One of Us Is Back (ONE OF US IS LYING)

Phoebe

Thursday, July 16

“I’m so sorry,” Emma says again.

I take in my sister’s familiar form sitting across from me at our kitchen counter: auburn hair held back with a headband, skin that’s pale even in summer, and straight, even features. A face as familiar as my own, and one I haven’t seen for over a month. But that’s not the timeline that kills me. “Twelve days, Emma,” I say in a voice that I have to fight to keep steady. “It took twelve days since I was drugged and kidnapped for you to come home.”

“I know,” Emma says. “It took a while to find the right flight, but—” She holds up a hand as I huff out a disbelieving snort. “Seriously, Phoebe, I have no money, and I can’t ask Mom. She already spent a fortune on a lawyer for me. Plus…it’s been really hard to do things lately. Not because I’m drinking,” she adds quickly before I can ask. “Never again, I promise. But the idea of traveling seemed impossible. Most days, I can barely get out of bed.” She gazes around our quiet apartment; Mom is still at work, and Owen is playing video games at a friend’s house. “I almost can’t believe I made it here.”

“Really?” My heart squeezes at the sadness in her voice. “Are you…Emma, it sounds like you should be talking to someone….”

She lets out a strangled laugh. “Who am I supposed to talk to?”

“Well, me for starters,” I say. “But maybe also a therapist.”

Emma snorts. “With what money?”

“I have money—” I start, but she shakes her head.

“Look, I made my bed when I started that pact with Jared, and I have to lie in it. I deserve to feel this way. You don’t, though, and I hear you about Owen. Maybe we aren’t helping him as much as we thought we were. But Phoebe…” She swallows hard. “I gave false information to the police when I told them I had no idea who could’ve written those messages to Jared after I told him to end the game. I could be charged for that if they decide to get tough.”

“So I’ll tell them,” I say. I hadn’t been grilled the way Emma was, once she admitted that she’d been posing as me all along.

“People will hate you,” she says.

“They already do,” I say, stomach twisting as I think about Knox.

“And they’ll hate Owen.” Emma bites her lip. “We can’t rush into this, Phoebe. We really need to think about it. I haven’t even seen him yet—”

Heavy footsteps sound in the hallway then, and a key turns in the front-door lock. “Speak of the devil,” I murmur as Emma twists in her seat and the door opens.

“Owen!” she cries, getting to her feet. “Oh my God, you’re huge!”

“Hey.” Owen takes his time dumping his backpack in the corner, like always, as though Emma’s been gone an hour instead of a month. She flings her arms around him anyway, making fussing noises as I pull out my phone and check the time. I need to leave in five minutes for an appointment, which will give Emma the chance to observe Owen one-on-one.

“So, how’ve you been?” Emma asks when she finally disentangles from him. “Tell me everything.”

Owen shrugs and heads for the refrigerator. “Nothing to tell,” he says.

“There must be something,” Emma insists. “How are you spending your summer?”

“Sleeping. Video games,” Owen says, popping the top on a can of Fanta.

“Well, that sounds fun,” Emma says brightly. “Have you seen many of your friends?”

Owen shrugs, and Emma’s smile gets more fixed. Welcome to my world, I think as a text from Bronwyn pops up on my phone. “Reggie’s funeral is tomorrow,” I report. “Everybody’s meeting up at Café Contigo tomorrow at ten if you want to come with me.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Emma says. “We can all go.”

Owen snorts. “Not me.”

“Why not?” Emma asks, frowning.

Owen chugs half his soda before answering. “It’s so fake,” he says. “Everybody hated Reggie, so why are they pretending to be sad all of a sudden?”

“Owen!” Emma’s mouth drops. “That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“It’s true, though,” Owen says.

“Reggie is dead,” Emma says. “Just like…” Her throat works, and I know she’s trying to bring herself to say Just like Brandon. She can’t do it, though. “Someone dying is a tragedy regardless of whether you got along with that person,” she finishes.

“Maybe with someone like him, it’d be a bigger tragedy if he got to keep being an asshole,” Owen says, leaving his soda can on the counter as he lopes toward his room.

Emma stares after him, open-mouthed. I’m horrified, too, but there’s also a sense of relief that she’s seeing what I’ve been seeing. I’m not paranoid or overly sensitive; Owen is being legitimately awful. It would be bitchy to tell Emma I told you so, though, so all I say is “See you in a couple of hours,” before grabbing my bag off the counter and heading for the door.

—

“Phoebe Lawton?” The young man behind a sleek chrome desk adjusts his headset and raises perfectly groomed eyebrows at me. “Lucinda will you see now. Straight down that hall, third door on your left.”

