The Cipher (5 page)

17

WAS IT POSSIBLE?

Could he really not see it?

Could he really not see the blazingly obvious truth?

“Oh,” Smiles said. “I don't know. I hadn't even thought.”

Of course it was from his birth mother.

His stepmom, Rose, had had no reason to leave Smiles some kind of weird letter/time bomb, set to explode on his eighteenth birthday. You'd only arrange that kind of thing if you knew you weren't going to be around. Rose didn't know that—she hadn't known she was going to die in that accident.

She wasn't a coward who couldn't face up to something she'd done. The letter was probably an apology his birth mother was too scared to make in person.

Smiles stared absently at the aquarium. In all their years together, he had brought up his birth mother only once. They were still small, ten or eleven, and Smiles had told her he'd tracked down her address. Her name was Alice. She was a mathematician like his father, and Smiles had discovered she was working at a think tank on the West Coast. They were up in Smiles's room when he showed her an envelope containing a letter he'd written to her. Melanie still had a sharp memory of her young self in Smiles's room, sitting cross-legged on his Patriots comforter, wondering how awkward it would be to write a letter to a mother who had discarded you.

Through the envelope, she could see the messy scrawl of his handwriting. The square dark blot in the middle was a school picture he'd included for her. He'd sent the letter more than a week earlier. It had already been postmarked, sent to California, and come back. A handwritten note near the stamp said
Return to Sender
.

Melanie hadn't understood at first. “She's not there anymore?”

Smiles had shaken his head. “It's her handwriting,” he said. “I've seen it before.”

He'd never brought up Alice again.

“Do you have a number for her?” Melanie asked now. She grabbed his phone from a pile of Xbox games just in case.

Smiles only shrugged. “I never looked for her again, after she returned that letter. I didn't even try to find her when my dad got sick.” He seemed disappointed with himself, and Melanie felt another surge of anger at the woman who had made him feel this way.

“C'mon,” she said, “we'll hop on your computer. Maybe she's still at the same place. And California is three hours behind, so—”

Melanie stopped. She had triggered something in Smiles.

“What is it?”

“Probably nothing,” he said, “but . . . where is area code 510?”

He brought out his cell phone and showed her a record of two missed calls from a 510 number. “They came in this morning.”

Melanie had no clue where 510 was, but it couldn't hurt to try. “Call it.”

She pinched her lip between her teeth as he contemplated the screen. And then he pressed the “call back” button. The tinny sound of a ringing line came through as Smiles drifted to his bedroom, the cell to his ear. Melanie followed on light feet to the doorway.

Smiles sunk to his bed, just a box spring and mattress lying on the floor. The sheets lay across it in a great swirl, a radar image of a hurricane. Even from the doorway, Melanie could hear the voice answering the call. She couldn't make out words, but there was something sharp in the delivery. It sounded female enough.

Smiles paused a moment. Melanie thought he might lose his nerve and hang up. She gripped the doorjamb with an unconscious intensity.

“Hello?” Smiles said. “Is this Alice Smylie?”

Silence for a moment, and then a muted reply. Smiles continued: “This is Rob Smylie. Your son, I think.”

I think
. It was heartbreaking. Melanie realized she'd cracked a nail and forced her hand away from the door frame.

Smiles nodded and then started again. “I, uh, well, you know Mr. Hunt? I was talking to him today and he told me there was a letter that you'd left for me. And a notebook of some kind. I'm not sure I really understood, but anyway I was wondering—”

A longer burst of sound, but now the voice had a note of finality in it.

“Well, okay, but I mean the whole thing was just a little confusing. You did write the letter, then?”

Silence, and then another clipped sentence from the other end.

“Maybe you could just tell me about it then? 'Cause it turns out Mr. Hunt actually threw away the letter. It's sort of a long story, but my dad's kinda sick and—”

A louder, longer response. Smiles's head made a slow bow of defeat to the carpet. Melanie wanted to throttle this woman. She couldn't take it anymore, and worse, she felt like she was invading Smiles's privacy. If she could pick up the line and demand some answers, she would. But she couldn't, so she did the only decent thing she could think of and retreated to the living room.

