A Perfect Lie

by Lisa Renee Jones

  I sign the card and offer her that as well. “What’s Megan’s story?”

  She shrugs. “She’s odd but she grows on you.”

  “How fast?” I ask.

  “Pretty fast, but between you and me, she really has it bad for Logan. I’m pretty sure we all now know that Logan has it pretty bad for you.” When my eyes go wide, she laughs again and holds up the card. “Can you end class a little early tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great,” she says, rushing away and I let out a breath. It seems I’ve made an enemy out of Megan, and the last thing I need is another enemy. I think of her eyes as she’s watched me from the doorway, the starkness of her expression, the shadows knifing through her gaze. On some deep level she is troubled, and I know now why this bothers me. She reminds me of Danielle. And Danielle is dead.

  ***

  Class goes well and I find myself smiling and laughing for most of the night. It’s exhilarating and yet some deep, dark part of me is clawing and biting, trying to escape. I’m like a baby trapped in her mother’s womb, being here is happiness, but it has to end. It’s me torturing myself. This can’t be my life and yet, I find myself daring to ask—or can it? As I make my final round to chat with my students, I wonder if the crush of my real identity would fade at some point. Well, not if my father becomes President, but maybe if he loses. It’s a horrible thing for me to wish for, but one I’ve secretly nursed for a lifetime it seems.

  I want him to lose.

  Setting aside that nasty little truth, I focus on keeping the here and now, safe and perfect. I decide I need to talk to Megan before I leave and pull her into my circle, not outside where she could become a problem. I pack up my bag, exit my art room, and without conscious decision to do so, I look for Logan, but the bar is all but empty, and a knife of disappointment infuriates me. I cannot trust him and right now is the worst time in my life to even try.

  I walk to the bar, where that college kid Eddie is wiping down the counter. “Where is Megan?”

  “Left for some emergency,” he replies, without even looking at me. I do like this quality in this man. Bring coffee. Done. Answer questions. Done. All without nosiness. If only everyone could be just like him.

  With my proactive Megan plan smashed, I murmur a “Thanks,” and head for the door. Exiting to the street, I cut left toward my neighborhood when I hear, “Hailey.”

  At the sound of Logan’s voice, I suck in a breath and stop dead in my tracks, a rush of mixed emotions inside me. I am glad he is here. I fear that it’s because he’s truly watching me, working for my father. And yet, I’m back to being glad he’s here after I just wished everyone would ignore me. Proof my present state of mind is more than a little messed up.

  I turn to find him leaning on the wall, his tie half undone, his jacket gone, sleeves rolled up. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I thought you might want someone to walk you home.” He shoves off the wall. “Dangerous neighborhood and all.”

  “Are you trying to get your stalking license back?”

  “Only if you’re willing to help,” he replies, his playful tone charming, but I’m charmed often for political reasons, I remind myself. It means nothing.

  “There are a million reasons why I should just say no.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  It’s that question that most would have turned into an assumption, that wins me over. “I’m not inviting you inside.”

  “I can live with that.” He pauses. “This time.”

  “Maybe not ever,” I say, and I don’t give him time to reply. I turn and start walking. He falls easily into step with me. We don’t immediately speak. “Obviously you aren’t going to tell me why you left yesterday without me asking,” he finally says.

  “Let’s call it claustrophobia,” I say, trying again to be honest. “It hits me at random moments.”

  “Any particular triggers?” he asks.

  “Pretty much it’s just about being me.” I change the subject. “How’d your filings work out today?”

  “Too early to know, but I used that case you gave me. You sure you haven’t gone to law school?”

  I give a laugh that manages to sound more bitter than I intend. “From the day I could speak,” I say. “But I still have to go through the motions and get the piece of paper.”

  “Because it’s expected of us doesn’t mean we have to do it,” he says thoughtfully. “Not even if we’re good at it. And yes,” he adds. “I’m speaking from experience.”

