The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,103

now my dad didn’t even know I was gone.

Emma leaned over the motorcycle, inspecting it carefully. “Why is the shifter on the wrong side?”

Mr. Mercer blinked at her, as if Emma had suddenly started speaking Swahili. “Actually, it’s not. This is a British bike. Before 1975, the gearshift was on the right side.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I thought your interest in cars stopped with 1960s Volvos.”

“Oh, well, I just read something about it,” Emma covered. One of her foster families, the Stuckeys, had a car that constantly gave them trouble, and the responsibility had somehow fallen to Emma to figure out how to fix it. She’d befriended the mechanics at the local gas station, and they’d taught her how to change a tire, check for oil, and replace various fluids and parts. The owner of the place, Lou, had a Harley, and Emma hung around him while he fixed it up, helping out now and then. Lou took a shine to her and started to call her Little Grease Monkey. If she ever wanted an apprenticeship as a mechanic, he said, his door was wide open.

I smiled. Now there was a career path. But it impressed me how resourceful she was. It was like Ethan said the other night: Nothing seemed to overwhelm her.

“Thayer had a Honda bike, right?” Mr. Mercer said. “You didn’t ride on it with him, did you?”

Emma shrugged, her skin prickling at Thayer’s name. Emma had found out last week that Laurel and Thayer had been best friends, and that Laurel had a not-so-secret crush on him. But she’d also discovered that, at the very least, Thayer had liked Sutton.

I tried desperately to remember what Thayer meant to me. I kept seeing flashes of the two of us standing in the school courtyard, Thayer grabbing my hands and saying something in an apologetic voice, me wrenching my hands away and spitting something back at him, my words flinty and abrasive. But then the memory dissolved.

Mr. Mercer sank down on an overturned milk crate. “Sutton . . . why did you steal today?”

Emma ran her fingers over the shifter. Because I’m trying to solve your daughter’s murder. But all she said was “I’m really sorry.”

“Was it because of . . . everything at home?” Mr. Mercer asked gruffly.

Emma blinked, turning to face Mr. Mercer. “Meaning . . . ?” Suddenly, a new list began to form in her mind: Things That Are Awkward About a New Family You Don’t Know but Are Supposed To. Heart-to-heart conversations with a dad she’d only met two weeks ago would be first on the list.

Mr. Mercer’s face folded into an exasperated, please-don’t-make-me-explain expression. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I know you’ve gone through a lot of . . . changes.”

More than you know, Emma thought wryly.

Mr. Mercer gave Emma a meaningful look. “I want to know what you’re feeling. I want you to know you can talk to me. About anything.”

The AC unit shuddered off and an earsplitting silence settled over the garage. Emma tried to keep her composure. She had no idea how to answer his question, and for a moment, she considered telling him the bald truth. But then she remembered Sutton’s killer’s threat: If you tell anyone, if you say anything, you’re next.

“Okay . . . thanks,” Emma said awkwardly.

Mr. Mercer fiddled with the wrench. “And are you sure you didn’t steal because, well, you wanted to get caught?”

I studied my dad’s clear blue eyes and a sudden flash came to me of voices and accusations flying through the air. I saw myself sprinting down a desert trail, heard my father’s angry voice calling out for me, and felt tears running down my face.

When Emma didn’t respond, Mr. Mercer broke his stare, shook his head, and threw a balled-up yellow rag on the grease-stained floor. “Never mind,” he mumbled, now seeming annoyed. “Just throw the trash bag in the bin when you’re done, okay?”

He closed the door with a muffled thud. Behind it was a cork bulletin board that contained a calendar several years out of date, a business card for a local HVAC service, and a snapshot of Laurel and Sutton standing in the middle of the backyard, smiling into the camera. Emma stared at the photo long and hard. She wished the photo could talk back, wished Sutton could tell her something, anything, about who’d she’d been, what kinds of secrets she’d kept, and what had really happened to her.

A snicker sounded behind