A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  “Dana, stay with me now, hon,” said Jeannie.

  But Jeannie was a world away. Dana was with her father. She felt the homemade knife in her hand, felt how it had pushed right through him and how hot the blood had been as it came out of him. She tasted iron and copper, and he’d looked so surprised…

  “Dana!” Grandma had her by the shoulders and shook her once, hard. “Dana! It’s over! It’s all over.”

  But it wasn’t over, and she was shaking and crying and naked and freezing in filthy water that was turning sick pink from the blood running off her.

  “I want to go home,” she cried. “Please! I just want to go home!”

  Jeannie took Dana’s face in both hands and wrenched it toward her.

  “Dana, you’ve got to promise you’ll stick with me, okay? Please.” Her hands were ice-cold as she stroked Dana’s cheek. “We will get out of this, honey. Together. I promise. You’ve just got to give it some time. That’s all.”

  “We’ve got to call Mom. She’s…she’s…We’ve got to. She needs to know. She freaks out if she doesn’t hear from me every day! She needs to know!”

  Grandma sat back on her knees, her eyes bright with worry and tears.

  “Look, honey, this is something else you’ve got to know. Your mom showed up right after we pulled you out of there. I don’t know how she found you, but she did, and she…”

  “What?” Dana gripped the edge of the tub. “What happened?”

  “They arrested her.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  When Beth’s lawyer finally puffed into the interview room, Beth had only one thing to say. “Noah, get me out of here.”

  Noah Beresford was a big man. He’d gotten through Loyola on a football scholarship. After school, the bulk had turned into fat without a fight. Now, he was leaving middle age behind. He flushed red when he moved, and his wedding ring had dug deep into the flesh of his left hand. His custom suits and shirts fit immaculately, and if his mind moved as deliberately as his body, it was also extremely resistant to shock.

  “I need you to be patient, Beth.” Noah set his briefcase on the table and lowered himself carefully into the chair beside her.

  “I need to be out of here.”

  “And we’re working on that. But it would help if you told me what you were doing in that hotel room, and why you booked it in the first place.”

  It was those last words that actually snagged Beth’s attention.

  “Wh-what?”

  “The room was booked through an online service in your name.”

  Of course it was. Beth ran her hands through her hair and tried to suppress the sick laugh welling up in her. I really should have seen that one coming.

  “You have to tell me what’s going on, Beth,” said Noah.

  How long had they been setting her up? At least three weeks from what Susan told her, but they could have been hanging around for months. Driving back and forth from Perrysborough—picking those times when Kinseki’s gullible idiot was on shift, figuring out which members of the staff were on his payroll—building their possibilities, mapping out her life, waiting for their chance.

  “Noah, all you need to know is that I have to get out of here. If they’re not charging me, they can’t hold me, right? You tell them whatever you need to, but you get me out of here. Now.”

  She did not have a whole lot of time. Patel would already be at work. She’d talk to Susan. She’d talk to Rafi and Angela. Rafi knew Beth’s given name, and he knew more about her parents than anyone else did.

  Rafi won’t say anything. I can trust him.

  Then again, Rafi’s silence would just let Detective Patel know that he had information. It would be easy for her to find out that Beth and Rafi had been friends back in the bad old days. Those old details could lead to old names. If the detective was patient, and she felt to Beth like a very patient person.

  Once Patel had Beth’s given name and even a partial list of her parents’ aliases, she’d have no problem finding Beth’s first victim.

  Beth had to be gone before that happened.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “It’s everywhere!” roared Todd as Dana and Jeannie came into the kitchen. “It’s all over the fucking news!”

  This was a nice house, and it had a nice kitchen—polished wood cabinets and soapstone counters. And Todd was in the middle of it, microwaving burritos. There was a party-size bag of Doritos on the dining table. And a plate of taquitos on the pass-through.

  The whole meal is going to rhyme, thought Dana, dazed. She collapsed into the nearest chair. Except for the booze. Because there was also a full bottle of vodka and a six-pack of beer.

