The Liar of Red Valley

by Walter Goodwater

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Brian said, pushing Sadie out the door. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  Sadie shivered as the strange door slammed in her face.

  When Sadie returned to the car, Graciela was waiting with saucer eyes.

  “What happened to you in there?” she demanded. “You look like shit.”

  “I think you were right,” Sadie said. “I don’t think we’re this bar’s usual clientele.”

  Ten minutes later, Brian scurried out of the bar. Sadie met him by his car.

  “So,” he said nervously. He had on a sweat-dark shirt and cargo shorts. He looked worse than Sadie remembered, thinner in the arms and thicker in the gut. “Your mom’s dead?”

  “Classy way to start, asshole,” Graciela said. Sadie shot an elbow into her ribs.

  “Yeah,” Sadie said.

  “How?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  He ran both hands over his face, pulling at the skin. “She called me the other day. I knew it had to be bad if she was calling me. Hadn’t spoken to her in years. It was nice to hear from her. Should have known something was wrong.”

  “What was going on in there?” Sadie asked, gesturing toward the bar with her chin. “With those… things.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, the words coming out so quickly they got a little jumbled. “You don’t want to be involved with the Long Shadows, trust me.”

  “You owe them money?”

  “I owe them a debt.” There was an edge to his voice now. “Like I said, don’t worry about it.”

  “You could at least pretend to be happy to see your daughter,” Graciela said. Sadie didn’t stop her this time. She knew Brian wasn’t going to greet her with a big hug, but she hadn’t expected him to seem so annoyed.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I’ve just got a lot going on right now, I didn’t mean…” He sighed, wiped some sweat that was about to drip into his eye. “That was a hell of thing you did, going in there like that.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a daughter,” Graciela said.

  “You said Mom called you,” Sadie said. “What did she want?”

  “Help,” Brian said. “She thought someone might be after her, watching her. Didn’t want to give me any details. She said she’d really screwed some shit up and was trying to make it right.”

  Sadie furrowed her brow. Who would have been following her mom around? Hassler? The King? And why? “Is that all she said?”

  “It was weird, because she never really talked much about being the Liar, you know? But this time, it was like she needed to tell somebody, get it off her chest. She said she’d told a real bad Lie,” he said. “And something got out of hand.”

  You could have told me, Mom.

  “How were you supposed to help her?” Sadie asked.

  “Wait for you, I think,” he said. He fished his keys out of his pocket and popped the trunk of his car. He rummaged around and came out with a box. “She said she needed that kept safe for a little while, but I’m guessing she wanted me to hold onto it for you.”

  “And you kept it in your car?”

  “Safer than my apartment, trust me.”

  Sadie pulled the box open. The cardboard was warm from the summer heat. Inside, she found a stack of old books held together with rubber bands. The ledgers.

  “Did you look at these?” Sadie asked carefully.

  Brian shook his head. “I don’t need any more complications in my life. Frankly I’m happy to be rid of them.”

  So many pages, so many Lies. But they all looked aged, yellowed by time. None she recognized. “What about Mom’s ledger?” Sadie asked. “Where is it?”

  “Didn’t see it in there,” Brian said. “She never went anywhere without it. Guess she wasn’t done with it yet.”

  He wasn’t wrong; her mom rarely let her book out of her sight. Sadie had accused her multiple times of caring about it more than her own daughter, and her mom hadn’t refuted her. But if it wasn’t here and wasn’t at their house, where was it?

  “I need your help too,” Sadie said after working up the courage. “I don’t know anything about being the Liar, but ever since Mom died I’ve got half of Red Valley on my butt wanting me to keep these secrets or give up these secrets. The undersheriff was at my house this morning. And before that, the King’s Man came to the hospital and—”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Brian said. He suddenly looked nervous. “You’ve got the sheriffs and the King after you?”

