It looks almost like I had left it.
Almost being the operative word.
I pull out my license and glare at the name. Now everything is crystal clear.
She looked inside and found out that I have lied about the most basic thing about me: my name.
Why did she leave?
Why didn’t she ask me about it?
I walk back into the living room and look out at the vastness of the desert outside.
Of course. Leaving was the smartest thing that she could have done. She doesn't know who I am.
She already knows that I have lied to her so staying here in this house all the way out here, where no one could hear her scream, and confronting me about the truth would be the stupidest thing that she could do.
Of course, I would never hurt her.
I have never hurt anybody. The only reason why any of this is happening is because I stood up to someone who was doing the hurting.
I take a deep breath and exhale slowly.
Emma did the smartest thing that she could do to protect herself but knowing that does not make the pain go away.
23
Emma
I packed my bags silently and left without saying a word. Under normal circumstances, I would never do anything like that.
I would at least say goodbye, but these are not normal circumstances. I'm running for my life.
I thought that I knew this person because I met him a few times and he was polite, charming, and everything that I wanted after what happened with Alex.
Now I realize that I have no idea who he is. He's been lying to me about everything and the smartest thing that I can do is to simply grab my stuff, get into my car, and get the hell away from here.
When I'm almost twenty miles away from his home, he starts blowing up my phone.
He calls a few times, leaves a few messages, and then a few more texts.
He appears concerned. His tone never elevates and he never threatens me. He just keeps asking me if everything is okay.
A pang of guilt tightens in my chest, but I tell myself to listen to my head rather than to my heart.
If I had stayed there to listen to him explain why he has another ID in his wallet and why all of his credit cards are issued under that same name, then he would've just told me more lies.
I can't do that.
I can’t hear any more stories.
I thought that this thing with him might be something, but I realize now that this is nothing but a rebound.
He made me feel good and there is something intriguing about him, but after this I need to protect my heart.
Before Alex, I had never been cheated on. I thought that I could trust men.
I thought that they wouldn’t lie and that they actually wanted to be with me.
Now?
Everything that has happened has turned my life upside down.
I know that I had no business getting involved with someone so quickly after what happened with my fiancé, but it felt good to be wanted and loved.
As I get further away from the desert, the safer I start to feel and the angrier I become.
How dare he lie to me about who he is?
How dare he make me feel so good after I was feeling so low?
My thoughts keep going round and round like they are circling the drain and I'm afraid that if I force myself off the track, then I'll end up going down that same drain.
To break my chain of thought, I pick up the phone and dial Shelby's number.
When I start to talk, tears start to run down my cheeks and I get so overwhelmed I can barely make the words make any sense.
“Okay, slow down,” she says calmly. “Otherwise pull over. I don't want you driving in that state.”
I wipe my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I grab the bottle of water from the cupholder and gulp down half of it.
“You still there?” I ask.
“Yes, I'm here,” she says.
The phone is laying on my lap so I'm talking hands-free.
“So, he lied to you about his name?”
“Uh-huh.“
I tell her everything that has happened and hope that she can help me figure it all out.
“There's one thing that doesn't really make sense to me,” she says after a long pause.
“What?”
“Alex knows Liam from back in the day, right?”
“Yes,” I mumble.
“He actually introduced him as Liam?”
I think about that for a moment trying to remember if he actually said his name to me or not.
“I think so, but I'm not sure. No, he did. At the party I heard him introduce Liam to someone.”
“You have to find out for sure,” Shelby says.
“What do you mean?”
“Alex knows him. He ran into him and invited him to your engagement party. Why would he do that if he didn't actually know him?”
“What if that's just a story?”
“What would be the point of that?”
“I have no idea,” I say quietly.
“You have to talk to Alex. You have to find out if he knows Liam as Liam or as this other guy: Peter Mueller Schmidt.”
“I was thinking about something,” I interrupt her. “What if he just had that guy's driver's license?”
“And credit cards?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. Yeah, but that can't be right.
“Wasn't it also his picture on the driver's license?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I looked at it very closely and it was him.”
Shelby doesn't say anything for a few moments and neither do I.
“Do you think there's any good reason that he could be lying to me about this? Like, maybe he goes by Liam and that's his real full name. Maybe he just hadn't mentioned it yet.”
“It's possible,” Shelby says after moment.
“Really?”
“Yes, of course. People use nicknames all the time.”
“So, do you think I made a mistake?”
“No, absolutely not. If you made a mistake, you can always apologize, but he did lie and if you had confronted him about it there and it turned out that you had discovered some sort of huge secret of his, then… Your life could have been in danger.”
