The Good Liar Page 11

  “What’s all this?”

  “I’m trying to cull.” She looks down at the stuff on the floor. She’s taller than me, five ten when she was at her tallest. It felt like I was looking up to her my whole life. “With the kids getting older, seems like I could get rid of some of this.”

  “You’ll still give out candy, though?”

  I feel uncharacteristically sad. My father always took Halloween so seriously, keeping statistics of how many kids came to the door each year and how much candy had been given out. Since he died, my mother’s kept dutifully on, her messier handwriting following his in the log. The thought of no one writing in that book seems like the end of something I’m not ready to accept.

  “Yes, dear, don’t worry. Harry would never forgive me if I didn’t give out the candy.”

  She looks up at the ceiling, as if that’s where my dad’s been hiding all this time. We named Henry after him but kept the more formal version of his name.

  “Henry, either, I don’t think.”

  “Probably not. It’s a real pain in the ass, though.”

  My mother never said one bad word in my presence the entire time my father was alive. He wasn’t in the ground twelve hours before I heard her use the word “asshole.” That was because of the broken garbage disposal. Now that term often refers to anything she doesn’t like, like she’s a child who doesn’t know how the word works or what it’s meant for.

  “We could take over,” I say.

  “It’s all right. But you could take some of this off my hands.”

  I sit down on the floor. The gas fireplace is on, throwing off a nice flickering light and a good blast of heat. I pick up a paper skeleton, one that used to glow in the dark.

  “Tom never liked decorating the house.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  My mother sits in a lotus position near another pile of Halloween debris. She’s seventy-five but does yoga every day and has better knees than I do. She’ll probably be the one who helps me up when we’re done.

  “So, what brings you by?”

  “I went on a date tonight.”

  Her face lights up. She let her hair go its natural gray five years ago, and it suits her. “Oh, that’s good! Do I know him?”

  I untangle the skeleton’s strings. One of its feet is missing. “Nope.”

  “Mmm. That means I do, and you don’t want to tell me who it is.”

  “I don’t want to tell anyone, Mom.”

  “And yet you’re here at bedtime.”

  She looks at me, squinting. She always could see through me, even without her glasses.

  “You’re right. I guess I did want a buffer.”

  “From what?”

  “From him to home.”

  My mother pops the lid on another plastic container. “Damn, Christmas ornaments.”

  “You know, I have no idea where Tom put ours. I had to buy new ones last year.”

  “Are you missing him?”

  “Would it be pathetic if I was?”

  “It would be normal, I think.”

  “It’s been a year.”

  “And there were more than twenty behind that.”

  “Nineteen.”

  She frowns at my literalness.

  “Nineteen years without another woman in the picture,” I amend.

  “Asshole,” my mother says, and for once she’s got the word right.

  • • •

  When I arrive home an hour later with two plastic containers full of Halloween decorations, Cassie’s made sure Henry went to bed and is reading in her room.

  I check the book she’s holding. She’s rereading one of the Hunger Games books for the umpteenth time. I read them along with her the first time, four years ago. I thought they were wonderful then, particularly the first book. But now that we live in our own dystopian future, I have trouble seeing their continued appeal.

  “How’s Katniss?”

  Cassie doesn’t lower her book. She’s wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt we bought for her when she was ten. It was too big for her at that age. Now it’s tight on her arms and doesn’t quite cover her stomach.

  “Henry’s asleep.”

  “I saw that. Good job.”

  “Where were you?”

  A lump forms in my throat. “I was out to dinner with a friend. Teo, actually.”

  The book slips from her fingers. “Teo?”

  “We went to The Angry Crab. It was fun. We should go back there soon; it’s been a while.”

  She picks up the end of one of her braids and flicks it into her mouth. “I don’t know if I could.”

  “Because of Dad?”

  She nods.

  “Are you upset I went there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you upset I went there with Teo?”

  She starts to shake her head, then stops. I sit on the edge of her bed and remove the braid from her mouth. Her eyes are welling up.

  “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t want to forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Daddy. I don’t want us to forget.”

  “Of course you’ll never forget him, honey.”

  “I don’t want you to, either.”

  I look at the picture of the four of us she has on her night table. The last official studio portrait we did in coordinated outfits. Coordinated outfits! My old life was a fantasy. Anyway, we’re all laughing because Henry had belched loudly and the photographer looked horrified.

  “How could I ever forget him?”

  “You could. You could get married again or whatever. Or maybe have another baby, and then . . .”

  She bursts into tears. I lie down next to her and hold her close. She’s starting to smell different from how she used to—more like a grown-up than my little girl.

  “Sweetie, what’s going on? Where is this coming from?”

  “That’s what Kevin was saying at dinner.”

  “Who’s Kevin?”

  “He’s . . .”

  I hold her away from me. Her lip’s trembling.

  “Is Kevin your boyfriend?”

  She shakes her head. When did my daughter become so tongue-tied?

