I’m outside Silas Baker’s house again.
A cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck as I pull up behind his Mercedes. That must mean he’s home. The food from Lili’s does an uneasy turn in my gut. I get out of the car, pocketing my keys and make my way to the front door when I hear the laughter—what sounds like Kendall and Noah—coming from the back of the house. I round it slowly, until I reach the backyard and find them there, lounging by a pool.
The private side of the Baker’s’ property is no less impressive than its public facing one. Their pool is inground, long, wide and deep with a diving board. There are four chaise longues, two on either side, and a fancy metal table between them.
The backyard is lush; the grass is jewel green with thriving vegetable and flower gardens taking up opposite sides. A pine deck leads to a sliding glass door to the inside of the house. Noah drifts on a float in the water. Kendall is resplendent in a tiny red bikini, sunning herself on a soft monogrammed towel. Everything around us seems blessed to be here, and I try to process the luxury of it, of everything I’m seeing against everything else I’ve seen today. The only thing my head is able to arrive at is, this isn’t real …
“Where’s Javi?” Noah asks, tilting his head at me.
“I d-don’t know.” I shrug. “He s-said he’d m-meet me h-here.”
“Huh.” Noah grabs his phone, which is resting on his abdomen, and thumbs out a text. He waits a minute and says, “Not answering. Maybe on his way.”
“Weren’t you wearing that yesterday?” Kendall asks me. Noah laughs.
“D-didn’t go home last n-night.”
Kendall leans up on her elbows, the action pushing her impressive chest out in a way I think is meant to intimidate me. “How come?”
“T-too hard to b-be there.”
“Well, hope you don’t mind doing this all morning,” Noah says. “We’re on lockdown because when we came home last night someone”—”he points an accusatory finger at his sister“—”didn’t have the decency to fake sober. Grounded for a goddamn month.”
I look around. “What a p-p-punishment.”
Noah smiles. “I don’t know you all that well yet, Lera, but I detect a hint of sarcasm.”
“Only a h-hint,” I return. “W-where’re your p-parents?”
I look up at the house, half-expecting to see Silas Baker’s face in the window, gazing down at this poolside scene. Where are you, Silas …
“Dad went over to the florist’s,” Kendall informs us.
“What?” Noah raises an eyebrow. “He in shit again?”
Kendall stretches languidly, arms over her head, toes pointing to nothing. “Mom heard him get up at the asscrack of dawn today to go into the office. And she told me he was late as hell getting home from T-ball last night. He promised he’d be here all weekend, no work, and he lied. Now she’s pissed, so she went out with Jean and she’s not picking up the phone. Sunday family dinner is going to be great.”
“K-Kendall,” I say abruptly. “C-can I b-borrow a swimsuit?”
“They won’t fit you.” She nods to her chest.
“Jesus,” Noah says, because I guess he’s got limits. “You could lend her a tank or shorts or something.” He kicks his legs, pushing the float to the edge of the pool and climbs out. “I’m gonna try Javi again. Not like him not to answer.”
“Whatever,” Kendall says. She groans, getting to her feet like it’s the last thing in the world she wants to be doing and it sends a flare of anger through me that is almost immediately put out for something that feels so much worse.
She doesn’t know her father is a monster.
“Come on,” she mutters and I follow her inside. “You can borrow some of Noah’s trunks and one of his old shirts…”
“D-don’t like sh-sharing, huh?”
“No offense, but you look like you need a shower.”
“N-no offense, b-but you look like a bitch.”
She stops in her tracks and turns to me, smiles nice.
“You can always leave,” she says.
I don’t say anything. She shakes her head like that’s the end of it and we step through the back door. I imagine what it must be like to step through it every day just because it’s your home and you live here. I get that feeling I got when I first saw Montgomery, that if I can’t have any of this for myself all I really want is to see it ruined.
