The Good Liar Page 7

  She was Tom’s head programmer, but we’d known her for years before she joined the business. The Rings lived in Evanston like us, and she and I were in a book club together for a while. But it was after the birth of her second daughter, Julia, four years ago (her third, I guess, a fact that still took me by surprise even though I was sitting down the table from the evidence, the person, Franny), when she was hit with a bout of postpartum depression, that we became close friends.

  Depression’s a funny thing. We don’t know what to do about it—as a society—unless we’ve been there ourselves. The person before us is not someone we know, and their unhappiness is often not something we can understand. So we downplay it, and we make the afflicted somehow to blame. No one would ever tell someone with cancer that if they tried a bit harder, if they got out of bed and took a shower, everything would be better, but people told her all those things. That and more, worse.

  Her husband, Joshua, hadn’t known how to handle it, but I’d been there in college—clinically depressed for much of my sophomore year—so I knew what it felt like. I knew what had worked for me, what had pulled me through and brought me out the other side. I made myself as available to her as I could, and we became close.

  When she was on her feet and feeling ready to go back to work, I suggested she apply for a job at Tom’s company. Tom agreed—they’d always gotten along—and several months after she started working for him, he told me how happy he was that he’d taken her on.

  “Yes,” I say to the committee in the here and now, “she wrote to me that day.”

  I can feel their curious stares. They’ve read the e-mail. What was she wishing me luck for? Why did she want me to call her after? After what? I’ve been asked more than once. It isn’t anybody’s business, and I’d made up some answer, some inside joke between us about how we wished each other luck on ordinary days. Just for fun. Ha.

  “You’ve all seen the e-mail,” I add. “Nothing relevant there.”

  Jenny looks as if she wants to ask more but turns to Franny instead. The others follow suit. The fact that anyone read her e-mails feels like the worst invasion of privacy. Which it is, but privacy gives way to compensation.

  “Did someone check the IP address?” one of the men asks. “She could’ve sent it from her phone.”

  “We checked,” Franny says. “All this information is in your packets.”

  There’s a slim white folder sitting on the table in front of each of us. It has the shadowy label of the Initiative on it. I open it up. It’s full of the usual application materials. Financial information, the details of the deceased’s job, how many family members are seeking compensation. A photo.

  I touch its matte surface. It’s been a long time since I held a real picture rather than simply scrolling through memories on my phone. It’s a happy photo taken at a backyard barbecue. There’s a date stamped on the back. Two years ago, almost to the day.

  “The judge had all this information,” Jenny says.

  “Correct,” Franny answers. “But he didn’t have the mug, and her DNA is clearly on it. It was matched to the DNA we have on file for her.”

  “But it’s the mug she used every day, right?”

  “Your point being?”

  “It isn’t any better evidence she was there than anything else we have. Not based on the criteria you insisted we put in place.”

  Everyone waits for Franny to respond. She takes a moment, possibly counting to ten in her head before proceeding as we’d discussed when we’d prepped for the meeting on the phone last night.

  “I agree with you. It alone doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Hush, Jenny,” I say. “Let her make her case.”

  Jenny slouches down and thrusts out her bottom lip. I can count the ridges in her spine through her cream linen shirt.

  Franny gives me a grateful smile. “I think if you turn to the last page of the packet, you might feel differently.” We do as she asks. There’s a grainy photograph of a woman standing at the elevators. It is time-stamped 9:56 a.m. “They found this in a cache of backups on the cloud,” Franny says.

  She explains. The company that owned the building used a cloud service to back up its security camera footage. But since all the passwords and people with authorization were blown apart in the blast—their offices were located on the first floor, next to the day care—access had proven difficult. We’d get packets of information at a time without, it seemed, any rhyme or reason.

  “Look at the time stamp,” Franny says. “It’s her. She’s in the building right before it happened. The lipstick on the cup matches her DNA, the cup she washed meticulously every day, according to anyone who knew her. I think there’s sufficient evidence to bring this to a vote. Do I have a second?”

  “I second,” Jenny says, perhaps to make up for her former criticism.

  “The vote has been seconded. I call the vote.”

  The voices ring around the room, and I don’t have to count to know.

  The ayes have it.

  • • •

  “Thanks for the support in there,” Franny says at the coffee shop where we go after our meetings to grab a coffee and decompress. “What’s gotten into Jenny?”

  I poke my finger at the foam in my latte. The server’s made a smiley-face pattern in it, perhaps sensing we have something to celebrate but don’t quite know how to do it.

  “It’s hard, all of this. It gets to all of us sometimes.”

  “I know.” Franny picks up and then discards the cookie she bought. Though she’s thinner than she was, she still struggles with her weight, something I’ve tried to get her not to care about. “Why don’t I feel happier?”

  “About what happened today?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I got what I wanted . . . for the family.”

  “For your family.”

  “It’s hard for me to think of them like that sometimes.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “What? Oh, no. They’ve been so kind, especially Mr. Ring.”

