for killing them. And then I’ll end up just like them.”
Becca’s anger drained away, leaving only the echoes.
Heather wiped away her tears. The emotion vanished from her face so quickly Becca wondered if she had imagined it. “Are you done talking like a dissident?”
As though nothing had happened. As though she had never started crying.
“Actually,” said Becca, “I should probably go.” She had to get out of here. Away from this person who looked like her best friend but wasn’t. Away from the word that got louder in her head every time Heather said it.
Guilt stabbed at her. Heather needed her, and she was running away like a coward. She should stay. Try to help her. It was the right thing to do.
“Okay.” Heather shrugged, already turning away. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow, then.”
Becca escaped out the door. The echoes followed.
She had a plan. She would drop the car off at home, and then she would go to the playground. Let her mind go blank for a while. Forget about her mom. Forget about what Heather had said.
But when she walked in the door, intending to toss the car keys inside and leave again, her mom was standing on the other side. Waiting for her.
“The two of us are going to spend some time together,” said her mom, daring Becca to contradict her. “And we’re going to fix this.”
Chapter Ten
Becca sat on the park bench with her mom, watching the sun go down. This park was nothing like her playground. The trees were spaced at precise intervals, the grass got mowed every Saturday, and the playground equipment in the distance gleamed as the last rays of the sun glittered off the rust-free metal. Becca hadn’t been here in years, not since the old brown grass had been replanted and the new swings and jungle gym had replaced a couple of splintery picnic tables.
The quiet beauty should have relaxed her. But she couldn’t relax, not with her mom sitting next to her, deliberately looking away as she waited for Becca to make the first move.
Becca stared up at the red-tinged clouds, hardly seeing them. “Just say whatever you brought me here to say.”
“I didn’t bring you here to have the same old arguments again,” her mom replied, still looking at the sky. “I miss you. I don’t like what’s happening to us. I brought you here because if we don’t work to get things back to the way they used to be, we’ll never get there.”
Becca brought her gaze back to earth, to her mom’s earnest face. “You want me to just ignore all of it? The things you did, the things—”
“I executed a couple of dissidents, Becca. That’s all.” Her soft tone took the hostility out of her words. She stood up. “But we didn’t come here to argue about that again.” She held out a hand to Becca. “Let’s walk together.”
Becca stood up to join her mom, but didn’t take the hand she offered.
Her mom started walking down the path. “Do you remember when we used to come here and feed the ducks?”
Her mom’s words immediately called the memory to mind. Becca cringed at the thought of that younger Becca with her hand clasped in her mom’s much larger one, giggling as she threw bread to the ducks. She hadn’t known then what her mom was capable of.
Now every time Becca looked at her mom she thought of Jake’s mother. Of all the false confessions. Of Heather’s parents, who had been dissidents but might also have been right.
If they had been dissidents, and Becca thought they had been right, what did that make Becca?
“What’s the point of remembering that? They filled in the duck pond two years ago.” She didn’t want to think about the times she had been happy with her mom. She didn’t want to remember how close they used to be. It would only remind her of what was missing. Heather, her mom… she was losing everyone.
Before all this, she would have gone to her mom for advice about Heather. Her mom would have known what to do.
Her mom sighed. “Are you going to keep pushing me away like this?”
As if what had happened were Becca’s fault. As if Becca were the one who had killed people’s parents, who had abandoned the truth in favor of whatever lies her bosses told her to feed to the dissidents.
“Don’t you miss it at all?” her mom asked. “The time we used to spend together? The talks we used to have?”
Of course she did. But what was she supposed to do, make herself forget everything she had found out?
They walked together in silence for a couple of minutes as the sky grew darker.
Her mom’s phone buzzed. Her mom picked it up and frowned at the display. “It’s work.”
“Do they want you to go in?” If her mom had to rush off to work, they could put this off until another time. Becca could arrange to be busy whenever that was.
“They can live without me for one night.” She reattached the phone to her belt.
Becca couldn’t remember ever seeing her mom ignore a call from work before.
“Things used to be a lot simpler, didn’t they?” her mom mused. “Before work got so busy. Before this thing with Heather and Jake.”
In school earlier, Becca had greeted Jake like she always did, and they had kept their conversation to safe topics like always. She hadn’t mentioned what her mom had said about him and his family. She had told herself it was because they were in school, where anyone could overhear, but she knew better.
If he found out her mom had been the one to kill his mother, he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. The memory of Heather’s reaction was still fresh in her mind. But it wasn’t just that. She didn’t want to ask him if her mom’s story was true because she didn’t want to try to decipher his answers to figure out whether he was lying. She’d done enough of that lately. More than enough.
For one irrational second, she thought about asking her mom for advice.
Then she remembered again.
“It’s not just you,” her mom continued, as though Becca had answered her. “I miss the way things were before work got so crazy. Back when I could actually spend time with you.”
“I miss it too,” Becca admitted, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to respond. “It was nice when the most important thing in the world was feeding the ducks.” But she didn’t have go to back that far to find a time when things had been easier. She only had to go back a month, to before Heather’s phone call.
In front of her, Becca saw the bench where they had sat and watched the sunset. The path had taken them in almost a complete circle.
“Things are harder for both of us now. Especially for you.” Her mom slowed down. “But I want you to know I’m still here if you need me. If there’s anything you want to talk about, anything you want to ask me, you can. About Jake’s family, or what happened with Heather, or anything else.”
Becca wished she could. But it wasn’t as simple as her mom made it sound. Asking about what she had found on her mom’s computer didn’t just mean admitting she had gone snooping through her files. It meant admitting she knew something she wasn’t supposed to know. Something Internal had kept secret for… how long? How long had they been doing this?
She was about to answer with some kind of noncommittal refusal when she stopped. Something was bothering her about what her mom had said, something besides how she wished she could take her mom up on her offer.
No, it wasn’t about what her mom had said. It was about the way she had said it.
It reminded her of something. It reminded her of…
That conversation with Jake. The one where he’d asked her about Heather just a little too intently.
She had been wrong about Jake.
This time, she didn’t think she was wrong.
