Liars, Inc. (16 page)

MY PHONE BUZZES AND I
jump. It's Parvati. Indecision stabs me in the chest. Two seconds and then I answer. I need info. She might have it.

“What were you trying to tell me about Preston?” I ask.

“Oh my God, Max. So it's true? They let you out?”

“Yeah,” I say, not bothering to explain. Every syllable out of her mouth hurts me. All I can hear is her saying Preston's name as she rocks back and forth on top of him. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if the visual is playing out on the patterned wallpaper of Ben's office instead of the inside of my skull. “What were you trying to tell me?” I ask again.

“What's wrong? Are you mad because I got us caught?” She's still talking, but I hold the earpiece away from my head
because I almost can't stand it anymore. “My parents will drop that stupid restraining order once they find out you're innocent and—”

“I know about you and Pres.” The words come out sharply and suddenly, like I'm vomiting up bowling balls.

Dead silence. And then a tiny breath. “What?”

“Your
friend
Preston? I know you guys . . . slept together.”

“Max.” Her voice softens. “I can explain.”

“No, P,” I say. “I don't want to hear about how it was all practice for being a spy or maybe a school project you two did together on the Kama Sutra.” My voice starts to crack. I am dangerously close to losing it. “All I want to know is what was so important that you left me three messages.”

“All right.” She sounds hurt. I don't think I've ever raised my voice to her before. Never had a reason to. “I think maybe Preston was adopted, and Violet Cain was his real mother.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I was going through all of my texts and emails from Preston, looking for anything that might be a clue. One of them reminded me of something that happened a couple years ago.”

“What?”

“I found a lot of money in the trig book, like thousands of dollars. I asked Pres about it and he said his parents gave it to him. Said they were always giving him money because
they felt bad about the adoption.”

“What did he mean?” I ask.

“I don't know,” Parvati says. “He was drunk at the time, and after that he never brought it up again.”

Probably because they were too busy getting naked. Bile surges up into my throat. I swallow it down, try to keep from pushing the entire computer onto the floor. “Well it's an interesting theory, given her age. But she can't be,” I say, “because I have a birth announcement in front of me, DeWitt and his wife holding baby Preston, back when DeWitt was the governor.”

“Damn it. I thought for sure I was onto something,” Parvati says. “I just keep thinking about Violet being thirty-five. There's no way Pres would be hooking up with someone that age. He's never shown any interest in older women. There has to be some other reason he went to see her.”

“Uh-huh.” I'm trying to focus, but my brain keeps flashing back to those pictures of Parvati and Preston.

“Are you at home?” she asks, oblivious to my thoughts. “I'll sneak out. We can go through all the information together.”

“No,” I say tersely. “I've got to go. I'll double-check the adoption angle, just in case.”

“Come on, Max. You know we work better as a team.”

“I thought we did,” I say. “But that was back when I thought we told each other the truth.” I hang up before she can
answer. She calls back, but I let it go to voicemail. She sends me a text and I turn the phone off without reading it.

Using just the light of the computer screen so as not to wake anyone up, I scan the entire study, looking for Ben's giant key ring. I don't see it, so I head into the hallway, planning to check the kitchen next. My foot collides with something hard and plastic and I trip over a bouncy seat parked outside the nursery. “Son of a bitch,” I say, just a little too loudly. One of my sisters stirs in her crib.

Uh-oh. The whole house shakes with the wailing of a healthy-lunged baby, which is shortly joined by the wailing of a second healthy-lunged baby.

Darla stumbles out of her bedroom in a flannel nightgown, her hair sticking up on top. “Max?” She stops like she isn't sure I'm real. “We got your message, but—”

“I know,” I say. “I owe you an explanation, and I wish I had one.”

I follow her into the nursery, where she picks up Jo Lee and gestures for me to get Ji Hyun. It might be the first time I've really held one of my little sisters.

“Sorry,” I say. “I think I scared them when I bumped into their bouncy thing.”