  We turn onto my street and I glance over at him. “Your father pressures you?”

  “Like a tidal wave crashing over me every single day.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Lost the ability to think for herself a long time ago,” he says as we arrive at my door.

  I stick the key in my lock and freeze, thinking of my mother. I turn and rest against the wooden surface, my mind going back to the research I did on Logan. “Isn’t your mother an attorney?”

  “One of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state if not the country.”

  “And she can’t think for herself?” I ask, turning to face him and finding myself eager for his reply.

  “Not where my father is concerned. If he wants something, if he believes in something, so does she, thus she believes I should be on a bench.”

  “Why?” I ask, not sure if I’m asking to figure out my own mother or myself. Or perhaps both. “Why would someone so successful and smart blindly follow him?”

  “I’d like to say it’s misplaced loyalty to his judicial role but at its core, it’s just him. He’s the reason and I don’t think I have to explain that considering your future job choice, or rather, someone else’s choice.”

  “I’ll be a damn good attorney.”

  “But it’s not what you want. It’s what your father wants. I said no and if I can just say no, so can you.”

  My defenses bristle. “You don’t know me or my situation.”

  He presses his hand on the door next to me. “I know more than you think I do.”

  Adrenaline surges through me. “What does that mean, Logan?”

  “It means life is short. Take a deep breath before you move forward before you can’t. Consider taking it with me. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Hailey.” He pushes off the door and walks away.

  Now I suck in air, that might as well be glass. I don’t know what just happened and that is not a familiar situation for me. He seems to be pushing me to do what I want to do, against my father’s will, and yet, those words he’d used: Life is short, and breathe before you cannot, echo a warning. I open the door and walk inside, shutting the door and locking it. I need to get a grip. I can’t see anyone clearly and that’s not about my life. It’s about my panic over that night.

  Otherwise, I’d be clear headed. Prior to right now, I have been. I knew Tobey was a user. I was just using him, too. I knew Danielle was—well—Danielle, unpredictable and confused, perfect prey for my father. As for my mother, she loved my father. Love is blind, but I don’t believe she was stupid, if she’d have known he was cheating, she would have left him. End of story. I’m done questioning her. That I was, speaks of my state of mind.

  I inhale and this time the glass sensation is gone. Calm and resolve settle in my gut. What is my next move? No. What would my next move have been in Austin, after finding out that Danielle was having an affair with my father? I’d call him. I’d call my father and confront him. And, I think as an icy chill runs down my spine, he’d try to silence me and Danielle. I press fingers to my temples. “What are you saying, Hailey?” I whisper. “That he’s a killer?”

  I drop my hands. I need to know which means it’s time to convince him I’ve remembered everything. It’s time to confront him, perhaps for the second time. Then he’ll start talking, telling me what I want to know. And I know exactly how to do it. I’ll text him my wall of sketches and paintings f
eaturing him and Danielle, my small piece of poetic justice. Any story my art tells about him, any secret, will always be poetic justice.

  I race up the stairs, and down the hallway, flipping on the light to the office, and freeze in my steps, air lodging in my throat. Every sketch and painting I’ve created of Danielle with my father is missing. I stand there for several stunned beats, my pulse pounding in my ears, a dark, heavy sensation in my chest that explodes from me in a growl that turns to a scream, my fingers balling by my sides. “Yes, I know, mother,” I bite out. “Ladies control themselves. Ladies are composed, but if you were here right now, even you would be furious.”

  I start to pace, the idea that I’m not only being watched, but that my private space has been penetrated, invaded, infuriates me. The pulse of fury rages inside me and this is not a good me. Anger is good. Fury is not. This is not a me that I want in control. I need to paint. I need to create and I need to do it now. I race down the stairs and cross the living area to my makeshift studio.

  I sit down and I skip the pencil, and grab a brush, looking for the true color and vision paint offers me. My hand trembles under the barely controlled rage, yet still it moves, and moves, and moves some more until I drop the brush on the floor and stand up, panting out a breath with what I’ve painted. It’s Danielle, lying in the alleyway, blood pouring from her body.

