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“You’re not out there breaking new ground and making discoveries, Jack. You’re living the same life your father and I did twenty years ago. But I never had the look on my face that you did just now, and it worries me. I’m your mother and I’m asking you what’s going on.”

I spin my phone in a circle, the black screen reflecting our faces as we have a stare-down. And Mom’s not blinking.

“How much do you know about Alex Craft?” I finally ask.

She definitely blinks then. “Alex Craft? The girl—”

“—with the dead sister,” I finish. “Yeah, her.”

Mom straightens up on her chair, back into full-on parent mode. “Well, I guess I don’t know much more than that. She had an older sister who . . . died.”

Died. Like she had an unexpected heart attack or something. But I’m not going to get into semantics when my mom is clearly trying so hard to keep her face open and blank. And it’s totally not working.

“What else?”

She goes doe-eyed. “What?”

“I’m not stupid either, Mom. And I know you pretty well. So what are you not saying? Is it weird because you dated her dad?”

I thought she’d blush, maybe swat that little fact away and change the subject. But instead she busts out laughing. “God, no. It’s a small town, kid. I probably dated the dads of half the girls you’ve—”

“—borrowed perfume from?” I cut in before she can finish with something that’ll make me blush instead.

She puts her hands up. “Fair enough.”

“So what’s the deal? Why when I said Alex Craft’s name did your forehead wrinkles get a lot deeper? Is it because you dated her dad?”

Mom ignores the jab, her gaze traveling to the well-worn path on the kitchen linoleum that needs to be replaced. Dad priced new flooring last year, and even though it wasn’t expensive, my mom didn’t get a new kitchen floor.

“Nick Craft is not a bad person,” Mom says in a way that makes me think it’s something she’s repeated more than once. “He split when those girls were little, left a lot of tongues wagging behind him. People said it was because he made out good with his trucking company and wanted to go live it up. But I knew him, and if that’s the truth, then the man was a far cry from the boy I grew up with. Nick wouldn’t have left without a good reason, and whatever it is—that’s between him and his wife.”

I think about the cardboard cutout of a woman standing in the doorway, chewing her lip in confusion when I ask if her daughter’s home. “She’s different,” I say.

Mom shrugs. “He married outside the county.”

It’s something you can’t miss if you’re raised here. Most of us don’t have money, but that doesn’t take away a certain element of pride that goes along with being part of this place, right down to the literal sense that your ancestors actually are in the dirt that grew the crops that you’ll have for dinner. When I’ve gone out with a girl more than once or twice, Mom and Dad have filled me in on her biological heritage, maybe just to reassure themselves that we’re not related.

But if you step outside the county line it’s like you’re taking your chances, rolling the dice to see what kind of inheritance you might be marrying into. Not from here is one of the most damning insults that can be tossed, carrying with it the eternal question mark of what an outsider might be carrying inside of them, a mental or biological dark passenger that will rear up and bite your ass thirty years down the road. And I realize maybe that’s what I’m actually asking.

“How do you ever really know someone, Mom?”

She smiles then, real slow. So slow that there are tears pooling in her eyes before the edges of her lips have made it up into her cheeks.

“Honey, you just don’t. You can love someone down to their core and they can love you right back just as hard, and if you traded diaries you’d learn things you never suspected. There’s a part of everyone deep down inside of them not meant for you. And the sooner you learn that, the easier your life is gonna be.”

I swallow hard. “So how do you try?”

She stops my phone in midspin, pointing it toward me. “You start by calling her, I guess.”

And right then my phone rings. Alex’s face fills the screen and my heart leaps into my throat, my pulse so loud in my ears that it drowns out the sound of skin tearing.

27. ALEX

It’s very odd to me that a string of numbers can put me in contact with a specific person. I told myself that I bought a phone because Claire might need to call me about the shelter. And while her name was the first entry, it still felt like an incomplete action until Jack was in there too. It feels heavier in my pocket now. Like a loaded weapon. One that might backfire on me.

Branley also put her number into my phone when we were taking Claire home, along with strict instructions to report back to her. I shot her a quick answer (she’s fine) shortly after my friend stripped down and vomited. It’s not true. Claire is not fine.

I now have three people in my phone. I can call them at any time, invading their lives with a series of numbers, like spinning the combination on their locker and suddenly being in their space. It’s so intensely personal it almost feels profane. I haven’t taken advantage of this permission yet, because they will know it is me calling. Which means they can choose not to answer.