“Thanks so much,” I say, springing off the rock-hard, ultramodern chair in Conrad & Olsen’s reception area.

Last night, after Vanessa left the Rojases’ house, the Bayview Crew spent hours searching for any information we could find about the Practice Makes Perfect campaign. When we were scrolling through the “Leadership Team” section on Conrad & Olsen’s website, one name stood out to me: Lucinda Quinn. My mother coordinated Lucinda’s wedding five months ago, and she was a frequent, chatty guest in our house during the weeks before the big day. She’s also, according to her biography, an eight-year veteran of Conrad & Olsen.

It felt like a gift; a small connection I have that might lead to something useful. I don’t know how to bridge the gulf that still exists between me and all my friends, but I know how to pick Lucinda’s brain under the guise of career planning.

“Phoebe, hi! It’s so great to see you!” Lucinda is still a whirlwind of energy, hopping up from behind her desk to engulf me in a tight hug. She’s even shorter than I am, with pixie-cut dark hair and trendy purple glasses, wearing a charcoal-colored dress that’s so oddly constructed, and yet so flattering, that it must have cost a fortune. “Goodness, you’ve had a rough go, haven’t you?” she adds, patting my shoulder. “I heard about all that mess with your sister and Jared Jackson. I am so sorry you had to go through that.”

I’m sure she is, because she’s a nice person, but she can’t hide the spark of curiosity in her eyes. I don’t mind, though; I was counting on it. “It’s been awful,” I say in a hushed tone, dropping my gaze to the floor. “He was obsessed with me. Well, he thought it was me.”

“I heard,” Lucinda says, stepping past me to close her office door. She gestures to the chair opposite her desk and says, “Please, sit. Tell me what happened.” So I do, in as much detail as I can stomach. It’s just a rehash of the headlines, really, but with enough of a personal spin to make Lucinda feel like she’s getting inside information.

That way, maybe she’ll do the same for me later.

“What a nightmare,” she says sympathetically when I’ve finished.

“It really was,” I say. Emphasis on the past tense, because as far as Lucinda knows, that’s all the trauma I have to share. The Bayview Police are holding back information about what was written on Reggie’s arm, so there’s no public link between my kidnapping and Reggie’s death.

“But here you are, spending your summer planning for the future. I admire that, Phoebe. Your mom must be so proud of you.”

“I hope so,” I murmur, feeling like a complete heel. My mother is still compulsively checking in on me whenever I’m not at home, and proud is the last thing she’d be if she knew the real reason behind this visit.

Lucinda folds her hands on her glossy black desk. It’s very stark and very chic, kind of like Lucinda herself. “So, what do you want to know about the advertising industry?”

I give her my best wide-eyed ingenue look. “Everything?”

Lucinda smiles kindly. “Maybe I could tell you how I got my first job?”

“That would be amazing.”

The conversation flows easily after that, because Lucinda’s friendly and I’m genuinely interested. But I keep looking for an opening to pivot, and once Lucinda starts reminiscing about her favorite campaigns, I find it.

“It’s interesting how some ads stick in your mind,” I say. “Like Mandalay Motorcars. They’ve been using the same tagline forever. Or the, um, Guppies candy theme.” I have to move on from that one quickly, though, because I honestly can’t remember that little jingle that Luis sang. “And I’ll never forget this Practice Makes Perfect campaign for SAT tutoring that was everywhere when I was in middle school. I was kind of obsessed with it back then.”

“Oh God, that campaign,” Lucinda says, cringing. “Did you know Conrad and Olsen did that?” I make what I hope is a surprised face, and she adds, “It was one of the first accounts I worked on when I started here, and to be honest—I always thought it was kind of basic. I mean, practice makes perfect? That’s not exactly breaking new ground from a messaging standpoint. It was effective, though.”

“Maybe it was the actors,” I say. “They made studying look cool.”

Even to my own ears, that sounds like blatant sucking up, but Lucinda beams. “Exactly. I was in charge of casting the girls, and that was my goal—to make them aspirational. They were phenomenal talents. One of them landed a national ad for Toyota a few months later.”

“I had a crush on the boy,” I lie. “Do you happen to know his name? I’d love to know what he might be working on now.” That was something even Maeve’s Google skills couldn’t uncover, although she’d managed to track down the two girls.

“Oh, that I had no say in,” Lucinda says, rolling her eyes. “It’s a good thing that kid had a cute smile, because he couldn’t read lines to save his life. We had to do something like a hundred takes before he managed to say ‘perfect’ right. I doubt he ever got another role.”

“Why’d he get hired if he was so bad?” I ask.

“He was our comanaging director’s son,” she sighs.

“Really?” I sit straighter in my chair. “And the comanaging director was…?”

