State of Lies

by Siri Mitchell

  But would that really have been such a bad thing? Why couldn’t we stay with them a few days? Why shouldn’t I let them help us?

  Because after a few days we’d still have to come back home.

  I’d still have to get used to living in a house that had been broken into and pondering questions that didn’t have any answers. I’d still have to be brave and strong. I’d still have to figure out how to keep on keeping on.

  It was something my parents couldn’t do for me.

  * * *

  The chill, crystalline morning yielded to a blustery evening. The wind pushed at my car as I drove from work to school that evening to pick up Sam. Ms. Hernandez was waiting with him. She pulled me aside to fill me in on something that had happened earlier in the day.

  I waited until after dinner to address it with Sam.

  “Is there dessert?” He was looking up at me with hopeful eyes.

  “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Then can we have dessert?”

  “Yes. Then we can have dessert.”

  He sat there in his booster seat, cape tied around his neck, waiting for me to continue.

  “Ms. Hernandez told me about something that happened in class today. Sam, did you push someone at school?”

  He sucked at his bottom lip. “Guess so.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “She was mean.”

  That shouldn’t have made it any worse, but it did. “What happened?”

  “She said mean things to me.”

  “What things?”

  He shrugged again. “Things.”

  “Sam!”

  He looked up at me, startled.

  “I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “She said Daddy was dead.”

  “The thing is, Daddy is dead.” It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to say. “You went to Daddy’s funeral. Don’t you remember?” He’d sat right beside me. We’d held hands the entire time.

  He said nothing.

  Maybe he didn’t remember. Maybe he’d been more emotionally impacted by his father’s death than I’d thought.

  “He’s in a hole now.”

  Relief washed over me. Of course he remembered. “That’s right.”

  “He went into the firm hole.”

  “Firm hole?” Sean had been cremated and I’d explained they were going to put him in a little hole in a big wall and put a plaque on top of it. The wall was made of stone. I supposed it was an unusually firm sort of hole.

  “You know.” He looked at me as if he was waiting for me to say something. “You go in one side and come out the other. Like a tunnel.”

  “A wormhole?” Dear God. “You think he went into a wormhole?”

  He was playing with the strings of his cape. “Yeah.”

  “The thing is, Sam . . . The thing is . . .” I couldn’t tell him wormholes weren’t real, could I? I’d always tried hard to tell him the truth. No one had ever found one, but theoretically, they could exist. There was a possibility.

  His eyes sought mine. “Welp, what if . . . what if when Daddy went into the firm hole—”

  “Wormhole.”

  “What if, when he went in, he was still alive?”

  How to tread carefully? “If he was still alive when he went in, then it would be possible that he could come back out.”

  His face brightened. “That’s what I told her. He just went into the hole, that’s all. That’s what I said. But she wouldn’t believe me. She said her grandpa went into a hole and he was still there and he wasn’t ever coming out and—”

  “Sam, Daddy would have had to have been alive if we expect him to come back out. And we know that he wasn’t.”

  His gaze sank toward the table.

  “You know that he wasn’t. Remember?”

  He nodded.

  “So your father didn’t go into a wormhole. Do you understand?”

  “But if he went in there before he died and he was still alive, then—”

  “Sam, your father didn’t.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “Because he died, sweetie.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “Because his car was hit and he died. Remember?”

  “But if—”

  “So if Dad was dead, then he couldn’t be anywhere else. He couldn’t be in a wormhole. Do you understand?”

  “But—”

  “He’s not coming back. He can’t.”

  “But if he went into the hole—”

  “Sam!”

  He looked up, eyes wide in that small, dear face. “But—”

  “He didn’t go into a wormhole. He’s dead! Your father is dead. He’s dead and he’s not coming back!”

  He slid from his booster seat and tore off down the hall, cape flapping behind him.

  “Sam!”

  26

  I would have given Sam anything. I would have moved heaven and earth if I thought I could. I would have lied, cheated, or stolen if I had to. I wanted Sean back just as much as he did. Mostly so I could yell at him for what he’d done to his son.

  And to me.

  Bedtime was a subdued affair that evening. As Sam brushed his teeth in the bathroom, I did a quick check of his closet. Knelt and looked underneath his bed. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d found anything odd there, but it made me feel better.

  Sam came into the room and pulled his pajamas out of his drawer. When I tried to help, he gathered them up and turned away. When he got in bed, he turned away from me and refused to say his prayers. I said them for him.

  “Sam, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  There was no response.

  “Sometimes adults don’t know the right thing to say. Sometimes they get scared. And sometimes when you’re scared, it’s easier to yell than it is to say something the nice way.”

  He turned to look at me over his shoulder. “You get scared?”

  Yes! I’d spent the rest of the previous night awake, listening for noises. I was sleeping with Sean’s Leatherman under my pillow. And someone had just ransacked our house. But still, maybe I shouldn’t have admitted to it. Maybe my being scared would make Sam more scared. No matter, it was done. I’d said it. Best thing to do was to own it. “I do get scared. Everyone gets scared sometimes.”

