We Told Six Lies Read online

  I laughed. “I’m old money. My mom is interested in buying this place, too. We are rivals.”

  You kissed my ear, quick. “I’ll have your head.”

  I grabbed your cheeks and pulled you back in. Said against your mouth, “I’ll have all of you.”

  Our waiter appeared. “Hello, my name is Tim, and I’ll be serving you tonight. What can I get you to drink this evening?”

  He shook out our napkins and laid them over our laps. You leaned back instinctually, but I was less graceful, watching his hand as it came close to my junk. Tensing.

  “I should tell you I’m Arturo’s daughter,” you said suddenly.

  The waiter looked at you with a blank face, and you smiled.

  “You’ll want to find out who that is,” you said sweetly. “We’ll have red tonight. A Malbec.”

  “And an appetizer,” I added, fumbling for the menu. Jabbing my finger at the first one I saw. “This one.”

  The waiter looked back at you.

  “That one,” you confirmed before setting your gaze on me and starting to talk about your day.

  “Certainly,” the waiter said, and dashed away.

  I watched him go and then laughed. “He’ll think you’re a mobster’s daughter.”

  You giggled. “Hopefully.”

  You watched the waiter disappear with regret. That look always came across your face when you’d manipulated someone. There were two parts of you, Molly. Have I told you that before? I’m sure I have. There was the part that celebrated getting what you wanted, however you had to. And then there was the human part, the part that hated being what you were.

  As for me, I like the first part of you best.

  The ruthlessness.

  The meal was the best I’ve ever had. I ordered the strip steak with mashed potatoes, and you ordered the salmon salad. We drank the wine the waiter brought us—two glasses and no more because surely he knew we were underage—and we finished the meal with a chocolate-raspberry torte and a cup of espresso because I saw other guests doing the same.

  When the waiter came along to drop the check, you dabbed at your mouth with the linen napkin and said, “You can tell the chef they can come over now.”

  The waiter’s eyes popped, but he recovered quickly. Grinned from ear to ear and said, “Of course, ma’am. Right away.”

  I bit back a smile as you waited. Hands in your lap. Back straight as a stretch of highway.

  The chef came out of the back, wiping her hands on a rag. She handed it to the waiter before offering her palm to you. You shook it firmly.

  “I’m so glad you could join us,” the chef said with an uncertain smile.

  “As am I,” you said. “You can rest assured it’ll be a positive note I send my father. The tuna tartare was divine, and your staff”—you referenced the waiter, who squared his shoulders—“was most gracious and intuitive. This man alone is worth my father’s attention.”

  The waiter beamed, and the chef laid a hand on his shoulder. “I have a great team. I’m so pleased to hear you enjoyed yourself.”

  The chef excused herself, but not without glancing back over her shoulder.

  I handed my money to the waiter in a black folder, and after he took it, I looked at you.

  “You are absolutely wild,” I said.

  You seemed as if you were about to say something but then stopped. Your entire face changed in that moment. I turned to see what you were looking at, and you said, “Cobain.”

  I saw him.

  He held a phone before him, clasped between two eager hands, the camera lens turned directly onto us. He had thick graying hair, sharp blue eyes, and a mole just to the right of his nose.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  But when I turned back around, you were frozen, your eyes twice the size they normally were.

  “Molly, do you know that guy?”

  You shook your head, and the look on your face said you were telling the truth. But you still seemed absolutely terrified. You shot up from your chair. Reached into your purse and produced a wad of cash, threw it on the table, and ran.

  I glanced down at the money for only a second before racing after you, leaving the waiter with an enormous tip.

  “Molly,” I yelled when we spilled out onto the sidewalk. You powered forward, not looking back. Not remembering that our car was in the other direction. “Molly, wait!”

  I reached for your hand, but you ripped it from my grasp. Spun around and glanced over my shoulder, searching for someone. “What do you want from me?” you snapped.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen you truly angry. Your body was a ball of smoldering black coal. I wanted to hold you in my hands and see how long I could stand the pain.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  You jabbed a finger into your chest. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “Everything.”

  You winced and looked down at your feet. “People only love me because I fill a hole in their life. I’m…useful.”

  I grabbed your hands again, and this time I held on too tight for you to pull away. “I am not your mother, Molly.”

  “What about my father?” you said so quietly I almost didn’t catch it.

  Surprise shook me, because you never talked about him. It had been an unspoken rule. Don’t ask. And so I didn’t. But now…

  “I don’t know your dad,” I said. “So I don’t know whether I’m like him or not.”

  “What about me?” you said, speaking to yourself but raising your eyes to mine. “Am I like him?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either.”

  Tears threatened to spill down your face, and I took a step back, aghast. Seeing you cry was like watching a statue weep blood. It was unnatural. Bone-shaking.

  I wanted to tell you that you were nothing like your father. That you were most likely born from Immaculate Conception. But one look in your face said you already knew the answer to your question. This was the reason there were two halves to my girl.

