The Lies About Truth Read Online Free PDF Page B

bolt—but it never stuck. If Max saw all these imperfections, plus other minor ones, then amazing wouldn’t be his word of choice. Piecing Frankenstein back together took time and money.
    Max focused on my eyes. “Seriously, I like the hat.”
    I switched the subject. “You look . . .” I inventoried Max. Cutoffs; sandals; worn University of El Salvador T-shirt; long, choppy brown hair that the sun had worked on; a dirty FSU baseball cap hanging out of his pocket. It wasn’t all those things that struck me most; it was the way they fit him. The way they would have fit Trent: loose in some places, fitted in others.
    He flicked his head toward the restrooms. “Mom says it all the time. I didn’t want to tell you.”
    I couldn’t argue with that. I hadn’t totally warned him about my appearance either.
    Mom intervened in our awkwardness. “It’s good to have you back, sweetheart.”
    Max coughed and touched his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was a little louder.
    “Hey, Mrs. K. It’s good to be back.”
    Years of neighborly surrogate-mom moments showed in their welcome-home embrace. If Max were Trent, he’d have said something profoundly silly. Max was just Max though, and the hug was enough.
    I held my hand up and measured his height. “Good Lord, what have they been feeding you?” I asked.
    He laughed. “Beans.”
    “You’re taller than he was,” I said.
    Max straightened his back and put out his chin, proud of the six or seven inches he’d gained in the past year. “Not by much.”
    I saw a ghost of Trent put Max in a headlock and tease, “You’ll always be my little brother.” He would’ve wrestled him down to the floor until Max tapped out.
    Shaking away the image, I said, “Well, I guess I can wear any size heel I want around you.” Which was total crap; I never wore heels. Still, I popped him on the chest, unable to control my happiness now that the initial meet-and-greet was over. “I can’t believe you’re home.”
    “I know, right? My face hurts from smiling,” he said, and stretched his jaw.
    His voice hurt too. I winced a little for him.
    Max’s mom manifested out of thin air carrying two shopping bags and a purse made of Kit Kat wrappers. “Tara!” Sonia dropped her bags and gave Mom a hug and then me. Time away had been kind to her. She’d shed four skins of sadnesssince last June, but she still wore some of it in her eyes and a little more in the gray hair above her ears. Max’s messages indicated Operation: Heal the Family had been relatively successful. Still, this trip home must be bittersweet.
    “Dad caught a flight on Tuesday,” Max explained as I glanced around. He touched his throat, cleared it, and said, “He had some business in New York and had to fly into Panama City.”
    “Hey, you sound good. Your voice is louder than I expected.”
    He ignored my compliment the way I’d ignored his earlier. Instead, he picked up the flowers I’d dropped. “You shouldn’t have.”
    “I had to do something.”
    There are two kinds of laughter: at and with, and Max was brilliant at the with kind.
    “You haven’t changed a bit, Sadie,” he said.
    “I’ve changed several thousand dollars’ worth, Max McCall.”
    Sonia interrupted her son’s reply. “I think Max is trying to say the roses are lovely.”
    I swiped the roses from him and handed them to Sonia, feeling my cheeks turn pink with embarrassment. I wondered what that color looked like against my scar.
    “We’ll put them in water when we get home. It’ll be nice to have that fresh smell in the house.” She turned to Mom. “George said the house looked wonderful. Thank you so much for taking care of us.”
    Mom touched her friend on the arm. “It was a pleasure to help.”
    The two of them linked arms like sisters and leaned their heads together. Max and I let them walk on ahead of us. He pointed to the Baggage sign and I fell into step with him down the short concourse.
    When we arrived at the