  He rolled toward me and put an arm out to hug me around the waist. “It’s okay, Mommy. That’s why we have Alice.”

  I kissed him. “You’re right. That’s why we have Alice.”

  “And if you get scared in the middle of the night, you can always come and sleep in my bed with me.”

  Tears slid from my eyes at the words of my kind, brave boy. “And what would you tell me if I did?”

  He let go and settled onto his back. The hall light shone in his eyes as he looked at me. “I’d say, ‘Mommy, it’s okay. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.’”

  * * *

  The wind whipped into a temper that evening as it sometimes did. I heard it the way I heard planes going into and out of Reagan National Airport: from a great distance, as a hum in the background. Then, quite suddenly, it was beating against the house.

  I jumped.

  My heart had just dropped back into its normal pace when the floorboards creaked somewhere in the front of the house, in the living room.

  Alice didn’t even flick an ear.

  I reminded myself that we lived in an old house. It was just settling.

  But the wind stirred up a great restlessness inside of me. Suddenly I felt much too isolated. I wanted to talk to someone besides myself.

  I wanted to talk to Sean.

  I wanted to tell him about the break-in. I wanted to tell him what I’d said to Sam. I wanted to tell him off. To demand he tell me what the heck he’d been doing the night he died.

  But I couldn’t. He was dead.

 
That’s what I’d told Sam, wasn’t it?

  I vowed that in the morning I would finally take his number off our phone plan. It was time. But that night, listening to the wind howl through the trees and beat against the windows, I just needed to not be alone. I needed to hear his voice one last time. I picked up my phone to dial his old number and realized I had a voice message of my own. I thumbed over to my voice mail log to see who it was.

  Sean Brennan.

  At 6:43 p.m.

  How was that even possible?

  I brought up the call information; it listed his old number. I went back to the voice mail log and pressed on his name. Held the phone to my ear.

  Hey. Georgie. There was a long pause. Do you still trust me? I need you to know that— His words became garbled, as if he’d turned away from the phone, and then the message ended.

  27

  Sean?

  Had I just heard . . . Was that Sean?

  How could it be?

  Sean was dead.

  As I was trying to figure out what had just happened, the voice mail ended with a beep.

  I stared at the phone in my hand, trying to think of a reasonable explanation for what I’d just heard. But the more I stared, the more my hand shook.

  I set the phone down on my bedside table and pushed it away.

  Swiped at the sweat that had formed above my lip.

  My ears felt thick. They were buzzing.

  Maybe my doubts about Sean’s trustworthiness were manifesting themselves in audible voices. Maybe I’d been wanting to speak with him so badly that I’d brought him back to life.

  I tried to pick up the phone but dropped it.

  With a shaking hand, I retrieved if from the floor and brought up the message again.

  Hey. Georgie. Do you still trust me? I need you to know that—

 

  Sean.

  It truly sounded like Sean. And the call had been made from his phone number.

  It was as if something in my brain had crossed circuits and I was receiving messages from the twilight zone.

  But that wasn’t possible. I tried to refocus myself on what was possible.

  Maybe Sean’s phone had been stolen during the break-in. I hadn’t even checked to see if everything was still in the box. I went to the office and pulled it out of the closet to check.

  It was still there.

  But maybe someone had traded out his chip for theirs.

  I took the phone into the bedroom and used one of the tools on Sean’s Leatherman to take it out. I used my phone to verify that it was his.

  That meant the call had to have come from Sean’s phone.

  Where had I been at 6:43? Eating dinner with Sam.

  Fear knotted my stomach.

  Had someone been in the house, in the office, while we’d been in the dining room?

  I tried to power up the phone, but the battery was dead.

  There was no way the call could have come from Sean’s phone. It wasn’t possible.

  And there was no way Sean could have made that call. He was dead.

  I sat on the bed, phone cradled in my hands.

  What should I do?

  First thing I couldn’t do: tell my parents. They were coming into town to get ready for the confirmation hearing, and I’d invited them for dinner. But crazy was not something the Slater family did. Period. End of story.

  I couldn’t tell Jim and June. They worried about me enough as it was.

  I could tell Jenn, but she’d looked at me so strangely when I asked her if she thought Sean had ever cheated on me. I didn’t want to have to explain all the other odd things that had been going on. So that left no one.

  No one but me.

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I have to admit I didn’t try very hard. I was afraid to. I was worried I would wake up certifiably insane. But I had more than enough distractions to keep me from those thoughts. The next day, Friday, was Bring a Parent to School Day. And after that, my parents were coming to dinner. I called in sick to work so I could have the day off. They assumed I had a physical ailment. I didn’t tell them I was afraid it might be mental.

  Ms. Hernandez beamed her thousand-kilowatt smile in my direction when she saw me. “I’ve put you right after Dr. Thomas.”

  I wished she had put me before Dr. Thomas. Dr. Thomas was a veterinarian and she brought real live animals. After she put the guinea pig and the baby chick back in their cages, Ms. Hernandez asked Sam to introduce me.