  “I’m sure you can call him Joshua.”

  She nods. There’s something about the gesture that reminds me of her mother, and I’m struck again at how her face has changed since I first met her. She looks younger now, freer, though she wasn’t old to begin with. “He’s told me that many times, and I do mostly. Emily and Julia call me Auntie Franny, even though that’s not right.”

  “It does rhyme, though.”

  “You’re trying to cheer me up.”

  “Is it working?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to.”

  “But you have to take care of yourself, too. That’s one of the things I learned in group. It feels good to help other people, but you can’t give all of yourself to them. You have to reserve something for yourself. There was this woman . . . kind of like the group leader, you know, but unofficially? Her name was Erika. Anyway, she called it boundaries. ‘You need to boundary up.’ That’s what she’d always say.”

  I put my hand on her forearm. The hair on it is thick for a woman, like I’ve seen on some anorexics, though Franny has enough meat on her bones. “You’re wise beyond your years. And your mother would’ve been very proud of you.”

  “You think so?” Franny’s eyes are brimming with tears.

  And even though I actually have no idea, because what do I know about her mother now, if she’d keep something like Franny from me, I smile and say, “Of course I do. Now eat your cookie.”

  10

  THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  KATE

  If Kate hadn’t already shattered her glass, it would’ve dropped to the ground as surely as gravity. Instead, her eyes moved reflexively to the television, where she saw not herself but images of her children. Her husband. Her best friend. Photographs she didn’t remember taking but that showed them all at their best. Missing front teeth and dress-up clothes and toys scattered under a Christm
as tree. Ghosts, all of them. She was looking at ghosts.

  “Aren’t kids funny?” Andrea said, half to herself and half to Kate. “Sometimes people look like other people, Willie. It happens.”

  Willie frowned and looked at Kate. “Not Kwait?”

  “No, honey,” Kate said. “I’m right here, see?”

  She stuck out her tongue, catching a disapproving glance from Andrea but a laugh from the boys. She walked to the television—the announcer was focusing on another broken family now—and tapped it twice to snap it off.

  “Who wants to go to the park?”

  • • •

  Although it had been her suggestion, an hour later, bundled up and with a cold wind whipping against her that made her cheeks feel raw, almost bruised, Kate regretted her mention of the park. The boys loved it, their small hands red against the wood-and-metal play structure, their whoops of delight carried away on the breeze. But Kate’s hatred of time spent with children in parks was long-standing. It was a penance for her, something she started counting down the minute she arrived. Setting a deadline like she used to do when she was working out. If she could keep going for two more minutes, then maybe she could stop.

  Kate checked on the boys, then went to the big-kid swings and sat down. She gripped the metal chains with her mittened hands. Unusually, they were alone. Although she could hear the constant traffic on Sherbrooke Street, it still felt as if she were in a bubble of silence penetrated only by the boys’ shouts of glee.

  Where was everyone else? Where were the other nannies she typically passed the time with, the women from the Philippines who made up most of the nanny class in Westmount? The occasional mother there with her own children like a normal mom? Probably all watching television, their children distracted by iPads while they relived their distant grief at the horrors of October tenth.

  She checked her watch for the umpteenth time. Though it felt like forever, it hadn’t been enough time. She should keep them there for another thirty minutes at least. With the plastic swing cutting into the back of her knees, Kate broke up the minutes like she had a year ago on the bus from Chicago to Montreal.

  That Greyhound bus ride takes one day, seven hours, and fifty minutes.

  Kate registered that information when she bought her ticket—a bargain at $120 because she was paying for only one way—but it was one thing to know a detail and another to live through it. Chicago to Kalamazoo. Then Detroit. Then over the bridge to Windsor, Ontario. Then on to Toronto, where they switched buses. Another switch in Ottawa. And finally they pulled in to Montreal.

  Nineteen hundred and ten minutes in all. Like that song from Rent where the minutes were counted out in a hopeful melody. Only it wasn’t an upbeat show tune. But that was the number of minutes it took to change her life. No, that was wrong. It had taken a lot less than that. The minutes on the bus were the minutes it had taken to change her location. Her life had changed before that, much faster and much more slowly than those two days.

  She watched Willie and Steven throw a stick into the dead grass and run after it like puppies. They were content for the moment, but she knew from experience that this could change in an instant. Happy laughter replaced by tears or screams. Arms flying, bruises raised.

  She tried to concentrate on them. But now that she’d started thinking about the bus, it was hard to shake it. The dead-air smell. The way she’d become familiar with the odor of her fellow passengers. The way her own body’s smell had changed, even the scent of her pee. How she hadn’t had anything left to read. She’d refrained from asking the woman across from her, who seemed to have a small mobile library, for a book because that might lead to conversation, questions. Everything Kate wanted to avoid.