  Dana was wearing too-long yoga pants and a pink sweatshirt with cutouts on the shoulders. She didn’t want to think about how she was hiding in somebody else’s house and probably wearing their clothes. It made her sick on a whole different level. That was probably stupid, but it was true.

  “What’s on the news?” Jeannie grabbed the taquitos off the counter and brought them to the table. “Here you go, hon-bun.” She put one on Dana’s plate.

  Dana couldn’t even make herself look at the “food.” She stared straight ahead of her. There were French doors off the dining area, and she could see that the house had a nice back deck and stairs going down to a nice patio and a nice spread of lawn. There was a nice privacy fence and nice old trees. She couldn’t see any other houses, but they’d probably be just as nice.

  There is no way we are still in Chicago, she thought.

  “Your goddamned fuckup!” roared Todd. “It’s all over the fucking news!”

  Jeannie pointed at Dana’s taquito. “Now, you eat that, hon.” As if to demonstrate how this worked, she ate one of her own in two bites, and, still chewing, she tore open the bag of Doritos.

  The smell of the fake cheese hit Dana hard, and to her shock, her mouth watered.

  “Come on.” Jeannie shoved the bag toward her. “You’ll feel better. I promise.”

  “Oh yeah, listen to her and all her promises.” Todd cracked the seal on the bottle of vodka. “Just look where they’ve gotten you so far.”

  “Did they say anything about Mom?” she asked.

  Todd stared at her, like he’d forgotten she could talk. “Yeah, they did. They said you better be praying she doesn’t decide to throw you under the bus for killing your father.”

  “Todd! What are you doing? Don’t listen to him, Dana. Your mother would never do anything to hurt you.”

  Dana nibbled a chip. And suddenly she was devouring taquitos. And about half the chips. Todd finished microwaving the burritos, and she wolfed one of those down too. At some point, Jeannie got some LaCroix out of the fridge, and Dana drank three, one right after the other.

  This was not okay. This was not right. Her body should not be working. She should not be up and walking around. The whole world had fucking ended. How could she be eating Doritos? Postapocalyptic fake cheese.

  A laugh tried to leak out of her. Oh crap.

  Todd stood by the patio doors and drank the vodka, watching them. Finally, he screwed the cap back on the bottle.

  “Now, I am going to explain how this is gonna go, and you geniuses are going to listen and do exactly what I say. You got it?”

  “Okay, Todd, okay.” Jeannie waved a chip at him. “You don’t have to be such a bastard. We’re listening, right, Dana?”

  Dana nodded and made herself swallow her mouthful of Doritos.

  “Everybody’s gonna get some sleep. In the morning, I’m going to go…see people. We’re going to need a new car and some cash to get started with. You will stay here. You don’t go anywhere. You don’t do anything. You hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we hear you.” Jeannie took Dana’s hand and gave it a little shake. “We’ll be good girls, right, Dana?”

  Dana nodded. Her mouth suddenly filled with a sour taste that had nothing to do with all the bad food she’d just forced down.

  “You bette
r be,” muttered Todd darkly. “Come on—let’s go to bed.”

  He sounded hollow.

  Something’s wrong.

  As soon as she thought that, Dana wanted to laugh. Because everything was wrong. Mom was arrested. Dad was dead. She was…she was…

  “It’ll be okay, hon-bun.” Jeannie suddenly hugged Dana. “Let’s get some sleep. You’ll feel better.”

  Jeannie took Dana’s arm and steered her up the stairs to the room with the Navajo rug.

  “Here, you can use this.” Jeannie handed her an oversize T-shirt that read LIVE YOUR DREAM EVERY DAY! “And remember what I told you before,” she said. “All we’ve got to do is keep him sweet. Just for now, okay?” She patted Dana’s hands and headed back out into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

  The T-shirt fell halfway down Dana’s shins and was too tight across her shoulders and boobs. Dana climbed into the bed. The unfamiliar mattress shifted under her. The blankets smelled like fake lavender. It was utterly quiet—no traffic noise, no train whistles or sirens. Not even distant ones.