  “I don’t think the King is after me,” Sadie said, though she still wondered what he truly wanted from her. “And the undersheriff wants these.” She held up the ledgers. “So he can go to war with the King. Mom must have been in the middle of all of this and now that she’s gone, I’m stuck with it. So I could use a hand. If you’ve got some time.”

  Brian glanced around the parking lot, as if he were looking for an escape route. “Look,” he said. “Your mom asked me to hold onto those books for her, so I did. I’m not sure what else I can do.”

  “I don’t know. You can give me a ride. Or some advice. Or twenty bucks. You know, your basic dad shit.”

  “I’m not really good at that.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve had plenty of years to notice,” Sadie snapped back. What is this guy’s problem? “Never too late to start now.”

  “What did your mom tell you… you know, about us? Me and her.”

  “She told me you were a dirt-bag, but a decent one.”

  “I’m not a decent anything,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

  “Brian—”

  “I’m not your dad,” he said. The words came out in a gush, like they’d been trying to break free since the moment he saw Sadie inside.

  “What?”

  His face burned red and he couldn’t look at her. “I liked your mom, always did. I knew her back in high school. She never had the time for me; didn’t seem to like anyone, really. Later, we became friends. Maybe she got lonely, I don’t know. But we never… you know. It never happened. When you came along, I didn’t ask questions about who or whatever. It was fun sometimes, pretending. But that’s all it was. Pretend.”

  Sadie felt her lips tighten and her lungs contract. The heat coming off the gravel was suddenly sweltering. And the man standing across from her suddenly looked very small.

  “Pretend,” Sadie repeated. The word tasted sour.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want you to be mad or anything. I wouldn’t have even told you, but with your mom gone now, it just seemed… I just felt like…” His words trailed off and he let them go, like they weren’t worth chasing after.

  “Now that she’s gone and you know she won’t ever sleep with you,” Sadie said, “why keep pretending to care about her brat?”

  “Hey, that’s not fair,” he said. “I cared a lot about your mom.”

  “Just not about me.”

  “It’s not like—”

  “No, no,” Sadie said. “I get it. You don’t have to explain.” She needed to get out of there so she could breathe, so this bastard wouldn’t see her cry. “Graciela, let’s go. We’ve overstayed our welcome here.”

  “Aw, come on,” Brian said, his voice stronger now that he could act aggrieved. “I gave you the books—”

  Sadie stopped and held up the ledgers. “Did she ask you to give these to me? She didn’t, did she? She asked you to keep them safe, but then I showed up and you saw an out, so you pawned them off on me. Well, thanks, Dad. I won’t expect a Christmas card.”

  “And good luck with the Long Shadows, Brian,” Graciela added before they got into her car and slammed the doors shut.

  “So,” Graciela said when they were back on the road.

  “Shut up,” Sadie said.

  “Shutting up,” Graciela said. “Want a hamburger?”

  “Yes,” Sadie said. “Yes, I do.”

  They drove back across the bridge and
into the King’s Peace. Sadie held the ledgers in her lap, but didn’t undo the rubber bands. She was vaguely aware of their weight and knew they should command more of her attention, but she didn’t care. Not after the morning she’d had. And the night before that.

  They settled on the Treehouse Diner where Sadie worked. Sadie didn’t really want to deal with Denise asking her to cover for one of the other waitresses, but they did have the best burgers in town and she got an employee discount. They got the booth in the back across from the coffee machine, where glass pots bubbled deep black liquid, despite the breakfast rush being long over. Sadie ignored the stares she got from the other patrons, their too-loud whispers.

  The restaurant got its name from the tree growing right up the middle of it: an ancient oak with a trunk at least four feet wide. Most of the branches sprouted above the roof so they didn’t have too many extra leaves to sweep up, and somehow the whole place didn’t leak like a sieve. The story went that when they wanted to build the place, they cut down the tree, but by the next morning, it had regrown back to full size. They tried again, same thing happened. Eventually they gave up and built around it. Sadie wasn’t sure if that was true, but she had seen bored jerks carve their initials into the wood while they waited for a burger, and by the next day, the marks were gone, the bark restored. Now the tree was a welcome steady presence in the diner, like a kindly regular who smiled and tipped well.