  “You should break up with me,” you said.

  “You’d have to try and kill me first,” I said.

  “I might.” You laughed, just a little. Then the smile fell from your face. “You can’t like me as much as you think you do. It’s just that I’m the first person your age who’s paid attention to you in a long time.”

  Your words stung, but I knew you were only testing me. Trying to get me to admit that I didn’t really want you.

  “Molly, I could name a hundred reasons why—”

  Your eyes lit up, and you grabbed my other hand. Pulled me against the side of the restaurant, several steps into a shadowy alleyway. You’d seen him again, that same man who was snapping pictures of us in the restaurant.

  “I want to get away, don’t you?” you asked me suddenly, manically. Your eyes darted across my face, and you looked certain but afraid. Like you were admitting something you weren’t prepared to share yet. “I just…I just want to escape.”

  I interlocked my fingers with yours. Glanced to the side, looking for the man. “Molly, who is that guy? Why was he watching us?”

  Your chin quivered, and my bones stretched and cracked with the need to repair you. To murder and maim if that’s what it took to see you smile again.

  “Cobain,” you said, your voice soft enough to split me in half. “Take me away from here.”

  “Okay.” I buried my head in your neck. Without you, what did I have? A father who gazed at me with a hopeful, never-ending smile? A mother who said she loved me, but couldn’t stay in the same room with me for more than ten minutes? A brother who was never around? “Okay.”

  NOW

  Nothing is as unsettling as the smell of disinfectant.

  My nose stings and my head swims from the
chemicals, but the police officer sitting in front of me doesn’t seem to notice.

  “How have you been, Cobain?” Detective Hernandez asks.

  I shrug.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” she says. “I know it probably wasn’t easy learning that your girlfriend ran away.”

  “Better to learn she ran than to be suspected of doing something to her,” I clip. “Why am I here? I figured you wouldn’t be looking for her anymore.”

  The detective frowns her bulldog frown. “Do you want us to be done looking for her?”

  Anger fires through my body. I lay my forearms on the table, grip my hands together until I’m afraid my fingers will break. “No. It’d be nice if someone besides me believed there’s more to the story than her needing some time away.”

  Detective Hernandez nods, looking at me in a way she hadn’t the last time I was here. I move my hands to my lap, uneasiness swimming through my gut. I wasn’t surprised when the cops showed up as I was walking home from school. I figured I’d pissed Nixon off enough to tell them I’d snuck into his house. I hoped they’d found Molly and wanted to let me know. But as I sat across the table from Detective Hernandez, I knew this was something more.

  “As I said before,” Detective Hernandez begins, “I want to bring Molly home. She’s a minor. And I don’t want something bad to happen to her while she’s out there, alone. If she is alone.”

  If she’s alone?

  Who the hell would she be with if not me?

  “Is there anything else, anything at all, you’d like to tell me?” she asks.

  It’s the way she’s looking at me, studying my face closer than she has in the past. It makes me squirm in my seat, even though I should be giving her the same look. Demanding to know what they’re doing to bring Molly home. Showing my frustration.

  “I think maybe someone did take her,” I say, if only to get her to stop looking at me that way.

  Detective Hernandez raises her eyebrow.

  I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, but it’s too late now.

  “Why would you think that?” she asks.

  I glance around the room. Run my chewed-off fingernails over my knees. “Where is the other one? Detective…umm?”

  “Tehrani,” she supplies, and smiles like she knows I remember his name. “He’s working another case right now.”

  The tension in my body eases. If they really believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that something bad happened to Molly, they’d have more than one head on the case.

  “There’s this kid at school. He told me to talk to Coach Miller about Molly.”

  Detective Hernandez’s brow furrows, but she’s quick to jot down the name.

  “Who was this that told you to talk to him?” she asks.

  I bite my lip. There’s no way I’d mention Nixon. The last thing I need is for them to bring him back in for questioning.

  “That’s okay,” she says. “Let’s talk about Coach Miller. Has he ever—”

  “There’s this girl Molly used to hang out with, too. Rhana. She was always jealous of her. And this guy, Jet, he didn’t like her. I know that for sure.”

  I don’t mention that I saw a picture of Jet with Destiny posted online from the night of the party, the night Molly vanished. Jet’s been into that girl since middle school, everyone knew it, and no way would he risk that relationship to screw with Molly or me.

  I just keep grasping anyway.

  Detective Hernandez nods. Makes another note. “Okay. Between those three people, who would—?”

  “And there’s a guy I used to work with at this gym. Duane. He made comments about her one time. And every time after that he’d always look at her in this way, you know? Just like…ogle her. I shoved him once.”

  Detective Hernandez leans back. Tilts her head.

  “And have you talked to Molly’s mom? Like, really talked to her? She’s a nutcase. I wouldn’t be surprised if she kidnapped her own daughter. Or did something to her so terrible that Molly didn’t have a choice but to run away.”