Inside, it’s incredibly stark, monochromatic. The family photos on the wall are professionally shot, black-and-white, all of them taken next to the flowerbeds outside. I study each one as I pass, following Noah’s and Kendall’s progression from babies to toddlers to awkward tweens, to now. Their mother, a lithe blonde with curly hair that keeps getting shorter. Silas and the way he doesn’t change. The most offensive part about him is how inoffensive he looks. Anyone would look at him and think he was safe.
The family portraits suddenly shift to Silas, his T-ball teams.
“There’s Javi,” Kendall says, startling me.
She points him out in a picture. I can’t make myself look.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.
“J-just a little h-hungover.”
“I’m not.” She sounds pleased.
I follow her past the living room where there’s a white sofa and just looking at it makes me nervous, the thought of it. When she was nine, Mattie went through a clumsy phase. In fact, I don’t think she ever entirely grew out of it, but when she was nine, it was at its worst. There’s not an inch of our trailer she hasn’t spilled something on.
Kendall leads me into the kitchen. It’s all gray-and-white marble countertops, stainless steel appliances. The table sits in front of a window overlooking the garden side of the house and I can just see the edge of the deck. The rest of the room stretches toward the front door.
“Hold on a sec,” she says, opening the fridge. “I’m starving.”
The front door opens.
“Kendall, whose car is that out there?”
My body turns to ice.
Silas’s back is to us as he shuts the door. He has a bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath in one hand. He scrubs the other through the back of his short blond hair before facing us and when he does, his eyes immediately fall on me.
“Who’s this?” he asks.
“Dad, this is Lera Holden,” Kendall says. “She’s new in town. Did I tell you about her last night? I can’t remember.”
“I’m sure you can’t,” he says drily. He tilts his head back and sizes me up and my fingers twitch. “Holdens … you just moved into the Cornells’ place, right?” I manage a nod. “I heard they had a daughter. That’s your car out there?”
He asks the question with a smile and his smile is all teeth.
I look at Kendall. Her body is half in the fridge.
“C-can I use your b-bathroom?”
Silas reacts to my stutter, a near imperceptible grimace.
“Sure,” he says. “It’s upstairs. Third door on the right.”
I duck past him without thanks and turn a corner that leads to a staircase, my body weak with relief once I’m finally outside his line of vision. It takes a conscious effort to move one foot in front of the other to get me to the top of the landing. There, I listen.
A low murmur. His voice. Kendall’s throaty responses. I creep down the hall and find the bathroom. I push the door open and take a shocked step back.
“G-get out!” a girl yells. “I w-want y-you t-to g-get out of h-here!”
She’s eleven, naked in the tub. Her knees are curled up to her chest and her arms are crossed around them, trying hard to cover her rosebud breasts. When she leans forward, she bares her back, the knots of her spine painfully visible. She presses her head to her knees and turns a hateful gaze to her left, to the man leaning against the sink. He’s taking up the whole bathroom. His arms are crossed, but he’s not moving. She desperately wants him gone, she’s said it out loud and everything, but he’s not moving.
“There’s no need,” he says slowly, “to be like this.”
“G-go a-away! W-where’s M-Mom? Mom!”
“What do you think she’s going to do?”
The girl opens her mouth and closes it and he smiles a little, sort of sadly, like he’s just admitted something to her that they both don’t like hearing. She turns her head away from him and I watch the small rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathes in and out, that rapid pulse revealing how angry she is. The water is cooling. She’s not going to get out until he leaves.
But he’s not going to leave.
“Sadie,” he says to her. “We’re family now.”
A peal of laughter floats upstairs. I turn to it, then back to the empty bathroom, my heart thrumming. Ever since Mattie died, it’s been like this, this surfacing of ugly things, forcing me to witness them because living through it all wasn’t enough. When Mattie was alive, I could push it down inside me because I had things to do, I had to look after her.
And now …
I still have things to do.
