The Deepest Secret (42 page)

At first, he doesn’t hear it. It’s a small sound, lost within the shuffling of his feet across the carpet, the buzz of a lawn mower, the faraway mutter of an airplane. His phone buzzes, letting him know he’s got a text—it’s from Zach:
Hey
—and when he stops to read and delete it, the small sound separates itself from all the other sounds and takes shape.

Someone’s knocking on the front door.

He lies on the floor and puts his ear to the vent. The sound magnifies. Maybe his mom’s left a window open. It’s an unimaginable possibility. What if more than one window’s open—what if they’re all open? The doors could be hanging ajar, too, flooding the downstairs with sunshine. Tyler’s bedroom could be floating on broad swords of sunlight. The thought makes him break out in a sweat.

Knock knock knock
.

Maybe it’s Detective Irwin, come to arrest Melissa.
Need anything from the store?
his mom had called through his door, and when he didn’t answer, she’d added,
Text me if you think of anything
. Tyler will tell him Melissa was only gone for thirty minutes. He’ll tell him that she hadn’t been drinking at all. He’s practiced his bored face in the mirror.

Knock knock
.

He rubs on sunscreen, pulls on his gloves, fits the mask Yoshi made him onto his head. He imagines she’s there, laughing at the crazy flames she’s cut out of plastic. Quick, before he can change his mind, he undoes the latch and swings open the door.

Everything’s in shades of gray. The stairs fall away, leading to the front door. Now he can hear the knocking more clearly. He goes downstairs and puts his mouth close to the wood. “Hello?”

“Mister?”

It’s just Connor, Holly’s kid. Not the police. Relief makes him tilt back his head and laugh. “Go home.”

“Mommy needs you.” Connor rattles the doorknob.

“You can’t come in. What do you mean she needs me?”

“Tyler!” Connor wails.

This is strange. Why would Holly send Connor over? She knows Tyler can’t come out. But maybe Connor had been sent to get Tyler’s mom. Maybe Holly really is in trouble.

He should go back upstairs. Instead, he opens the door and steps onto the porch.

A flash of white makes him blink. Then the world blooms bright before him, blazing with color. His heart leaps. He’s forgotten how things look in the sun. He holds out his hands, to touch the blueness of the sky, feel the green of the grass. He turns his head and sees Connor waving from his front porch.

The pavement sparkles with diamonds. No one told him treasure was buried there. Holly’s house looms before him, gray and black and white. “Holly?” His voice is muffled behind plastic. His voice is puny.

Connor seizes his hand and drags him inside the house, where everything is dancing, so bright it makes his head hurt. Now he hears the baby crying. He sounds like he’s upstairs in his room. “Where is your mom?”

Connor pulls him up the stairs and down the hall into Holly’s bedroom. Tyler feels shy. What will he find? The room is dark with welcome, and there Holly is, a slight lump beneath the covers, her face turned toward him, pale, her eyes closed and her hand curled beneath her cheek. She looks impossibly pretty.

Connor pushes her shoulder. She doesn’t move.

Tyler’s suddenly afraid. Didn’t Rosemary fall asleep one day and never wake up? “Holly?” But she still doesn’t move. He leans close and sees the pulse in her throat. “Holly,” he says, louder. He studies
her face. Nothing. “It’s okay,” he tells Connor, who’s sniffling and rubbing his eyes with his hands.

Tyler picks up the phone on the nightstand and presses the buttons: 9-1-1. He hears the operator’s voice, distant and small. She won’t understand him, not through the mask. “Tell her your mom needs help,” he says, handing the phone to Connor.

Christopher’s screaming down the hall. Tyler knows what to do. The baby probably needs his diaper changed, or maybe a bottle. He’d told Holly he’d never babysit again, but this isn’t really babysitting. As soon as the paramedics come, Tyler will give them Christopher and go home.

Light falls on the carpet outside the baby’s room. The shrieking grows louder as Tyler steps into the room, which is flooded with sunshine. The curtains are open here. The room is bouncing with UV, but Tyler feels none of it. Maybe he doesn’t have to stay in his room the rest of his life. Maybe he can walk around just like everyone else. Maybe he’s been stupid not to wear his mask, to follow all his mom’s rules.

Christopher lies on his back in the crib, his hands in fists by his sides, his legs stiff. His mouth is wide open, his cheeks bright red.

