All the Lies We Tell Read online

  Quietly, she went to the table herself and loaded up her plate in a similar fashion. She grabbed a couple of napkins and then hooked her arm through Ilya’s, careful but not successful in keeping him from spilling a little. He resisted at first, but she looked him in the face.

  “Come outside with me,” she said. “You’re kind of being a dick.”

  She hadn’t known Ilya before their parents got together. She’d only met him as an arrogant teenage boy with an infectious sense of humor and a penchant for getting into trouble, as well as the talent to talk his way out of it. She’d heard stories about him over the years. Those small seeds of gossip had found a way to bear fruit even in the next town over. Still, it surprised her how readily he reacted to her murmured admonition.

  “Sorry,” Ilya said with his mouth still full.

  Theresa shook her head and left the dining room, dodging the well-meaning, reaching hands of the women who’d gathered there to mourn Babulya, and avoiding Dina, who was still trying to catch Ilya’s eye. The weather was still so unseasonably warm they didn’t need their coats, but the day had been overcast, with a promise of more rain. There’d been no snow this year, a fact she was grateful for. Not having to deal with bad weather on top of everything else had made her life a lot easier over the past few months.

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  He did. He dug his plastic fork into the slithering pile of macaroni salad, managing to stab a few noodles and get them into his mouth before pausing to swallow. He gave her a startled look. “Babulya’s macaroni salad.”

  “I made it this morning.”

  He glanced up at her and took another bite before he answered. “I haven’t had this in years.”

  “I haven’t made it in a while. I thought it would be appropriate for today.” She took a bite, savoring the flavors. Bits of green onion. Mustard. Small cubes of carrot. This macaroni salad was the perfect summer-picnic dish, as out of season as the warm weather, and yet somehow seemed perfectly right to also celebrate the life of a woman who’d been so loved.

  “So, Dina,” she said after a moment or so of silence, interrupted only by the sound of them both chewing.

  “She lives next door to Allie. She’s . . . nosy.”

  Theresa laughed softly, catching a glimpse of blonde hair at the kitchen’s sliding door. “Ex-girlfriend?”

  “She’s married. Four kids. None of them mine,” Ilya added sarcastically.

  “I wasn’t accusing you of fathering half the neighborhood,” Theresa said after a pause. “Although the way she was looking at you, she might be looking for a daddy for number five.”

  Ilya grimaced with a shudder. “Shit, I need another beer.”

  “Do you? Need one? Or do you just want one?” Theresa asked.

  He frowned and glanced at the house. “What difference does it make? Need or want?”

  “It makes a big difference,” Theresa answered quietly and focused on her plate. “But only you can figure out what it is. If you need one, go in and get one.”

  Ilya made as though to get up from the table, then settled back into the chair with a grumbling sigh. “Nah. I don’t want to go back inside, watch my mother holding court like some kind of queen. You know she wants to sit shiva this week?”

  “I heard her inviting people, yes. Not that most of them knew what it is.” Theresa, baptized Catholic at her grandparents’ insistence but raised without much of any organized religion, had toyed with practicing a few different faiths over the years. She’d never gone so far as to officially convert to anything, but she did know what shiva, the traditional Jewish practice of seven nights’ grieving, was.

  “It’s ridiculous.” Ilya rested his elbows on the table to let his hands make a cradle for his face for a few seconds. When he spoke, his voice was muffled. “Like what, she’s Jewish now?”

  “I thought you were always Jewish.”

  He peeked at her through his fingers. “Well . . . yeah. I mean, sure, but we never really did anything about it.”

  “Doesn’t mean that your mom can’t find comfort in the traditions of her faith,” Theresa said mildly.

  Ilya sat up and stared at her. “You’re different.”

  She didn’t think so, but then again, he didn’t know her, did he? He’d hardly known her back then, this sudden younger sister forced on him by their screwed-up parents who’d thought they were in love until making it work got too hard. She didn’t answer him.

  “I mean . . .” Ilya shrugged, staring at her. “Hi.”

  Theresa’s brows rose. “Hi.”

  “I’m a little fucked up.”

  “Too many beers,” she said lightly.

  Ilya shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know,” Theresa answered.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Then

  School was a special level of hell, Niko thought. They put you in these small rooms and made you sit there for hours to do work you could learn in so much less time if they only bothered to figure out a way to teach that made sense. It didn’t even have to be fun. His pencil tap-tapped on the notebook in front of him. Couldn’t they just make it less freaking torturous?

  It didn’t help that all he could think about was Alicia Harrison.

  All his friends had started panting after girls with their tongues hanging out like dogs since about the seventh grade, but he’d never seen much point in it. Why get all worked up over some flat-chested pimpleface who might or might not have to be pressured into opening her mouth when you kissed? Not to mention what you had to do in order to get her to touch your dick. Or to let you touch any of her parts. It hadn’t made any sense to him—why did he ever have to fall in love? Or worse, have some clinging girlfriend claim she was in love with him?

  Niko planned on getting the hell out of this piece-of-shit town the first second he had the chance, so why would he want to get tangled up with someone here? Why start something that was only going to end? If he got horny, he had his own two hands that could take care of business. He didn’t need something else.

  Except . . . now he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl across the street. Allie was the last person in the world he’d have thought he would ever want to kiss. The party had been a bad idea from the beginning. He’d known it. But Ilya had a way of convincing everyone that even the worst ideas were going to be great, so Niko had gone along with it because he almost always did. He’d drunk his mother’s vodka. And he’d kissed Allie in the garden. He’d done that, and neither of them had talked about it since. It had been almost a month, it had been a stupid thing, so why then couldn’t he shake the memory of how she’d tasted?

  Why couldn’t he stop wanting to do it again?

  Somehow he made it through the day, dodging a detention for not having his homework finished by arguing with Mrs. Haberstramm that straight As on his tests should prove that he understood the material.

  “I can’t give you credit for the work if you don’t turn it in,” she said with a sigh she reserved for all the students who tried to wiggle their way out of turning in their homework. “And it counts for half your grade, Niko. So, no matter how many tests you ace, if you don’t turn in the homework, you’re going to barely squeak by with a D, and that’s only if I’m generous.”

  They agreed he could turn in all the missing homework he swore with an angel’s face he really had finished and had just forgotten to bring in. Every day. For months. She gave him until Friday. Three days. He was never going to make it, not if he worked all night, every night, and had nothing else to do. The futility of the arrangement, the challenge, should’ve motivated him, but Niko headed home and tossed his backpack on the recliner in the living room the way he did every single day after school.

  Babulya had snacks ready in the kitchen. She and Theresa had been baking again. Cookies, fresh from the oven, cooling on wire racks. He snagged one, knowing she’d scold him about ruining his dinner but not mean it. She wouldn’t make cookies if she didn’t w