Deception by Lee Nichols

CHAPTER ONE

Six weeks ago, my parents disappeared.

I’d left them at San Francisco airport at seven in the evening, nervous and excited. These were their last words:

Dad: “There’s money in the bank; use your ATM card. If you get in trouble…” He looked at me. ”Don't get in trouble. We have our cell phone. You can call us anytime.”

Mom: “You know a scarf isn’t a jacket Emma.”

It was a chilly forty- eight degrees- sometimes I wondered if San Francisco was really in California. I’d worn a black sweater, black jeans, black boot, and a red embroidered pashmina my parents brought back from one of their many business trips. The scarf wound tightly around my neck and shoulder.

Me:  “that’s really the last thing you’re going to say to me?”

Mom: ”A hat helps, too.”

She fingered my short, choppy blond bob- a haircut she hadn’t approved- looking like she was about to say something more, but she hugged me instead.

I suppose if id known they were going to vanish, I would’ve said “I love you” and “ I’ll miss you”. Instead I left them at the curb and sputtered home in our ancient Volvo wagon, already planning my fall from grace: clubbing until 4:00 a.m., unsupervised shopping sprees, and maybe even a tattoo if I could come up with something good.

Hoping for inspiration, I paced our mausoleum of a house. Seriously, our coffee table was a stone sarcophagus; it was like we snaked off Nefertiti’s head. My parents were overly fond of the dead, or at least possessions of the dead. They sold antiquities from a store below our apartments on Fillmore Street, and the apartment was filled with relics and icons. Even the sofa was 150 years old- horsehair, dust mites and all.

My family had owned the building for generations. I guess we were rich, despite the old car, my pathetic allowance, and public education. Why else would we have the high-tech security system for both the store and apartment, which required a thumbprint to get in? When we were younger my brother, Max, and I pretended we ere 007 agents. Now it was just an aggravation every time I left the house for a red-eye chai from the café next door.  You’re probably wondering what kind of parents eave their seventeen-year-old-home lone for God knows how long. They’d said three weeks, but my parents didn’t always stick to the plan- this trip, in fact was last minute. Still, I wasn’t completely alone. They had one-employee, Susan, who’d run the shop for the past ten years, and she was supposed to check in me every night.

Susan’s daughter, Abby was my best friend- emphasis one the was. Two years older than me and two years younger than my brother, we’d grown up together, hanging out after school, obsessing over guys and our mutual lack of nice fingernails. Abby and max were always close; he even tutored her in French. And with our parents away so often, Susan became our surrogate mother to us.

Then, this summer, when Max was home from Harvard, I discovered him and having the Affair.

I’d just gotten back from the café next door when I heard noises coming from Max’s room. Id barged in without knocking and discovered them-, which put a whole new spin on the French lesson.

It was more of Max’s skin than id seen since I was a toddler, but I blocked out a lot of my past; it was just one more image to add to the file. And they were both happier id seen either of them. For two months things were great.

Then max dumped her.

Abby was devastated, and there was nothing I could do except keep the Kleenex and chocolate flowing. I have no idea how max took the breakup, or why he ended it, because the nest day he left for his junior year abroad.