“Hey, buddy.” This is what his dad called him when he was little. He leans over the side of the crib and puts his hands around the baby’s tummy. Christopher flails, his arms swinging. He knocks Tyler’s mask from his head.

Tyler grabs at it, tries to fit it back on.
It’s okay, it’s okay
. Then it’s not. An angry pain flames up his throat, zips along his cheek right to the top of his head. His hair stands straight up. His skin is on fire. He drops and curls up in a ball. He hears himself shrieking.

My hero
, Holly had said.

EVE

E
veryone walks to the window to see the ambulance race down the street. They push through the front door to watch it stop at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. When the siren silences, Eve hears an awful screaming coming from inside the Rylands’ house. It makes no sense, but she knows. It’s Tyler. She races down the sidewalk, shoving her way through the paramedics to pound up the stairs and run to her son, kneeling on the floor with his arms crossed over his head. She yanks the blanket from the crib and throws it over him, crouching beside her son, crooning. Her worst nightmare, throbbing in three dimensions.

The doctor meets them at the emergency room. The nurse has a cubicle ready, the lights doused. Eve holds her breath as the doctor removes the blanket. Until this moment, she hasn’t seen the damage. The left side of Tyler’s face is swollen and red, blazing with large
white blisters. She doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t change the tone of her voice as she tells Tyler to hang on just a little bit longer, until the pain medication kicks in. But inside she begins praying.

I’m sorry
, Tyler keeps saying.
I’m sorry
. It breaks her heart.

Hours later, she hears David’s voice in the corridor outside. She turns as he draws aside the curtain and comes in, pulling his suitcase behind him. He’d gotten her message and come directly from the airport. She’s so glad to see him. She’s weak with relief.

David goes to Tyler and stands looking down at their sleeping son. Tyler lies propped up on pillows, his face bandaged and shiny with burn cream. “How is he?”

“It’s mostly second-degree. It was just a second or two of exposure, but the doctor says there’ll be some scarring.” This isn’t the worry, though. It’s the damage below the skin, where creams and gels can’t reach, that they can’t fix. The horror of this catches her breath. It makes the room spin.

David pulls her to him. She presses against him, feeling his heart beat, and he kisses the top of her head. This perfect moment, unexpected. She has missed this so.

“What happened?” he murmurs.

“I don’t know the whole story. For some reason, he went over to the Rylands’ house. I found him in their baby’s room. He’d already called the paramedics. He was worried about Holly. He kept asking if she was okay.”

“Holly?”

“I didn’t even know he knew her.”

“I’m thirsty,” Tyler whispers, and she turns back to him, reaches for the cup of water beside his bed.

Now that Tyler’s awake and the sun has gone down, it’s safe to take him home. She wants this very much. David helps Tyler into the backseat before climbing behind the steering wheel. She keeps up a cheerful monologue all the way home. She tells Tyler that Holly had just taken an extra sleeping pill, that she was in no danger whatsoever.
She tells him how brave he was to check on the baby. Melissa comes running out the front door when they pull onto their street. Charlotte meets them in the doorway. She has kept Melissa company all this time.

“Thank you.” Eve’s teary with gratitude.

Melissa hugs Tyler, even as Eve warns her to be careful. But Tyler hugs her back, just as hard, and Eve feels something take flight within her. Joy. It’s been so long.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” Tyler says after Charlotte leaves. “Can we order pizza?”

Eve laughs at this exquisitely ordinary request. She orders bread-sticks and liter bottles of soda, too, and cuts Tyler’s food into small pieces when it arrives. They sit on the patio. Night wraps warm around them. The stars are out, peppering the sky with brilliance. Sophie’s lights blaze behind the fence. David notices and frowns.

They have talked about Robbie’s arrest. Tyler has listened carefully. She wonders what he’s taking in and understanding. The medication will make him woozy. Perhaps he’s not picking up on the subtleties, but he’s fourteen now. He may understand more than she realizes.

“Charlotte asked if Robbie ever made me feel uncomfortable,” Melissa says.

“Did he?” Eve’s stricken at the thought.

“No. Gross.”

While David tidies up the kitchen, she helps Tyler upstairs. She and David have agreed—she’ll take the early shift with Tyler and wake David to take over a few hours later.

