FORTY-EIGHT

Pandemonium. (Understandable.) Most of the boys were yelling and Leah had gone to Jacky, who was crying, and put an arm around him, and walked him around the turtle table and made him sit down before he fell down.

But Angela wasn’t touched by any of it. Instead she stood like a statue—like Eternal Silence, who showed you your death if you matched its gaze—and did what Jason had done: looked at “reality” through a different lens.

“This was always my mess. I bought it; it’s mine.”

You can’t save him.

“He’s dead. Let him stay dead.”

And, particularly damning: “It should have been him.” She thought about sitting across from “Uncle Dennis” and vowing to avenge the wrong brother’s murder. How could he have just—just sat there and let her ramble on and on about all the time she was wasting?

He tried to make you stop. He and Mom both tried to make you stop.

Yeah? You know what a great way to make me stop would have been? Mentioning that HE WAS MY FATHER AND CLEARLY NOT DEAD. Christ, this was her life as Augusta Harrison all over again!

“He did tell us,” she said. Her mouth felt like she’d gotten a shot of Novocain; it was hard to make her lips move. “He told us over and over. And he was right. I heard, but didn’t listen.”

She and Archer stared at each other and then said, almost in unison, “The wrong brother’s in jail.”

Paul, meanwhile, was holding his head in his hands. “This. Is. So. Fucked.”

“Archer, you were right,” Leah marveled. “You said it yourself on the way back from ICC: It was right in front of our faces.”

“And I didn’t recognize him.” Archer was wearing the dazed expression of someone who was still standing despite taking a beating from a larger, more skillful opponent. “Why would I? It’s been ten years. And they have the same build, the same coloring, sometimes people thought they were twins. If you look at the old pictures, you can see it.” In his shock, his eyes showed the whites all around. “My dad’s the one in the ground. Donald Drake—the ‘good’ brother—he’s the one who’s been locked up all this time.”

“That’s why he wouldn’t see us,” Mitchell said. He looked as punch-drunk as Archer did. “He couldn’t stand to look at any of us, knowing what he’d done. We were kids, but he must have been scared we’d recognize him and blab.”

“We’ve been in a soap opera for ten years!”

“Not even a good one, like Days of our Lives,” Paul added, almost tearful. “A dumb, shitty one, like Judge Judy.”

“Wait. Wait. You’ve got it wrong.” Jack was rubbing his face, smearing tears. “All of you. Think about it—Daddy just turned himself over to the police and said, ‘Hi, I’m Dennis and I want to go to prison now’? And nobody questioned it? How is that possible?”

When was the last time he used the word “Daddy”? It’s been years. Ten, in fact. “Who would he have to fool? Fellow inmates? The COs?”

“Who’s gonna say ‘What’s this, you’re reading Shakespeare? How out of character, that seems more like something Donald would do, you must be an imposter, someone get this man a new lawyer!’”

“That . . . seems farfetched,” Archer admitted.

“But that’s crazy!” Jack said. “It wouldn’t have even gotten that far before he would have been busted. If nothing else, Mom would have—”

He cut himself off so abruptly, Angela heard his teeth click together. Her heart cracked for him in that moment. Because in order to believe in the Drake brothers switcharoo, you had to first acknowledge that . . .

“She was in on it.”

“Worse,” Leah said gently. “It would have been her idea. There’s no other way this would have worked. And for whatever reason, your father went along with it.”

“But why?”

The memory bubbled up to the surface again: her father, holding a bulging suitcase.

I never would have left him. And he never would have left me.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Angela was already slinging her purse over one shoulder. “I’m going to go ask her.”

Jason, who appeared to have been waiting for her to reach that conclusion, got up and held the door for her. “You know where she went.”

“I know where she went.” Angela took a breath. “Will you take me there?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t want to go,” Jack said at once. “I can’t.” The oven timer went off and she’d never seen him look so relieved. “Because of the pudding.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m not going, either. I might actually kill her. Kill her for real, not ‘kill her but not really and then sit in jail for a decade’ kill her,” Archer said.

“You guys stay here and keep Jack company, okay?” She was amazed when uncharacteristicly quiet nods were the only response. A hundred years ago, she would have loved the deference. Now it looked wrong. Felt wrong.

“Felt wrong.” Oh, boy, that was putting it mildly.

She pulled a Kleenex from her purse, handed it to Jack, watched him wipe his eyes. “I’ll go take care of this.”

He sniffed and looked up at her. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

I might kill her, too, Archer. For putting that look on Jack’s face, if nothing else.

“Let’s go,” she said, and Jason was right behind her.