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For a second, I can only watch, paralyzed, as they stand at the desk speaking to the charge nurse. One of the officer’s hands is on the sidearm on his holster. I back slowly away and then, when I can, I turn, doubling back in the direction from which I came, moving toward the fire escape stairs at the other end of the hall.
I leave the building, wondering what I will tell Sienna when I get home.
Twenty-Six
I hear Sienna’s voice as I come into the apartment later that morning, still on edge from seeing the police at the hospital, though I’ve tried to reassure myself that they could have been there for a dozen different reasons that had nothing to do with me, such as a belligerent patient or a criminal being admitted for care. I searched online while I walked, looking for any updates into the investigation of Caitlin’s murder attempt and find a picture of Milo Finch in a newspaper article dated two days ago, saying how the police are asking for the public’s help in finding him, which means that, as of forty-eight hours ago at least, they still think he did it, that he pushed her over the edge and she can’t say otherwise. It comes as a relief, though my conscience hopes he’s long gone or that he’s found a good hiding spot. I don’t want him to get caught, but if either he or I has to go to jail for it, I hope it’s him.
Ben has texted for a third time and he tried to call. There is a message waiting for me on my voice mail, but I can’t bring myself to listen to it. I walked home, flooded with emotion about the police, about Caitlin, about being put on administrative leave and about what I might find when I got home and if Ben would be standing in my living room when I came in.
He’s not. At first glance, the apartment is empty except for Sienna, who is in her bedroom with the door closed, home from her sleepover with Gianna. I hear her and think she’s on her phone, talking or on FaceTime with a friend because her voice is muffled and indistinct as I stand in the living room, just inside the door, shrugging off a wet winter coat. I can’t hear what she says, but then she lets out a peal of laughter that slices through the air.
I’m about to call out to her to let her know I’m home, but then I hear Nico’s voice from the other side of the closed bedroom door and I become stiff, clenching and seeing red, because Sienna knew I didn’t want her having boys in the apartment when I wasn’t home and she intentionally disobeyed me. Worse, they’re in her bedroom with the door closed, which makes me wonder what they’re doing in there.
I cross the room in three steps. Without thinking, I raise my hand and am about to knock on the door when something out of the corner of my eye catches my attention and I turn toward the kitchen, feeling my arm lower by instinct. Sienna’s phone sits on the kitchen table, face up and illuminated, beside her overnight bag, calling for me because it’s so unlike her to leave her phone out in the open like this, to not have that thing shackled to a hip.
But then again Nico is here, and he’s stolen her attention, and she didn’t expect me to come home and see it, because I told her I was running into work and she probably assumed that meant I’d be there all day.
I back away from the door. I drift toward the phone. When I get to it, Ben’s name is on the screen. The incoming text is from him.
My heart beats faster. Ordinarily I wouldn’t read Sienna’s messages. But curiosity gets the better of me and my mind flashes again to last night, to him here in my living room with me, his eyes holding mine, his thumb grazing my neck.
I glance back to Sienna’s door, where on the other side of it, she and Nico have gone quiet, their voices reduced to nothing, and I worry about what they’re doing in there, but not more than I worry about the texts from Ben to Sienna.
I reach for the phone. I quickly enter her password to unlock it, which was another of my stipulations when she got her phone, that I always have access to it because, in essence, I pay the bill; it’s my phone.
The message from Ben reads: Is your mom home or is she working today?
I close my eyes and shake my head. I don’t know how it makes me feel, that he’s texting Sienna to check up on me, that he’s using Sienna to get to me. I’m about to set the phone back down. But then my eyes open and drift further up in the chain of messages.
Just above this latest text, I see Sienna’s last words to Ben.
She’s a liar.
They’re caustic, blistering, and my first thought is to wonder who. Who is a liar?
And then I see my name.
In the text before, Ben says to Sienna: Mom said you had a headache, which was preceded by a series of incisive question marks from Sienna. ????
I breathe harder. They’ve caught me. I am the liar. Because in the text before that one, sent from Ben last night shortly after ten, he asks: How is your head?
Ben knows that I lied to him. He knows Sienna didn’t have a headache and that she wasn’t coming home last night.
That worries me. But it’s not the worst thing, because what gets me more is the barbed, cutting tone of Sienna’s words when she called me a liar. She’s so angry, so bitter.
She’s a liar.
My stomach tightens as I scroll further back to yesterday evening when Sienna texted Ben that I was being weird.
Weird how? he asked.
I don’t know. She just is.
Are you home? Is she there with you? Did something happen?
No. I don’t know. She just told me to go to Gianna’s. She said I couldn’t stay here.
I’m sure it’s fine.
