The Good Liar Read online

  “I’m just tired. It’s a lot right now with the memorial and everything, and Franny . . .”

  “Can be needy?”

  “Yes, frankly. Not that I blame her.”

  I turn back to the window. Teo lets me take a minute. A beat.

  “Are you still okay to do your first interview tomorrow? After the memorial?”

  “I suppose you’ll be filming all that, too?”

  “I will.”

  My eyes meet his in the glass. What does he see when he looks at me? I don’t feel like the woman on the cover of all those magazines. What’s that song? “Pretty on the Inside.” I used to feel that way. Now . . .

  “And after,” I say, “you’ll come to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  I guess there’s nothing left to do but face it.

  I nod my agreement. “Is there a back way out of here?”

  2

  A FARTHER SHORE

  KATE

  A country away, Kate Lynch lay in a bed in Montreal that still felt alien to her, staring at the patterns on the ceiling cast by the light from the street lamp. The clock next to her glowed brightly. A minute ago, the time had changed to twelve o’clock. And so there it was. October tenth. The day she’d been dreading for months was finally here.

  She knew it would be a day full of memories. Some unbidden, some forced upon her. Five hundred people don’t die in America without incessant news coverage. All the anniversaries would be marked. But this anniversary, the first anniversary, would be the subject of special attention. As would anyone connected to it.

  Kate had done her best to block out information about Triple Ten over the last year. That was part of the reason she’d chosen Montreal. She’d guessed that French Canada would be less obsessed with the gory details than everywhere else. She’d been right. It wasn’t that they didn’t cover the event; the world had done so. But the reporting was more like what she’d experienced when she’d been in Europe during Hurricane Katrina. There was a detached cadence to the news announcers. This wasn’t happening to them but to someone else. And that was exactly the amount of remove Kate needed. A buffer that would wall her off from the worst of it.

  It had worked for the most part. There’d be stretches where it felt as if she’d forgotten who she was. Why she was there. What she’d left behind. As the daily thrum of life slipped by, she concentrated on the small moments in front of her rather than the larger world. Not that she had much time to watch the news or read the paper that still, almost quaintly, struck the front door each morning. That was part of the point of this new life, too. But as the countdown clock to the anniversary unwound, Kate knew that even here, a thousand miles away, there’d be no escaping it. The images. The tributes. Maybe even some direct reference to her former life.

  This next week, maybe two, would be a nightmare. Because even something as simple as that word—“nightmare”—was enough to trigger what she wanted to avoid.

  A memory.

  • • •

  This time a year ago, almost to the minute, Kate’s daughter had a bad dream. This wasn’t an infrequent occurrence. Her daughter was sensitive, fragile. Her brain seemed to sift together every negative thing that happened to her during the school day and assault her with it at night. It had taken years for them to get her to sleep in her own bed. More years still before the night-light in the hall and the half-cracked-open closet door were enough to keep her there on all but the worst nights.

  A year ago, a familiar scream tore Kate from sleep. She pried herself from the cocoon of blankets they’d put on the bed that week in anticipation of cooler weather and scurried down the hall before the shrieks woke more than her.

  When she got there, her daughter’s hands were grabbing the blanket, her eyes wide open, her mouth moving without any sound emerging. Kate had placed her hand on her daughter’s damp forehead and crouched down, her knees popping like corn.

  “It’s okay, baby. Hush now. I’m here.”

  “Mommy?”

  “I’m here. I’m right here.”

  “Is the bad man still here?”

  “There wasn’t any bad man, sweetheart.”

  She turned her head toward Kate. Her limbs were thin and stretched out—no baby fat left on her five-year-old frame. Her eyes looked black. “There was.”

  Even after years of being a mother, Kate hadn’t figured out the right approach to this kind of situation. Should she humor her daughter? If she told her she was wrong, was she calling her a liar? There were so many questions to which she could never find any satisfactory answers. And when she tried to ask the others, as she thought of them, the competent mothers, the ones who lined her block and the park and Gymboree—everywhere—they’d give her this funny look, as if she’d asked how to tie her shoes. Or worse, breathe.

  “What did he look like?”

  “It was too dark to see him. But I could hear him. He was breathing.”

  Her daughter’s chest rattled, a heavy yogic exhale that made Kate go cold. Perhaps there had been someone in her room? Home invasions happened. He could be hiding in the closet. Or in the linen cupboard down the hall. So many scary possibilities.

  She’d searched the gloomy room with her eyes and listened carefully. The window was closed. The light in the closet was on. The house was silent. She would’ve felt it if she’d passed someone in the hall. They were alone.

  She’d gathered her daughter in her arms. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry you’re so scared.”

  “It’s not your fault the bad man came.”

  She was right, but it felt to Kate as if it were. It felt to Kate—always—as if she should’ve figured out a way to keep the bad men at bay. Even from her daughter’s imagination, even from her dreams.

  “I love you, baby. I love you so much.”

  Kate let her down against her pillows gently and stroked her damp hair. It was silky and thin. No one had told her, before she had children, that being a mother would be like reliving her own childhood, only worse. That she’d have to re-feel all the slights and worries a hundredfold.