I bite the inside of my lip.
It sounds dramatic, but as someone who has watched more than her share of true crime shows, I know that this kind of thing happens all the time and people get killed for a lot less.
No, it was the right thing to do, to get the hell out of there.
Now, I'm going to go home and I'm going to find out exactly who this Peter Mueller Schmidt is.
Before hanging up, Shelby asks me if I want her to come over.
I do, but I also need some time to work on this.
“Maybe,” I say after a pause. “Let me get home, get situated, and then maybe we can meet up. I'll call you.”
24
Emma
I plan on calling Alex when I get home, but the more time that passes the longer that I’m stuck in traffic, the more inpatient I get.
Finally, I cave and dial him.
He picks up on the first ring.
“I'm so glad that you called,” Alex says in a chirpy upbeat voice.
I'm tempted to jump right in, but I also want him to tell me the truth.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Terrible. I miss you. I'm a total wreck.”
I swallow hard. He does exactly what I don’t want to hear.
That's the whole fucking problem.
“I'm not calling about that,” I say coldly.
“It's too bad because that's all I want to talk about.”
“Alex, I want to ask you something.”
“Move back in with me,” he says as if he hasn't heard what I just said.
“I was never living with you.”
“That was the issue. We should have been living together. We should've been spending all of our time togeth
er.”
“No, you shouldn’t have been sleeping with your boss.”
“What can I do? How can I make this up to you?”
I see an opening and jump in.
“Tell me about your friend Liam.”
“Why?”
“I don't know if you know but I did a story on him. He's a pretty famous writer.”
“No, he's not.”
“Yes, he is. He writes fantasy novels. I just published a story on him a few days ago. He uses the name D. B. Carter.”
“Okay,” Alex says nonchalantly. “I don't know anything about that. I don't have time to read.”
This irks me.
This is the kind of bullshit that people who don't like to read like to say. It sounds like a compliment to them, but it's really a putdown to other people.
“I know that you pride yourself on not being well read,” I say mockingly and immediately regret it.
The only reason we are talking is to get some information out of him. Insulting comments are not going to help my cause.
“So apparently he is a famous writer,” Alex says. “He told me that he made all of his money investing in the stock market, but what do I know?”
My mouth drops open.
Could this be right? What if… I don't want to let my thoughts go there, but they do anyway.
What if Liam isn't D. B. Carter at all?
I mean, this elusive Matt Lipinski led me to him, but what if he is actually Matt?
What if he is just catfishing me, pretending to be this famous writer?
I decide to keep this to myself for now.
“Are you sure that his name is Liam?”
“Yes,” Alex says. “110%. I've known that kid since middle school.”
“You haven't really seen him since then though. How do you know that it's actually him?”
“I guess I don't, but he looks the same. Plus, we talked a lot about our time back there with Mrs. Williamson, Mr. Kilpatrick, and all the teachers that we had. He knew all about them.”
I nod processing all of this.
Alex isn’t stupid.
He's sharp and if someone were just egging him on or pretending to be Liam, then he would know.
Right?
“Do you think it was a lie?” Alex asks.
I look at the whites of my knuckles wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.
“I don't know what to think.”
“He may not be D. B. Carter, huh?”
“I just don't know why he would make that up. To what end?”
“People lie for all sorts of reasons,” Alex says and I see that as a veiled statement.
What is he trying to say with this? Is he trying to use this as an excuse for what he did to me?
“What are you going to do about your article?” Alex asks.
“I don't know.”
“I can talk to him when he comes in to talk about his investments.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He is investing two million dollars in our fund.”
“Two million?” I gasp.
“Yeah, so whatever it is that he does for a living, it must pay pretty well.”
My thoughts get muddled and my vision gets blurry, but I blink and put myself back on the freeway, crawling in traffic at twenty mph.
I read somewhere that most accidents occur at this speed because people get distracted and bored and start tinkering with their phones and their music.
Who the hell knows if that's true?
“What's going to happen with your article?” Alex asks. “The whole thing is about him. Will you have to write a retraction?”
“I don't know, probably not.”
“It looks good,” Alex says, catching me off guard. “I have it pulled up here on my laptop and I'm going to read it as soon as we get off.”
“You really don't have to.”
“No, this is important to you and I want to show you that I'm interested in things that are important to you.”
“Alex, we're not going to get back together.” My voice is stern but quiet and direct.
I've said this before, of course, but this is the first time that I think I really meant it.
There's a long pause on the other end and I wait for him to reply. Instead all I hear is him licking his lips.
