Page 33 of The Better Sister

I had to remind myself that Ethan was only sixteen. Teenagers today are so cynical and exposed to so much. But, in the end, they simply haven’t lived long enough to recognize the degree to which things are right and wrong. A good kid knows the difference between the two—good and bad—but still can’t be expected to judge the scale of things on either side of the line.

I played hooky once—and only once. It was in the ninth grade, and it was an absolutely perfect day outside and my friend Maddie Lyndon wanted to smoke cigarettes on the giant tire swings at Coventry PEACE Park. She smoked her unfiltered Camels while we passed between us a single bottle of Smirnoff Ice that she had pilfered from the overflow refrigerator in her garage. When I saw Coach Simon behind the wheel of a Ford pickup heading our direction, I nearly waved on instinct. But Maddie, the more experienced ditcher, grabbed me and we both dove to the ground to avoid detection. Peeking up at the last minute, we saw him lean over to plant a long, nasty kiss on our classmate, Leah Weller. I never told anyone, because, in my mind, I knew a teacher kissing a fifteen-year-old was wrong, and I knew cutting class to drink and smoke was bad. But as crazy as it would seem years later, I didn’t really understand that one was bad enough to warrant exposing the other. Instead, it felt like a draw, like we had all done something forbidden that day.

I would have told Ethan that entire story so he might understand, but we didn’t have the luxury of time. “I don’t care about the pot,” I said.

“So wait, the ‘bob’ we’re talking about is pot and not something worse?” Nicky asked.

He shrugged. “It’s just what Kevin calls it. He plays Bob Marley when he gets stoned, so he’s all like, bob or whatever.”

“What does Kevin mean by ‘you broke off on Friday’?” I asked.

“He’s trying to make it sound like I’m the one selling—”

“Ethan, stop it. I’m not your father. I’m not going to be mad at you, or disappointed. You need to tell me where you were Friday night. I told the police you were with Kevin, because that’s where I believed you were. Is he saying something different now?”

Ethan scrubbed his scalp so frantically with his fingers, I was afraid he’d draw blood. “We didn’t go to the movie. It was sold out.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to remain calm. “They asked me where you were, and I said you saw that movie based on what you told me, but that’s only from my perspective. Did you tell the detective you saw the movie?” I was already spearheading a strategy to explain the discrepancy. Change of plans. Confusion of tense. A misunderstanding.

“No, of course not, because we didn’t go. But I guess Kevin said we did. He told me yesterday when we went by his house to pick up my backpack. He made it sound like the cop steered him to it. Like, ‘we just need to confirm you both went to the movie.’He assumed that’s what I told them, so he repeated it, because what really mattered is we were together.”

I wanted to build a time machine and crawl back into it. Nicky was right. I never should have let Guidry speak to Ethan without me. “But you weren’t together? You broke off?”

For the first time, I felt as if Ethan were looking to Nicky for help. “Eyes on me, Ethan. I asked you a question.” If he thoughtIwas grilling him, there was no way he could handle Guidry and Bowen.

“We were apart for like, an hour. At most.”

“Jesus, Ethan. Why didn’t you tell the police that? I don’t even know what to do with you right now.”

“When Dad found that pot last summer? Itreallywasn’t mine. I was telling the truth about holding it. It was for Kevin while he worked his shift at K-Mart. He totally freaked when you dumped it down the sink. I mean, I paid him back for the cost, but he had plans to sell that to all the city kids through the summer. And Kevin’s like my magnet to everyone I know on Long Island. He was dropping by a couple of houses Friday to do some deals. And I was like, no way can I go, because I knew Dad would kill—” His eyes began to water, but then he shook his head and regained his composure. “You saw how pissed he’s been lately, especially at me. I wasn’t about to get caught in the middle of some drug deal. So Kevin dropped me off at Main Beach and I just hung out until he was done. That’s all.”

I pressed my eyes shut and rubbed them. I wanted to scream at Ethan to wake up, but I knew from experience he would only shut down. Ethan was at his best when you allowed him to make his own choices.

When I’d first noticed his stoic response to his father’s death, I told myself it was because the news had been delivered by a total stranger. Since then, I had attributed his detachment to his tendency—shared with his mother—to find humor in every situation. But for the life of me, I could not understand why he would have withheld information from a police officer during his father’s homicide investigation.

I had been so focused on dragging information from Ethan that I hadn’t noticed that Nicky had her hands on her head and was physically trembling. It was as if her whole body was being jolted with electrical current. “Oh my god. We have to do something.” Whatever humor she had been able to find when she thought the police suspected me was gone now that we were talking about Ethan. But Ethan still didn’t understand the implications of his friend’s text.

He slipped his hands into his pockets. “What was I supposed to do? Narc Kevin out? It’s not like he hurt Dad or anything. It was totally unconnected. And if I had told her I hung out alone for an hour, she would’ve wanted to know why. And then Kevin would have gotten busted, and I’d look like a bad kid by association. And now that’s exactly what the cops are going to think.”

“Ethan, were you high on Friday?” I asked. “Is that what you didn’t want to tell the police?”

His shoulders began to shake as the severity of the situation descended upon him. I stepped toward him and pulled him into my arms. To my surprise, Nicky did the same. Our kid was in trouble, and we both knew it.

Nicky was the one to convince Ethan to leave his phone in the living room with the two of us while we spoke in private. The last thing we needed was to have Ethan text something that one of his friends would post on Snapchat or sell to a gossip website.

Nicky was running her half-painted fingernails through a tumble of dark blond waves she had draped over one shoulder. “We have to do something. I can’t believe this. My kid’s going to be treated as a murder suspect because he’s covering for some 90210 pot peddler?”

“He doesn’t have a lot of friends,” I said.

I heard Nicky mutter something about wondering where he got that from.

I didn’t need her to guilt-trip me about this. That’s why I had never mentioned the incident last year with the gun in his backpack. For so many years, I had been able to assure her that Ethan was happy, smart, thriving, funny—all the other adjectives that kept her content with the idea that she had basically lost her son, but that he was having a better life because of it. The few times he’d gotten in trouble, I thought I was handling the situation, protecting him from an overreaction. But now, here we were.

“I’m pretty sure the police think Ethan killed his father.” It was the first time I’d been able to speak the words aloud.

“I agree,” Nicky said. “It was better when I thought they were accusing you.”

Totally deadpan, once again. I was starting to remember what it was like to live around my sister. “I think I need to get him a lawyer.”

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