a long time. If you show up, the Beaumonts are in the clear. And sorry, Valencia, but refusing a DNA test definitely makes you look guilty.”
But I still don’t understand how Miles can think Grant made the leap that I was involved in their attempt to cover it up.
“If he thinks I’m a part of this, why wouldn’t he come out and say it?”
“Better to put pressure on you when they weren’t around. He started with that to get you freaking out, which—” He gestures to me like I’m wearing a shirt that says, “I’m freaking out because a retired cop cornered me in a library and all I got is this lousy T-shirt.” “People who freak out make mistakes.”
That’s kind of how I got into this situation. Starving and freaking out, worried I was going to be sent home to my parents. And I made a mistake. One I need to finish.
“Okay, then we need to get me out of here,” I say. “Now. If I disappear again, then maybe he can convince the cops to go back to investigating the Beaumonts. You said all that evidence is circumstantial. I could leave a note that says they hired me, whatever Grant needs to hear, and you can also give him the circumstantial evidence, and he can take it from there.”
Miles holds out his hands. “Okay, let’s take a breath. That’s a terrible idea.”
“No it’s not. Look, I lied and said I was Nate to avoid going to jail or being sent home to my parents. Now, honestly, I don’t care. I need to get out of here.”