Melanie waited for five minutes there, looking beyond the gurgling fish tanks to the low clouds turning to Creamsicles in the sunset. The murmured pleadings she heard in Smiles's voice pained her ears.

Since she had last been to his place, a number of golf ball–sized pocks had appeared in the living room drywall. Her shoes rested on a gigantic purple stain in the carpet with dried chunks of paper towel all over the place. Smiles had parties during the week, attended, she imagined, by people he met out at the bars who liked the idea of hanging out with Robert Smylie's son for a night. It worried her. She wondered what happened here at night during the week but never asked. Chalk up another thing she wanted to change about herself.

She was sitting on the battered blue sofa that Smiles had found in the trash area on the day he got his keys. On the wall facing her was the seventy-two-inch plasma.

The obscene hunk of black plastic was shrieking everything she didn't like about Smiles. She wasn't comfortable here. And still she knew why she had come tonight. She knew why she had confused him with her birthday gift, and why she'd kissed him back by the aquarium. If she had the list right now, she would have written:
Pro: I glow for him. Ridiculous, but I do
.

The bedroom door opened. Smiles pocketed his cell on the way out, looking haunted.

“Smiles . . . what did she say?”

“Do you want to eat?”

He was avoiding it, of course, but she hated seeing him like this.

“Kabobs?” she said. Smiles loved the smelly kabob joint across the street.

He took her hand on the way out. He almost never did it, and she could have cried at the tender offering.

The kabob place was the size of a matchbox. It had two tiny booths, and the air was thick with a smell of lamb that stuck to your clothes for days afterward. The grease had yellowed the walls and penetrated a picture frame above them, warping a poster of Cyprus. They ate in silence, scrunched side by side in the booth. Melanie was thankful when Smiles prepared to speak.

“It was her, you were right.” He was a fast eater and had finished already. He wiped his hands on tissue-thin napkins.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She said it was for the best that I didn't read the letter.”

Melanie groaned.

“What?” Smiles said.

His harsh tone took her aback. He hardly ever spoke like that.

“I just . . . I think you deserve to know what it said.”

Smiles shrugged. “What could she say that's important now? Whatever—it's over.”

Melanie chewed, savoring the extra time to think of how to advance this conversation. It suddenly felt like a minefield. “But after what she did to you—”

“I don't care what she did to me. I had the best mom I could want.”

“I know. It's just, like,
accountability
or something.”

“I'm not gonna play judge. I'm not gonna force anybody to deal with me if they don't want to.” After a while he added, “Anyway, she said my mom knew about the letter.”

“Rose?”

“Yeah, Rose. You know—my
mom
.” He was angry now, like Melanie had been insulting the memory of the woman who raised him.

“Right, sorry.” Melanie felt like she couldn't win here. What was she supposed to do, call them Mom One and Mom Two? “But I mean, what does it matter that Rose knew about it?”

Smiles stared at her like she was dumb. “If she knew and didn't say anything, then she probably thought it was best for me not to know about the letter, too.”

“Or she was just being respectful. Waiting till you turned eighteen, according to the directions for the message. Did she even read it?”

“Yeah.” The harsh voice again. “I guess. They emailed about it and everything, apparently.”

“Smiles . . .”

He turned to her, gearing to attack.

Why was he getting like this?

“If it were me,” Melanie said, “the emailing thing would make me
more
curious.”

“We're different people, then. Or maybe I'm just weird.”

Melanie could feel herself getting hot but couldn't help it. She could practically see his self-esteem shrinking before her eyes, and it wasn't right. “She
gave birth
to you, Smiles. Did she even apologize for leaving you and your dad?”

Smiles balled up his soggy napkins and paper plate.

“I'm done, let's go.”

“
I'm
not.” She had half a kabob on her plate.

