Chapter 54
Fifty-Four
The fresh air feels amazing on my burning skin. I breathe deeply but immediately start coughing again and I collapse onto
the grass of the backyard.
Miles runs over and hugs me. I groan as pain racks my entire body. He sobs against me and I hold him, whispering quiet apologies
over and over. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell him how sorry I really am for getting him wrapped up in all this.
I let Miles go and turn to see Valencia crouched down at the edge of the yard with her hands over her mouth and nose. She’s
watching the boathouse burn as the fire spreads up through the roof.
“I don’t have my phone,” Miles says. “To call the police. Or fire department.”
“Someone will call,” I say, too tired to get up and go into the house to find our phones. Miles’s parents have probably been
wondering where he’s been all day. They’ll look out and see the burning boathouse eventually. Then they’ll call. Or one of
the other neighbors will.
I look over at Valencia. She’s sitting on the ground, leaning against her heels, almost as if she’s praying.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Miles. He nods as I stand and walk over to Valencia.
I crouch next to her. She’s not crying anymore, but her eyes are glassy in the firelight.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know there’s nothing I can do, and sorry isn’t enough. But I needed to—”
“I chipped your tooth,” she says, interrupting me.
Is she talking about Nate? Was this something that happened to him? Some cute story maybe that she remembers about him? And
she still thinks I’m Nate because having to shoot her own son has made her final tether to reality snap?
But then she turns to me, and she seems lucid. “When I did your cleaning the other week. I chipped your tooth.”
“Oh,” I say. What is she trying to tell me? A dental mishap is nothing compared to telling a lie—several lies—that destroyed
an entire family. “That’s okay.”
She frowns. “When Nate was four, I gave him trail mix that had dried cherries in it, and one of them had a pit. He bit down
on it, and it shattered one of his baby teeth. He needed oral surgery—minor—but there was some scarring there. On one of the
back molars that was below the gumline.”
Oh.
“So when you were in for your cleaning, I chipped a part of your tooth off, so it would look like Nate’s. I thought if anyone
demanded proof, I could show them the chip and Nate’s old X-rays. They wouldn’t be able to check your other teeth because
Nate’s X-rays were baby teeth. But they’d see the chip out of your adult tooth.”
That’s why it hurt so bad after she cleaned them. I thought it was because I hadn’t been to the dentist in over a year.
But that would mean . . .
“You knew I wasn’t Nate.” For those keeping track, my record is now oh-and-six for people who actually believed I was Nate.
She looks like she doesn’t know the answer to that. But then she says, “I was willing to do anything to believe you were him.
I knew he was dead . . . I think from the moment Marcus woke me up and told me he was missing. I felt it in my gut. But I
told myself it was nerves. That we’d find him pretty quickly, maybe playing with one of the other kids in the neighborhood.
But it stayed with me. Every day.” She puts a fist to her solar plexus. “I felt it, every day. Then I got the call about you.
And it was like . . . a splinter had finally been removed. But I knew you weren’t Nate the second I looked at you.
“And the splinter came back. But this time it wasn’t a splinter; it was like a knife. I knew you weren’t him, but I wanted you to be him so badly.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “So I told myself you were. And then I told everyone else you
were. And I felt better.”
Valencia reaches out and grasps my hand.
“I did everything I could to force myself to believe that you were Nate. The more time I spent with you, though, the more
I realized you weren’t him. But I also learned that I didn’t care.”
A sob escapes my throat, and it shocks me so much I clamp my free hand over my mouth.
“I know you’re not my son,” she continues.
“But you remind me of him. He was funny. Effortlessly. And there were moments after we brought you home when I saw that in you, too. You’d say something, but as soon as you said it you’d shut down, as if you were scared someone would notice you.
The real you. And every time that happened, I wanted to hug you and tell you it was okay to be yourself.
It felt like a second chance. You made it so easy to love you.
I think even Marcus realized that, too.”
And now I can’t hold in the sobs. She reaches over and hugs me, and again, it hurts, but this time I squeeze back.
Valencia is what a mother should be. What my own mom should have been. She even had unconditional love for Easton despite what he just put her through. And
I can’t imagine how terrible it must feel to kill your own son, but even that was a mercy. Burning alive would have been horrific
for Easton. I’d never say it to her, but he deserved it after everything he did.
I don’t need to feel any kind of love for Easton. He wasn’t my real brother, and he was a shitty brother to the real Nate.
But Valencia still loved him.
Once I get myself together and stop crying, I sit back. The sirens of fire engines echo in the distance. They’ll be here soon.
And they’re going to want the truth. Especially since the truth also now involves a murdered retired FBI agent.
“Do you think they’ll arrest me when we tell them who I really am?” I ask.
Valencia shakes her head. “Not after everything we’ve been through. They’ll have plenty of terrible shit they need to sort
out.”
I don’t know if I should even say it, but I want her to know how much I appreciate her. “You were a great mom to me. So I
wanted to say thank you, Valencia. I felt more love from you and Marcus than I ever felt from my own parents.” Which is really
saying something since I considered both of them to be murderers at multiple points in our relationship.
She smiles and wipes a tear from my cheek with her thumb. “Well, they’re shitty parents for not realizing how wonderful their son is.”
I laugh because she doesn’t mean that. I’m a liar. Easton said a lot of fucked-up things, but that part was true.
She looks back at the boathouse.
“What if we kept lying?” she says.
At first, I don’t understand, but then I connect the dots. But she can’t really be serious. She isn’t asking me to keep saying
I’m Nate. How would we explain any of this? Including Agent Grant.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Not about Easton,” she says. “JT’s and Agent Grant’s families need to know the truth. But about you. Your parents— Knowing
you’d be going back to people like that . . .” Her eyes cloud with anger as she shakes her head.
“So I . . . keep being Nate?”
“That part’s already covered,” she says. “People will be focused on Easton now.”
Would we be able to get away with that? Maybe for a bit, but with all the murder and mayhem now, a judge would definitely
sign an order to have our DNA tested.
Or maybe Valencia is right. Maybe all the Easton stuff is a way to let me keep hiding in plain sight.
The sirens are getting closer. Lights flash down the street where the road curves.
Miles gives me a questioning look.
I turn back to Valencia. “We need to get our stories straight.”