A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  “Can I come meet you after I’m done? I want to see Jeannie.”

  Mom hesitated. “I don’t know how long this will take. But text me as soon as you’re done. I’ll come get you, and we’ll head straight back, okay?”

  “I can get a Lyft…” But Dana knew that was a nonstarter before she finished the sentence.

  “Humor me,” said Mom. “I’m having a tough enough time letting you out of my sight today as it is.”

  “Yeah, sure, okay.” Even as she said it, though, Dana felt there was something…off. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was there. But it wasn’t like she could argue. She had to take whatever breathing room Mom was willing to give her.

  Mom was already hesitating. “And swear you’ll stay put until I come get you. You won’t go anywhere with anybody?”

  “Swear.” Dana crossed her heart. “Stranger danger. Three steps back and run like the wind. And it’s not like the place is going to be empty,” she added as she pulled on her school blazer. “There’s going to be, like, a zillion people around with knives and fire.”

  That actually got Mom to smile. “Phone?” she said.

  Dana flipped open one side of the blazer to show her the lining and the hidden pocket.

  “Mad money?”

  Dana flipped open the other side.

  “Text time? Because you’re humoring me,” she added when she saw Dana’s eye roll.

  “Four thirty, on the dot,” Dana recited. “Today and every day.”

  “Love you, Dangerface.”

  “Love you, Mom.

  Dana turned away. Time for Step Two.

  “Well, we’ll be sorry not to have you with us, Dana.” Ramona Lee, the manager of Vine and Horn, closed the manila folder in front of her. “But we all understand family has to come first. Hopefully, you’ll be able to reapply next summer.”

  Next summer. Dana repeated the words to herself. Next summer. First we deal with the shit storm.

  Dana smiled and said thanks and sure and good-bye and all the other polite stuff she should. She picked up her purse and let herself be steered out of the cramped office, through the busy kitchen, and into the empty dining room. It was Monday, and the restaurant was closed, although you’d never know it from the amount of frantic prep work underway.

  “Um, sorry, Ms. Lee,” said Dana. “Is it okay if I make a call?”

  “Of course, but I have to get back to the kitchen. Just make sure the door shuts all the way behind you when you leave.”

  Dana promised and waited until Ms. Lee pushed back through the swinging doors. She swallowed the lump in her throat and reached into one of her inside jacket pockets.

  This morning, Mom had clearly been glad to see her wearing one of her “special” blazers. She would have been less thrilled to know that Dana had loaded one of her pockets with her backup phone—the one she’d bought with her own cash so Mom didn’t have to know about it. There were times she just plain did not want to deal with Mom and her tracking apps.

  Dana touched her father’s number and waited.

  “H-hello?” He sounded sleepy. Or hungover. Dad? No. He’d never. Would he?

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  “Dana! Hi. I’m, uh, it’s good to hear from you. Did you talk to your mom?”

  “Not yet, but, um, I need to talk to you—like, now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. You’ll have to come to my hotel. I’m waiting on this call, but…”

  “Hotel? Why are you at a hotel?”

  “I’m, uh, it’s just temporary. We’re having some work done on the house while Susan and the kids are camping, and—”

  “I thought that was just the weekend?” Dana cut him off. She did not have time for him to start rambling.

  “Yeah, well, it…” She heard him getting ready to lie. But then, it seemed, he changed his mind. “Dana, I…She’s left me.”

  “What?” Dana barely remembered she should keep her voice down.

  “This thing with your mother and the money—it was too much for her. It’s why I’ve been so crazy. I’m just trying to fix this so I can get her back.”

  Un-effing-believable. Dana squeezed her eyes shut. Nothing could ever be simple with her father. Nothing could ever get better. It just had to keep falling further apart.

  But what was she going to do? She had to find out everything she could from him before she told him to get the hell out of her life forever. She had to know if he was telling the truth about the fraud. She wouldn’t have believed him, never in a thousand years, except he’d told the truth about the…the other thing.

  If Mom was in that much trouble, if she was lying about something that huge, Dana had to know. She didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. Except the other thing was. She had to know.

  “Dana? Are you still there?”

  “Uh, yeah. Okay. Where are you?”

  He gave her the name of an extended-stay place and said it was out by the highway. She was going to have to call a ride, but she had her debit card to cover it.

  Dana told him she’d be there in maybe fifteen minutes, and she hung up. Step Three. She bit her lip, hard, and then she messaged Chelsea.

  Going to see Dad. She added the hotel name and his room number. DO NOT FREAK!!! ​ Will message every 10 minutes from backup phone. If I miss one, you can freak.

  She hit Send and dropped the phone back into her pocket. It clinked against the “special” nail file Chelsea had given her, in case of other kinds of emergencies. Not that she’d need it. Dad was pathetic, not crazy.

  Dana looked toward the kitchen door, and then she laid her other phone—the one Mom tracked—down on the chair and walked out the front door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Susan.” Beth smiled as the other woman sat down at the café’s sidewalk table. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  “You’re welcome, Beth.” Susan Hoyt appeared as collected and perfectly put together as she had the few other times Beth had met her. Doug’s wife looked like she’d been called in from central casting to play a suburban homemaker. Her pale skin was enhanced with sunblock, moisturizer, and facials rather than nips and tucks. She was thin but not too skinny. Her wide blue eyes tended to make her look a little anxious. But there was an extra air of distance and caution in the mix today.