“Alexander Alton,” Lucinda says, frowning a little.

“Do you not like him?” I ask.

“Of course I did,” Lucinda says. Did? “Why?” she asks. “Was I making a face?” She gives herself a little shake. “Sorry, I went down memory lane for a second. I loved Alex; he was a wonderful mentor. I just get sad thinking about what happened to him.”

My pulse starts to pick up. “What do you mean?”

“He drowned six years ago,” Lucinda says. I let out a startled gasp as she adds, “It was such a tragedy. He had three kids—Chase, the actor, had just turned twenty-one, and the twins were still in high school. They’d started driving lessons a couple of months earlier, and Alex used to joke that being in the car with his youngest son was like taking his life into his hands. We never imagined…” She exhales a long sigh. “Anyway, their mom moved away afterward, somewhere in the Midwest. Close to family, I think.”

“Wow, that is sad,” I say, mind racing. I knew someone high up in the firm had died—Vanessa mentioned that to Nate when she talked about the restructuring that led to Jake’s mother leaving—but that small detail seems more significant when it’s someone with a direct tie to the Practice Makes Perfect campaign. “Drowning is such a…” Such a what? Suspicious kind of death? “You don’t hear of it happening to many people,” I finish limply.

“I know,” Lucinda says. “We were shocked. The whole firm went into mourning.”

“That must’ve been so hard, with Mr. Alton being in charge and everything. Although, you did say he was the comanaging director, right?” I ask, trying to recall what Nate had said about Ms. Riordan. “So I guess there was another leader who could, um…”

I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence, but Lucinda breaks in before I have to. “In theory, yeah, but that didn’t really work out. The other managing director left soon after.” She tilts her head, eyes gleaming like they did when I first showed up, and I’m pretty sure I know what she’s thinking. Fresh gossip. “You might know her, actually, since you live in Bayview. Or know of her. Katherine Riordan, her son is—”

“Jake Riordan,” I say. “We went to school together before he got arrested.”

Lucinda purses her lips. “I cannot believe he’s getting a new trial,” she says. “Such a travesty. I always liked Katherine, but that boy should’ve been put away for life.”

“Agreed,” I say fervently. I could talk trash about Jake forever, but that’s not why I’m here, so I put on a thoughtful expression and ask, “Why did his mom leave Conrad and Olsen?”

“Well, the official story was that she left to spend more time with Jake,” Lucinda says. “And maybe she did. God knows, that kid must’ve needed more supervision. But mostly, Katherine just couldn’t do the job anymore. Alex’s death really rattled her. She’d been in Mexico on a shoot when he died, and when she came back she took almost a month off. Even though we were insanely busy and desperate for some kind of direction. And once she returned, well…” Lucinda shrugs. “She wasn’t the same.”

“Wow.” I don’t know Jake’s mother at all, except for a few sightings at school events, but that seems like unusual empathy for a Riordan. “Was she close with Mr. Alton?”

Lucinda smirks. “Rumor has it.”

My jaw drops at what she’s implying. “Really?”

It’s too much reaction. Lucinda clears her throat in a businesslike way, like she just remembered she’s at least fifteen years older than I am and shouldn’t be gossiping as if we’re both in high school. “The important thing is, Katherine needed to switch gears, and we needed a leadership change. Somebody who could take the firm into the twenty-first century, because honestly, with that Practice Makes Perfect crap we were kind of stuck in the nineties. We didn’t even have an Instagram account six years ago. Like, you’d say digital to the creative team, and all they could think was billboard.”

She glances at her watch, like she’s about to tell me she’s out of time, so I blurt out my next question before she can speak. “Speaking of which, did you ever find out who hacked the one on Clarendon? The billboard, I mean.” An irritated expression crosses Lucinda’s face, like she doesn’t appreciate the reminder of all the bad press, and I rush to add, “I was so scared when I first saw it, like the Truth or Dare game might be starting up again.”

“Oh, goodness, sure,” Lucinda says. She rearranges her features to be more sympathetic, but I can tell she’s still kind of annoyed. “Well, don’t worry about that. There were some very old security protocols in place, but they’ve been updated. You won’t see anything more like that.” She looks at her watch again. “I need to get ready for my next meeting, but it was lovely talking with you, Phoebe. I hope that some of what I told you was helpful?”

“Absolutely,” I say, closing out the app on my phone that I’ve been using to surreptitiously take notes while Lucinda talked. Chase Alton nepotism/Alex Alton drowned/Affair with Jake’s mom? “I learned a lot.”