  He took my hand and pulled me up from my place on the carpet beside him. “Welp, this is my mom. She’s a doctor too, but she can’t help anyone.”

  That was me. Academically brilliant but practically useless. It didn’t, however, keep me from performing the magic tricks Sam had requested. I made a glass fill itself with water, I turned liquid into gas using a bicycle pump, and I made a boiled egg slide through the narrow mouth of a glass jar. I wished I could figure out the magic that had created Sean’s message as easily. The only thing I could figure: someone was playing a cruel trick.

  After me came Mr. Carter. He was a journalist with the Post and he came armed with handouts: bookmarks, colorful cartoon books, and puzzle pages that explained the importance of the First Amendment.

  Later, as I was standing in the lunch line with Sam in the cafeteria, Ms. Hernandez motioned me over. “When the students go outside to play, would you mind coming by the classroom?”

  I ate my lunch in record time and waved at Sam as he ran from the cafeteria out onto the playground. In the classroom Ms. Hernandez was sitting at one of those tiny tables, waiting for me. She pushed a folder across the table. “He’s still drawing these.”

  I opened the folder.

  It was another long black spiral that stretched from one end of the page to the opposite corner. But this time there was a difference. This time I knew what it was.

  Realization sank into my stomach. I couldn’t keep the tears from coming. I dabbed at them with the cuff of my sweater. “They’re wormholes. He’s been drawing wormholes.”

  28

  I waited until Sam came back from recess before I left. I didn’t want him to freak out if I wasn’t there. As I walked home—coat collar turned up, hands shoved deep into my pockets—my cell phone rang.

  I turned into the wind as I answered so my hair would stop blowing into my face. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Brennan? This is Kyle Correy.”

  Kyle Correy? Kyle Correy! The medical examiner from Sean’s autopsy. I’d written him a letter. “Yes. Dr. Correy. Hi.”

  “You asked me to call you? About your husband?”

  “Hi. Yes. My husband. You did his autopsy. And you also took his inventory. I had thought there was something missing, but I found it.” Or maybe it had found me. “I’m sorry. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No. I remember.” He paused. “Could you do me a favor? I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out by now . . .” His voice trailed off. When he resumed talking, it was in a whisper. “But the feds didn’t want that to get around. It was different from the others.”

  I stopped walking. “Sorry?”

  “Everyone knows I swung a deal. But not many people, not even my attorney, know about that. So please, let’s keep it that way.”

  “Dr. Correy, I don’t understand what you—”

  “I have to go. Sorry.”

  “Wait! Dr. Correy?”

  Silence.

  I stood there on the sidewalk trying to figure out what had just happened.

  I’d been operating under the assumption that Sean’s death was a hit-and-run.

  Had I been wrong?

  Dr. Correy had seemed to suggest that there was some sort of relationship between the feds and Sean. Some sort of relationship they didn’t want anyone to know about.

  Maybe Sean’s death hadn’t been an accident.

  As I sat there, it felt as if the world was collapsing in on me.

  I tried to push it back. I
n order to think, I had to focus.

  What else had Dr. Correy said? The feds didn’t want that to get around. It was different from the others. What did that mean? That Sean’s death didn’t have to do with drugs? Or that whatever deal Correy had made, when it came to Sean, it had been done in a different kind of way?

  And why didn’t the feds want it to get around? What were they trying to hide? Who were they trying to hide it from?

  I didn’t have enough information to determine what Dr. Correy had meant when he said that.

  And what about the other part? I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out by now.

  What was there to figure out? And why was he so sure I would have been able to do so?

  * * *

  I spent the afternoon tidying the house for my parents’ visit. As I cleaned, I worked on solving the mysteries of Dr. Correy’s words and the notes in Sean’s book as well as trying to make sense of the mysterious voice message.

  I needed a theory that would explain everything.

  The voice mail message almost made me want to change my mind about the existence of parallel universes.

  Had someone somehow recorded him speaking before he died? And then used it to create a message? But then, how had they been able to use his phone number? I was still paying for that phone line. The number was still assigned to my account.

  I shook my head in an effort to focus on the problem at hand.

  Dr. Correy.

  Sean’s notes.

  And the prospect of something disturbing, something nefarious, that Sean had gotten mixed up in. Maybe whoever was trying to wire my computer and ransack my house was looking for something, some information, that Sean had left behind.

  Information like the notations in the book.

  I took Alice for a long walk as I tried to sort it all out.

  Midafternoon I was interrupted by a call from my mother. She was calling from their layover in Atlanta to make sure I had something “smart” to wear for my father’s confirmation hearing. I assumed she wasn’t talking about my Resistance Is Not Futile—It’s Voltage Divided by Current T-shirt.

  I kept going back to the names and numbers from Sean’s book. If I knew what the two-letter designations after each name were, it might have helped. It would have given me some hints as to what Sean had been doing. As it was, I felt like I was trying to define dark energy.