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Dad’s truck is still gone when I get home so I think I’ve managed to avoid trouble. But when I go inside, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table, phone in hand. She slams it down and rushes at me, and for a second I think she’s going to hug me, but she just shakes me.

“Stop,”

I cry. “You’re hurting me.” She isn’t, not in my body anyway. But the flatness in her eyes, the blankness in Calvin’s—people who love you don’t look at you like that.

“Where were you?”

she demands.

“I—I found out about you and Dad,”

I say. “I was upset!”

“Where did you go?”

“I just rode my bike around.”

This is only half a lie. I did ride my bike.

“Did anyone see you?”

“No.”

This, too, feels like only half a lie because I’m not sure Calvin did see me.

Mom’s face is a mask of fury. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you could cause?”

“No, Mom, I don’t. They never taught back-from-the-dead protocol in Sunday school.”

Mom touches a hand to her cheek like I’ve slapped her. “Go to your room!”

“You can’t send me to my room. I’m twenty-four now.”

I look at my reflection in the oven door. I don’t look twenty-four. I look like I always did. I feel like I always did, except for the not sleeping or eating or peeing and not being able to feel and smell things.

“Fine, then, I’ll go to my room.”

And with that Mom turns and leaves.

I start to shiver again. Inside the house feels like outside in winter but when I go to turn up the heat, the thermostat is already at seventy-four.

I hear the sound of a car in the driveway. I run to the window and push open the shade, sure it’s Calvin, having come to his senses, but it’s only Missy.

“You’re back,”

she says with a sigh of relief. “We were all worried. Let me text Dad that you’re okay.” She dashes off a message on her phone before turning back to me. “You went to see Calvin?”

I don’t bother lying. She always had a Spidey-sense that could see right through me. “Don’t tell. Mom already freaked out at me for going anywhere.”

“She was really scared when you left. She thought you wouldn’t come back.”

“She looked at me like she wished I hadn’t come back.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“It’s not. It’s just hard for her to believe you’re here. It’s a lot to process.”

“Dad seems okay. And you hardly blinked.”

“That’s different,” she says.

“How?”

I ask but before she can answer, the phone rings. Calvin, I think, but then realize it can’t be Calvin because I don’t have a phone and we don’t have a landline anymore. Missy told me hardly anyone does. And, besides, the ringing is coming from Mom’s phone. The caller ID flashes a weirdly familiar name: Peg Weston.

“Is that Dina’s mom?” I ask.

Missy grabs the phone and answers it. “Hi, Peg, it’s Melissa. Mom left her phone in the kitchen.”

My mom was not friendly with Dina’s mom even when the two of us were close as kids. I always suspected she felt weird around her because she was a cop. Wait a second! Did she call the freaking cops on me?

I strain to hear what the detective is saying but I can’t and Missy’s face gives nothing away. “I think she’s just having a rough day,”

Missy says. “You know how it gets around the anniversary.” Missy goes quiet as Peg Weston—Detective Weston—keeps talking. “I’ll tell her,” Missy says. “Thanks for being so understanding.” More silence. “Yes, give my love to Kathy. Bye.”

“What?”

I ask after Missy puts down the phone. “Am I in trouble? Is Detective Weston going to, like, arrest me?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why is she calling Mom of all people?”

“From what I can gather, Mom called her last night and left a rambling voicemail message worrying that she’d um . . .”

Missy pauses and swallows. “Identified the wrong body and asking if there was any DNA left.”

“DNA? She called the cops to test my DNA?”

“Not the cops. Just Peg Weston.”

“Who’s a cop! Who Mom hates!”

I grab the phone from Missy and run down the hall to Mom’s room, barreling past the closed door. Mom’s just sitting there on the bed, staring into space. “Here!” I yank a piece of hair from my head. “You don’t believe it’s me. Test my DNA.”

Mom keeps staring, like I haven’t even spoken, like I’m still dead. “Look at me!”

I cry, throwing the phone at her. “Don’t call the cops. Look at me!”

She won’t, though. I rip out another piece of hair and throw it at her. “Look at me,”

I repeat. “Look at me.” I yank out more hair, a fistful this time. I feel the pressure, hear the sound of the follicles snapping, but don’t feel any pain.

“, stop it,”

Missy says, grabbing my hands and pinning them to my sides.

“What the hell?”

Dad bursts in just then. He runs to me, grabs my face in his hands, looking at me the way Mom refuses to.

I struggle free and yank out another hunk of hair. I pry open Mom’s hand and shove my locks inside it. “You want proof I’m your daughter. Here!”

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

Dad demands.

“Mom called Detective Weston last night. She wants to test my DNA.”

“Jesus, Gloria! Why can’t you see what’s right in front of you?”

“Because, Brian, it can’t be.”

“But it is,”

Dad says. “Isn’t this what you prayed for every night? And now that you get it, you deny your own daughter.”

Mom stares at the hair in her hands and then lets it drop to the floor. “My daughter is dead,” she says.

Peg

Thirteen Years Before

Peg Weston knew there were several strikes against her in a town like this: newcomer, police officer, Black, single mother, and now, lesbian. When she was snubbed, as she often was, it wasn’t a question of why so much as which why.

What had she expected, moving to a place where everyone knew each other and she knew no one, save for a late great-aunt who had unexpectedly left Peg her house? When she’d heard about the bequest, Peg thought she would sell the place. But as the estate moved through probate, her marriage was going through its own death throes. Like her aunt, it had been ill a long time, maybe doomed from the start, predicated as it was on a lie.

