The Darkest Lie (17 page)

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

The air wheezes in and out of my lungs. My heart tries to drill a hole through my chest. Again, we wait, limbs stiff and muscles tight. Not daring to make a sound, but ready to sprint if it comes to that.

One minute passes, and then two.

A full five minutes later, and it's clear that no one's coming. I let out a breath, too on edge to be relieved.

Sam rises into a crouch. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

The best idea I've heard all day. Maybe even all year.

“Call me anytime,” Sam says twenty minutes later. I pull into his driveway, and he laces his fingers through mine on top of the black, metal-edged box that's been sitting between us the entire ride home. “If you need to talk. It's not like I'll be sleeping, anyway.”

“Too busy working on your article?” It's due on Tuesday, four days away. He's only mentioned the due date once, and I didn't write it down. But I don't need to. The date's ingrained in my mind. What are we going to find before the article's due? And if we don't find anything, what will Sam write the article about?

“Nah. Too busy jumping at every car that backfires. I don't need to lose sleep over the article. I've got some preliminary thoughts.” Before I can ask what those thoughts are, he brings my hand to his lips and kisses my fingertips. “Will you be okay?”

“Sure. There's not a bomb in this safe. Or a severed head. Or the chopped-off remains of her hair.”

Oh god. Why did I say that? What if there
is?

We both look at the metal safe. It measures eighteen inches by twelve, and it could hold anything.

“Call me,” he repeats. “Unless you want me there when you open it?”

“I'll be fine.”

I drive home. Dad's nowhere to be seen, and Gram's still at her poker night. Surprise, surprise. The way I come and go, you'd never guess I had two so-called guardians.

I take the safe to my bedroom and sit cross-legged on my bed. I clench the silver key in my fist until it turns hot and slippery.

My fingers itch for a quick sketch. Sam, in his midnight-robber gear, untangling my braid with his fingers. The moon shining down on us with its all-seeing gaze. The sawed-off padlock and the pools of cooled wax. I want to draw all this and more, although there's no danger of me forgetting this night. But I know if I take pencil to paper now, I may never stop. I may never open the safe.

What am I afraid of? Not finding the answers for which I've been searching? Or finding them?

I pick up the snow globe, give it a shake, and set it beside me. The snow falls on the girl and her mother and her mother's mother five times, and then another five, and I'm still not ready. No matter. I'm never going to be ready. I just have to do it.

I take a deep breath and slide the key into the lock. Of course, it fits perfectly. Inside, I find not blood and gore, not hair, not brains, not any organic matter. Instead, a slim notebook lies at the bottom of the safe, a notebook with a leather cover and yellowed pages.

No, not just a notebook. I flip through the pages and see my mom's loopy handwriting, dates from over twenty years ago. A journal. From—I do the calculations on my fingers—my mom's senior year.

Why did she go through all this trouble to leave me her journal? Will I find out why she posed for those topless photos? Learn what happened to her a quarter of a century later?

There's only one way to find out. I lie against my pillows and begin reading.

 

 

My chest feels tight, like I've forgotten how to breathe. I read the words of the first entry again. And then again. I want to savor them. No, more than that. I want to swallow my mother's words, make them a part of me so I never have to let her go.

So much hope in these lines. So much excitement. Sure, there's an underlining cloud of sadness, but her overall energy and zest for life shines through.

Back then, the scandal with Tommy was an unfathomable speck in the distant future. Whatever her mistakes or failures, they had yet to occur. My mother was nothing but a girl—a girl who had lost her own mother the previous year. A girl very much like me.

My fear disappears. The uncertainty, the anxiety, even the anger lift like the fog on a sunny morning. It doesn't matter what I find in these pages. Because I now have something I haven't had for the past six months. My mother, back again.

I clutch the journal and keep reading.

 

 

I met someone today. Oh, I suppose I didn't just meet him. I've known him for years, but I didn't really
know
him, if you get what I mean.

 

 

Alarm bells ring in my head, loud and long and insistent. This isn't going to end well. It can't. I wouldn't be lying here reading my mom's journal if it had. Her topless photo wouldn't be floating around the Internet. Something about her words crawls inside me, something oddly familiar that tangles my stomach with my kidneys and lungs. Something not good.

I want to shout at the journal, at the seventeen-year-old Tabitha.
Run! Run as fast as you can from this relationship. He isn't good for you, not if he makes you keep your relationship a secret.

But she can't hear me, and even if she could, it's too late. The past has already happened. All that's left for me to do is to find out how bad it was.

My hands trembling with fear, I continue reading.