“But you’re . . . you’re ateenager. How did they—”
She lifts her chin. “I look mature for my age.”
Something on my face must show my doubt. I’m sure I’m biased, given that I’ve raised her, but Tegan doesn’t look any older than she is. Some days I still see the face of that eight-year-old in her, playing with her favorite Barbie before she realized Mom had gone.
“I wore a lot of makeup. And I downloaded a filter for my webcam that helped.”
I shake my head, ignoring a wave of nausea, of guilt. I guess I haven’t helicoptered enough. Been vigilant enough.
“But when they got here, of course they were going to see—”
“I just needed to get them here,” she interrupts. “I needed to turn eighteen, and I needed to get them here. I knew—Iknowthey’ll take me anyway.”
I lean forward in my chair, setting my elbows on the table and running my hands through my hair, bowing my head. “Teeg. You can’t—”
“I don’t know why you’re getting to askmequestions,” she says sharply. “Now that you know about this, maybe you should answer some of mine.”
When I look up at her, she’s shoved her can away, putting her elbows on the table, too. But she’s not sagging into it the way Iam.
She’s pressing in. Determined and angry.
“Did you know Mom disappeared with Lynton Baltimore?”
“No,” I answer quickly, but then I pause. I’m giving her the answer I would’ve given to Salem Durant, had she asked the question so directly.
I swallow. “Not at first, no.”
Tegan interrupts with a scoff, as if it’d be ridiculous for me to finish, to say I’m not sure.
She’s so confident in this, so certain. I have a terrible thought. Did he contact her somehow? Did Mom?
“How do you know about him?”
For a second, I think she won’t answer. I think she’ll say,I’m asking the questions now.
But finally she gives in.
“A couple months ago, I read a listicle online. ‘Best True Crime Podcasts of the Last Decade.’”
A fuckinglisticle. “Best” True Crime.What a world.
Of course, I’d listened to Salem Durant’s podcast, too.
I wasentertainedby it.
“The Last Con of Lynton Baltimorewas on it, with . . . there was a photo of him. His mug shot.”
I know that photo. It was featured on the podcast’s title card. Black and white, a little grainy. I never connected that photo with the man I knew as Miles Daniels until later. He hadn’t looked the same to me, not even a little, which I guess was the point.
And anyway, I only met him a couple of times, always briefly. “Brief” was basically all I’d allow when it came to time with my mother back then.
“I recognized him,” Tegan says. “I knew right away. That was Miles.”
If I thought the guilt was bad before . . . it’s nothing to hearing my sister say this, to the reminder of how I was mostly absent from Tegan’s life for those last few months before Mom left. Tegan would’ve been around Lynton Baltimore all the time, because my mother wanted Miles Daniels around all the time.
I stand from my chair, restless and newly nauseated.
“And then I just . . . I don’t know. I got curious. I listened to the episodes. I worked out the timeline. Mom met Miles a month after Lynton Baltimore got out of prison and ghosted Salem Durant.”