  “A friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you out with him tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  I feel queasy. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. “So you weren’t at Stacey’s?”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad. I want to know what’s going on.”

  She pulls away and wipes at her nose. I have a mother’s instinct to grab a Kleenex off her nightstand, hold it to her nose, and tell her to blow.

  “I wanted to go to this movie with Kevin. He asked me, and I’m not sure I like him, and I didn’t want it to be a big deal.”

  “I wouldn’t have made it a big deal.”

  “Mom. Come on.”

  “Okay, so I would’ve made a big deal about my daughter’s first date. Sue me. It is your first date, right? I didn’t miss that?”

  “It’s the first.”

  “Phew. Your first date! Wow.”

  “I knew it.”

  “It’s not like I would’ve insisted on pictures or anything. Well, maybe only a couple.”

  She starts to cry again.

  “Oh, honey, I was kidding.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . I miss Dad.”

  I hug her to me again, the queasiness having turned to sorrow. I thought I was done crying over Tom, but there are still so many firsts he’s going to miss.

  “He always said he couldn’t wait to beat up my first boyfriend.”

  “He did say that.”

  “And now he can’t.”

  “It’s true. It’s not fair. He should be here to beat up that Kevin guy. I can do it if you want.”

  She tilts her chin. “You’re joking again, right?”

  “Of course I am. Or not. Your choice.”

  I stroke the top of her he
ad while she rests against me. Her room is in a transition phase, like her. Posters we put up years ago are half papered over with photos she’s printed out on our color printer of her friends. Thick books with black covers are perched on top of a confetti of others about magic and twins in high school. It’s like an archeological dig of her childhood.

  “So, I get the hiding where you were going from me—not that it’s okay—”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “You probably will. I’m not saying it’s allowed. I’m just being practical.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Good. But what about that led you to think I’d be marrying someone else and—God forbid—having more children?”

  “You don’t want to have more kids?”

  “Sweetheart, you know I love you and your brother to death, but no. I’m forty-three. I’m too old for that.”

  “Janet Jackson had a baby at fifty.”

  “Good for her! Come on, where’s this coming from?”

  Cassie squirms, then settles. “We were just talking . . . I don’t know, about stupid stuff. How his brother was still obsessed with Pokémon and stuff like that. Anyway, then he kind of asked me about the memorial, and it felt good to talk about it because none of the kids at school ever ask me anything about Dad, like it’s contagious or something and their dad will die if they mention it. So I talked about Dad for a bit and how it’s been, and then he told me how he’d read this thing, or heard his dad talking about it, I guess, about how all these babies are being born now, like how there was this baby boom or whatever starting nine months after Triple Ten, and it’s still going on, and even some of the survivors’ families have new babies and . . .”

  She pauses for breath.

  “And then what?”

  “And then he asked me if you had started dating ‘yet.’ And I just lost it, Mom. I ran out of the restaurant and all the way home. And now he’s never going to talk to me again.”

  I can feel Cassie’s heart thrumming against her ribs. I know that feeling all too well. “I’m sure he will. And if he doesn’t, then he wasn’t worth it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Trust me.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Is that what you were on tonight with Teo? A date?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She pulls away.

  “I know it might be upsetting to you and Henry to see me with another man, but that’s not what’s happening. Maybe it will someday and maybe it won’t, but it was just dinner.”

  “But he likes you. I can tell.”

  “And I like him, too. We all do. But I don’t know if I’m ready for that again or, even if I was, whether he’s the right person. This is complicated. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah,” she says, but she’s not looking me in the eye.

  I turn her head gently to me with my fingertips. “How about this? Why don’t we agree that we’ll both keep each other up to date on our, for lack of a better word, love lives?”

  She wipes her nose again. “Like, in detail?”

  “Um . . . no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. But if I go on a date with him or you with Kevin, we’ll tell each other about it. Sound good?”

  I smile bravely, because it doesn’t sound good to me, and I can’t imagine it sounds good to her, either.

  None of this is how it should be, but it’s all that we’ve got.

  16

  DOWNTOWN BY MYSELF

  KATE

  I have a secret, Kate typed into the dialogue box. Last year, I ran away from my family.

  She stared at the words on the screen. How had she ended up here? After some nearly sleepless nights, and desperate for an outlet for the thoughts chasing her through her days, Kate had discovered IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer.com, one of those secret-sharing websites, where users could spill their innermost shame in anonymity. I cheated on my husband. I regret having children. I hate my best friend and I don’t know how to tell her. These were the easy secrets to absorb. Some were almost laughable, others criminal. Their combined effect was a white noise and a sense of relativity. What she’d done wasn’t so bad. Not truly. Especially not now that she’d written it down and the comments of support had started flowing in.

  I’ve wanted to do that for years!

  I think UR brave.

  I left my kids when they were babies.

  Kate knew she had to add more to the story. That, to actually unburden herself, this was only the beginning. But it had to come out in dribs and drabs. There was no point in setting it all out at once. Let them drag the details out of her, as she’d seen others do. That was part of the experience. The normalization of her immorality.

