Chapter 9
Coach Delgado blew the whistle and gathered them at the center of the field, and that's when he said it.
“Bree Bowman is going to be out for the week. She's visiting family in Temecula. Grandmother, I think.” He was matter of fact about it. “Cat, I'm going to need you to adjust your positioning—”
Kayla wasn't listening to the rest of it.
She was watching Mandy.
Mandy was standing two people to her left, her stick in both hands, her eyes on Coach Delgado. From the outside she looked fine. Slightly tired maybe, but it had been a long week.
Except her knuckles were white on the stick.
Kayla looked back at Coach Delgado and nodded at the right moments and then practice started and she ran the drills and did what she was supposed to do, but the whole time she watched Mandy out of the corner of her eye.
Mandy was playing. She screwed up on two easy passes, then during scrimmage she had an opportunity for the goal that she missed by a mile.
Mandy was too good for this.
At the water break Kayla fell into step beside her. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Mandy took a long drink from her water bottle.
“You okay?”
“I screwed up, is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I’m not talking about that. Everybody has off-days. I’m talking about Bree. You seemed upset. Did you know she was going to visit her grandma?”
“Yeah. She mentioned it.” She’d taken too long to answer. Way too long.
“She didn't say anything to me.”
Mandy shrugged. “Bree doesn’t tell you everything. You’re not the center of the world, Kayla.”
That stung. “It’s just that I’m worried. About her. About you.”
“Well stop it. We’re big girls.”
Kayla watched her. “Mandy.”
“I'm fine.” She turned and looked at her directly for the first time. Her eyes and voice were steady and Kayla almost believed her. Almost. “I'm tired and I have a lot going on at home and it's nothing. If you don’t let it go… Well I don’t know what I’m going to do. But it won’t be good. Got it?”
Kayla’s stomach dropped. “Okay,” she whispered.
Mandy's shoulders dropped half an inch. “Thank you.”
They went back to practice.
Kayla ran the next two drills and made herself focus and stop watching Mandy.
She was doing fine at that until she heard Coach blow the whistle in a different pattern and she looked up to see Mandy's stick on the ground and Mandy walking fast toward the sideline, one hand over her mouth like she was going to throw up.
Kayla started after her.
“Leave her,” Cat said quietly, appearing at her elbow. “You’re going to make it worse.”
Kayla stopped. She watched Mandy disappear into the field house.
Cat was right, she should leave it. The idea of losing Mandy, it killed. But her gut told her this was something bigger than losing her friendship. But right now there was nothing she could do. She went back to the drills.
Coach let them go early. On her way to the locker room Kayla stopped at the field house door and pushed it open a crack.
Mandy was sitting on a bench with her head in her hands, the team manager crouched in front of her talking quietly. Mandy looked up and saw Kayla in the doorway.
Their eyes met.
Mandy shook her head. Small. Defeated.
Not now. Not you. Please.
Kayla let the door close and walked to the locker room. She got changed and didn't say anything to anyone, because that was what Mandy had asked for, and right now it was the only thing she could give her.
She got home to find her mom at the kitchen island with crab dip and toasted bread in front of her.
“How was practice?” her mom asked without looking up.
“Who’s coming over?” Kayla asked at the same time. She grabbed a piece of bread and scooped up some of the crab dip. “Yummy.”
“Aunt Lydia and Aunt Angie.”
“Cool.”
“So how was practice?”
Kayla dropped her bag. “Bree Bowman isn't at practice. Coach says she's in Temecula for the week. Visiting her grandma.”
Her mom, who had been moving back to the fridge to probably get something else out, turned back to give her a long look.
“And Mandy threw up and had to leave early.” Kayla pulled out a stool and sat. “She won't tell me what's going on. She asked me to leave it alone.” She paused. “Mom. Something is really wrong.”
Her mom pulled out another stool and sat down. She looked at Kayla with the expression that meant she was really listening.
“What do you think is wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, but something. They’re both acting really weird. Nervous. Scared almost. And it’s not something Mandy is willing to share with me, and she always tells me everything.”
“You’re right, honey, I think something is going on, too.”
“You do?”
Before her mom could respond, the doorbell rang. She went to get it and Lydia on the porch with her tablet under her arm. She walked past her mom and headed straight to the island.
“Hey, sweetheart.” She kissed the top of Kayla’s head and set down her laptop, and didn’t even seem to notice the crab dip. Which was just another weird thing in a day of weird things.
“Sophia, we’ve come up with a couple of things,” Lydia said as she fired up her tablet. Then she looked at Kayla. “Sweetheart, maybe you should go up to your room, or watch TV or read a book or something.” Then she winced. “God, that came out wrong. You’re fourteen. I know, go text your boyfriend.”
“Lydia!” Mom called out sharply.
“What? She has a boyfriend, right? I mean Beth’s oldest has a boyfriend. Good-looking boy. He plays guitar. Of course Clint and Jack hate that about him.”
“Kathleen is seventeen, for God’s sake. Kayla is fourteen.”
“Exactly, they’re both in high school.” Lydia turned back to Kayla. “I hate to be so pushy, but really, your mom, Aunt Angie, and I really need to talk about some things privately. And for the record, I think you’re old enough to date.”
There was another knock at the door.
“Thank God!” Mom exclaimed. “Kayla, can you get that?”
Kayla knew she was going to yell at Aunt Lydia and she was going to miss out, but she went to let in Aunt Angie.
“Hi Kayla, you look beautiful.”
