“You’re drunk.”
Maeve sighed. She straddled the chair and rested her head on her arms across the back. “I know, Dad. I’m sorry.” Even her apology was funny. She let out a guffaw.
“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the whole house.”
As if on cue, Molly bounded down the back stairs in her nightgown, red hair pointed every which way. She plopped onto William’s lap and plugged her nose. “What’s that smell?”
Maeve noticed then that her pants were torn and caked with mud. The party had drawn cops to the woods, and she’d spent the last two hours huddled in a ditch with Wendy and the twins, hiding until the coast was clear. She was covered in bug bites, and her neck was kinked. She’d never been happier.
“Go back to bed, Pixie,” William said.
“Pixie, Pixie, Pixie,” Maeve said. Maeve tapped the words out purposefully, moving her fingers along an invisible keyboard. “Did you rat on me?”
Molly tossed her arm around her father’s shoulders, casually, a simple affection. “I told you I could keep a secret.”
“I was worried, Maeve. You’re so late. I forced it out of her. Molly said you went to a birthday party in the woods. Is that true?”
“What the heck, Pix!” Maeve railed. “You promised!”
Molly leaned toward Maeve. With her hand to the side of her mouth, she whispered, “I didn’t tell him about the German boy you kissed ...”
“What’s this? What German boy?”
“You did that on purpose! You’re such a brown-noser, Pix,” Maeve said. She spat thePsound. “I’m never trusting you with a secret again!”
Her mother appeared at the foot of the stairs, velour robe over her nightgown. “Oh, God. Okay. Molly, you heard your dad. Back to bed.” She clapped her hands, and Molly slid off her father’s lap like a pancake off a spatula.
Maeve knew she was in deep trouble but couldn’t stop giggling. Wendy had stifled her laughter earlier with a finger pressed to Maeve’s lip. She bit the spot, tasted bug spray and beer. All worth it.
“You know what?” Her mother circled her finger in the air. “Everyone. Go to bed. William, you better walk behind that one so she doesn’t fall and break her neck. We’re really disappointed, Maeve. You know better.”
Upstairs, Maeve collapsed into bed. She didn’t like that her mother was disappointed, and her father had said there would be punishment in the morning. Plus she’d probably get a talking-to about that business with Oskar, but Maeve didn’t care. Nope, Maeve couldn’t care less. She’d led the girls through the woods, down a path to a ditch where they wouldn’t be found. She was the one who made sure the cops were gone. She was the one who’d spotted Wendy’s keys on the ground. And the way Wendy had looked at her when they found their way back to the parked car ...
A persistent knock made Maeve open her sleepy eyes. The bedroom door creaked, and a moment later, Molly stood next to her bed.
“What do you want, snitch?”
“Sorry I told. It slipped out.”
Even though she got caught by her parents, Maeve still felt like she’d gotten away with something. And it felt way better than shoplifting ever did. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“You’re not mad?”
In that hazy light, Maeve saw Molly for what she was—her little sister busy with child’s play, her little sister, too little to understand Maeve at all. In a way she hadn’t in ages, Maeve felt full grown. She wouldn’t need Molly to be her best friend anymore.
She steeled her voice, tried to sound like their mother. “I’m not mad. Go to bed, Pix.”
Chapter Thirteen
1979
On the roof outside her bedroom window, Maeve braced her feet against the shingles, tucked a flashlight into her armpit. Spring peepers chirped in the distance. She listened for the sound of a purring motor, the low rumble of a car moving slowly. She could hear the television from the living room below—All in the Family,Mannix,Gunsmoke. It didn’t matter what they were watching. Wendy Walker had asked her at school that day if she could sneak out to go to a party with her and the Nordic twins. “Absolutely,” Maeve said, no hesitation, though she still felt the sting of her parents’ disappointment, not to mention she had a week left on her grounding. But this was worth it. It had to be.
It was eight on the dot, and for a moment, Maeve feared she’d fallen for a sick joke. But then, headlights flickered, went dark, flickered again. She slid her switch on and off, on and off, on and off.I’ll be there.She shimmied down the tree trunk, stashed the flashlight under a bush, and ran toward the car waiting darkly in the road.
The paneled station wagon idled beneath the pine trees. Wendy was behind the wheel, overpowered by the size of the beast, the sink of the seat. Her hands at ten and two, she hunkered down, turned to Maeve, and grinned, accentuating a slight overbite. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Maeve glanced at the farmhouse and hopped in. Wendy hit the gas, and the house was out of sight before Maeve turned to say hello to the girls in the back seat. It was empty. “No twins?”