  I swallow hard and I consider snapping a picture and texting it to my father, which would surely freak him out. Yes. I like this idea. “Poetic justice,” I call out, delivering his truth, but I’m not foolish enough to do such a thing. Text messages, like my temporary home apparently, are too easily breached by those they are not meant for.

  I don’t even know why this is what showed up on my paper. Danielle couldn’t have been lying in that alleyway. They found her someplace else. I couldn’t have seen her like this. I don’t remember seeing her like this. She didn’t follow me into the alleyway. I didn’t do this to her. It’s simply me putting my worst fear on paper. That’s all this is. It’s a lie. I’ve painted a lie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  That painting turned out to be Pandora’s Box and not in the way you are most likely thinking. That box was me, which I assume you’ve assumed, but what I’d confined to my mind was not some horrific secret about me. I’d just been conditioned to think I was the root of all evil, but it was a man that was the root of all evil. My father.

  ***

  THE PAST…

  I burn the painting and as the paper frays and shrivels, it is inked in my mind, never to be unseen. I don’t know what it means. I just know she’s gone. Maybe that’s the point. I need closure. I keep going back to the fact that her father wouldn’t let me see the body.

  Once my creation is ashes, I lay down on the couch, and I have one thought: If there wasn’t something to hide about Danielle’s death, my art would still be on the wall.

  I wake to beaming sunlight in the living room, unaware of the moment I fell asleep, and once again I have one thought: Danielle is dead, and my father didn’t cry at her memorial.

  By the time I’m in the shower, I’m back to thinking about me. I wouldn’t kill Danielle. She was always troubled. I was the big sister that kept her sane. I would have been angry over her and my father, I am angry, but I would have seen the writing on the wall. He’s a manipulator. In fact, I would have been so very furious that I would have called my father that night. My father would have known this cheating scandal was coming. He would have known Danielle to be damning on top of that. Maybe even the end of his campaign.

  I fall against the wall, out of the spray of water, barely able to catch my breath. I called him. I know I called him. My mind flashes back to the alleyway. Danielle wasn’t with me. No. I was pacing, angry, hurt. I grabbed my phone, yanked it out of my purse, my hand shaking as I called my father only to get his voicemail because of course, he was on the plane on his way home. I wasn’t. I exploded into his voicemail:

  “Danielle? Really? How very presidential of you, father. I wonder what your wife will think? Yes. I know, honey. I read the messages. All of them.”

  I blink back to the present, and I’m sitting on the floor, knees to my chest. She was a problem for him. She was erratic, unpredictable, a mistake he’d never undo. Someone he needed to get rid of. “No,” I hiss, pushing to my feet. He didn’t kill her. He was on a plane, headed home. He didn’t order anyone to kill her. I laugh bitterly, a choked horrible sound, I barely recognize as my own. She was just conveniently killed the night he found out I knew.

  I swallow the acid in my throat. This is crazy. The place in my head is going is crazy. I turn off the water, grabbing a towel. Danielle kept the affair with my father a secret. I wouldn’t have told. My father’s a bastard, not a killer. All of this careful cover-up is about the affair that could still be damning on the heels of that book.

  My mind retraces what I know, confirming this makes sense during which I barely remember leaving the shower or dressing, but somehow, it’s become afternoon, and I’m dressed. I’m in all black; black jeans, black tee, black sneakers, the color of grief, because it’s time I grieve Danielle. It’s time I start accepting what I can’t change. Nevertheless, I braid my hair long before I have to leave for class and apply heavier make up. I need to be Hailey Anne Pitt today. I need to be my mother’s daughter but I’m not.

