Sweet Liar

by Debra Doxer

  Jonah’s face became pinched. The fact that he couldn’t do what I was asking obviously upset him. “Candy . . .”

  “You know what that’s like, don’t you? To have a parent disappear from your life? It’s nearly Christmas. Could I talk to him on Christmas Day since I’m spending the holiday alone?”

  The tears that sprang to my eyes caught me off guard. The next moment, Jonah’s arms were around me, pulling me close.

  He whispered in my ear, running his hand up and down my back. “Don’t cry. I’ll see what I can do. Okay?”

  I nodded against him, wanting the comfort of his arms as I settled against his chest.

  “I’d spend Christmas with you if I thought you wanted me to.”

  It was a kind offer, and so different from the one Drew made. “Aren’t you spending it with your father?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s where you should be, then. With your family.”

  “Say the word, and I’ll be with you.”

  He was torturing me and making me cry again. I was so tempted to say the words he was looking for, or anything else that could erase the past few weeks and let me spend the holiday with him. But it wasn’t so simple, and he knew that too.

  “You don’t have to be alone. Maybe you could go to Theo’s or Lea’s.” He made the suggestion once it was obvious I wouldn’t ask him.

  “Maybe,” I replied because I did intend to see Theo over the holiday. I just didn’t know when yet. Also, I didn’t want Jonah to feel badly for me or to blame himself for my tears.

  After a while, I reluctantly withdrew from his arms and wiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand. We were both quiet and sullen as we left auto shop with neither of us having eaten any lunch.

  ***

  That evening after I’d had dinner, I stared at my mother’s recipe book. She had several recipes for Christmas cookies, and to my surprise, I was toying with making some. Today had been the last day of school, and now a long Christmas vacation stretched in front of me. My only definitive plan was to visit Theo before he left for California with his family, and I thought I could bring over some homemade cookies since he was eating again.

  Theo. It felt like a brick was lodged in my throat each time I thought of him. My fingers itched to dial Alison and ask her again if she knew any more about the treatment that helped my mother. I’d only asked her twice since that first time. I knew I was impatient, but the clock was ticking. It felt like there was no time to waste. I decided I’d call her tomorrow, since I’d just asked her this morning.

  Staring at the grocery list in front of me on the counter, I mulled over the food items I’d need from the market if I decided to cook something. I was still eyeing it indecisively when my phone dinged with a text. It was from Drew, and my jaw fell open at what I saw there. It was a litany of expletives, all directed at me.

  My fingers tightened on the phone as I reread his text. What the hell? I had started to send back something just as rude when the doorbell rang. My pulse jumped at the thought that Drew was out there, but then I heard Jonah’s voice. He was calling my name through the door.

  I punched in the code to turn off the alarm before pulling the door open. Jonah was out of breath as he pushed past me into the house. “You’re alone?” he asked, standing in my living room, looking around frantically.

  “What’s going on?”

  His shoulders slumped as he turned to me. “I couldn’t let it go, Candy. I had to tell my father.”

  My heart pounded harder, even though I had no idea what he meant.

  “About Drew and what happened at school today. He’s holding something over you. I could see it in your face. You wouldn’t talk to me about it, and I couldn’t take the chance that Drew might hurt you or worse.”

  The message on my phone. “Did you just come from Drew’s house?”

  He rubbed his face and looked away. “No. I came here first. When I told my father, he left in a hurry. He believed the Hoyts were hiding something, and now he’s sure of it. I didn’t know if he was coming here or going there.”

  “He went there,” I said, holding out my phone with the text message still on the screen.

  Jonah read the message, his jaw flexing as his eyes scanned over it.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said quietly, knowing my hopes of helping Theo were being dashed. “How could you tell your father? I said it was nothing.”

  “Candy . . .” He took a step toward me and I stepped back, but he moved with me, gripping my shoulders. “What do you mean? Tell me what I’ve done.”