  Not that I blame her. Beth flipped her phone over. The phone-tracker app was up and running. It showed Dana’s location as a green circle on the map and stayed steady.

  Dana’s fine. I need to focus.

  Beth needed to find the right way to ask this woman she barely knew about the current state of her family finances, and if she knew who her husband had been giving money to.

  The server came over with water and to take drink orders. Beth ordered a cold brew coffee. Susan, despite the already warm day, ordered herbal tea.

  Beth asked about Patty and Marcus. Susan asked about Dana.

  Beth asked about the house and the rose garden that was always Susan’s special pride. Susan asked about work.

  Beth couldn’t help noticing how good Susan was at small talk. Really, professional grade. She never let the silence stretch a second too long before she had another question ready. But then, this was exactly why Doug gravitated to this woman. Susan took “detail oriented” to new heights. For her, problem solving for anyone in her near orbit was a personal triumph, and she had always seemed to believe she could discover the exact combination of love, kindness, and competence that would get Doug to leave his personal Neverland and finally grow up.

  Their drinks came, and while Beth shoveled sugar into her coffee, Susan dunked her mint tea bag into her cup exactly ten times, before pulling it out and settling it on the saucer. Then, she lifted the cup, wiped the bottom with her napkin, and set the saucer aside.

  Beth decided to take that as her signal to get down to business.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I called…”

  “I actually expected to hear from you sooner.�
� Susan lifted her cup in both hands. “I imagine you have a great deal of gloating to do, and that sort of thing is always so much more satisfying in person.”

  The cold declaration hit Beth with physical force. “What are you talking about?”

  The corner of Susan’s mouth twitched. “Please. You’ve never been anything but jealous of me and my children.”

  “Is that what Doug told you?” And you believed him?

  “Of course he told me. That’s why you’ve always tried to shove your daughter into our family, so you could use her to spy on us. I love Doug,” Susan continued with surprising ferocity. “I have always, always tried to be what he needed. You can sneer all you want, but that’s the truth.”

  It took all Beth’s years of personal discipline to keep from blurting out her response. She knew next to nothing about Doug’s wife. Since she and Dana moved to Chicago, Beth had met Susan only three or four times. They would make small talk about the kids and the city. Susan would talk fondly about Doug and all his problems and all her solutions. Somewhere during the conversation, Susan would explain how some failure of Doug to live up to some promise was actually her fault. And Beth had always been able to picture Doug standing behind her, smiling and relieved and oh so grateful.

  Beth had seen it was a mask, but it was a very good one. Maybe she could have gotten under it, but that would have taken time and effort, and she hadn’t believed it would accomplish much of anything.

  Except maybe get me ready for this. Beth took another swallow of coffee and pushed the cup aside. Whatever she said next, she would have to choose her words very, very carefully.

  She met Susan’s proud, worried gaze. She’s scared of me.

  “I have never once sneered at you, Susan,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, you and your family are the one thing Doug actually has going for him. I called you because you need to know he’s gotten himself into some kind of pyramid scheme.”

  Susan stared at her, plainly unable to believe what she was hearing, but Beth kept on going. “I’ve got people tracking it down. We should be able to identify the source before too long, but until then, you need to keep an eye on your money, just in case. None of this is Doug’s fault,” she added quickly. “These people are very smooth operators and—”

  “These people! What people?” Susan demanded.

  But Beth just said, “Susan, what’s happened?”

  Susan turned her face away. She watched the traffic easing by in the street. Watched the people and the pigeons, watched everything except Beth while she brought herself back under control.

  Oh, Susan, I’ve screwed up so badly. I should have gotten to know you. I should have taken the time. But she’d been so glad somebody else was managing Doug that she’d been more than willing to just leave Susan to it. She’d never thought about what kind of stories he might be spinning, or that it might ever matter.

  After all, Doug was harmless.

  I knew everything he’d done to me and to Dana, and I still kept telling myself he was harmless. How the hell did I let that happen?

  “All I ever wanted was a home,” Susan said at last, keeping her face turned toward the city. “And someone who needed me. Me.” She patted her chest. “I told him, right up front when we first started getting serious, that the one thing I would not tolerate was him keeping secrets. I swore I was done with that.” Memory took her gaze even farther away.

  Beth burned to ask what lay behind that distant look, but now was not the time. Maybe that time would never come.

  My fault. Again.

  “The money’s gone,” said Susan. “At least, his is.”

  “His?”

  This, evidently, was something her pride could stand to talk about, and Susan turned toward Beth again. “When we got married, I told him I was going to keep my own investment accounts, just in case something happened. I wanted to be able to provide for myself and any children during any…transition period. He didn’t like talking about dying, of course, but in the end, he came around to it.

  “That was actually my first hint that there was trouble. Recently, he started pressing to get his name on my accounts, in case something happened, he said.”

