Footsteps continue across the hall into the living room, and for just a second, I think I’ve gotten away with it. Then Emily steps into the bathroom and flips the wall switch.

Light floods the small room, and she screams, shocked to find me hiding there.

I flinch as footsteps pound down the hallway toward us. “What’s wrong?” Mr. Mercer demands.

Emily blinks at me. I shake my head, silently begging her to claim she saw a spider or something. But then her father appears in the doorway.

“Beckett Bergen.” He steps back and waves me into the hall with one hand.

My mother’s eyes fall closed for a second, and she exhales slowly.

“Did she come with you?” Jake’s dad demands, and my mom shakes her head. So he turns to his son. “Jake, what—?”

“It isn’t his fault, Mr. Mercer. I just … I wanted to tell him that my mom would be—”

“Beckett!” My mother scowls at me, mortified.

“Young lady, you do not have permission to be in this house!” Grace snaps, and all eyes turn her way.

“I know Jake’s grounded, but—”

“He isn’t grounded.” Grace looks puzzled. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

I frown at Jake, but he won’t look at me, so I turn back to his mother. “Then why …?” He said he was on lockdown. He snuck me in because— “It’s me, isn’t it? You told him to stay away from me.”

“It isn’t personal.” Mr. Mercer is talking to my mom, as if Jake and I aren’t even here. “I hate to say it, Julie, but we never had a moment of trouble out of our son before he started spending time at your house. And if we’d known about the issues Kyle was dealing with, we never would have—”

“Nick,” Brother Bill says softly. “That isn’t relevant.”

But Mr. Mercer doesn’t even look at the youth minister.

Hearing my dad’s name on Jake’s father’s tongue feels like a slap in the face. He’s wielding it like a weapon, and I am defenseless against this blow.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him.

But he doesn’t look embarrassed or ashamed of what he’s said. He looks … sympathetic.

I want to slap the sympathy off his face.

He turns back to my mother. “I’m as sorry as I can be about the loss you guys have suffered, Julie. I can’t imagine what you’re all going through. But we have to think about Jake’s college—”

“Dad,” Jake snaps.

His father holds out a hand, as if to reassure him. “The tire plant’s been good to me, but Jake’s the best high school pitcher in the state, and between baseball and his test scores, he’s got bigger things on the horizon. But these days, it isn’t only stats that recruiters look at. We just can’t have him associated with the kind of ugliness that’s going around on the internet right now. With this baby killer hashtag business.” Nick Mercer waves one hand at me in a vague gesture of disapproval.