Free The Safest Lies by Megan Miranda

alternative.
    “Thanks for the ride,” I said when we pulled into my driveway.
    He leaned forward, taking in the gates, the house, and he let out a sigh. “Same time tomorrow?” he asked.
    “I’ll be here,” I said as I exited the car.
    “Hey, Kelsey?” he called after me through a lowered window.
    I paused in front of the iron bars.
    “For the record, I am glad you’re okay.” And then he drove away.

    I saw Mom’s shadow at the window, curtains pulled aside, then falling back into place, as I pressed my thumb to the security screen at the gate. She’d already unlocked the door as I was walking up the front steps. She stood back from the entrance, watching Cole drive away, then shut and locked the door behind me. Except shut was kind of an understatement. The door slammed, and the pictures on the entrance table shook.
    I took a step backward. The house smelled like green beans and syrup, and I needed both space and air.
    “So,” I said, “I guess you saw.”
    There was something almost unrecognizable about her, this person I knew better than anyone. Something about the way she was standing, the way she was looking at me. Her hands were tightened into fists. “What? Your picture, and my name in the paper with a quote from you? Yes, I saw. ”
    “I barely said anything, obviously,” I said. “I didn’t tell her your name. I mean, I told her no comment, but she just kept talking, and—”
    She held up her hand. “What I’m upset about, Kelsey, is that you didn’t tell me. You talked to a reporter, even though you knew I wouldn’t want you to, and you thought I wouldn’t find out? The story was picked up by the state news, for Christ’s sake! It’s a human-interest story now, and it has our address!”
    “No,” I said, “you don’t understand. She called and—”
    Mom fixed her eyes, cold and hard, on my own. “She called? Where was I during this phone call? Were you trying to hide this from me?”

    “God, Mom, you’re completely overreacting! You were in the office with Jan!”
    She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, but I could tell it wasn’t working. “You don’t just pick up the phone, ” she said, like I’d done something akin to handing over the nuclear launch codes to an enemy state. “That’s what the answering machine is for.”
    “I thought it was someone I knew,” I said. “Sorry!”
    “Who? Did you think it was that boy ?” I was starting to see my mother like someone from the outside—like she was being completely irrational, like this whole conversation was embarrassing and frustrating and not normal. Which was completely and totally true. “I raised you better than this. I raised you to think —”
    “I thought it was Annika,” I said. “Because I wasn’t answering my cell.” I wanted to tell her to get a grip, to listen to herself, but her hand kept reaching for the scars on her back, and I remembered that she had limitations, that it had taken her seventeen years, and this was as far as she’d come.
    Something impossible to shake, a memory she could not reach—proof that bad things did happen. People were taken, hidden, hurt. Danger was everywhere.
    And here I was, standing before her, living proof.
    The oven dinged, and she strode back to the kitchen and pulled out a pungent casserole. I couldn’t be in a room with this stench anymore. I couldn’t be in a room with her anymore.

    “I have homework,” I said. But she reached for me with an oven-mitted hand, and I lingered near the sink.
    “I feel like I’m…” She let the thought go, but I could tell, with the way she was still reaching for me, and the way I’d been moving back. Like I’m losing you.
    Like I was slipping, falling…
    It was the car, and the pictures, and me in the paper—everything out of her control.
    “I’m here,” I said. “And I’m fine.” I took a deep breath, swallowed the lump in my throat, hated that I had to say the next part. But I did. “We’re