Page 27

The next morning, while I’m pretending to sleep, the doorbell rings. I peek out my window and see that it’s Detective Weston, and my first thought is that Dina got in trouble for sneaking me to Whittaker last night.

Mom answers the door. “Oh, Peggy,”

she says with a shudder in her voice.

Melissa opens my door, puts a finger to her lips, mouthing, “Be quiet,”

before heading toward the kitchen.

I hardly see the point in hiding. Mom already told Detective Weston about me and now she’s here. But I don’t want to risk getting Dina—or me—in any deeper trouble so I eavesdrop from the edge of the hall where I can hear them but they can’t see me.

“Melissa,”

I hear Detective Weston say, her voice full of warmth.

“Hi, Peggy,”

I hear my sister say. There’s the sound of kisses.

“Is Brian here?”

Detective Weston asks. “I’d like to talk to all three of you.”

Brian is not here. After their fight last night, Mom sent Dad back to his apartment. “You don’t live here anymore,”

she’d said. Which had seemed even crueler than her telling him to go to hell.

“He’s at his place.”

An edge has crept into Mom’s voice. “But I can relay whatever message you have to him.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

“Let’s sit down in the living room,”

Mom says, and they all move away and I can’t hear them anymore.

I pad into the hall. I stop at the foyer, and when Detective Weston isn’t looking, I dart across into the kitchen.

Melissa sees me and her eyes go wide, but she keeps her mouth shut. Her gaze goes to the end of the kitchen counter, where it L shapes into a cutting board. Underneath the board is a hollow space, one of Missy’s favorite spy hiding niches. I nod as I hurriedly collapse my body into her hidey-hole.

“Thanks for being so supportive a few days ago,”

Mom is telling Detective Weston. “I think I had a brief lapse of sanity.”

“It goes with the territory,”

Detective Weston replies.

“I’m just sorry to lay that on you.”

Detective Weston reaches out to grab Mom’s hand. “Gloria, you never have to apologize to me. For anything. We’re family now.”

She reaches her other hand to Melissa.

Melissa told me that Mom and Detective Weston were friends now and Dina confirmed it, but seeing it before my eyes, I can’t quite believe it. The two of them had a chilly relationship from the start. Dina said it was because my mom was homophobic. I didn’t even know what that meant at first, but I knew it was bad enough to tell Dina to shut up. Later I realized she was probably kind of right. Mom is, or was, a word-of-God kind of person and our church was not one of those that was super accepting of things like homosexuality.

But clearly all that is behind them now. Because Mom is acting with Detective Weston the way she once did with Pauline. Which is to say warm, vulnerable, letting her feelings show.

“So what brings you here, Peg?”

Mom asks. “Not that you need a reason.”

“No, but I do have a reason. I’m here, I suppose, on semiofficial business.”

I don’t see Mom stiffen so much as feel it.

“What business is that?”

Mom asks, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I got a call from the chief of police today.”

“On a Saturday? Weren’t you and Kathy going to visit her kids?”

“That’ll keep. Anyhow, the chief had just come off the golf course with Scott Locke. Do you remember him?”

“Casey’s father?”

Mom asks. “Of course I do. I haven’t seen him in years. What about him?” I can hear the effort Mom is making to sound casual. It’s not really working, though. Her voice is brittle with fear.

“He wants us to open an investigation about those funds that were raised following ’s death.”

“Why?”

Melissa asks.

“I have no idea,”

Detective Weston asks. “Normally, I’d write this kind of thing off, but with it coming on the heels of your voicemail message, I just wanted to check in.”

The room goes sickeningly still. Mom buries her face in her hands and after a painful moment, looks up. “I think you know what happened to those funds. Brian spent them on detectives and billboards and his wild goose chase for a villain.”

“No, you misunderstand me, Gloria. No one is asking you to justify how the money was spent,”

Detective Weston says. “You didn’t solicit it. It was raised on your behalf. There were no stipulations given on how it should be spent. If you’d wanted to buy two thousand teddy bears, it would’ve been your right.”

“So what you’re saying is that Scott Locke is an asshole,”

Melissa says. “Not exactly breaking news.”

“Language!”

Mom’s voice is so weak there’s no muscle to her scold.

“I think my language is very precise,”

Melissa replies. “That whole family is awful. Casey was always such a manipulative bitch and she brought out the worst in ,” she says, her voice louder, I expect, for my benefit. “Not that I can blame her, coming from those parents. Her dad screws everything in town. And her mom is even worse. So holier-than-thou. Remember how she complained to Father Mercer after I came out that I was bringing ‘gay propaganda’ to the church? Dude, it was a rainbow pin.”

“I keep telling you to come to my church,”

Detective Weston says. “The Unitarians are very queer-friendly.”

“I like my church,”

Melissa says. “I grew up in it. I can change minds from the inside. Like this one.” She nudges Mom, who offers a wan smile and puts a hand against Melissa’s cheek.

Two things strike me: One, Detective Weston doesn’t know I’m back. And two, my sister is gay.

The first one is a surprise. Because if Mom didn’t tell Detective Weston about me, then who told Dina?

But Melissa being gay? That feels like something I already knew.

“I’ll refrain from commenting on Scott Locke while I’m here in a professional capacity, but now, let me change hats and talk to you as your friend.”

