The twins beamed. The fact that Miranda was not here to reclaim Little Sister was clearly enough to win them over.
“When we saw you before, we didn’t like you,” Phoebe said. “But you seem nicer today. Even though you snatch people’s children.”
“Phoebe!” I said. “That’s not polite.” I made a mental note to talk to her about how it was sometimes important not to tell annoying people how annoying they are.
“I help keep children safe,” Miranda said, but she didn’t seem ruffled. She’d likely heard worse. She glanced around the living room, taking in my mom’s odd decor. The disco ball dangling from the ceiling; the window ledges lined with fake food; the avocado tree my mom had named Frank Sinatra; the couch draped with her DIY tie-dye slipcover; the walls hung with David Hockney prints she’d bought at a gallery show in LA.
“This was your mom’s place, right?” Miranda said.
I nodded, and tried to push down my grief. Seeing Miranda made time collapse. I was a junior in high school again, complaining, “Why couldn’t I have been born a Miranda Carson?” But my mom said I was perfect. In reality I was funny, awkward, weird, dancing and sweating fiercely in my Mr.Potato Pants mascot suit, just to make my fellow students laugh—until I was defrocked because Miranda hid her vodka in my duffel bag.
“Your mom was always so cool and quirky,” this middle-aged Miranda said, and for a second I thought I detected an unexpected note of jealousy in her voice.
“She sure was,” I said.
“I remember one time both our moms were around to pick us up at the end of practice. My mom was starting in on me for not being crisp enoughon some stupid cheerleading move and your mom said, ‘Miranda, honey, I thought you looked just great out there.’” Miranda’s eyes gleamed and for a second I thought she’d start to cry. Instead, she set her purse down on my couch, and said, “Any chance you’d like to offer me a cup of tea?” She didn’t look like she was here to document my parenting fails for CPS, but perhaps it was a sneak attack.
Absolutely not, I wanted to say. But instead I went to turn the kettle on.
Eighteen
There’s nothing like serving tea to the former queen bee of your high school to make you feel like you’ve never actually grown up. Add the irrational fear that said queen bee was there to snatch your children or expose the murdered corpse in your yard and you’d have my mental state.
“Low-stress chamomile,” I said, casually scooping up Connor’s mail and dropping it in the recycling bin with a prayer to sundry pagan goddesses that Miranda hadn’t noticed his name on the envelopes. Miranda did not know, could not know, I had a mansicle on the property. But why was she here? My only hope was she’d joined a twelve-step program and wanted to make her ninth-step amends for letting me take the fall for her teenage misdeeds.
“Is it that obvious I’m stressed?” Miranda said. She actually did look tired and anxious. “After this I’m headed to one of my mom’s scented-candle parties where she’ll neg me about my looks and all my life choices.”
“Your mom’s still that hard on you?”
“She could have a side hustle training abusive Marine Corps sergeants.”
“Ugh! I’m sorry,” I said. “My mom told me your mom complained you wouldn’t carry a handgun. Your mom said the taser she gave you as a stocking stuffer wasn’t going to cut it.”
What I didn’t say was that, according to my mother, Mrs.Carson’s television had gotten stuck on Newsmax, turning her into a full-fledged right-wing extremist. It had made me feel a tiny bit sorry for Miranda. But right now I needed to feel sorry for her from a distance.
As if she could read my mind, Miranda walked to the sliding glass door. She gazed in the direction of the playhouse; I grabbed for my phone and typed an SOS.
“My mom worries about me because of my job,” Miranda said. “When it’s necessary, I remove kids. So plenty of people in this town aren’t happy with me.” She paused. “It’s kind of nice talking to you about my mom. You’ve known her since forever so you get it.”
“I’ve hardly seen her in twenty-five years, but I remember how she was,” I admitted.
“If I tell you something about her, promise you’ll take it to the grave?” she said.
Don’t confide in me, Miranda. I don’t like you.“Pinky promise,” I said, eyes on my phone. Send. Phone down.
“She’s started making deepfake candle labels with her Cricut Joy Xtra.”
“Her what?” Maybe I’d been on the Best Coast so long I no longer understood the basic vocab of your average Boisean.
“It’s a design and cutting machine for making labels, tickets, stickers, you name it. Even the founder of D.S. & Durga wouldn’t be able to tell my mom’s Big Sur After Rain label from an original. My mom sells them at her candle parties at a ‘deep discount.’ For sixty bucks each!”
“Damn!” I said. “Does her Big Sur After Rain candle really smell like Big Sur after rain?”
“It actually does.”
“So it’salmosta victimless crime?”
Miranda shrugged. “These guys she hires to haul her candles around, you would not believe how dodgy they are.” She turned and spotted the Pole Kisses studio brochure Emmylou had stuck on my fridge with a magnet. “Pole Kisses?”