  “You keep choosing him. Every time you have the chance to choose me, you pick your father instead.”

  “You’re wrong. I choose you. Every choice I make I’m thinking of you.”

  Jonah walked me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. He took the chair across from me and reached for my hands. My fingers were tinged purple, made that way by stress, and I stared at them, feeling all my hope slip away.

  He rubbed my cold hands with his warm ones. “Talk to me, Candy. Tell me what’s going on with Drew so I can help you.”

  I pulled my hands back. “I can’t do this with you anymore. You act so nice, and then you betray me all over again. You have to go. You have to leave me alone.”

  He stared at me, my words sinking in and hammered home by the look of utter despair I knew was on my face. The strained silence between us dragged on, but Jonah didn’t move. A strange determination darkened his eyes.

  When the quiet was finally interrupted by the dinging of his phone in his pocket, he pulled it out and cast a weary look at me. “My father’s here. Let me get rid of him, and then I need you to talk to me because I’m not going anywhere.”

  He stood and walked to the front door. Anxiety flooded me when I heard Victor’s voice in my house. Jonah hadn’t gotten rid of him. He’d let him in, and now they were arguing. It took a moment to push to my feet, and when I slowly walked out into the living room, there he was.

  His dark eyes moved between Jonah and me. The look on his face sent the blood rushing to my ears as I broke out in a sweat. I turned to Jonah, looking for help, but he couldn’t seem to make eye contact with me.

  “Your father kept a small safe. Where is it?” Victor demanded.

  I sucked in a short breath. The safe. How did he know about it?

  Jonah stared at me hard, his face like stone because I’d kept this secret from him. Apparently he was the one who felt betrayed now.

  “He asked Alison Hoyt to hold it for him,” Victor said. “He told her to give it to you if anything happened to him. When she refused, he did something else with it.”

  My nails dug into my palms. He’d asked Alison to hold the safe and she said no? She told Victor that? Did she know what was in the safe? Had she guessed?

  “Where is it?” Victor asked sharply.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, frustrated at the tremor in my voice.

  Victor stalked toward me, and I took a step back. His dark eyes were fierce, and sent a chill up my spine.

  He placed his hand against the wall above my head, and leaned in close. “Candace,” he said in a surprisingly even voice. “Just tell me.”

  I realized he probably didn’t think much of me. He thought this would be easy, that he could intimidate me and I’d tell him whatever he wanted.

  “Tell you what?” I asked, hedging.

  He cocked his head to the side. “You know what. The safe. Tell me where it is.”

  My stomach wobbled. “I already told you I don’t know.”

  Victor’s lips pressed into a tight line and Jonah moved in closer, hovering behind his father as Victor shook his head at me.

  “You think this is a joke?”

  Victor slammed his hand into the wall above my head, making me flinch. My heart hammered against my ribs and I heard Jonah’s voice, sounding agitated as he placed a hand on his father’s arm, trying to pull him away.

  “Tell me
,” Victor demanded.

  I shook my head, unable to get any words past the tightness in my throat.

  Victor’s dark eyes drilled into mine, and I could almost feel him deciding what to do next since intimidation wasn’t working. I expected him to yell louder, to threaten more. What I didn’t expect was his hand to snake out to wrap around my throat, for his long fingers to circle it and tighten as he pushed me up the wall, just like he’d done with my father.

  I screamed, flailing as I clutched at his hand and tried to kick him. My scream abruptly ended when he squeezed harder, cutting off my air.

  Frantic, I scanned the room for Jonah but I could only see Victor, his image swimming before me. My lungs struggled as I gasped in vain for breath, and I kept thinking that this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be happening. My last thought before my vision clouded was that Jonah was letting his father do this. He was somewhere in the room watching, doing nothing.

  But he wasn’t just watching. He came at his father from behind, holding a large object in his hand. That object crashed down onto the back of Victor’s head.

