“Besides, you’re one to talk. You don’t look so great, either.”

Chet doesn’t have to tell me. I saw myself in the hallway mirror earlier, the unwashed hair I worked into a messy braid down one shoulder, the clothes that look dug from the bottom of the laundry basket, my face pale and shiny with sweat. I know I look like hell. I feel like it, too.

“Yeah, well, you walk up on a dead body in your backyard and let’s see how you look afterward. She was under the dock, Chet, just...bobbing there. She looked like a mannequin or something. Her skin was practically see-through. And then they flipped her over and I saw her face.” I shudder, a chill hijacking my spine at the memory of her one-eyed stare into the sky, at the shock of Paul’s words: No, I don’t know her. “I’m pretty sure my heart stopped.”

Chet frowns. “What, had you seen her around or something?”

I shake my head. “I just meant it freaked me out, is all.”

That’s the thing about lies, that they demand commitment. Once you spout one off, you have to stick to your story, to think before blurting the next words. Even at home, and even with Chet. Especially with him. He’s the last person in Lake Crosby capable of keeping a secret.

He brushes it off with a shrug. “Understandable, I guess. Remember all those nightmares I had after Uncle Jerry’s funeral? The way they just laid him out on that refrigerated table, his eyes all sunken in and stuck together with glue. I don’t care what anybody says—he didn’t look asleep. Creeped me way the hell out, too.”

“Exactly.” I steer us to a safer subject. “So what’s the big emergency?”

“Who says there’s an emergency? Can’t a guy drop by to see his favorite sister?” Chet steps to the fridge, sticks his whole head inside. “Hey, you got any of that pumpkin spice creamer? That stuff was the shit.”

“I’m your only sister, and it’s gone.” I don’t mention that Paul dumped it after he spotted it at the very back of the fridge, half-hidden behind a tub of Greek yogurt and some organic orange juice. As long as I’ve known him, Paul’s position has been, if it doesn’t come from a farm or the organic market, it has no business going in the body.

“Palm oil, cane sugar, artificial flavoring,” Paul said, squinting at the back label, “but you know what this stuff doesn’t have? Milk.” He twisted open the top, turned it upside down in the drain. “Imagine that, a coffee creamer without so much as a drop of dairy. You’re going to grow a third ear if you keep drinking this crap.”