JAKE

Six Years Earlier

“All of this will be yours someday, Jake,” Dad said, waving a hand toward the crystal-blue pool in the Riordans’ backyard. “If you want it. Maybe you’d rather have an apartment in the city, though. Some of the new high-rises going up downtown are incredible.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Jake said, adjusting his sunglasses. “That’s so far away.”

“Not as far as you think,” his father said. “Time flies. You’ll be in high school next month, and then it’s only four short years till graduation. You’ll need to start thinking about the right college, the right job, the right girlfriend….” He chuckled at Jake’s expression. “Trust me, kid, you’ll be fighting them off soon.”

“Hope so,” Jake muttered.

“You will,” Dad said, stretching his arms above him on the lounge chair.

“What does the right girlfriend even look like?” Jake asked. Then he felt compelled to half answer his own question. “Besides hot, I mean.”

“Someone who supports you,” Dad says promptly. “Someone who understands that you’re the kind of person who’s going places, and will help you get there.”

“Like Mom.” Jake said it as a simple statement of fact, but when his father didn’t answer, Jake twisted in his seat to look at his father. “Right?”

“Your mother is an incredible woman,” Dad said. With his sunglasses on, it was impossible for Jake to read his expression. “She’s also very driven, which is something I didn’t realize about her when we first met.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Jake asked cautiously.

“Of course not,” Dad said. Jake couldn’t read his tone either. “If it’s what you want. Some couples enjoy having competitive careers. Others might prefer a more complementary relationship. I know you better than you know yourself, Jake, and I have a feeling that you’d be happier with the second scenario. The kind of sweet, supportive girl who knows that your successes are her successes too.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. That did sound good. His father’s words made him uneasy, though. It’s not as though Jake hadn’t noticed the tension between his parents this summer; he couldn’t miss it no matter how hard he worked at being oblivious. But nothing was actually going to come of it, right? The Riordans of Wellington Avenue were a force in Bayview, and they were supposed to stay that way. Jake didn’t want to start high school like some kind of pathetic latchkey kid shuttling between houses, no matter how nice the houses were. “You and Mom are okay, though, right?”

“Of course we’re okay,” Dad said, swinging his legs over the edge of his lounge chair. “So okay, in fact, that I’ll bet she’ll make some of that chicken salad we like if we ask very, very nicely. Come on, let’s head inside. The sun’s getting too bright, anyway.”

“Okay,” Jake said, pushing down his concerns. If his father said there was nothing to worry about, then he wasn’t going to worry.

“By the way, I’ve been talking with some of the coaches at Bayview High about hosting a mixer for the incoming freshmen players before school starts,” Dad said as they made their way around the pool. “We have plenty of space, and it would be a great opportunity for you to start hanging out with the right kids.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said.

“Simon isn’t doing any sports, is he?”

“Are you kidding?” Jake snorted. “What would he play?”

“I don’t know. Croquet, maybe?” Dad asked, and they both laughed.

“You say that like Simon could aim any kind of ball,” Jake said as they reached the patio. “He can’t even handle ping-pong. You should see him with a paddle.” Jake swung one hand around his head like he was brandishing a flyswatter, and his father chuckled again.

“I’m sure he’ll understand not being invited, then,” Dad said.

The sliding glass door was normally closed, but Jake realized as they approached that he’d left it partially open the last time he went inside for a drink. The double-glazed glass usually prevented any sound from the house reaching outside, or vice versa, but now, Jake could hear his mother’s anguished voice loud and clear.

“It’s not that simple, Alex,” she said. “I wish to God it were, but it’s not.”

Jake paused, ready to stop, but his father’s hand on his shoulder kept him going. Scott Riordan continued to stride toward the door like he hadn’t heard anything.

“Don’t you think I want that too?” Mom said. “I want it more than anything, but there’s Jake to consider, and—”

And then Dad pulled the door the rest of the way open, and Mom stopped talking. By the time they reached her, her phone was facedown on the dining room table, and she was wearing a near-perfect replica of her usual smile. “How was the pool?” she asked.

“Beautiful, but a little too hot,” Dad said. “And then we got hungry. I don’t suppose we could impose on you for some chicken-salad sandwiches?”

“Of course,” Mom said, picking up her phone and hurrying for the kitchen. “Coming right up. I just need to thaw the chicken.”

Beyond the conversation Jake and his father had overheard, that was the second sign that something was wrong. Coming right up? That wasn’t how Mom talked to Dad lately; she was more likely to say I’m right in the middle of something or Could I get a little help?

The third sign was the reflection of Dad’s face in the gilt-edged dining room mirror. Scott Riordan was smiling faintly, like he always did when he got his way. But his eyes were glittering as they followed his wife’s progress into the kitchen, and Jake could read their expression even though he’d never seen anything quite like it before.

His father was utterly furious.