“It's okay.” Jo fusses in Darla's arms. Darla rocks her back and forth and motions for me to do the same with Ji.

Gradually, Ji's screaming fades to wailing and then
sniffles before subsiding. I smile despite everything that's happening. The babies are cute when they're not screaming, but why Darla wanted to adopt more kids when she's over forty is beyond me.

“What happened?” Darla asks. “Did the charges get dropped?” Her voice is so hopeful that it kind of breaks my heart to tell her no.

“But who could have possibly posted your bond?”

“I don't really know,” I hedge.

Darla looks worried. She lays Jo down in the crib, and I do the same with Ji. “Max, you're not involved with drug lords or the Mafia or anything, right?”

I snort. “Darla. I don't think the Mafia employs a lot of high school kids.”

Her cheeks go pink and droopy, like one of those half-dead roses that gas stations sell around the holidays. I know she's given up hoping I'll start referring to her as “Mom” someday, but she still wilts occasionally when I say her name. I don't call her Darla to be mean. It's just that my real mother died giving birth to me. It seems like the least I can do after that kind of sacrifice is not replace her with someone else. Besides, as hard as she tries, Darla just doesn't feel like a mom. More like a cool aunt, but I know that isn't what she wants to be.

“No drugs?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No drugs.” I sigh. “I need to ask you a favor, though.” The kind of favor a mom wouldn't do but a cool aunt just might.

She raises a finger to her lip and heads for the hallway. I follow behind her. She goes into the kitchen and fills the coffee carafe.

I check the clock. It's cruising toward midnight. “Seriously? Coffee now?”

“Something tells me you're not going to sleep anytime soon, and I could drink an entire pot of coffee and still be out before my head hit the pillow.” She yawns. “What do you need?”

I don't answer right away. I feel guilty for lying about Langston, but I can't exactly tell her the senator's shifty henchmen bailed me out. That would invite too many other questions. And every minute I waste, Preston's killer might be getting farther away. It's like Amanda's newest cop show,
The Clock Is Ticking.
In the opening credits, a movie preview voice-over man informs viewers that only forty percent of criminals not apprehended in the first forty-eight hours are eventually brought to justice.

I hear the telltale drip as the coffee starts to brew. I turn away from Darla to grab a pair of chipped coffee mugs from the cabinet. “Your car,” I say finally. I give Darla the Humane Society mug and keep the surfer mug Amanda painted for
me. “Or Ben's truck. Is there any way I can borrow a vehicle, just for tomorrow?”

“When do you think you'll be getting
your
car back?”

She must think that the police impounded it as evidence. Instead of correcting her, I trace one of my mug's surfboards with my finger. Behind me, coffee rains down into the glass pot, filling the kitchen with an earthy smell. “I'm not really sure,” I say.

“I see.” Darla's face does its drooping thing again. We both know I'm not telling her the whole story.

“But I have to find Pres's killer, because everyone thinks I'm guilty, and I'm not.” The coffeemaker hisses. “You believe me, right?” I jump up to grab the coffee, almost sticking my hand in the cloud of steam it belches out at the end of the cycle. I'm afraid to look at her right then. I know what she'll
say
, but what if I see something different reflected in her eyes?

Her voice is soft. “Oh, Max, of course I believe you. I just wish you had come to us for advice before you ran off.”

I turn around slowly, but there's no doubt or judgment in her face. Just a divot of sadness between her thinning eyebrows.

I set the mug of coffee down in front of her. She always drinks it black. I add a slosh of milk to mine, and a spoonful of sugar big enough to kill most of the coffee taste. “I got
scared and I messed up,” I say. “But I'm coming to you now.” I give her my most hopeful look.

I don't tell her where I'm planning to go with the car—back to the Rosewood Center for Boys. I never told her how much that place sucked, but she knows I hated it. We had to return for visits with the social worker, Anna, for the first couple of months after I got adopted, just until a caseload spot opened up for a Vista Palisades social worker. Anna was the nicest person there, but I still used to get all tense in the car on the way, as if part of me was afraid the building would swallow me up when I went back inside. As if I'd spend the rest of my life getting my ass kicked by Henry the Happy Sociopath. “I need to find out the truth.”