“I don't believe that,” he finally says.
“No, you don't want to believe it, but it is true.”
“Let's just wait and see,” he says calmly. The coolness of his voice startles me. There's a certainty in it that throws me off a little, but I choose to ignore it.
I don't want to talk to him anymore, but there's something else that I need from him.
“What is Liam's last name?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell me his last name.”
“Linville. Liam Linville.”
I grip the steering wheel harder and exhale very slowly to slow down my increasing heartbeat. For a moment, I don't think that I had heard him correctly.
“Are you sure?” I ask, my voice cracking in the middle. “Are you sure it’s not Liam… Parish?”
“Yes, his name is Liam Linville. That was always his name.”
“Tell me everything that you can about him.”
“Only if you promise to have dinner with me.”
“No, I'm serious. I have to know the truth.”
“Well, then you won't mind having dinner with me in return.”
I think about that for a minute.
“What do you know?”
“I'll tell you everything that I know tonight at seven. I'll pick you up at your place.”
I want to protest and tell him no, but this is an important part of the story. He's the only person who I know for sure knows Liam. Maybe there's some hidden information that he's holding that he doesn't even know about.
“What do you say?”
“I'll have dinner with you for one hour and that's it.”
“Perfect,” Alex says and I can almost see him grinning on the other end.
25
Emma
When I get home, I drop my bag on the floor and melt into the couch. I want to immediately get to work on finding out the truth about Liam, but I can't physically make myself move.
The ups and downs of the last two days have thrown me for a tailspin. The odd thing is that I hadn't even realized the extent of my exhaustion until right this moment.
My eyes feel heavy and impossible to lift. My lids close all on their own and despite how much I fight it, I start to drift off and fall asleep.
Sometime later, I wake up and realize that I have slept for hours. When I pick up my phone, I have close to fifty notifications.
Who is messaging me so much? I wonder out loud, expecting to see memes and funny comments from the big group text that my whole family is in together.
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
I have a number of missed calls along with voice mails and at least five messages each from my mother and Brooke.
“Lindsey's in the hospital,” Mom writes. “Not sure what's wrong. Get here as soon as possible.”
“She might be having a miscarriage,” Brooke writes. “We are at Cedars-Sinai, going through the emergency entrance.”
“Where are you? Why aren't you answering our calls? You have to get here as soon as possible.”
Still in a daze from the drive and the impromptu nap, I grab my bag and rush to the hospital. It's at least a half an hour drive from here and the traffic has only gotten worse.
I call Brooke on the way and she updates me on the situation.
“They don't know much yet. She had a lot of blood, but they're not sure if she's having a full-on miscarriage. We are here in the waiting room… Waiting.”
My heart doesn't stop pounding until I see my family sitting in the waiting room. My mom immediately walks up to me and takes me in her arms.
“What's going on? What do you know? What a
re they saying?” I keep asking, but she just keeps shaking her head and refuses to say a word.
“We don't know anything yet,” Brooke says, putting her arm around my shoulder.
My dad is sitting at the far edge of the waiting room with his head in his computer.
He gives me a brief nod hello but continues typing away.
If I were anyone else, then I would think that he didn't really care.
The problem is that I know him and I know that this is what he does when things get very stressful.
“Where's…” I start to ask about Lindsey's husband, but Brooke interrupts me and says, “He's with her.”
“How far along is she?” I know that it's six months, but for some reason I want to know the precise number of weeks, as if that's going to mean anything.
After we talk a little bit about all the things that we don't know and all the control that we don't have over the situation, I feel a tinge of jealousy toward my dad.
I want to open my own laptop and bury myself in my own work just to think about something that isn't this painful.
Frankly, I've had plenty of pain over the last week and I think I'm due for a break.
“That's so selfish,” I say to myself. “This is something that Lindsey's going through and all you can think about is yourself.”
The truth is that I'm kind of looking forward to being an aunt and having a nephew or niece.
I don't have much experience with kids and I’ve never really given it much thought on having my own, but I've been looking forward to playing with this little one.
“I'm sorry, Mitch, they don't have any French vanilla coffee.” Alex comes out from behind the corner, startling me.
I stare at him, at first unable to open my mouth and say a word.
“Oh, no worries, this is great,” my dad says, taking a sip.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
“I came as soon as I heard. I'm really sorry, Emma,” Alex says and pulls me close to him in a half hug.
I quickly jerk away, but that doesn't seem to faze him one bit.
“Why did you call him?” I demand to know of my mom.
All the Secrets (All the Lies Book 2) Page 11