  I fell to the floor in a heap. Gasping for air, I sucked in a deep breath. Another crash nearby convinced me to push to my knees—I needed to move. A moment later Jonah came around the couch and pulled me up. The side of his head was covered in blood.

  “We have to go,” he said, grasping my hand.

  Mesmerized, I stared at the way the blood dripped over his scar. When I didn’t move, Jonah brushed past me and pulled open the closet to grab my coat. He shoved my arms into it as he urged me toward the door.

  His eyes were panicked, continually glancing back at the living room. I followed his line of sight to find his father on the floor, lying in front of the fireplace, his head resting on the raised brick of the hearth.

  Was he dead? My thoughts seemed jumbled, almost detached. If he was dead, we couldn’t stay here, and if he wasn’t dead, we couldn’t stay here either.

  When Pumpkin came around the corner and looked at me, it felt like the floor tilted beneath my feet. He was real, which meant all of this was real. It wasn’t a nightmare, like I’d hoped, because my throat throbbed, air grating like sandpaper each time I breathed.

  I broke out in a sweat as I pulled out of Jonah’s grip and picked up Pumpkin, who meowed at me. I couldn’t leave him here with Victor.

  Saying nothing, Jonah pushed me ahead of him, and we both ran out the door and into the cold night. Jonah’s Jeep was parked in my driveway, and Victor’s SUV was on the street.

  “You’re hurt. Let me drive,” I said.

  “Just get in,” he said breathlessly, pulling the passenger door open and ushering me inside. Pumpkin was distressed, clawing at my shoulder, trying to climb up my body as I buckled myself in. He jumped in the backseat when Jonah slid inside.

  My gaze was pinned on the front door. I expected Victor to appear as Jonah backed out of the driveway, but he didn’t. Soon we were speeding down the road away from my house.

  ***

  Jonah had a death grip on the steering wheel, and his eyes kept flicking up to the rearview mirror.

  “Where are we going?”

  He glanced at me. “Somewhere he won’t find us, like Siberia or Mars.”

  “I don’t think you can drive to Mars, or Siberia for that matter.”

  “Then Vermont maybe, for now. A buddy of mine has a place up there.” He released the wheel to gingerly touch the injury on the side of his head.

  “Are you okay? That looks pretty bad.”

  “It’s fine,” he said absently.

  It wasn’t fine, but we couldn’t risk stopping, “Then what?” I asked. “After Vermont.”

  “I don’t know, Candy,” he answered impatiently.

  He looked scared and lost, and I could tell his head hurt, even though he wouldn’t admit it. At that moment, I knew where we could go. “Take the next exit and head west.”

  Jonah looked at me.

  “Let’s go to Ryberg. There’s someone there you should meet.”

  “Ryberg?”

  I nodded.

  “My father knows you used to live there. We should go somewhere you have no ties to.”

  Jonah had just sacrificed everything for me. He went against his father and probably ruined his career. I’d wanted him to choose me, but I never thought about what it would cost him.

  “We need to go to Ryberg. Your father doesn’t know about the place I want to take you to.”

  He gave me a hesitant look.

  “Trust me. Okay?”

  I could see the hesitation on his face, but still, he took the exit.

  “Turn your cell phone off,” he said. Then he handed me his. “Mine too and pull the batteries out just to be safe.”

  “You think they’d try to track our phones?”

  He nodded.

  With our phones off and the batteries tucked inside my pocket, the rest of the ride was spent in silence, and although Jonah sat perfectly still, not even his hands moved on the steering wheel, I could feel the restlessness in him, the shock over what he’d done resonating. In an instant, he’d made a choice that changed everything. I doubted it was a choice he could ever come back from.

  “What’s the address?” he asked just as the clock on his dashboard turned over to midnight.

  I gave him a street address and he punched it into his GPS. Then I watched as the road narrowed and the woods on either side of the road thickened. My muscles tensed the closer we got to our destination. I turned to check on Pumpkin and found him curled up on the backseat asleep, oblivious to the situation. I envied him.