Darla runs one finger around the rim of her coffee mug. “What you
need
is to let the police handle that. Go to school. Make up the work you've missed. Graduate.”

School? Seriously? “Darla. The FBI is just waiting for the forensics report to link me to the fire in Vegas. They think I killed Pres. Probably everyone at school does too. I can't go back there.”

She shakes her head like I'm being overly dramatic. “I don't want you to drop out. That could wreck your whole future. Just tell the truth and everything will be fine.”

I never believed that, not even before someone put a bloody phone in my trunk and called the cops to tell them
Preston and I were arguing at the top of Ravens' Cliff. The truth doesn't get you very far on the streets, or in a group home, or even in high school. That's probably why the idea of Liars, Inc. appealed to me. Everybody lies. You might as well get paid for it. I shake my head in disbelief as I think about sitting at the cafeteria table with Pres and Parvati, joking about our new business venture. It seems like a million years ago. “I tried,” I say finally. “They didn't believe me.”

“What does Parvati think about all of this?”

“Who cares?” I mutter, stirring my coffee violently.

Darla's eyes widen slightly. She's never heard me say anything even remotely unflattering about Parvati. “Are you two fighting?”

“I wish that was all.” I glance up for a second and then train my eyes on my coffee again, trying not to think about how the creamy, tan color reminds me of Parvati's skin. “Let's just say she lied to me about some important stuff.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Fu—hell no,” I say. “I don't even want to think about it.”

“Does it have to do with the investigation?”

“Sort of.” I pause. It might feel good to tell someone, to release a little bit of the rage inside me. Maybe I would be able to think more clearly afterward. “You really want to know? The FBI found videos on Pres's computer of Parvati and him together,” I blurt out.

Darla almost chokes on her coffee. “She cheated on you? Could they have been from before you started dating?”

“Maybe. Does it matter? Either way she lied to me. According to her, she and Preston were never more than friends.” My sharp voice cuts through the quiet kitchen. I take a deep breath and try to tone it down so I don't wake the babies again.

Darla reaches across the table and pats my hand. “I'm sorry. I'm sure you feel betrayed, but maybe it's not as bad as you think. Maybe she has an explanation.”

I shrug. “You think it's okay to lie about stuff like that as long as you have a
reason
?”

Darla shakes her head. “No, but everybody lies sometimes, Max. And I've never seen you happier than when you're with Parvati. It seems like she's the only person you actually confide in.” She sips her coffee. “I wouldn't be too quick to kick that person out of your life.”

Darla is right that Parvati was the only person I really talked to. She knows so many things about me that other people don't. But I always assumed that was a two-way street. Finding out she kept something so major from me . . . cuts deep.

I don't think I ever lied to
her.

Darla adjusts the collar of her nightgown. “Do you love her?”

I slouch forward. “I don't know. What does that even mean?”

A smile plays at her lips. “Remember when you hit that kid with a rock because he was bullying Amanda?”

“Yeah.” Not my finest hour, but he kind of deserved it.

“It's like that. When you care about someone so much that you'll do anything—even stupid or destructive things—for them.”

“That sounds more like mental illness than love.”

Darla doesn't respond. She's staring down into the bottom of her cup as if she could tell my future by the inch of remaining coffee. “You know, before we adopted you, your dad almost left me because of a lie.”

“You? Seriously? I always thought you were perfect.”

“No one's perfect.” She laughs under her breath. “I really wanted to adopt a child, but the shop had been struggling and Ben thought we should wait until we were financially stable. I thought that would never happen. I ended up getting back in contact with a guy I dated in college.”

I hold up a hand because I'm not sure if I want to hear this story. If Darla tells me she cheated on Ben I'm going to wonder if
any
relationship anywhere ever is safe from crushing betrayal. “You don't—”