When Elijah said that he’d met someone else, Peg felt no rancor. Though it remained mostly unspoken, they were both aware by then that she was gay. “I guess it was obvious,”

Elijah said when the divorce papers were finalized and they could speak the truth out loud.

“Why? Because I’m a cop?”

Peg had asked.

“No. Because I’ve always repulsed you.”

This wasn’t true. That she did not desire him did not mean she was disgusted by him. He was, or had been, her friend, and the father of her daughter. It was only after he announced his plans to move across the country with his new, already-pregnant fiancée, leaving their young daughter, that the disgust crept in.

So, there she was, divorced, a single mom, and a newly, kind of, maybe sort-of-out lesbian—she couldn’t get used to that word; it sounded like a garden fungus—and the owner of a three-bedroom home with no mortgage. A fresh start seemed in order, so she applied to the squad here and once she was hired, she packed her and Dina’s lives into a U-Haul trailer and moved.

She had not expected the welcome wagon, or apple pies left on her doorstep, but she had underestimated how hard it was to make friends at her age. Mothers in the neighborhood gave her tight smiles and a wide berth. Men on the force didn’t know what to make of her; aside from Peg, there was only one woman on the force, and she was a rookie uniformed officer. All the other women worked in clerical positions. Maybe there was a gay community in town, but she was not yet ready to figure that all out.

She’d begun to doubt her decision and was considering selling the house when Dina made a friend. A good friend, maybe even a best friend. The two of them played in the front yard almost every day. In the evenings, Dina came home filthy, happy, burbling with stories about this . It was because of that Peg decided to stay.

As fall approached, the weather began to cool, but the girls bundled up in coats and played outside. “You can play inside,”

Peg told .

“My mom won’t let me go into strangers’ houses,”

replied.

Peg was surprised to hear herself considered a stranger but then again she had not spoken to the Cranes more than in passing. She decided to use this as an opportunity to be neighborly, maybe invite the family over. Also to properly explain some of Dina’s allergy rules, though Dina knew them fairly well herself.

So on a windy fall day, she walked over and knocked on the Cranes’ door. A little girl, perhaps three or four, answered. She wore a suspicious expression and a choppy haircut that looked as though it might have been the result of a craft-scissors experiment.

Peg crouched down to speak eye to eye with her. She was good with children, which was why she was sent to deal with most domestic calls.

“Aren’t you a policeman?”

the girl asked, even though Peg was not in uniform.

“Close, a policewoman. My name is Detective Weston.”

The little girl stared at her with a preternaturally solemn expression. “Where’s your badge?”

Peg showed it to her.

“How do I know it’s real?”

Peg showed her name, the rank, the details only real badges would have.

The girl’s suspicion melted into a gappy smile. “I’m a spy. It’s like a detective.”

“They’re similar,”

Peg said. “They both require observation and patience.”

“Only spies are secret.”

“This is true.”

The girl stuck out a tiny hand. “I’m Missy.”

Enclosing the child’s hand in her own, Peg felt an ache inside her. “I’m Margaret. But my friends call me Peg or Peggy.”

“What should I call you?”

“That depends; are we friends or colleagues?”

“We are compatriots,”

the girl said. It was an awfully big word for such a small child, yet Peg felt that it was perfectly apt.

“So, Missy, based on my detective skills, I’m guessing you’re ’s sister.”

“You know ?”

“Yes. She plays with my daughter, Dina.”

Missy frowned. “They won’t let me play with them. They say I’m too little.”

“Yes, big sisters can be tough that way.”

“But they’re pretending to be animals. I’m good at pretending.”

“Perhaps I can speak to Dina.”

Missy shook her head. “It won’t help.”

She seemed so certain about it, it stretched Peg’s heart a little further. “Are your parents home?”

“You won’t tell them what I told you about ?”

“Of course not.”

“Promise?”

“Compatriot’s promise.”

Her smile broke open her face. It was like a revelation.

“My mom’s home but she’s in her room with the Do Not Disturb sign up.”

“I see,”

Peg said, the police side of her brain already wondering why Gloria Crane was locked in a room in the middle of the day. She pictured empty booze bottles, neglect. She was thinking this as Gloria emerged into the foyer.

“Detective Weston is here,”

Missy announced.

Gloria’s face seized with panic. Police dropping by unannounced had a tendency to arouse the worst fears.

“Everything’s fine,”

Peg reassured Gloria, something she often needed to do when showing up at people’s doors. “I’m not here on official business. I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Margaret Weston. Peg. I’m Dina’s mother.”

Gloria’s shoulders slumped in relief, but now she was the one eyeing Peg suspiciously. Peg noticed the small gold crucifix around her neck. She knew the rumors about herself in town were already circulating. She felt the antipathy coming off this woman.

“The girls have been playing so much and I thought your family might like to come to dinner one night.”

Peg had been so keen on the idea before, already imagining the Dina-safe foods she might cook, but now the invitation came out tepid.

“That would be nice.”

Gloria’s reply was equally flat.

They stalled there, the invitation hanging and unwelcome.

“Maybe some weekend coming up,”

Peg said vaguely.

“Yes. In a few months,”

Gloria replied. “Things are hectic now. I’m studying for my boards.”

“The new year, then,”

Peg said, certain that this woman would never eat at her table, nor she at hers.

She walked down the path. It was hard living here, hard being simultaneously conspicuous and unseen. Maybe she had made a wrong choice. She fleetingly imagined moving back but it wasn’t as if she’d left a full life before. And Dina was happy. Peg could handle being lonely. She was used to it.

Right before she got to the end of the walk, the little girl called out, “Don’t forget, we’re compatriots,”

and something in Peg lifted. She had one friend in town, it seemed. Maybe she would be all right here after all.