Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (10 page)

The next day after school, Emma skipped tennis and drove straight home. The house was quiet when she arrived, the soft ticking of the grandfather clock echoing through the foyer. When her phone beeped, piercing the silence, she jumped. She had a new text from Ethan:
I DIDN’T SEE YOU AT TENNIS PRACTICE. EVERYTHING OK?

YEAH, JUST TRYING TO GET SOME REST
, Emma wrote back. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, haunted by nightmares of being strapped to a hospital bed.

Emma’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She’d quickly told Ethan about Becky in the hallway that morning, not wanting to go into much detail because she wasn’t sure who might be listening—she doubted the story of Sutton Mercer’s crazy mother was something Sutton would have wanted to become common knowledge. Ethan had given her a huge hug. “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” he’d said, and she’d felt just a little better, knowing that he was there for her.

I’M FINE
, she finally wrote.
BUT I MISS YOU. I CAN’T WAIT FOR OUR PICNIC TONIGHT
.

ME NEITHER
, he responded.
SEE YOU AT 8?

After Emma texted
YES
, she shut the door softly. Drake loped into the foyer, his long tail waving behind him. She stroked the smooth short fur around his ears. “Hey, buddy,” she whispered.

He raised his head to lick her face. When she started up the stairs to Sutton’s room, he followed, his nails clattering noisily on the hardwood.

The stairwell was hung with family pictures: images of the vacations the Mercers had taken over the years to Disneyland, Paris, Maui, mixed in with snapshots of Christmas mornings and school awards ceremonies. Emma stopped absently to straighten a school picture of a seven-year-old Sutton in pigtails. Even then Sutton’s smile looked mischievous, like she knew just how much she could get away with.

Emma was halfway up the stairs when Mrs. Mercer stepped into the hall with a basket of laundry in her arms. She had changed out of the sleek, tailored work suit she’d worn this morning into a pair of dark-wash jeans and a short-sleeved cashmere sweater. When she saw Emma on the stairs, she looked startled. “Sutton!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing home?”

Emma rested her hands on the banister. “I have a headache, so I skipped tennis.” It wasn’t too far from the truth. The episode with Becky had shaken her to her core.

Seeing Mrs. Mercer’s concerned frown, she added, “I’m okay. I took some aspirin and I’m already feeling better. Just not up to running around a hot tennis court.” Then she cocked her head. “What are
you
doing home?”

Mrs. Mercer smiled. “I cut out of work early today. There was a meeting on the books that I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through.”

“I guess we’re both playing hooky,” Emma joked.

Mrs. Mercer shifted the laundry basket to one arm. “Why don’t you join me for some tea? I was just about to sit down for a cup.”

Emma had actually come home to try to refocus—she needed to be able to think logically if she was going to find out what had really happened to Sutton. She’d been looking forward to some time alone, relaxing in Sutton’s bedroom, but she didn’t feel like she could turn down the offer. “Sure.”

Sun poured through the kitchen’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Emma perched at the island counter and watched as Mrs. Mercer measured loose-leaf tea into a purple-flowered teapot. “Remember playing tea when you were little?” Mrs. Mercer asked, smiling. “You would bring your stuffed animals down and sit them around the table and pretend to serve them crumpets.”

“Crumpets?” Emma rolled her eyes as she imagined Sutton would have done. “I did not.”

“Yes, you did. I don’t think you even knew what crumpets were—you just heard the word somewhere and liked how it sounded.”

Emma smiled. She liked hearing sweet memories of her sister.

I liked that my mom
had
sweet memories of me.

“How’s Ethan?” Mrs. Mercer poured hot water over the leaves. Lavender-scented steam billowed from the teapot’s spout.

“He’s good.” Emma couldn’t wipe a dopey grin off her face. “We’re having a picnic tonight.”

Mrs. Mercer raised an eyebrow. “How romantic.”

Emma ducked her head, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. “We’re going stargazing—he’s really into astronomy. I was going to bake cookies this afternoon to take with us.”

“
You’re
making cookies?” Mrs. Mercer peered at her. “You don’t even know how to turn the oven on!”

“Oh, I’m sure I can figure it out,” Emma covered. It didn’t surprise her that Sutton didn’t know how to cook, but she’d been baking since junior high, making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and peanut butter blossoms to try to win over her various foster families. Baking relaxed her. She liked to sit, listening to her favorite music on the used iPod she’d bought at Goodwill, inhaling the delicious smells of sugar and chocolate.

I just hoped she didn’t lick the batter from the spoon. Sutton Mercer did
not
get love handles.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll love them, even if they’re a little burned,” Mrs. Mercer teased.

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” Emma groused good-naturedly. Just talking about her night with Ethan made Emma’s heart speed up. It felt like ages since their date at the movie studio, and she couldn’t wait to feel his breath on her ear and his lips on hers. She smiled at the thought of his cryptic text from that morning:
N 32° 12' 23.2554", W 110° 41' 18.3012" = <3? 8PM?
After a moment of puzzling, Emma had plugged the longitude and latitude notations into Sutton’s iPhone. The coordinates were for a site in Saguaro National Park.
Sends me invitations in the form of riddles
was something else to add to her list of
Adorable Things Ethan Does
.