  “I’m just going to say it,” Graciela said when she couldn’t take Sadie’s silence anymore. “He was a total douchebag.”

  “Yeah,” Sadie said. She didn’t meet Graciela’s eye. Instead she stared at the tabletop. At the Treehouse, the tables all had old newspaper clippings from the Red Valley Daily News embedded under a coat of clear varnish. From her seat, she could read about a record turnout for the rodeo back in 1957 or which families came to the Red Valley Baptist church potluck for Easter in 1907.

  “I’m glad he’s not your dad,” she went on. “You don’t need his douchebag genes messing you up. Your mom was right to stay away from him. What a tool.”

  “Yeah,” Sadie said again, absently twirling a straw between her fingers.

  “Seriously, chica. You don’t need him.”

  “I know.”

  “But…?”

  The straw flipped out of her hand and disappeared under the table. “Yesterday I had a mom and a dad. Today…” Sadie’s voice trailed off into the bustle of the diner.

  “Yeah,” she said. They both sat in silence for a moment, but it became too much for Graciela and she said, “So, who do you think it is? Your dad, I mean.”

  Sadie laughed a little. She’d been too busy working over the events in the bar and Brian’s revelation that she hadn’t even thought about other options. “Mom wasn’t really friendly with anybody else,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe before my time.”

  “Maybe it was some dark, handsome stranger who came into town and swept her off her feet before his dangerous past caught up to him and he had to flee to keep you both safe.”

  Sadie snorted. “That sounds like one of those crappy telenovelas you love.”

  “Una Pasión Peligrosa is not crappy.”

  Sadie stared back with a raised eyebrow.

  “Look, if you can’t appreciate fine art, that’s not my problem. That’s just a failure of your upbringing.”

  “We certainly didn’t watch a lot of Una Pasión Peligrosa growing up,” Sadie said.

  “What do boring white people watch instead? The local news? Wheel of Fortune?”

  “Murder, She Wrote.”

  “Is that a TV show?”

  “Yeah,” Sadie said, remembering. “An old lady solving crimes. Mom loved that stuff. Read a lot of books like it too. Murder mysteries at a bed and breakfast, solved by the local knitters’ guild, that sort of thing.”

  Graciela blinked. “That is the whitest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Sadie laughed. The shows and books had been silly, but for some reason her mom had devoured them. She’d always toss the books after she was done, but Sadie had snagged a couple and read them herself. There was something to them, trying to work out the mystery before the big reveal. And while people usually did get murdered in the opening pages, death never really had the same weight in stories like these. You never got to know the victim; the stories weren’t really about them. They were just a part of a harmless puzzle. As an ache grew in her chest and burned her eyes, Sadie longed for a world like that.

  They ordered their food and Sadie set the ledgers on the table in front of her.

  “So that’s what everybody’s after?” Graciela asked, nodding toward the books.

  “I guess so,” Sadie said. She unwound the rubber bands and spread the ledgers out. Any secrets inside these were old, the Lies forgotten by generations long gone from Red Valley. Sadie was more interested in her mom’s ledger and the Lies she’d told. What else had she been keeping from her? And what had she meant when she told Brian about a bad Lie that had gotten out of hand?

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  Sadie ran a finger down the spine of one of the oldest ones. It was coarse under her thumb. Her mom had wanted the ledgers protected. The King had wanted them secret. The undersheriff had wanted them exposed.

  What did she want?

  “Maybe I should have just left them with Brian,” she said. “I sure as hell don’t need all this drama in my life right now. I never asked to be the keeper of this damn town’s secrets.” Yet even as she said this, she felt drawn to the books, to the words within, and to the mysterious women who had written them. Her family. Gone, but maybe not forgotten.

