Tunnel Vision by Aric Davis Page A

grown-up June walking around town as the murdered Mandy’s all-but-identical twin, it was remarkable that it had never come up.
    June had never said much about her family, which as far as Betty knew was practically nonexistent. Betty knew that June’s parents were split up and that June didn’t have any living grandparents, but that was about it.
    How can we be such good friends if I know so little about her?
    Betty felt almost sick at this thought, and then remembered the murky waters of her own past—her missing father, her nonhyphenated last name, the moms themselves. Especially when it got complicated, maybe it was just easier to keep family stuff to yourself. It just was , after all, and not talking about it didn’t mean they loved each other any less.
    Done thinking for a while—it was wearing her out—Betty folded the laptop closed with a satisfying snap, grabbed the bottle of water from her desk, and ventured out of her room and back to the kitchen.
    She found Ophelia and Andrea sitting at the table there. “Hi,” she said.
    “Why don’t you have a seat,” said Andrea.
    Betty nodded, realizing as she sat that they’d been waiting for her. That they’d probably heard her phone ring and knew who’d likely called, and at least some of what they’d talked about, and where her curiosity would probably take her after she’d hung up.
    “OK,” said Betty. “I want to know everything.”

NINE
    “That’s not going to be possible,” said Andrea.
    The moms were holding hands, Ophelia’s over Andrea’s on the tabletop. Betty wondered how long they’d been waiting for this moment. She’d been friends with June since the second grade, they’d gotten their first periods a month apart, and Betty’s moms had known all along that June’s aunt was dead and that June’s parents wanted it all to just go away.
    Now Betty found herself pissed off again. Things like this don’t stay buried forever , she said to herself in her seat, fuming, her eyes flitting back and forth between her parents.
    “Why not?” she asked, and even though she knew her tone was shitty she kept her eyes locked with Andrea’s.
    “Because we still don’t know everything, Betty.”
    Exhaustion was evident in Andrea’s voice, and normally Betty would have recognized that and realized that the conversation could wait a day or two, but not this time. Betty wanted to tear the information from their minds, and then get back online and read everything she could on the subject. She wanted to know all there was to know about Duke and Mandy. She wanted to know why Mandy was dead and why people thought Duke was innocent if he’d confessed to the crime. She wanted to know how June could have grown up in the shadow of all of this but was left with no information.
    “I don’t understand,” said Betty. “Should I go look online some more, or can you tell me why in the hell no one knows about this?”
    “Relax,” said Ophelia. “You’re getting very aggressive about this, but you don’t need to. This wasn’t a case of keeping something from you because we felt that we had to. There was just no reason to tell you about some poor girl that was killed over a decade ago.”
    “Why doesn’t June know?” Betty demanded. “Why doesn’t she catch shit for this from the mean girls and write sad papers about her cool dead aunt? Why was all of this a secret?”
    “It’s not a secret just because you’re ignorant of it, Betty,” said Andrea. “The information has always been out there. The fact of the matter is this: the man who killed June’s aunt is a drug addict who has been locked up for half his life. His fingerprints were all over the crime scene—all over Mandy—he had a history of violent behavior, and he confessed to the crime. There was just no reason to talk about this. As for June’s mother, well, not telling June was a decision she made when June was very young, and it’s not up to us to decide if that was a good choice