The teapot whistled, breaking Emma from her thoughts. “He wasn’t hurt too badly in that fight, was he?” Mrs. Mercer asked.

Emma shrugged. “I think he’s okay. He has a black eye that he thinks makes him look really cool.”

Mrs. Mercer sighed. “He shouldn’t have swung at Thayer. Boys never stop to think things through, do they? People get hurt in fights like that—and not just the people in the actual fight.” Then she looked at Emma. “How are
you
doing with all of that, Sutton?”

Emma picked at a speck of lint on her skirt. “Haven’t you heard? I’m Sutton Mercer. I love it when boys fight over me.”

Mrs. Mercer crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve never seen you get so pale as when those two started on each other.”

Gratitude bubbled up in Emma’s chest as she met Mrs. Mercer’s eyes. No else one was willing to believe that she wasn’t enjoying stringing two boys along. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I like Ethan, and it’s completely over with me and Thayer. I just can’t seem to convince either one of them of that.”

Mrs. Mercer sipped her tea. “You know, Sutton, the problem isn’t that you’re giving them the wrong signals. It’s that you’re so worth fighting for. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

If I could have put my head on my adoptive mother’s shoulder right at that moment, I would have. Ever since my death, Emma and I had scrambled around trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve getting murdered. It seemed I’d given so many people reasons to want me gone that the real mystery was why someone hadn’t done it sooner. It was a welcome change to hear something nice about me for once.

Mrs. Mercer opened a package of shortbread cookies and placed a few on a plate. “Well, I for one think Ethan has been a good influence on you. Your grades have improved so much since you started seeing him, and you’ve been nicer to your sister.” She gave Emma a motherly smile. “Or maybe my little girl is just growing up.”

Emma shifted uncomfortably. “Um, where did this tea set come from, Mom?” she asked, hoping to change the subject from her personality shift.

Mrs. Mercer eyed her strangely over the silver sugar tongs. “You don’t remember? This was your great-grandma’s, the only thing she brought with her from Scotland. I’m not sure how old it is—I always got the impression that it’d been handed down well before then.”

I suppressed a twinge of sadness—and anger. How many times had I listened to family history and felt shut out of it just because I thought I was adopted? I still didn’t understand why my grandparents didn’t feel that they could tell me that their stories were my stories, too, that I was related to the ancestors who had come over from Scotland with that tea set. It all came back to Becky. What had she done that had merited banishment so complete that I wasn’t even allowed to know my own heritage?

Emma looked thoughtfully at the tea service, thinking the same thing I was. Wheels started turning at the back of her mind.

She looked up. “Mom, can I ask you a question? Do you … have any regrets?”

Mrs. Mercer looked surprised. “Regrets?”

“You know, people you don’t talk to anymore, relationships you’ve cut off. Anything like that.” She almost winced at how transparent she sounded, but Mrs. Mercer didn’t seem to notice.

Her grandmother looked down into her cup. “You know, things change. People change. Sometimes you have to move on from someone you care about. It can be hard, honey.” Mrs. Mercer folded and unfolded a linen napkin embroidered with a pineapple. “Sometimes you have to admit that a relationship can’t be fixed. That no matter how much you want to, you can’t trust some people.”

Something about her words sent a little shiver up Emma’s spine. She poured more tea into her cup, a few stray leaves swirling in the hot liquid. She wished she could use them to see the future. Or even better, the past.

Mrs. Mercer frowned. “What’s this about, sweetheart?”

“Nothing,” Emma said, biting her lip. “I’ve just been thinking how you’ve always been there for me, no matter what. I guess it just got me wondering if I’ve ever pushed you too far.”
Like Becky did
, she thought, willing Mrs. Mercer to open up.
Come on, Grandma, tell me how Becky crossed that line
.

Her grandmother took Emma’s hand across the table, her bright blue eyes wide with concern. “Are you trying to tell me something? Are you in some kind of … trouble?”

Emma shook her head. “No, of course not. Everything’s fine.”

Mrs. Mercer looked searchingly into Emma’s eyes for a long moment, then let go of Emma’s hand and picked up her teacup and saucer, the porcelain clinking softly together. When she spoke again, her voice was halting and careful, as if she were still forming the words in her head.

“Sutton, I love you and your sister very much. I would do anything for you two. I’ve been hard on you sometimes, I know that. But it’s because I look at you and I think about all the potential you have, to be successful and healthy and happy.” She paused. “A mother’s love is unconditional, Sutton. There’s nothing you could ever do to make me love you less. I promise.”

Emma looked back down to her tea. An unmistakable sadness had gripped her at her grandmother’s words. A mother’s love should be unconditional. But Mrs. Mercer clearly hadn’t felt that way about Becky. And Becky certainly hadn’t felt that way about her twins.

Emma didn’t know why Mrs. Mercer had accepted Laurel and Sutton and not Becky, but she knew she wouldn’t be getting any information from her today. She’d just have to keep digging and find her own answers.

For both our sakes.

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