  When her daughter’s breathing finally went soft, and Kate had dragged herself back to bed, she thought about that failing and felt defeated.

  Now, a year later, as she lay in a new bed, in a foreign city, with everything changed so irreversibly, she had a different idea of what “defeat” meant and a whole other set of regrets. And as she waited with increasing resignation for sleep to come, she wondered.

  Would she survive tomorrow, or would it finally be her undoing?

  INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

  Subject: Franny Maycombe (FM). Conducted by: Teo Jackson (TJ).

  TJ: I wanted to begin by thanking you for agreeing to participate in the documentary.

  FM: Of course! I think it’s so important, what you’re doing. This film is going to contribute to our efforts—I can tell.

  TJ: So, we’ll be doing a series of interviews over the next couple weeks, covering a broad range of topics, with the tragedy and its impact being the central focus.

  FM: I understand.

  TJ: Good. Let’s begin with some background questions. What’s your full name?

  FM: My name is Franny Susan Maycombe.

  TJ: And how old are you?

  FM: I’m twenty-four years old.

  TJ: Where were you born?

  FM: Right here in Chicago.

  TJ: Did you grow up here?

  FM: No, in Madison. I was adopted when I was a baby, and that’s where my adoptive parents brought me.

  TJ: Madison, Wisconsin?

  FM: That’s right.

  TJ: What was growing up there like?

  FM: It was all right. Nothing special. Just life in a smallish city. I’m sure you can imagine.

  TJ: Did you go to college?

  FM: Only high school for me. I wanted to go, you know, and I had the grades, but we couldn’t afford it. Maybe I’ll go someday.

  TJ:�
�Did you work after you finished high school?

  FM: Yeah, I did a lot of things. I was a receptionist in a dentist’s office. And I worked in a hardware store. Then as a waitress. You know, the whole nine yards.

  TJ: But now you work for the Triple Ten victims’ fund?

  FM: I do.

  TJ: In fact, you’re the chair?

  FM: Cochair . . . Mrs. Grayson is the chair, too. She was the chair first. But yes, I do.

  TJ: How did that come about?

  FM: I got involved because of my connection to Triple Ten.

  TJ: So, let’s talk about that. Where were you on October tenth?

  [Pause]

  TJ: Everything all right? I know talking about it can be hard.

  FM: I’m fine. It wasn’t that; it was just, wow, I had this flash. Like déjà vu or something, but not, you know? And it feels like a million years ago, right? Another lifetime.

  TJ: What was that lifetime like?

  FM: I was in the diner I was waitressing in, getting crappy tips. Wearing that uniform, you know, the apron, this yellow shirt and skirt that was too short. Anyway, it was just after the breakfast rush finished, right when we can usually take a bit of a break, but then this tour bus stopped in, and so we were superbusy, running around, trying to get everyone’s order right. Then the news came on, took over the TV station, you know, the way it does when there’s breaking news, and we all stopped what we were doing and watched. I stood there for an hour without moving. We all did.

  TJ: This was in Madison?

  FM: Yes.

  TJ: Was there anything else that happened that day? Something that stands out?

  FM: There sure was. We had the TV on for hours and hours. We all sat in the booths and kept our eyes glued to the screen. Everyone thought it was another attack at first, like a terrorist attack, and that tour bus never did leave. And then it was dark, night, and they started releasing the names of some of the victims. I began to get this feeling, this shaky feeling, you know, like my life was about to change.

  TJ: Why did you feel that way?

  FM: I’m not sure. But I had this connection to Chicago, right, and then there it was, a huge tragedy there, and I felt like I knew. I just knew.

  TJ: What did you know?

  FM: I know it sounds crazy, but I swear—I knew my mother was dead even before they said her name.

  3

  OUR HOUSE

  CECILY

  I don’t need any alarms to wake me the next morning, even though I set three and asked my mother to give me a wake-up call, fearful I’d be up every hour on the hour, then fall into a deep sleep around four and miss the allotted time. But instead, I went to sleep easily and dreamed I was skiing—Tom and I used to take yearly trips to Jackson Hole with the kids—and the powder was fantastic and I was laughing the way you do sometimes when you’re having pure fun.

  And then I skied off a cliff.

  Normally, in one of those horrible falling dreams, you wake with a start, your heart shuddering. Instead, as I was tumbling into a white oblivion, I told myself: This is a dream. It’s a trick I learned long ago, a way to wake up without a flood of fear, to somehow remain conscious enough to push away the panic. This is a dream, I thought again, and pulled myself back from the edge.

  I open my eyes.

  I’m safe in my bedroom—our bedroom—sleeping on my side of the bed as if Tom’s body is still a barrier to stretching out. The last book he was reading—a thriller by Mary Kubica he took from my bookshelf—is cracked open on the nightstand, its spine broken. I remember how mad I was when I saw him do that. He knew I loved keeping my books pristine, never folding the pages or bending them open, keeping my place with a tissue, or memory, because breaking the spine on a treasured book is a sin, isn’t it?

  I used to think so before real sins became everyday currency.