Tyler goes into his bathroom and she wanders around his room. She picks up his digital camera, turns it over, and begins to look through his pictures. He hasn’t said anything about his photography class in days.

The toilet flushes. “What’s going to happen to Robbie?” Tyler calls.

“There’ll be a trial.” Everything will be brought to light, and she’ll understand how the police had pieced it all together. She feels giddy with relief, Tyler’s near miss.

“Will he go to prison?” The water’s running in the bathroom.

“It depends on the evidence.” That backpack, his baseball bat.

What else?

“Like what they found in his truck?”

She’s not sure what she’s looking at, a picture of brown water? It’s the river, she thinks. There are several in a row, with thin fronds floating beneath the surface. When did he take these?

Here’s a picture of Holly Ryland, smiling directly into the camera, her arms around her little boy. Something cold spreads inside her. Tyler had known Holly. He’d gone over there with purpose.

“Mom?”

Here are pictures of Amy, taken outside her kitchen window, standing on a chair and reaching up. Then she’s dragging the chair. Then she’s entering the kitchen. Eve’s eyes blur with tears.

“What are you doing?”

She looks up to see Tyler. He’s reaching for his camera and she holds it up, out of his reach. “It wasn’t just the Farnhams you were spying on, was it?”

“That’s mine. Give it to me.”

She hates to see him so upset. “You know we have to talk about this. How long have you been sneaking out?”

“Give me that!”

“You can’t take pictures of people without their knowing.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did of Amy.”

“So what?”

Suddenly, something he’d said earlier registers. She looks at him, standing there defiantly, his eyes narrowed. She must have misunderstood. “How do you know the police searched Robbie’s truck?”

“I saw it on the news.”

But this detail hasn’t been on the news. Her heart begins to beat faster. “So you know what they found.” Or didn’t find. It was Robbie’s baseball bat they were looking for. But that’s not what Tyler volunteers.

“A picture.”

“A picture,” she repeats. She looks down at the camera in her hand.

“So they know he did it. So he’ll go to prison, right?”

Tyler’s been wandering around their neighborhood for weeks, possibly months. She holds the camera, scrolls back to the image of Amy jumping down from a chair, her too-small nightgown revealing a little girl on the cusp of young womanhood. Charlotte had tried to get rid of that nightgown, but Amy had a way of holding onto things she loved most. So even though the fabric was worn so thin it was sheer, and even though it hugged her too tight, Amy kept digging it out of the ragbag. An innocent shot, and yet not. “This picture?” she says. Her hand is shaking.

Tyler looks away. “No.”

My God. He’s lying
. She can’t even swallow. “Did you put this picture in Robbie’s truck?”

“No.”

Her mouth is dry. “Why? Why would you do this?”

He still won’t look at her. “I want my camera back.”

“Tyler. Why would you do this?” She’s whispering. She can’t bear to say the words louder.

“I didn’t.”

“Please, Tyler. Tell me. Did you know what it would look like?”

“What what would look like?”

He knows. He knows exactly what the police would think when they found it. She’s sick with dread. “We have to tell the police the truth.”

“They won’t believe you. That picture only has Robbie’s fingerprints on it. Not mine.”

She’s icy cold, trembling. “Why? Tell me! Why would you do this?”

“They were going to arrest Melissa.”

“No, no, they weren’t. Why would you think that?” she cries, confused.

His mouth turns down, and there he is. Her little boy. “They were, too. Everyone knew it.”

“Who? Charlotte? No, she was just upset. She didn’t mean anything.”

“They were going to arrest Melissa and I was never going to see her again.” He’s weeping. “She’s my sister. My sister.”

“Ssh,” she says. He needs to calm down. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

“You always say that.”

“I know.” She puts her arms around him carefully. “I know.”

The first Christmas that they were a whole and complete family, Melissa got a toy kitchen with knobs that turned and cabinet doors that opened. Four-month-old Tyler lay beneath the Christmas tree, his little fist in his mouth, watching the lights blink above him. He’d reach up to bat at an ornament and Melissa would softly say,
No, Ty. No touch
. She would take his little hand in her little hand and he would coo at her. All those ornaments, the glass Santas and colored balls and tinsel-tailed birds, all of them, are wrapped in bubble wrap and tucked into sturdy boxes. They are protected, as much as they can be.