  The worst part was the border crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. She’d sat with her nose pressed up against the dirty glass as the bus got closer and closer to Canada, her thoughts racing. Even on this bus full of oddballs, she stood out. Her clothes a mix of what she’d been able to buy at the bus station and what she’d been wearing when she made the decision to leave. She needed something new before they got to the border. A backpack full of the things people usually had when traveling, not the weird amalgam she was carrying. But with her money already dwindling, she settled for a new sweatshirt.

  She washed her hair in the bathroom sink of one of the roadside gas stations they stopped at with hand soap. Then changed and transferred everything she cared about into the pouch of the new sweatshirt. Her money. Her passport. A picture of her family. She should’ve left it behind, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it, either. But she knew, someday, she’d want this piece of comfort. Even if it came with pain. So she touched it like a talisman, and that was good enough for then.

  For all her worry, the border was a breeze. Her Canadian passport was scanned, her photo checked. The customs officer asked her where she lived and what she’d been doing in Chicago. Montreal, she said, making sure to pronounce it as Canadians do, with the O replaced by a U. She’d been visiting friends in Chicago when everything happened.

  “Bad luck,” said the officer.

  “Bad luck,” she’d agreed.

  And then, right when she couldn’t stand being on the bus anymore, when she thought she might be sick if she had to breathe in any more of the terrible antiseptic smell or the stench wafting from the bathroom, the bus driver announced that they were arriving at their final destination.

  And all she could think was: Now what?

  In the park, Kate checked the time again. Finally, enough seconds had passed, and it was coming up on noon. She looked around. She’d lost track of the boys for a moment, and her heart started to battle panic.

  “Willie! Steven!”

  She roamed through the play structure, thinking they might be hiding from her. They weren’t. The swing set blocked the way to the street; they couldn’t have gotten past her without her noticing. They must’ve gone deeper into the park. She started to run down one of the paths. The pond! The boys loved the pond, where ducks paddled in the summer. They drained it every fall, but there was always an accumulation of rain in the bottom that would be deep enough for a three-year-old to drown in.

  “Willie! Steven! Where are you?”

  She caught a hint of laughter on the wind. She pushed herself harder, turning the corner to bring her to the pond. She stopped, trying to breathe, searching for any sign of them. The pond circled an island of land planted with several trees. She heard a giggle.

  “Willie! Come out, come out!”

  Willie popped out from behind a tree with his arms wide. “Taa-daa!”

  Kate wasn’t sure she’d ever felt such relief in her life. If something happened to these boys, she didn’t think she could live with herself.

  She jumped over a large puddle in the bottom of the drained-out pond.

  “Steven!”

  “I here.”

  “Let me see you.”

  Willie reached behind the tree and pulled his brother out. Their hands were muddy, as were the knees of their jeans. She rushed up to them, pulling them in close for a hug.

  “Boys! You can’t run away from me like that.”

  “Sorrryyy.”

  “You scared me.”

  Willie’s lip started to tremble.

  “Oh no, don’t cry.”

  “We wanted to see the ducks. But they not here.”

  “They’ve flown away for winter. Next time, ask me first.”

  “We will.”

  Kate hugged them again. They smelled as if they’d been rolling around in the bottom of a bog. Andrea was going to be pissed. But they were okay. And with some luck, she’d convince them to keep this escape to themselves.

  “How about lunch?”

  “Yeah!”

  INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

  TJ: Perhaps we could circle back to how people found out about you later. Why don’t you tell me what it was like when you met your mother for the f
irst time?

  FM: It’s hard to describe. I’d dreamed about her my whole life, you know? Wondering things like, do I bite my nails because of her, or . . . You know that song from Annie? “Maybe”?

  TJ: I’m not familiar with it.

  FM: She’s an orphan, right? Only, she doesn’t think she’s an orphan, she thinks her parents will be back for her. And she sings this song where she imagines where they are, what they’re doing. Maybe they’re in a house nearby, hidden by a hill. Or maybe he’s reading a book while she’s playing the piano. Simple things. You get the idea. She imagines them perfect, their one mistake being that they gave her up. Anyway, that’s what I felt like my whole childhood was like, and then we met.

  TJ: So you found the record of your birth, and then what?

  FM: Once I realized she’d changed her name when she’d gotten married, I was able to track her down at the company where she worked. There was a picture of her on the website, and I knew right away it was her. Her e-mail wasn’t listed, but I figured it out by using all these different combinations. It wasn’t that hard. I think I got it right on, like, the third try.

  TJ: What did you write to her?

  FM: It was basically, if you gave a daughter up for adoption twenty-two years ago, I’m her, and I’d love to meet you. I included the picture I had from when I was a baby, because I thought she might recognize that more than me as a grown-up. Because we don’t look much alike, except I think I have her eyes. That’s why I recognized her in the photo on her work site. I take more after my dad, she told me.

  TJ: That must’ve been a nerve-racking e-mail to send.

  FM: Yeah, it was. I spent a week writing it and rewriting it. And then right after I sent it, I realized there was a typo. I’d spelled “adoption” “option.” [Laughter] Like she’d optioned me for film or something. I felt kind of stupid.