When they finished, Marcus said, “You’ve been up here all day.”
“Yeah.”
“Girl stuff?”
Winnie sighed and lay back against her pillows. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “What if one of your parents did something really bad-”
“Like commit murder, you mean?”
Okay, she deserved that. She thought about how to start over.
“What if one of your parents kept a secret from you your whole life. Like, oh, I don’t know… like they flunked out of college or had a child out of wedlock. Would you be pissed?”
Marcus shifted on the bed and glanced up at the ceiling. Winnie followed his eyes-there was a light water stain and a tiny black spider. Without a word, Marcus stood up, collected the spider in a tissue, and let it go out the window. Winnie marveled. Any other guy would have squished the thing to death. When Marcus sat down again, his eyelids drooped. After two months together, Winnie knew what this meant: he was shutting her out!
“Wake up!” she said impatiently.
“What’s going on, Winnie?”
Winnie chewed her thumbnail. Garrett had sworn her to secrecy, but that wasn’t fair. After all, Piper knew about Beth and David. Winnie motioned for Marcus to come closer. He rolled his eyes-she was being silly-but he leaned in.
“What is it, Winnie?”
“Mom was married before,” Winnie said. “She was married to David.”
Marcus straightened. Married to David. Well.
Winnie studied Marcus’s face; she was interested to know how someone else would react. He seemed nonplussed, like he didn’t get it.
“When was this?”
“When she was twenty-one years old,” Winnie said. “They were married for two weeks. And she never told us.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Piper’s mother, Rosie, told her and Piper told Garrett. I checked it out this morning when I was in town. I made a copy of the marriage certificate.” She pulled it out of her pocket, unfolded it and presented it to him. “Here. This is it.”
That explained why she’d acted so strangely at breakfast. Marcus knew she wasn’t going into town for books. He looked over the marriage certificate. “Did you talk to your mom?” he asked.
“Hell, no. I’m never talking to her again.”
Marcus guffawed. “What, over this?”
“Yes, over this. She lied to us, Marcus.”
“Maybe she had her reasons. Maybe she was embarrassed.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Why? You can’t tell me you’ve never kept a secret from your mother.”
Winnie thought for a minute. She couldn’t think of a single thing she had ever kept from anyone. “I don’t keep secrets.”
“Some people do,” Marcus said, thinking uneasily of the still-blank legal pad in his room. “It’s called privacy.”
“Privacy isn’t okay under these circumstances,” Winnie said. “Besides, there’s worse news.”
“What’s that?”
“She never told my dad,” Winnie whispered. In her mind, this was such a horrible fact that it couldn’t even be spoken aloud. Her dear, departed father deceived by the woman he loved.
Marcus set the marriage certificate down on the bed. Here was Beth’s secret, then-the one she kept from her whole family but almost told him on the Fourth of July.
“You need to talk to your mom, Winnie,” he said. “You need to work this out.”
“No way,” Winnie said. “Mom is going to pay.”
“Pay? What do you mean, pay? You’re being ridiculous.”
Winnie bristled at this. “Shut up! You don’t talk to your mother. I don’t see you ‘working things out’ with her! She’s sent you at least three letters that I know of, and you haven’t opened one of them.”
“First of all, my letters are none of your business,” Marcus said. “Secondly, my mother did something really bad. She killed a woman and a nine-year-old girl. She killed them inside our home with a knife from our kitchen. I have a reason to be angry.”
“I have a reason to be angry, too,” Winnie said. “This changes my whole life. I’ve been deceived, my brother has been deceived, and worst of all, my father! I feel like my whole life is a sham. Anyway, Garrett and I have planned some revenge.”
“Revenge?” Marcus said. Winnie kicked herself mentally-she shouldn’t have said anything about the revenge. “You want revenge because your mother was married to David for two weeks twenty years ago? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Marcus felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed.
“Don’t pretend like you’re falling asleep!” Winnie said. “You do that all the time when you don’t want to deal with reality.”
“Oh, do I?” Marcus asked, his eyes still closed.
“Yes, you do. Anyway, why are you taking Mom’s side? You’re my friend. You have to take my side. My side is the right side.”
Marcus stood up and studied the dresser in front of the door. “You’re crazy, you know that?” He moved the dresser with enormous ease and stepped out into the hallway. “You need to put your shit into perspective. You wouldn’t know a problem if one bit you in the ass.” He sounded truly pissed and Winnie groped for words to reel him back in, but then she told herself she didn’t care what he thought. Marcus was the person who was supposed to understand. Okay, maybe Beth wasn’t a murderer but that didn’t mean Winnie’s feelings weren’t hurt.
“You know what you are?” Winnie said. “You’re self-absorbed.”
“I’m self-absorbed?” Marcus said. “Sister, look in the mirror.”
“Fuck you,” Winnie flung out. “I wish I hadn’t told you.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me either,” Marcus said. “Because I used to respect you. I used to think you had a decent heart.”
“I do have a decent heart,” she said. “And this is a real problem.”
“Don’t get me going,” Marcus said. “If you want to hear about real problems, I’ll tell you sometime. But what I’m hearing now is you judging something you don’t understand. You need to talk to your mother.”
“I told you, I’m never talking to her again,” Winnie said.
“Well, then,” Marcus said. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
“I can’t believe you’re being such a hypocrite,” she hissed. “You don’t talk to Constance.”
“This isn’t about me,” Marcus said.
Winnie was so furious-here was Marcus making her feel like the bad guy!-that she slammed the door, but it bounced back in her face. Marcus walked down the hall to his room without another word. Winnie closed the door as best she could and moved the dresser in front of it. Then she flopped face-first on her bed. She didn’t understand. That much was true. She didn’t understand anything anymore.
The plan was scheduled for one in the morning, to be completed by three. Garrett had read that these were the hours that the average person-one who went to sleep at ten-thirty and woke at seven-slept most soundly. Before one A.M. a person was in light REM sleep, and after three the average person woke at least once to use the bathroom. Garrett sounded convincing on this point and Winnie conceded. After all, she didn’t want to get caught. She found it impossible to fall asleep, and thus lay awake in a state of fearful agitation, replaying her conversation with Marcus. After she skipped dinner, she thought he might realize that she was depressed and come up to check on her, but he didn’t. On top of everything else she had to deal with, now she and Marcus were fighting.