Detective Weston mimes taking something off her head and putting something else on it. “Gloria . . . Is there something you want to tell me?”

“No!”

Mom’s voice is a high-pitched squeak.

“Mom was having a moment the other night,”

Melissa says. “It just snuck up on her after all this time.”

“I understand,”

Detective Weston says. “No matter how much time passes, I still can’t believe it.”

Mom turns toward the kitchen, unknowingly looking right at me when she answers. “I can’t believe it, either.”

Peg

Two Years Before

When Missy Crane knocked on the door, Peg was pleasantly surprised to see the girl, now more of a young woman. Though they lived on the same block, Peg had not seen her since the funeral.

“Hi, Detective Weston.”

“I thought we agreed you’d call me Peg,”

she said, recalling their first meeting—what was it, more than ten years ago?

“Peg,”

she said weakly. “Can I come in?” She asked it so seriously, as if formally requesting an official appointment.

“Of course.”

She ushered her inside. “Would you like some tea?”

“I don’t want to put you out,”

Missy replied.

“I always make tea this time of day if I’m home.”

She was not just saying that. Rituals helped punctuate her otherwise empty days.

“Okay,”

Missy replied.

Peg went into the kitchen to turn on the kettle. Missy followed behind her, solemnly watching.

“The honey is in the cabinet,”

Peg said, and Missy automatically went to the right one, as if she’d been here many times before. “Lemons in the . . .” But the girl had already retrieved one from the Delft china bowl that had come with the house.

Peg unearthed some unopened shortbread cookies from the cabinet—the sweet tooth that had hounded her, and her hips, her entire life had vanished—then set up a tray. She carried it back to the living room. Though it was a frigidly cold day, bright rays of sun warmed patches on the couch where they sat, side by side.

As they drank their tea, they chatted. Peg asked Missy about school and Missy asked Peg about her job on the force. To be honest, she was considering retiring, though she hadn’t told anyone that. Nor had she said that part of the reason she wanted to leave was Crane. Peg had only been tangentially involved in the investigation because no one really believed it was a homicide, but it weighed heavily on her that they had never found the driver. Mostly because she knew how much it weighed on the Cranes.

On the one-year anniversary of ’s death, the local newspaper ran an update on the case. Peg had given a quote, referring to the low clearance rate for hit-and-runs. “Unfortunately, it’s unlikely we will find the culprit, but at this point, I think it’s more valuable to focus on the example of ’s life rather than the tragedy of her death.”

A bit of generous poppycock, Peg thought, because though she had forgiven , she didn’t particularly consider her a beacon.

A few weeks after the article ran, she received an angry screed of an email from Brian, accusing her of not pursuing ’s case because of some old enmity between the girls. The suggestion was preposterous. As if any of their juvenile squabbling mattered now. And even if it had, her professional standards wouldn’t allow her to flub a case because of personal resentments. If she couldn’t have investigated the case fairly, she would have recused herself. And the truth of it was, there was no homicide. It was vehicular manslaughter, not her domain.

A few months later, Earl Simcox, a retired cop who now worked as a private investigator, asked her out for a beer.

“What do you know about Calvin Judd?”

She sighed. “You’re barking up a dead tree,”

she had told Earl. “We looked into him as a potential suspect for about five seconds because he had a black eye and didn’t go to the funeral. The latter might be unorthodox but it’s not unheard of. As for the black eye, it corroborated his rock-solid alibi. He was nowhere near the scene of the accident.”

“Well, he’s got quite the rap sheet now.”

Earl flipped open his notebook.

“That all came after,”

Peg said. “Grief makes monsters out of people.”

Back then it had been a throwaway comment. Oh, did she know that now.

She looked at Missy as she sipped her tea and told the girl the truth. “I’m thinking of retiring.”

“Why?”

“I suppose I don’t feel like I’m helping people anymore. And really I moved here for Dina and she’s not here anymore.”

“I understand why you might feel that way but it’s too bad.”

“Why is it too bad?”

Peg really wanted to know. She wanted this girl to tell her.

Missy drained the rest of her tea. Peg went to refill the cup, but Missy shook her head. She had seemed determined before; now she looked defeated.

“It’s too bad,”

the girl said, “because I was going to ask for your help.”

“You need my help?”

Missy’s chin trembled. Peg remembered the first time they’d met. That ache in her heart. Here it was again.

“Tell me how I can help you, Missy.”

The girl looked at her feet. “I’m gay,” she said.

“Okay,”

Peg said, treading carefully, knowing how religious the mother was. “First of all, you should know that it’s who you are and it’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know,”

she said. “ told me that.” She paused as if to correct herself. “Or she would’ve.”

“She would have been absolutely right,”

Peg said. She would never forget what had done to Dina, but if she had been at all accepting of her sister, it made Peg feel a little warmer toward the girl.

“I need to tell my family,”

Missy said. “I know it’s going to hurt them and they’ve been through so much already.” She looked up at Peg with watery eyes. “Will you help me?”

The Crane family had caused Peg Weston such a load of grief. First, Gloria rebuffed her. Then, dumped Dina in the cruelest of ways. And following ’s death, Brian came at her. Gloria had made some half-hearted attempts to be kind in the aftermath of everything. Too little too late, as far as Peg was concerned.

But she’d always felt a bond with Missy, a cord connecting them all this time. “I’ll help you,”

she promised. “Of course I’ll help you.”