“Thanks, Aunt Angie. Mom and Aunt Lydia are in the kitchen arguing.”
“Why are they arguing?”
“Aunt Lydia said I was old enough to date.”
“You’re only fourteen,” she exclaimed.
Kayla giggled.
They walked into the kitchen. Neither Lydia nor her mom were talking. But Lydia now had a glass of sangria in front of her, and she was grinning. “Hi, Angie.”
“Kayla is too young to date,” Angie said.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Who’s watching Declan and Nora?” Sophia asked Aunt Angie.
“Rebecca. I mentioned I was coming over and she volunteered. She said she had papers to grade. The only caveat is that I need to bring home some of your baked goods. You better have something here.” Angie pointed her finger at Sophia’s chest.
Sophia laughed. “I baked brownies.”
“How are you not three hundred pounds?” Lydia asked as she scooped up more crab dip.
“Self-control.”
“Okay, we’ve established Kayla isn’t dating,” Lydia said, but she looked at Kayla. “Seriously though, sweetheart. The three of us need to talk privately.”
“Actually, Kayla needs to be part of this conversation,” Sophia said.
Angie frowned.
“What?” The scoop of crab dip that Lydia was going to bite into froze in space.
“She has information related to all of this. She has it from Peggy and Lettie’s daughters' perspective.”
“Please don’t tell me it’s bad news,” Angie whispered.
“It’s not good.” Kayla whispered back.
“Shit.” Lydia set down her snack on the napkin in front of her.
“Okay, what do you have?” Sophia asked Lydia.
Lydia looked down at her tablet. “I've been digging into Mary.
On the surface she's completely real. Employment history, a rental history going back four years in Phoenix, a college transcript from ASU, tax records, a dormant Instagram she never posted on but that existed.
Everything you'd expect.” She paused. “It's good work. Whoever built her identity knew exactly what a background check looks for and gave it everything it needed.”
“But?” Sophia asked.
“But Rylie and I have been doing this a long time.” Lydia set down the tablet.
“The documents are real. The accounts are real.
The paper trail is real. But the texture is wrong.
When an actual person lives a life, the digital record of it is messy.
Inconsistent. You get a gap when someone's going through something, a burst of activity when they're happy, random things that don't connect to anything.
Mary's record is too clean. Too evenly distributed.
It's the work of someone who understands what a real life looks like and constructed a version of one, but they built it from the outside in.” She looked at Sophia.
“A real person doesn't look like a real person on paper.
Mary looks exactly like a real person on paper. That's the tell.”
“Who’s Mary?” Kayla asked.
“She’s a barista at the Bay Brew, five blocks from the bakery. I saw her and Bree’s mom having a really intense conversation a few days ago. It wasn’t right.”
Kayla frowned.
“What’s more, when she handed me my coffee, she knew my last name, but I’d paid in cash, so I don’t know how she could have.”
“Well, you do own the bakery a few blocks away,” Kayla said slowly.
“Yeah… but it was still kind of weird.”
“That’s why you’re having the aunts check into her?”
“That, and the fact that when I talked to them at your game, Mandy’s mom didn’t even know that Coach had taken her out of the game, she was so focused on her conversation with Lettie. They were both drinking out of Bay Brew coffee cups.”
“Not Yetis?” Kayla asked.
Sophia shook her head.
Angie turned to Kayla. “What do you have?”
“Mandy has been freaked out about something. I’ve known her since first grade.
She tells me everything. I mean everything.
But something big is bothering her, and she won’t tell me what it is.
I asked her at school, at our study group.
Then today, Coach announced that Bree is off in Temecula visiting her grandma for a week.
Mandy didn’t look just freaked, she looked scared to me.
When I asked her again what was wrong, she said nothing again…
” Kayla looked down at the food on the island.
“What, honey?” Sophia asked gently.
“She told me that the world doesn’t revolve around me.”
Angie sucked in a deep breath.
“She didn’t mean that,” Sophia assured her.
“That’s the problem, Mom. At that moment, she was doing everything she could to push me away. I’ve got to help her. I’ve got to help both of them.”
She watched as her mother exchanged looks with Angie and Lydia. “What?”
“I don’t know, Kay-Kay. Angie, did you find out anything?”
“Yeah, both of their fathers are working on the same top-secret project.”
“I thought they were mechanics,” Sophia said.
Angie looked around the island, and her gaze rested on Kayla. “They are mechanics, but they are the best of the best, and sometimes they’re called in to do quality control. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“You’re not going to say anything more because I’m here, right?”
Angie winced, then nodded.
“If it’s top-secret how do you know about it?”
Kayla watched her mom cross her arms and arch her eyebrow. “Yeah, Angie. How do you know about it?”
“Years and years of investigative skill. Let’s leave it at that. But rest assured, I don’t know specifics.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“If it’s top-secret, could someone have taken Bree to get information?” Kayla asked.
All teasing stopped.
“The first thing we’re going to check is Bree’s whereabouts. I’m almost sure she’s at her grandma’s,” Lydia assured her.
“We need to do more research,” Angie said. “And I forgot that Declan has a paper due that I promised to help him with. So I better get going.”
“Yeah, I need to go too.”
“Don’t forget the brownies,” Sophia said.
Kayla watched as the women quickly left. They left too quickly. Despite what Lydia said, something cold settled into the pit of Kayla’s stomach as she headed to her bedroom.
Bree wasn’t at her grandma’s.
She didn't know how she knew. She just knew.
She sat very still and waited to find out if she was right.