  She opened one of the ledgers. There was a name inscribed inside: Alice Tully. Based on the dates aligned with each Lie, Alice was probably Sadie’s grandmother, though she’d never met her. Her handwriting was terrible and the Lies fairly mundane, the same crap most people had come to see her mom for.

  “Any great cosmic secrets of the universe?” Graciela asked.

  “People are vain and stupid,” Sadie said, turning a page. “I can’t believe what people are willing to give up for such petty shit. Oh, but here’s a good one: ‘Nobody will ever find Alexander Harbaugh’s body.’”

  “Nice. And just to be clear, that is exactly the kind of thing that would happen in Una Pasión Peligrosa.”

  Their food arrived and Sadie set the ledger aside. They ate in silence, food being one of the few things that could keep Graciela quiet for long. Sadie chewed slowly, absently, barely tasting the greasy fries. Her mom had told her that the King gave the Liars their power. He’d done similar things all over Red Valley through the years, as his magic infused the town. But the Liar’s power was unique, and particular. What Lies did the King want told?

  She brushed salt from her fingers and found what looked like the oldest ledger. The corners were fraying and the ink on the cover had faded from black to brown. The spine cracked slightly as she gently opened it. It too was inscribed on the inside of the cover: property of mary bell. Sadie turned the first thick page and found its Lies.

  The ledger was separated into columns. The first column was a date, followed by a long block where the Lies were written out. The last column held a space for the blood. The stains had long turned the color of rust, but Sadie still felt a chill at the sight of them. She fanned through the pages briefly. There were hundreds and hundreds of entries, each marked with blood. How much life had been burned up with these Lies?

  Mary Bell’s handwriting was small and neat, though the cursive lettering was a bit strange for Sadie. She returned to the first entry.

  August 1, 1862 In this book, I will write only truth.

  An interesting way to start. Sadie kept reading.

  October 2, 1862 Sarah Jane Macalister is a tall woman with beautiful blonde hair.

  October 19, 1862 Jacob Baker came back from the foothills with 10 gold nuggets.

  November 4, 1862 The Rev. Robert Joseph White still beli
eves in the power of the Almighty.

  She read the last one aloud to Graciela.

  “But he’d still know, right?” Graciela said. “He’d know it was a Lie.”

  Sadie remembered Mrs. Bradford and her yappy dog. So much of what people told themselves were already lies, long before the Liar got involved. Maybe some people just needed a little help. “I think these Lies might be true enough for…” Her words died in her mouth.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, God,” Sadie said. No, no. That can’t be right. She read the line again, careful to understand each looping letter. She hadn’t misread it.

  “Tell me.”

  The hamburger started to crawl its way back up Sadie’s throat. “Trust me,” she said. “You don’t want to know.”

  December 20, 1862 The King of Red Valley is not dying.

  Chapter Seven

  Sadie’s heart began jumping in her chest. Her hands went cold and tingly. The noise of the diner was muted in her ears, like she was listening from underwater.

  The King of Red Valley is not dying.

  Which was a Lie. Which meant the King was dying. And had been for a long time. And the first Liar had covered it up.

  Sadie wasn’t exactly clear on what the King actually was. There were guesses and rumors, old stories shared in hushed tones around town, but no one claimed to have any real information. The King hadn’t been seen by anyone, as far as Sadie knew. But what the King did was more apparent. She’d just witnessed it, when they’d dared to venture outside of the King’s Peace. The world was full of monsters, but the King kept the people of Red Valley safe. Whatever the King was, the things outside were terrified of him and so stayed away.

  Things started to make sense now: why the King’s Man had been so concerned about the ledgers, and why the undersheriff wanted them. And why the King created the Liar in the first place. If the great dark things outside Red Valley knew that the King was dying—that he was vulnerable— maybe they wouldn’t be so afraid of him. Maybe they wouldn’t stay away.

  “So,” Graciela said. “You wanna talk about it?”