  When the GPS announced that we’d arrived, Jonah turned down the long, narrow driveway. The small house looked the same as it had the first time I arrived with the lamppost flooding the front yard with light, and a white Jetta parked in the driveway.

  “Who lives here?” he asked.

  Nerves jumped beneath my skin. I didn’t want to tell him because I had no idea how he’d react. If he knew, would he refuse to go inside?

  After sending a text to Lorraine telling her I was outside, a light came on in the house. My stomach lurched because I knew this moment was big, and I hoped I’d made the right decision by coming here.

  “Candy?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Jonah noticed the light come on, and he opened his door and waited for me to do the same. I grabbed Pumpkin and came around to meet him. As always, Jonah waited for me to walk ahead of him. When I spotted Lorraine standing in the open doorway, wearing a pink terrycloth robe tied around her waist and a worried look, I slowed down and turned to Jonah behind me.

  He walked a few more steps before stopping. Then he squinted at the doorway, motionless as it dawned on him who he was looking at. Rooted to the spot, he stared, his expression unchanging until his eyes shifted to me, and I saw a mixture of confusion, anger, and betrayal there.

  My face warmed under his scrutiny, and so I looked away as I continued toward the door. “Sorry it’s so late,” I told Lorraine.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at her son. As far as I knew, it was the first time she’d seen him in seven years.

  “Jonah.” I said his name softly because he still hadn’t moved. My voice seemed to wake him up, and he took slow, hesitant steps toward the doorway.

  Lorraine’s gaze stayed fixed on him when he stopped in front of her, but his pained expression was still directed at me.

  “Please come inside,” Lorraine said pleadingly to him.

  Abruptly, he looked away and moved past her to walk through the doorway. Her hands reached out in his direction when he passed by, but she pulled them back because his stiff posture didn’t welcome her touch.

  Silently, sending a look of apology to Lorraine, I followed Jonah inside. In the light of Lorraine’s living room, I could see the dried, crusted blood on the side of his face. Although his eyes were tired and bloodshot, they burned with emotion.

  “Are you going to ex
plain this?” he asked me.

  I put Pumpkin down and turned to Lorraine. “I’m sorry to surprise you this way in the middle of the night. Something happened, and it felt like this was the right place to go.”

  She looked at me in as much shock as Jonah seemed to be in. Even though she’d asked me not to tell Jonah about her, she didn’t seem upset that he was here. She only appeared worried for him.

  “You’re hurt.” She reached out to him again, her expression stricken.

  He absently rubbed his fingers against the side of his head, wincing slightly.

  “You should let one of us take a look at that,” I said.

  Jonah shot me an exasperated look. “You’d better start explaining how the hell you knew where my mother was, or I’m walking right back out that door.”

  “Cooper, please.” Lorraine took a step toward him, and he moved back. With that one step, Lorraine’s face crumpled. She turned to me with pain etched in her eyes.

  I could see Jonah’s hard expression slip for a moment at the sight of his mother in tears.

  “I’m sorry I surprised you like this,” I said to Jonah. “But you’ve been wrong about your mother. Things aren’t the way you think.”

  “Candy.” Lorraine shook her head as her eyes pleaded with me. After all this time, she still didn’t want him to know what happened.

  “No more secrets, Lorraine. They only make things worse.” Her lips turned down as she looked at her son, hugging her arms around herself. “I suppose you’re right. Sit down,” she said to him after a moment. She added a soft “please” when he didn’t move.

  His gaze swung to mine before he grudgingly walked over to her couch. His expression was uneasy and just as strained as it had been in the car during the drive here. The arrogant, wise-cracking Jonah I knew was nowhere to be found, and my heart went out to him.

  Lorraine tightened the belt on her robe as she came around to sit beside him.

  “I’ll go find something for your head,” I said, wanting to give them privacy.