  “We went by—”

  “There’s one other thing,” I say, my voice low. My eyes lock on her so she knows how serious this is. “There was someone watching Molly. A man. He was at this restaurant I took her to, and he started taking pictures of us on his phone. She wouldn’t say who it was.”

  Detective Hernandez stares at me for a long, hard moment. “Your girlfriend has been gone for almost two weeks, and you failed to mention that someone was watching her, or that you suspected any of these other people”—she nudged her notebook—“until I brought you in for questioning a second time?”

  “I’m telling you now,” I shoot back.

  She sighs and glances down at her notes. “Okay, well, better now than never.”

  My body relaxes, imagining her looking into these leads. And finally, with my help, figuring out what happened to Molly.

  Detective Hernandez is quiet too long.

  “Did you need last names?” I ask. “Or addresses? I think I know Rhana’s—”

  “Just one more question, Cobain, and we’ll get you out of here.” She flips a page. Another one. “You said you and Molly skipped school on October eleventh, correct? Shortly after you met her?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiles, but I see the cracks in the gesture. “Just a little thing. When I called the school, they actually told me you guys were absent a second time. Eight days before Molly disappeared, to be exact. Why didn’t you tell me you two cut class more than once?”

  A jolt shoots through my body, because if she knows we skipped that day, she may also know about our…disagreement. But that’s all it was. One little disagreement, which is perfectly normal in relationships, but I didn’t want to mention it because she’d have turned it into something it wasn’t.

  I shrug. “I forgot about it. It was just for a few hours.”

  “What’d you guys do?”

  “I don’t really remember,” I lie, because I’ll never forget what we did. “Maybe went to see a movie.”

  “What movie?”

  Now it’s my turn to go on the offensive, because I didn’t do anything. And as she has reminded me time and again, I don’t have to be here.

  I stand up.

  “I don’t have to answer that,” I say. “I don’t have to answer any of your questions, because you know what? They aren’t doing anything to bring my girlfriend home. You’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “I was just asking a question, Cobain.” She flaps her notebook closed. “We’re done anyway. You’ve been very helpful, once again.”

  She stands and offers her hand.

  I consider not shaking it, but in the end, I do.

  She holds on a bit too tight, looks in my eyes a beat too long, and so it’s me who ends up pulling away. I back up a step and stare at her, my heart beating in a strange new way. I look down, then turn and walk away, feeling sick in a way I can’t fully explain. I don’t like the way she looked at me just now. The detectives were covering their bases when they brought me in the first time, but this felt like…this felt like suspicion.

  As I push through the glass door, I find myself thinking of the way my brother looked at me with that same level of uncertainty. I think of the way Nixon looked at me when he said, The way you were shaking her. I think of the way the kids look at me at school every day.

  Their faces, their words—it makes me squirm. Makes me uneasy. But I have no idea why.

  Because I have nothing to hide.

  MOLLY

  Molly discovered Blue’s weakness—his desire to feel needed—and she nursed it every chance she got.

  How long had she been there? Four days? Five? Long enough for him to bring more dresses. More flowers. Food, sometimes ripe, sometimes half rotten.

  She thanked him fo
r it all.

  And she took an interest in him.

  She was careful with her requests because she knew she could only make so many. He wanted to feel needed, yes, but also sought control. So first, she’d asked for the water. The next time, she asked for him to visit her at night.

  He’d made a strange sound when she’d asked this, but she was quick to clarify that she just wanted someone to talk to.

  “I’ll go crazy if you leave me alone,” she’d said when he didn’t come for two days after their night in the kitchen. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  In truth, Molly wanted to be as far away from him as possible. But she was afraid he’d panic and leave her down there to die. He may not have wanted to kill her, or even hurt her, but maybe he could convince himself to simply walk away. It’d be easy, she knew.

  If she was to gain his trust, she had to keep them interacting. So she asked for him to visit. And he had. This was the third night he’d come, and so she sat on her bed, cross-legged and ready.

  She wore another oversize dress—this one a short sundress she shivered in—but she’d let him see all of her in it. When she heard him descending the stairs, she slipped a strap off her shoulder. Flipped her hair over the other. Bit her lips to bring color to them.

  Molly knew what she was risking by drawing him to her, but if he wanted to do that to her, he would do it regardless of what she did. Go ahead, she thought to herself. Come close. Unbutton your pants. Lower your guard, Blue.

  I’ll destroy you in the end.

  “I hear you,” she said.

  Blue made a sound, and Molly imagined him sitting on the bottom step. It’s what he’d done the last two nights. He didn’t show himself to her often. She figured it was because she knew him. But maybe it really was that he didn’t want to get caught should he ever decide to let her go.

  “This dress is getting dirty,” she said. “I’d like to change.”

  It was the only time he removed her wrist restraints. He’d stand inside the bathroom and wait, not looking out even once. She’d have to yell that she was done in order for him to come out again.