  To her shock, Dana fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Sometime that night, she woke up. Her hand reached out, trying to find her phone so she could check the time, check messages, know she was still hooked into the outside world.

  But her phone was gone. She had been unplugged. Wiped out. Disappeared.

  When the morning came, Chelsea and Kimi and Keesha would all wake up and they’d look at their own phones full of pictures, words, music, and links. And what they’d hear was the story that Dana’s mom had been arrested for killing Dana’s father.

  They’d try to text and call. They’d check her feeds and streams, and they’d post and demand to know what was happening and did she know she was famous and what the fuck, Dana?

  And she wouldn’t answer. The Dana Fraser that shared their world was being replaced by something else. An image in the news. A blurry picture they’d flash on CNN.

  Dana squeezed her eyes shut hard so she wouldn’t start crying again, but that was no good, because the red under her eyelids just turned into blood, and she felt it stinging her skin again, stinging her eyes, cracking on her lips like paint, filling her mouth with that sick taste.

  And she saw Dad, perfectly clear. Right there. Dead on the floor. His eyes stared at her, blank, wet, gone.

  Ghosted. Wiped out. Finished. Done.

  Dead.

  She should be dead. After what she’d done. Dead and gone. Then they could just blame her and let Mom go.

  Then she thought, Mom’s going to hate me. Dana looked toward the bedroom door. Like she hates them.

  Because not only had she screwed up everything, Dana was all set to just vanish, like Todd and Jeannie had just vanished when Mom was a teenager. And Mom would never know why Dana had left her either.

  Mom would never know she’d just wanted to help.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks and dropped onto the fat down pillows. She shoved her hand over her mouth to keep the sobs inside.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The instant the car pulled up to her building, Beth scrambled out and pushed through the revolving door. Thankfully, Noah did not try to follow.

  She had (so far) escaped being charged, but that was not for lack of trying on Detective Patel’s part. Noah said it was a series of little things that saved her—like that there was no definitive proof that she had deliberately attempted to tamper with a crime scene. The car service couldn’t find the college kid who had driven her to the hotel, but they had the call and the destination logged. The camera in her building lobby showed her coming and going.

  But that same camera showed her going out with Dana and how Dana hadn’t come home. The manager at Vine and Horn showed them Dana’s completed paperwork.

  They found Dana’s cell phone in the restaurant, right where she’d left it to fool Beth into thinking she’d kept her promise.

  “Let us help you, Ms. Fraser,” Detective Patel had said as the desk sergeant handed Beth back the few things of hers that weren’t thought to be useful as evidence. “We all want Dana to get home safe.”

  “In this case, Beth,” Noah had said when they climbed into the town car he’d called for them, “helping the police find Dana is highly advisable.”

  Beth had not answered either one of them. She didn’t know how to, because she didn’t know what was happening, and that fact was burning a hole through her.

  She shoved her way into the lobby. The TV was on over the faux fireplace. A bleached-blonde reporter was speaking with that particularly grave enthusiasm reserved for death and other tragedies.

  “…and in Chicagoland, at the top of the hour we have an update on the gruesome and shocking murder of Douglas Hoyt…”

  Movement jerked Beth’s attention away from the screen before they could flash whatever photo they had from the scene. A man struggled to his feet from the couch, rumpled and disheveled.

  Rafael.

  His face was grim as he took in Beth’s appearance. Noah had been allowed to bring her a change of clothes, but there was no disguising the fact that she’d been awake all night or seen the end of the world lying bloody on the floor in front of her.

  “Ms. Fraser?”

  Beth turned to the desk. It was Kendi who spoke. She’d walked right past him without seeing him. He was hanging up the phone.