“You aren't eating that.”

She wasn't, but now he was pissing her off. “You're telling me what I'm going to eat? I don't know why you're acting like this is all my fault somehow.”

His stare hardened, his eyes gone bitter and dull. “I'm done with this.”

And then he left.

Melanie finished her kabob out of spite. She sat on the sticky red plastic, in the hot greasy air, and she chewed slow bites that piled uncomfortably in her stomach.

She walked to the apartment building on a storm cloud of hurt. Melanie knew she shouldn't act when she wasn't thinking right, but she couldn't stop herself. She rapped loudly on Smiles's door, welcoming the pain that broke across her knuckles.

Smiles pulled the door open and retreated back inside, but Melanie didn't follow.

“It's
over
,” was all she said before slamming the door shut and walking away, bloated and sick.

19

DID I JUST
do that?

Yes, I just did that
.

The Camry's tires throbbed over the cobblestone drive. Melanie got out and wafted toward the house, feeling like someone had filled her with helium.

She lived with her parents in an embarrassingly nice Tudor home, which hardly stood out in the candy-land opulence of Weston, the town motto of which should have been “Jealous?”

This was all wrong. Melanie had always imagined breaking up with a guy as a triumphant, girl-power moment. The way it sounded in pop anthems. Even if it wasn't like that—even if she didn't get over it right away—she would have three girlfriends close at her side, and they would heal their troubles together through the power of, like, sweet-potato pies, or the wisdom of Jane Austen, or maybe a magical bra. The fat and/or slutty one would keep them in stitches the whole time, and everything would be right.

Apparently not.

Melanie was happy to see the lights off and no sign of her dad's car. They must have had a thing tonight. Her parents always had a thing—an opera, a benefit, a gallery opening.

A stone path led to their front door with its black iron hinges and tendrils of ivy. Melanie trudged up the stairs and sunk onto her bed without turning on a single light. She had logged a lot of hours like this in the last couple of years: facedown on her floppy white comforter, lights off, doubting herself. But this was worse than fretting over a volleyball game or chemistry test; this was Smiles. They had known each other forever. Their fathers were best friends. Their lives were wrapped around each other like the roots of an elm.

Melanie couldn't fight it off anymore—a nauseating feeling that she had pushed things too far. She didn't know what it was like to have a mother who left you. She had basically forced Smiles to make that call. And he had done it, which must have been scary as hell, and when it was over he had held her hand softly. Like the kiss he had given her by the fish tank. Melanie couldn't replay their argument too clearly—it was still a thick brew of feelings—but now she was getting the impression that she had riddled him with questions.

Why hadn't she given him a little space? All this stuff about Alice—it must have felt like a threat to Rose, who had been such a good mom to him before dying in that terrible accident.

Melanie had loved Rose, too, and she loved even more the stories that Smiles would tell about her. How she taught him to make daiquiris (virgin for him, double rum for her) in the summer when he was little. How, when he was even smaller, she would let him work the ATM like a video game. Her password was RSJR (i.e., Robbie Smylie Junior), and Melanie went heartbroken all over at the thought of Smiles's stubby infant fingers pressing the code, his hands clapping when the money came out. Rose had programmed that same password into their home security system, and—

Melanie bolted upright.

No
.

I couldn't do that
.

Would it even work after a person died?

Rose had sent Alice an email about her mystery letter . . .

If Melanie could access Rose's email account, she could see it. And then Melanie would know what all of this was about.

Without thinking, Melanie turned on her bedroom light and fired up her Mac.

She was hoping that Rose's email account would still be active (she'd been dead for almost a year now, but how would an email service know that?), and she couldn't be positive she'd used the RSJR password for it.

Melanie searched her Gmail account for messages from Rose. She quickly found two messages from [email protected] about a surprise party for Smiles they'd planned together. Melanie had never had the heart to delete them.