  But he’d done it, and we’d had a fight, a stupid fight. We’d gone to bed in angry silence, the air thick with our words. We lay with our backs to each other, two opposing forces in the bed, our anger a reverse magnet neither of us had the strength to match. But then the next morning, that morning, Tom apologized and said things would be different going forward. He kissed me on the forehead and said he’d see me later. Don’t be late . . . I couldn’t quite tell if he was being serious or trying to tease me. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and did my best to move past it.

  And maybe things would’ve been different if death hadn’t intervened. It’s one of the things that drive you crazy, the what-ifs of unexpected loss, even though life is full of them, too.

  But he’s gone now, and I still take a shower every morning in a stall filled with his shampoo and favorite soap and the last razor he used sitting in its niche. I pull my clothes from a closet full of his—business suits and pressed shirts and his “good shoes” and his “comfortable shoes” lined up like soldiers across the floor because Tom had a thing about his clothes and how they had to be arranged just so. Our grocery delivery still contains the same amount of low-fat milk, even though the kids and I don’t drink it. Every week, I place the containers in the fridge and vow I’ll call and amend the order, then drain them into the sink a week later, untouched, right before they turn sour.

  I’d meant to change all this. I had a plan, even, that involved a few close girlfriends and wine and doing something symbolic like rearranging the furniture or getting rid of the chair that didn’t match the rest of our living room that Tom insisted on keeping because it was a comfortable place for him to fall asleep in after a long, hard day.

  That never happened, either.

  My friend Sara has said more than once that it’s like I live in a shrine. She’s even taken to calling me “The Widow Grayson” in moments of levity. I get mad at her sometimes for that, though I know it comes from love, but she’s not wrong. I will forevermore be Cecily Grayson, stuck with a last name that still doesn’t feel like my own but that I took for the sake of our children. “So we can be a real family,” Tom said, though I never understood what my last name had to do with whether we were a family or not.

  Whether asleep or awake, I’m stuck. I have no idea how to move forward or even where I want to go. Someday soon I’m going to have to do something. I can’t go on living in stasis, trapped under the glass of the public’s glare and unceasing sympathy. But today’s not about moving on, it’s about remembering, so I’ll play my role and smile through the worst of it, and tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll make a plan.

  “Why’d you agree to the documentary, then?” Sara asked me the night before, when I was circling the rim of a glass of Chablis, my complaints nothing new, her advice still unheeded.

  “I didn’t at first. It took a while for Teo to convince me.”

  “Ah,” she said, reaching for the half-empty bottle. “Teo.”

  “It’s not like that . . . It was easier to agree than to fight.”

  “You always take the path of least resistance.”

  If it were anyone else, I might’ve been upset at this bald assessment of my character. But Sara was Sara, and Sara was right. “That’s a pattern I need to break, too.”

  “Easier said than done, though, right?”

  I agreed with her. If things had been like they were two years ago, Tom and I would sit down at the kitchen table while the kids were asleep and make a list. What are the pros of being involved in Teo’s film? (Remembering, helping others deal with their grief, raising money for the Initiative.) What are the cons? (I miss my privacy, I feel like a fraud, what if Teo finds out?) And then we’d decide, together, what was best.

  But it’s too late to do that now. I can’t back out without raising questions, so I’ll have to take it like I have everything else. One day at a time.

  My cell phone buzzes on the nightstand. It’s my mother, my wake-up insurance.

  “Hi, Mom. Thanks for calling.”

  “You sound awake.”

  I flip onto my back as anxiety gathers.
The crack in the ceiling seems larger than the last time I looked. Another thing to take care of tomorrow, tomorrow.

  “I am awake.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “It’s okay. It was bound to happen.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

  “They’ve only given us three seats together. You might not even be able to get in.”

  My mother gives one of her patented humphs. “You let me take care of that.”

  “No, truly. I promise. We’ll be all right. I feel horrible saying this, but . . .”

  “It might be easier without me?”

  “Is that terrible?”

  “Perhaps a little. But I understand.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Are you okay?”

  “I’m thinking about your father.”

  “I know.”

  My father died six years ago. He was the love of her life, and his death hit her hard. She’d been doing better before Triple Ten, making new friends and joining a walking group, playing bridge. But having her own daughter become a widow set her back, and in some ways, this last year has been harder for her than for me.

  “I’ll be thinking of Dad today,” I say. “Thinking of both of you.”

  “I love you, Cecily.”

  “I love you, too.”

  The clock radio turns on as I hang up. It’s playing one of those Justin Bieber songs all my girlfriends love for some reason. I slap the “Off” button and track through the list of what I need to accomplish to get us to the ceremony on time.

  I cannot be late today.

  I cannot.

  • • •

  The memorial takes place on the exhibition floor of McCormick Place, which is big enough to hold all of us and our noise, the thousands of people who make up the families, the living monuments to the victims, not to mention the dignitaries—the mayor, the governor, the senators, and the members of Congress dressed in somber suits, glad-handing around our tragedy.

  If he were here, Tom would be singing Dylan lyrics about standing in doorways and blocking up halls, because that’s exactly what they’re doing.