  “Is there anything we can do, Ms. Fraser?”

  Beth shook her head. She could not trust her voice. Not yet. Fortunately Kendi seemed to understand that and did not press the issue.

  “We are praying for Dana,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Rafael said for her, which allowed Beth to continue to the elevators. Rafael followed.

  The doors opened, and they both filed inside. The doors closed, and they stood there, watching the red numbers flicker and hearing the beeps that indicated the passing floors.

  “Beth?” said Rafi finally. He was trying to be gentle. He was trying to be patient. They were friends, and something very bad had just happened. “Beth, where’s Dana?”

  Beth said nothing.

  Inside the apartment, Beth closed the door. She checked the locks. She checked the alarm. Nothing had been disturbed. She turned and brushed past Rafael, wading into the stale silence that filled her home.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night,” Rafi told her. “I started calling the second I heard what happened to Doug.”

  Which she would have known if she had been able to use her phone. She jammed the charger into the dead phone so hard that for a moment she was afraid she’d bent it.

  Beth stared at the icon of the battery with the flashing red line indicating it was out of charge. She pressed her hand over the warm screen, willing that red line to turn to green so the phone would start working again.

  Because maybe Dana had called. Maybe the worst hadn’t happened. Maybe she was somewhere Beth could get to her. But most importantly, maybe she was still alone. Maybe she got away. That could still be true.

  Finally the screen lit up.

  Dozens of messages from Zoe’s number, from Chelsea’s, and from Rafi’s, of course.

  None from her father.

  None from her mother.

  None at all from Dana, or from any unknown number that might be Dana.

  Rafi came around the counter to stand beside her. They did not hug. That was never something they did. He just took hold of her hand, and they stayed like that until she was able to lift her head again.

  “Dana…” she began.

  And of course, that was when the landline rang.

  Beth jumped. It was Rafi who picked up.

  “Fraser residence,” he said, and he listened, and then he covered the receiver with his hand. “It’s Susan.”

  Of course it was. Of course the police, led by the patient Detective Patel, had already been to see Doug’s family.

  Beth kept one hand pressed against her cell as she took the landline h
andset.

  “I’m here, Susan.”

  “What did you do to my husband?!” screamed the other woman.

  “Please, Susan, I’m so sorry. I—”

  “The police were just here! He’s dead! They kept asking about you and your child and…and…I believed you!”

  Beth said nothing. What could she say?

  “I believed you when you told me you had nothing to do with Doug losing his money! I tried to make peace with you! Now you…you…I’m telling them EVERYTHING!”

  “Susan…” Beth tried again, but Susan hung up and left Beth staring at the phone.

  I’m telling them EVERYTHING! Susan’s scream rang in her ears. She tried to tell herself the woman had just had the worst possible shock. Of course she was shattered. Of course she would take it out on Beth. Who else was there?

  Beth pressed her back against the counter and dropped her face into her hands. Her cell wasn’t ringing. Dana hadn’t called. Susan was telling all Doug’s stories to the police, and Dana hadn’t called.

  Rafi touched her shoulder. “Beth, you’re going to need help. You’re coming home with me and—”

  “No.” She made herself look up. “There’s too much I need to do.”

  “Come on, sister,” he breathed. “You can’t leave me alone out here.”

  Beth tried to estimate how much time she’d spent with this man. She knew him better than any lover she’d ever been in bed with. They shared so many late nights, plotting world domination over balance sheets, websites, books, and junk food. Together, they’d worked the angles, judged the men, and sometimes the women. They put together their plans and targeted the money. They’d built businesses, changed lives and worlds.

  Rafi was the only one who’d ever been able to see beneath her surface, because only Rafi knew what Beth was really hiding from. And he had always understood that there were times when the only answer that would keep everything together was a hard, cold one.

  “Rafi, you cannot be here. You need to go home and take care of Angela and the kids and Lumination. This thing…It’s going to hit Lumination like a ton of bricks.”