Tig’s car. He was a kid from Downtown, while I lived in Waverly Place, backed by parents who regularly dined with the mayor. I had one of the best criminal attorneys in the state standing between me and every question that might have revealed the truth. The only person who cared enough about Tig’s statement to check on it was this cop. But he was no match for Mitch and all my parents’ money. I didn’t even have to lie. Not out loud. All I had to do was sit quiet and let all the wrong things happen.
After the detective left, and my lawyer left, and my father went back to work, my mother made us lunch. We sat in the dining room, each of us in front of our own untouched salad. I was never comfortable in this formal room with its lacquered table and wall-length china cabinet displaying all her Raynaud dishes. It was painted a weird neutral, taupe and beige mated to make a putty-colored baby. River Stone, my mother called this color, though I’d enraged her once by calling it Hint of Wart.
She was still so tense she was vibrating like a violin string, every bit of her pulled taut.
“I think . . .” I started, and then stopped. I had said nothing to the cop, but I needed to tell someone. “I think I may have been . . .”
I stared at her, and she stared back, searching my face with a depth I was not used to. She never looked at me the way she looked at Connor. She gazed at his face with the only kind of hunger that she ever seemed to feel. Now she was looking into my eyes, but it was different. It was as if she were seeking confirmation or perhaps the truth.
Whatever she was looking for, she found it.
“Jesus,” she said. “You were . . .” She couldn’t bear to finish the sentence any more than I could.
“I really don’t remember,” I said instantly. Now I was lying, so I amended it. I tried to make it be true. “I don’t remember driving.”
“You don’t remember driving?” my mother repeated, questioning but also nodding.
“I don’t,” I said. “But Tig said I was, and I do remember that I had the k—”
“You don’t remember driving,” my mother said, fast and edgy, and this time it was an order. She reached a hand across the table and left it there until I gave her mine. It struck me that this, today, was the most my mother had touched my body in weeks. I could not remember the last time her hand had rested on my leg or squeezed my fingers. “Don’t let this boy put things in your head. If you try to remember too hard, your brain can make things up. Like all those kids who said the satanists were at the day care, or whatever that was. None of it happened. And if you had been driving, the police would know. So you weren’t.”
We sat for a moment, and I said, “What if memories come back, like that detective said?”
My mother shook her head. “Any new thing you think you remember, you can’t trust that. That policeman put it in your head. So let it go. You aren’t going to talk about it. With anyone. Ever again. This isn’t just about you, Amy. If you invent some big confession, you could hurt your dad’s career, and I am already feeling so judged. And your brother—he has a very bright future. You have embarrassed us enough.”
“But if Tig wasn’t dri—” I started, and she jerked her hand away. Her voice went from almost pleading to chilly and dismissive.
“Amy, don’t get dramatic and choose martyrdom. Do not orchestrate some grand romantic gesture for this boy. Because that would be pathetic. You are hardly Juliet.” And now her gaze did go to my body. “Do you understand me?”
I did. I understood her perfectly.
And God help me, I did what she said. I swallowed it down and let it sit inside me. It filled me, like a lump of clay in my stomach.
Part of me believed that it would fix itself without me. Surely I had behaved suspiciously enough that that old, dad-like detective would tell someone, We got it wrong. I see now! It was Amy at the wheel.
Then I could say, That may be so, but I do not remember, and let justice happen.
But no one ever talked to me about