Page 105 of Serial Killer Games

I prop up a fake smile and try to look confused—Dodi and me, fighting?—but Laura sees through me. I learned all my fake smiles from her, after all. She gracefully drops it.

We gravitate to the kitchen, our default, and she pours coffee and restlessly picks up crumbs off the surface of the kitchen table with the pad of her finger.

“I’m going to have to turn my phone on at some point.” Shelaughs hollowly. “How many missed calls do you think there are?”

Andrew would have come home to an empty house yesterday, expecting us to be cowed and conciliatory. I can picture him now, checking that tracking app, useless with Laura’s data turned off. Firing off text after text, calling over and over, face getting grimmer and grimmer.

I want to reach across the table and place my hand on Laura’s.Don’t go back.

She twists her hands, and her face twists too.

“I need to talk to you, Jake. It’s been eating me up inside, what I said the other night. I should never have worded it like that, like I stayed because Ihadto. Because I could have left. I had my bags packed when you showed up—there was a reason I hadn’t bothered with Christmas that year. But Ichoseto stay. Ichoseit. I would choose it again. It was all worth it.Youwere worth it.”

I freeze. “What do you mean?”

She places her hands on mine and squeezes, and the pins and needles in the tips of my fingers start.

“I finally had my proof of the affair—well,oneof the affairs—and I had my exit plan figured out, but then the social worker showed up with walking, talking proof of a completely separate affair, and his dog in tow, and—”

She stops for one second, emotion catching up with her. It catches up with me, too. I remember that day clearly, this strange woman standing in her front door, staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

“You weren’t anything like Andrew. I could tell that at a glance. You would never have survived growing up with that sociopath—I knew thatinstantly. And then after what he didto that poor old dog—” Laura cuts out again for a second. “Jake. I was never goinganywhere.”

My fingers are blocks of ice.

I stare at Laura—the large, dark doe eyes, the heart-shaped face—so much like my mom, who I look like—my mom, the youngest, prettiest teacher at school—a little public school, because she’d left the Catholic school system after having me out of wedlock—who had never in my entire childhood spoken of her estranged sister, Laura. Never had so much as a photo of her in our apartment.

Because they’re not sisters. They’re not sisters, but Andrew has atype.

Laura squeezes my hands and her mouth moves, but I don’t hear a word. My mind is skipping like a stone over still water from ifs and thats to thens. It was easy to fabricate a redirection of the public’s speculation—I look like myaunt. An easy, sleazy lie. A way to keep squeaky clean the reputation of my uncle, the Catholic school superintendent—my uncle, who always bristled when anyone mistook me for his son. My uncle—

Myfather. I could be sick.

I remember that dinner on my birthday.Howdareyou tell her I’m your father…

Laura thought I knew. Of course she did. What normal person wouldn’t have put it all together? Andrew’s family did. Those wary, disapproving stares at family dinners, those probing, uncomfortable questions about my parentage in those early years—

Laura’s been talking this whole time—saying what, who knows—and now she pulls her hands back from mine for a moment, and my fingers aren’t just white, they’re blue at the tips. This is a new symptom. I’m getting sicker. My nerve cellsfalling apart, myelin disintegrating. I feel nauseous—my heart starts thudding—the well-trodden physiological circuit of an anxiety attack starting—

And it’s the missing step on the stairs at night. I lurch as I find my mental footing.

I’m not dying.

In my mind’s eye, Andrew’s parents—my grandparents—doing their ridiculous dance classes at their retirement home, rudely spry and physically able. Disgustingly healthy. Showing no signs of slowing down as they close in on a century on this planet.

“When did this start? Poor thing,” Laura says, taking my blue fingers into her warm hands. “Raynaud’s syndrome. Capillary spasm. Lookssomuch scarier than it is. Andrew gets that too, in his feet. That’s why you never see him without a pair of socks. Triggered by cold or stress. Have you been stressed?”

Have I been stressed.My heart’s been eating itself in my chest for eight years. It’s empty now—quiet and still inside.

Laura comes into focus in front of me, her lips moving, words forming, but I’m in my own head. Of course she didn’t take me away with her. Of course we didn’t leave Andrew in the dust. I wasn’t hers. I washis.

I always thought she was weak, but she was so strong. Not the sort of strength that stood up to force, but the sort that quietly bore great pressure. What was that like, always rolling over, giving way, placating, placating, placating your psycho husband so you could stay put in a horrible marriage and keep an eye on his kid? The kid you had no legal right to?

“Oh, honey,” Laura says, squeezing my arm, seeing something on my face I can’t tuck away and hide. “Don’t be stressed. Talk to her. It’s normal for new relationships—”

This is peak Laura right here, calming, soothing, a steady drip of encouragement. She’s always been the best. The absolute best aunt a lonely, grief-stricken boy could ask for.

She’s not my aunt, though.

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