Protecting Tegan, taking care of Tegan.
Never disappearing on Tegan the way Mom disappeared onme.
* * *
THERE’Sno car in the driveway when I get back, not that I remember if there was one when I first opened the door to Tegan’s . . . guests, co-conspirators, whatever. But the garage is still open from when I first came home, thinking this was just a regular morning where I’d made a simple mistake. Forgetting a pair of shears, not missing all the signs that my sister has spent the last two months on the precipice of blowing up our quiet, private lives.
I take a deep breath before I walk in.
She’s standing at the fridge, getting out a can of water, and I think that’s so insulting, for some reason. Drinking a sparkling water at a time like this.
“They left?” I say, clipped.
She pops the top on the can and takes a sip. “For now.” She carries her drink over to the table and sits in the same place she sat only moments ago. Before, when it was the four of us here, she seemed nervous, frantic, eager to please. But now, with only me, she’s transformed, and it’s not into the sullen, sometimes sharp teenager she’s often been over the last few months—behavior that I guess now makes more sense, given that she found the postcards. No, this Tegan is different. She seems . . .
She seems so confident.
So grown.
Maybe impersonating a thirty-one-year-old will do that to a person.
It’s that thought that propels me forward, newly desperate to get answers. I settle across from her, clasping my hands together on the table’s surface until I realize that’s the same posture Salem Durant took up. I immediately reposition, crossing my arms.
I take another breath.
“Teeg,” I say, before I realize that I don’t even know where to begin. I settle for a simple, stunned, “How?”
She flicks at the tab on her water can, and it’s a curious sort of relief to see her fidget. She presses her lips together and rolls them inward, a habit she’s always had when she’s trying hard at something. This is how she looked when she flipped my egg sandwich last night. I’d thought it was sweet.
She shrugs. “I set up an email account. I sent an email.”
“Using my name.”
Thepingof that can top again. “You kind of made it easy.”
I blink across the table at her. “Imade it easy?”
It’s a ridiculous thing to say. Anyone who’s ever dared criticize how I’ve raised Tegan over the last decade has always said the same thing: that I’m overprotective, that I helicopter, that I never learned, as she got older, to let go a little. I ask her too many questions about her day; I pry about the details; I’m vigilant about monitoring her social media. Sure, Tegan has more independence now, is alone when I go to work, but I still always—
But that’s not the point, I know. Not now.
“How did I make it easy?” I say, gentling my voice as best I can.
She takes another sip of water before speaking again.
“They weren’t really going to be able to check easily if I was you. You don’t have any social media. No photo on the salon website. You won’t even get into other people’s pictures.”
That last part, she’s said with an edge. I remember the evening of her senior prom a couple of months ago, a gathering in the gorgeous front yard of one of her friend’s parents’ houses. Photo after photo of parents flanking their kids, getting in their own shots before dates and friend groups started being the focus.
I’d hung back, tried not to be overly blunt as I passed on well-meaning offers to photograph Tegan and me. We’d already taken a few selfies together back at the house.
As always, I’d asked her not to share them anywhere.
I stare at her, my stomach uneasy. The irony of my obsession with privacy backfiring on me in this way.
I don’t like my photo taken because I think I look so much like my mom.
Because someone might see me, and connect me with her. Connect me with Lynton Baltimore.