  With an hour left before I have to leave for work, I once again sit down to paint, setting my alarm to ensure I stop when I need to. This time, when I set my brush down, I’m staring at Danielle again. This time, she’s alone, laughing, happy, beautiful, and still alive. Yet, in my mind’s eye, I can still see the image I created last night; her in that alleyway, bleeding to death, and understanding comes to me. That creation was about me blaming me for telling my father I knew about Danielle. Me wanting to blame him for taking her from me but I’m the one who went nuts on everyone. I did. I remember. My lashes lower and I cover my face, transported back to the alleyway.

  I end the call with my father as Danielle rushes through the door with Tobey on her heels. “Why would you even read my text messages?” she demands.

  There is a jumbled mess in my mind of us shouting at each other. Tobey and Drew are there. Someone else too, but I don’t know who. It’s all fuzzy. What isn’t fuzzy is the moment Tobey steps between us. “We all need to go back to the hotel,” Tobey says. “This is not a fight to be had in public.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you two,” Danielle hisses. “Ever again, Hailey.”

  “Right,” I say. “Why do you need me? You have my father.”

  I blink back to the present. I left her. I was drugged, I remind myself. I was drugged. She drugged me but that really doesn’t matter. I left her behind. I left her to die.

  I turn away from the painting, shoving my hands in my hair. Guilt can destroy a person. I know this from personal experience and I cannot go down that dark tunnel of hellish torment again. I need to snap out of this. I need to step away from my own thoughts and clear my head but to do that, I need to feel safe. I hurry forward, do a little research and in half an hour, I have the security system activated. Of course, my father’s people can breach it, but at least it gives me a layer from reporters or strangers, if I should be discovered. It’s actually rather odd that Rudolf didn’t think security to be necessary.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Safe is defined in the dictionary as protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost. What happens when the ones who will harm you are the ones protecting you? Were they ever protecting you at all? Maybe they were just trying to shut you up.

  ***

  THE PAST…

  With the house secure, I don’t hunker down. That’s for tonight, when I return here alone and know I’m safe. For now, I leave and head into the heart of Cherry Creek where I can buy a birthday gift, and explore the artsy neighborhood that reminds me of my mother’s love of just that, art. Maybe then I can r
emember the grace she’d encourage me to have in all situations and figure out what she’d want me to do with this one.

  By six, she’s frequented my mind often, and I’ve managed to purchase a birthday gift for Michelle—a smoked glass sand timer with a note that reads: Because the time is yours and you’re living your dream with the coffee shop. I think it will hit a nerve with her, perhaps because it hits one with me. She’s living her dream. I’m not but some part of me knows as I pay the cashier, that Logan was right. Life is short. I’m beginning to think Michelle’s little place has opened the door to more for me. I’m not going to stop painting, even if it has to be a hobby. That’s what my mother would want. That’s what I want.

  Pleased with this decision, my steps are lighter as I head toward the coffee shop, but a jewelry store catches my eyes or rather a necklace in the window that reads “Fearless.” I walk inside, buy the inexpensive but pretty piece, and slip it around my neck. My mind flicks to Megan, and I buy a second one and stick the little black velvet bag it came inside into my pocket where I can access it easily when I’m ready to give it to her. I’m about to leave when I spy a pen that reads “asshole” and for obvious Logan-related reasons, I buy it as well. If he works for my father, he’s an asshole. If he doesn’t, I’m the asshole. Which one of us deserves this pen will be decided at a later date.

  Done shopping, I decide a dinner of coffee and cookies will be delicious, and I head on toward the coffee shop. Once I’m inside, the smile I now realize is on my lips fades as a couple at a table just inside the bar area is debating my father’s infidelity. “What do his bedroom habits have to do with how he runs the country?” a man demands.

  “A President has too much power to possess no moral compass,” the woman replies, and I walk on by but not before I hear the man, add, “Should I list out all the affairs ‘great’ Presidents are known to have? Hello, John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. He also had a teenaged girl brought to his room to have sex and play with rubber duckies in the tub with him. It was in that book “Once Upon a Secret.”