I press my hands over my eyes and then I lower them and take a look around. This room is, of course, no less spectacular than any other part of the house. It’s so much bigger than any room with a toilet in it has a right to be. There’s a separate shower and a bathtub. The towels over the towel rack look softer than anything I’ve ever dried my hands with. The expanse of mirror over the side-by-side sinks is surrounded by lights.
I close the door loudly, just in case they’re listening downstairs, and then I move farther along the hallway, until I find the room that must be Silas and his wife’s. There’s a king-size bed in the middle of it, covered in a clean white comforter. The door to a walk-in closet is half open. There’s a vanity in one corner of the room, and a mahogany desk with a laptop on it in the other. I tiptoe over to it and move the cursor. The screen lights, prompting a password for desktop access. Shit … there’s a color photo on the desk, him and his kids. I pick it up and turn it over but there’s nothing on the back of it. I lift the laptop up. Nothing.
I open every drawer, riffling through them, shifting through papers and junk for anything that could be a book or a notepad with a goddamn list of passwords in it—people are still stupid enough to do that, aren’t they?—and find nothing. I fight the urge to slam the last drawer shut and push my hair from my face, frustrated. I’ve been up here too long.
I’ve got to get back.
I slink out of the bedroom, go into the bathroom and flush the toilet before I make my way downstairs.
I find Silas still in the kitchen, leaning on the island, scrolling through his phone.
His phone.
Kendall’s gone. I turn my face to the window. I can hear Noah and his sister talking faintly through the glass.
“Can I get you a drink or something, Lera?”
I nod without looking at him and he sets his phone down and goes into the fridge. I reach out quickly to touch the screen so it stays unlocked, but I don’t have time to pocket it.
Silas doesn’t ask me what I want, just sets a bottle of water between us. He gets one for himself and I watch him twist the cap off. His hands are big, veins snaking along the tops of them, his fingers are thick.
They look … strong.
“Welcome to the neighborhood.” Silas nods at the water and I open it. “I think my wife made a gift basket for your mom and dad. We were going to run it to you this weekend but you can just take it home. How are you liking Montgomery so far?”
I shrug and take a sip of the water and it is ice cold relief against my parched throat. My eyes drift to the still unlocked screen of his phone. I don’t know how long before it’ll turn off on its own. A few minutes, five, ten if I’m lucky …
“The Cornells’ house is pretty nice.”
“Y-yeah.”
Because I have to speak sometime, don’t I.
“What do you like most about it?”
“F-four w-walls and a roof.”
“It’s a real boon to Montgomery, having your parents in the community. I know it’s no fun having to uproot your life especially during your senior year. Your father’s research in…” He trails off, frowning. “What was it, again?”
“S-something…” Fuck. “Important.”
He laughs softly, the lines beside his eyes crinkling. “Okay.” Then all the laughter is gone, just like that and it’s awful when someone can do that, turn it on and off in less than the time it takes to blink. “Your car—I thought I saw it earlier.”
I set the water down.
“W-where?”
The silence between us is heavy and all I can think is I want away from him. I want away from him, I want away from him now …
He pauses. “Never mind.”
The back door slides open and Noah leans his head in, dripping water all over the hardwood floor. “Hey, Dad, you wanna grab me a drink and that leftover roast beef sandwich in the fridge? Lera, you coming back out?”
“Sure,” Silas says.
“Noah—”
Noah turns at Kendall’s voice. Silas puts his back to me as he opens the fridge. I grab his phone and slip it into the pocket and then I just—
I don’t remember the hurried trip down the front hall. I don’t remember opening or closing the front door. I’m outside and I’m breathing hard, like I’ve run some kind of marathon as I fumble my car door open, getting myself half-inside the driver’s seat. I swipe through Silas’s contacts with sweaty hands. Keith isn’t in there. Darren isn’t. But Jack—Jack H is. Langford. Place called Langford, at 451 Twining Street, Langford … 451—
“I’ll take my phone back now.”