“You’ll be fine,” her mom assured her.

Amelia frowned, unconvinced.

Her mom tried again. “You’ve been looking forward to this all week. Casey’s mom said you guys are going to play games and have pizza and cake. You’ll have so much fun.”

It did sound like fun. Amelia sniffed. “Promise?”

A slight hesitation. Her mom breathed in, smoothed back Amelia’s hair again. “I’ll tell you what? You go to the sleepover and if you aren’t having fun, you can call me, and I’ll come get you. Anytime. Even if it’s three in the morning, I’ll be there.”

The tightness in Amelia’s chest loosened a bit, but then she shook her head. She couldn’t call her mommy to come get her from the sleepover. Her friends would never let her live that down. “They’ll think I’m a baby.”

Her mom’s eyes widened as if she’d had an epiphany. She snapped her fingers. “We’ll use a secret code. One between just the two of us.”

“A code?” Amelia sat up, intrigued.

Biting her lip, her mom glanced around the room. When she looked into the closet, a grin spread across her face. “Red jacket.”

Amelia laughed, the memory surfacing.

“It’s perfect. An inside joke. Something no one else would know,” her mom was talking fast now. Animatedly. “If you call me and use the phrase ‘red jacket’ I’ll make up some family emergency and come get you. Deal?”

Amelia smiled. “Deal.”

She didn’t need to use the code that night, but she did end up using it a handful of times over the years. And true to the agreement, her mom was there for her. Quickly. No questions asked.

Lauren had spent the past few weeks trying to convince Amelia that her mom was evil. A criminal mastermind. A bad person.

But she didn’t know her the way Amelia did.

The woman who tucked her in countless nights, singing lullabies off-key, who came up with a secret code to make her feel safe, who held her, stroking her hair when she had a nightmare and who always had her back—she was not a monster.

And there was no way Lauren could convince her otherwise.

When she and Lauren first met, she’d been annoyed with her mom’s controlling tendencies. She’d been rebelling. Pulling away. And she shared a lot of her frustrations about her mom with her new friend. The girl she believed to be her age who she randomly met at a party. Lauren misread it, though, clearly thinking she could get Amelia on her side.

Truth is, deep down she was mad at her mom. She’d been hoping Whitney would deny all the accusations, offer proof that she and Amelia were flesh and blood. It’s what she’d been expecting when her mom walked up to them in the cemetery today.