  And you turned him down, and that brought him to me.

  “Susan, I don’t know what Doug has been telling you about me, but I might be able to help recover at least some of the money.”

  Her mouth twitched. “Which is ironic in the extreme, since Doug said you were the one who stole it.”

  Ah. Beth sat back, disappointed but not terribly surprised. Damn, Doug. I’ve really made it easy for you to turn me into your scapegoat, haven’t I?

  “Do you believe him?”

  Susan took a swallow of her tea and made a face. She retrieved the tea bag and dropped it back into the water. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  “Can you answer me one more question? Have you ever seen Doug with this man?”

  Beth pulled a photograph out of her purse and slid it across the table. She’d pulled the picture from one of her Kinseki reports. It was Todd in three-quarter profile, laughing at some joke.

  “Where did you get this?” asked Susan.

  “Do you know him?” Beth countered.

  “That’s Rafael Gutierrez. He and his wife came to dinner with us three weeks ago.” She pressed her hand over her mouth. “She’s the reason I wouldn’t let Doug near my money.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The MaxRest America Extended-Stay Hotel was about as generic as you could ask for. Dad had a ground-floor room on the same side as the (empty) outdoor swimming pool. The clerk barely glanced at Dana as she headed across the lobby and down the hall.

  Dana stopped in front of the room and messaged Chelsea.

  Still OK

  She tucked her phone into her side pocket and banged on the door. There was some shuffling from inside and then the sound of the deadbolt and the chain being worked.

  “Hi, Dana,” said Dad. “Come on in.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” she sneered and walked inside.

  It was a hotel suite, all shades of beige. There was an oversize TV in the living area and a kitchenette with a full-size fridge and a separate bedroom. The door was closed.

  “You want to sit down?” Dad asked nervously. Of course he was nervous. He was trying to mess with her head and maybe he was already getting the idea it wasn’t working. “Something to drink?”

  “You know what I want, Dad?” Dana snapped. “I want you to tell me the truth!”

  She’d meant to go slow. She’d meant to try to sweet-talk him. But coming straight from the wreck of all her plans for the summer and seeing him like this—she just didn’t have enough left in her to play the good cop.

  Her father spread his hand, giving her the “calm down” wave, which had never calmed anybody down, ever. Her anger flared up fresh just seeing it. But she also saw he was all rumpled again, and stubbled, and red eyed.

  Good. Everything sucks. Everything should suck for you!

  “Dana, I know you’re mad, and you’ve got reason to be. But you need to sit down and try to listen to what we’ve got to tell you. It’s important.”

  “No! I am done listening to you! I…” She stopped, and she was pretty sure she did a double take. “Wait. We?”

  “Yeah.” Dad rubbed his hands together. “You see…”

  That was when the bedroom door opened, and the lean, gray man stepped out.

  It was Todd.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Doug told you this man”—Beth tapped the photograph—“was Rafael Gutierrez? Head of Lumination?”

  Susan nodded. “They said Doug was helping do the risk assessment on a new fund. I didn’t think it sounded…I don’t know what I thought it sounded like. I knew he was your boss, and I knew you’d never go along with Doug working on any project you were involved with…”

  Well, finally we’re both on the same page about something. Beth tried to stop her head from s
pinning. She tried to focus on hearing what Susan was actually saying.

  “I meant to start asking questions. I did, but then—” She swallowed. “Then, his wife…We were in the restroom, and she told me that there was an investigation going on at Lumination, and Doug was in over his head. She told me I should keep an eye on our money for the time being, and not let Doug take out too much. She said she wasn’t supposed to be telling me, because it might interfere with the inquiries, but she…she was a mother too, she said, and she knew I had nothing to do with it, and she didn’t want our kids to get hurt.”

  And of course you couldn’t ask any questions after that. You were too busy trying to save yourself and your kids. Beth pulled a second photo out of her purse. “Was this his wife?” She laid Jeannie’s picture down on the table. “Yes. Angela. What—” The sound of Beth’s phone ringing cut her off.

  It was Chelsea. Beth forgot all about Susan and Doug.

  “Hello? Chelsea?” She pressed her free ear closer to hear better. “What’s happening?”

  “Uh, hi, um, Ms. Fraser, I…”

  Shit. “Deep breath, Chelsea. I’m listening.”

  “It’s Dana. She’s in trouble.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Hello, Dana.” Todd Bowen smiled and spread his hands. Unlike her father, he was perfectly combed, and his shirt was crisp and clean. In fact, it was like they’d swapped places or something. “I know this has got to be a surprise, but…”

  Dana recovered her voice. “A surprise!” she shouted. “Dad! What is this guy even doing here?! Do you know who this is?”

  Dad seemed to deflate. He crossed the room and collapsed onto the couch like he didn’t have the strength to keep standing. Then, to Dana’s complete shock, Todd walked over and patted Dad’s shoulder.

  “The FBI is investigating your mother, Dana.” Dad said it to the wall. He rubbed his hands together, like he was trying to get them warm.

  “What?!”

  “Her and Lumination, and they’re probably coming after me.”