Now that she had Rose's email address, she went to Yahoo—the screen distressingly joyful and tidy, advertising a movie called
Pants on Fire
—and plugged “roseyrose65” into the Yahoo ID box. For the password, Melanie typed in “rsjr” and pursed her lips.

A red message:
Invalid ID or password.

Maybe the password had to be at least six characters long. She tried “robbiejr.”

Same error message.

She tried “robertjunior,” “robbiesmiles,” “robertsmyliejr,” and “littlerob,” but none of them worked, either, and Melanie started wondering if Yahoo was tracking all her failed attempts to break in to the account. She was probably raising suspicion deep within Yahoo's security programs in Silicon Valley, or Bangladesh, or wherever. Yeah, Melanie probably shouldn't have been doing this from her own computer, but it was too late now.

She had signed up for things on the Internet that required you to use both letters and numbers in your password. Melanie looked at her cell phone and found the numbers corresponding to
JR
.

And then she typed “robbie57.”

And then it worked.

The email page freaked her out.

Good Evening, Rose!
it said, as if she had just stepped out of the grave to update her pals on how the afterlife was going. Melanie shuddered away the feeling that she was doing something blasphemous.

Just find the email Rose sent
.

Smiles's birth mother's first name was Alice, that much Melanie knew. His dad had started his company back when they were still together, and he'd named it after her in a cutesy kind of way. Alyce Systems.

Melanie brought up the “Sent Mail” folder and clicked on the “To” bar, which put the recipients in alphabetical order.

Amongst the
A
's, Melanie found it. A single message, sent to Alice:

Rose Carlisle

To: Alice T

Thursday, April 3 11:53:04 AM

Subject: Alyce

 

I have your info on Andrei. We need to talk. Please respond—I'm not into head games here.

Rose

Melanie smiled wide. It sounded so much like her.

Rose was so much fun, but there was something wild about her, too, something half-unhinged, and she had a ballbuster at her core.

Her immediate thought about the message was a guilty one: Maybe Rose and this “Andrei” had been having an affair. It might explain the “head games” comment and the antagonistic tone. Maybe Alice had found out Rose was cheating on Mr. Smylie and was trying to exploit her knowledge somehow. But why? And what did it have to do with Smiles? Melanie had no clue, and she shouldn't be speculating like this anyway.

She was ready to close the account when she re-sorted the emails by date and saw that Rose had sent a second email immediately after the one she'd sent to Alice—to Melanie's own father. A worried hum escaped Melanie's lips. The email read:
Marshall, I know you're in Saint-Tropez for the week, but if you get this give me a jingle. If you can drag yourself from the topless beaches, that is
J.

Was it just a coincidence? The email was friendly enough, but she obviously wanted to talk to him right away—she wouldn't have bothered him in Saint-Tropez otherwise. Could there be a connection between her dad, Alice, and whoever this Andrei person was? How could her own father possibly be mixed up in all this? Certainly he couldn't have anything to do with an affair. Just the thought of him on a topless beach was enough to turn Melanie's stomach. It was silly to even venture a guess—

Headlights flashed on the street below. The car swept past—it wasn't her parents—but it broke Melanie out of her runaway thoughts.

This was pretty ghoulish, what she was doing.

She printed out the email to Alice, shut off her computer, and hopped under her comforter. It was pointless to even pretend she could give this thing up—not now, not with her dad mixed up in it, too. But she resolved not to think of the affair angle, or make any other premature judgments, until she got some better information. If she was lucky, Andrei worked at Alyce Systems. It seemed possible, anyway, given the subject line. Melanie did her for-credit internship every Friday at the Alyce headquarters (with Bug Eyes, Jenna Brooke). They worked in the HR department, so tomorrow Melanie could search for employees named Andrei.

Melanie stared up at the ceiling with a crazy energy racing in her head.

There was something significant in that letter, she was sure. Something important to Smiles, to her dad, and maybe even to herself. The trauma of the night was fading already, replaced with a determination to discover what the letter was all about.

It was like a test, and Melanie was excellent at tests.