  The wind rattled against the basement window. It was late, almost midnight. Kate should be asleep. Her alarm would sound too soon. But Andrea’s house, once so spacious, was starting to feel claustrophobic. Kate was giving serious thought to running again.

  It wouldn’t be a frantic getaway this time. She could simply hand in her notice and scuttle away into the good night. She had some savings. She could last for a while. But where would she go? When she’d left her old life a year ago, that part of the decision had seemed easy. The location. How to get there. Those first steps.

  It was frightening, how automatic it had been. The inventory she did of her situation, skipping past the fact that she was leaving her family behind. It was more like she was going through a checklist she didn’t even know she’d been building. All those years of fantasizing, planning, coming to fruition.

  First, money. She had $600 in cash in her purse to pay her nanny, the woman who took better care of her children than she did. The same miracle that had thrown her to safety left her cross-body bag in place. After a brief hesitation, she risked pulling another $600 out of their bank account when she passed an ATM twenty blocks past her building. Her husband never checked the bank statements; that was her job. Besides, all the statement would say, if he ever looked at it, was that the money had been taken out that day but not at what time. For that, he’d have to go looking. And why would he do that?

  Second, walk away from the crowds that had gathered at a safe distance to watch the fire casually so you don’t draw attention to yourself. Pay attention to where the cameras are and try to avoid them. Walk in a crowd with your head down, one of many. Do nothing to stand out.

  Third, take the SIM card out of your cell phone and crush it under your shoe in an alley. Leave the phone in a garbage can. Make sure no one sees you do either of these things.

  Fourth, get rid of your ID, but not where someone might pick it up and use it, leading to awkward questions. Think about leaving your wedding and engagement rings somewhere, too, but decide instead to keep them to sell later for cash.

  When she’d stopped at the ATM, she thought briefly about wrapping her scarf around her head in case the footage was checked. Then realized that might bring more attention to herself. Besides, no one would be looking for her. Certainly not if she didn’t do anything stupid. Didn’t give anyone reason to believe she was anything other than a victim of the day’s events.

  Kate’s borrowed iPad chimed with another comment.

  Why did you leave? asked Anonymous4Life. He was one of the cheaters who seemed to form the majority of the website’s users. Kate had the impression that many of them were simply looking for other like-minded people for further adventures. As if the site was a coy Ashley Madison. A4L had cheated on his wife twice with the same woman, three years apart, and claimed he’d joined the group as a way of avoiding telling her.

  They were better off without me, Kate replied. And given how quickly she’d left them when she had the opportunity, that was clearly true.

  Once she had the additional cash, she’d walked to the Greyhound station near the water. By the time she got there, fat blisters had formed on the soles of her feet. Her work shoes were not meant for walking or the running she’d done earlier. She checked her reflection in t
he glass of one of the stores she passed. She looked disheveled but not entirely out of place.

  The bus station was in a bad area of town. But as she watched the weak sun glint off the black water of the lake, she didn’t feel as if she was in danger. She’d survived. She felt insulated, wrapped in bubble wrap.

  Lucky.

  Inside the cavernous building, she checked the schedule. There was a bus headed to Canada in three hours. She waited in line with twenty others, an impatient group held back by nylon tape barriers. She’d been worried the bus station would be closed. But other than the intense way people were looking at their phones, everything seemed to be business as usual.

  When she got to the counter and asked for a one-way ticket, the clerk told her the price and asked for her passport. She reached into her purse for the cash and thanked her continued luck that she had both her passports with her.

  That was the key to her success, if she did succeed. Her two passports. Her American one, because that’s where she lived and mostly who she thought of herself as being these days. And her Canadian one, because that was where she was born and where she still traveled to frequently for work. Since she was a citizen, Canada required her to enter on her Canadian passport. But were they linked? She’d never thought to ask. Would the fact that a dead person used a passport hours after she was supposed to be dead raise a red flag somewhere, someday? She’d have to take the risk.

  Her passports were still in her purse from a trip to Toronto a few weeks earlier to attend a tech convention. And her Canadian passport still had her maiden name on it because she’d never bothered to make the change when she renewed it after she was married.

  The woman at the bus station scanned her passport. She said something about how she’d move to Canada if she could, what with the way the world was these days. Kate smiled and nodded, holding her breath. Nothing happened other than the woman handed her a bus ticket tucked into the pages of her passport. She went to wait for her bus.

  There were two hours until it left. She settled into an uncomfortable seat. She rested her purse on her lap and fixed her gaze on the television so she didn’t make eye contact with anyone. She watched the breaking news about her former workplace, wondering what had happened to everyone. There were all kinds of theories. The CNN anchor reminded people to remain calm. Their sources were telling them it was a gas leak. But still, there were rumors of bombs in other buildings. Suspicious packages being left behind. Certain types of people to be rounded up. Civil liberties that needed to be violated.