The Perfect Lie (The Perfect Stranger)

by Charlotte Byrd

  “Is that why you took the trip?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “We actually met before that. I felt safe with him so we decided to take a trip. I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I wasn't sure about anything. That's why I didn’t tell anyone about it. I hope that you don't take offense, but I just didn't want anyone else's opinion muddling up what I thought of him.”

  “No, of course not,” Trisha says, shaking her head with approval. “I know that things have been quite difficult for you for a while and I'm glad that you had a good time.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Maybe this is going to work out. Maybe I didn't jeopardize my job at all.

  I apologize again and again she tells me that it's okay. There's a slight hesitation in her tone, but by the time our meeting ends, I get the feeling that all is well.

  We discuss the upcoming week and Trisha says that she will check in with my clients’ moms and try to arrange some hours for the next day.

  “I really appreciate this,” I say, giving her a warm hug and walking out of the office.

  As soon as I get outside, I let out a deep sigh of relief. I didn't realize it, but I have been holding my breath this whole time.

  I'm not getting fired. Everything is going to be okay. I'm going to actually be able to pay my bills and get back to life as I know it.

  That feeling of exhilaration quickly turns sour as soon as I pull out of the parking lot.

  This is not at all how I had imagined my life going only a week ago. I was lying in Tyler's arms, holding him in mine. Will we ever see each other again?

  Time is supposed to make separation from loved ones more palatable, but not if you don't know where they are. Maybe it hasn't been long enough, but I have a feeling that if I never hear from Tyler again, then I'll be looking for him for the rest of my life.

  Seeing that my car is running low on gas, I drive into the gas station and grab my bag. I search around for my wallet and stumble upon the other phone with my old SIM card. I put a credit card into the machine and put the pump in the gas tank, holding the phone tightly.

  And then, before the car is entirely full, it rings.

  The sound startles me and I nearly drop the phone.

  “Hello? Hello?” Again, I hear someone breathing on the other END but not saying a word.

  It has to be Tyler. It just has to be.

  “Is that you? I'm sorry. I didn't take anything from you. I was just borrowing it, I had to save my mom.”

  I try to be as vague as possible, but I can't. I'm not even entirely sure that it's Tyler on the other end, but in case it is, I need him to know the truth.

  Still, he says nothing.

  I no longer hear anyone on the other end so I glance down at the screen and see that the time tracking the phone calls is increasing.

  This means that he is still there.

  “I’m here,” I say, still avoiding using his name.

  I do that more to protect his identity than my connection to him.

  “I'm sorry. I need to explain. I did not betray you. I came back. I needed to help my mother.”

  The call ends and I'm no closer to knowing whether I have actually talked to the real Tyler or not.

  31

  Isabelle

  I resume work and everything returns to normal. My mother is living with me, something I have never experienced as an adult, but it's going a lot better than it ever did when I was a kid.

  She's courteous and polite. She washes the dishes and does the laundry. She spends most of her days watching daytime television and playing games on her phone, and I'm glad that she is not out there on the streets like she used to be.

  Still, I can't help but wonder how long this will last.

  When I was a kid, we went through periods of this, too. She would be home when I got home from school and she would bake me cookies and make me dinner. The one year that I ran track, she even attended my meets and picked me up from practice. Then she started disappearing again.

  When my dad was still around, they would fight, make up, and then disappear together. They liked to party and drink in bars and do drugs together. Inevitably, they would break up. One or both of them would lose their job and Mom would kick him out.

  After they broke up and Dad moved out for good, sometimes these periods of peace and contentment would last as long as a month or two.

  Then she would get bored and go back to the bars. She would meet a guy and she would start sleeping over at his house and disappear for days on end.

  I was older then but still a teenager. I was the one that stayed home and worried about where she was.

  I sometimes look back and wonder why I never had a childhood, but it’s because I was never allowed to be a child. I had to be the grown-up. I had to take care of her and worry about her because she never really did the same for me.

  This has been a good week and when I come home from work on Friday, I hold my breath wondering if she will be going out somewhere.

  Much to my surprise, she doesn't.

  Instead, she has baked chocolate chip cookies and prepared pasta salad and a casserole for dinner. She was never the most adventuresome cook, but I know that this is a big amount of effort for her.

  “You know you didn't have to make all of this,” I say. “I could've just ordered some takeout.”

  “I know,” she says with a shrug. “I wanted to.”

  I change out of my work clothes and let out a sigh of relief when I take off my bra. I can never wear it at home. I tried a variety of types in a variety of price ranges and they all seem to pinch and prod at me in a very uncomfortable way.

  Emerging from my bedroom, I plop on the couch with my loose fitting pajama bottoms with elephants on them and an oversized T-shirt, paired with a cardigan because my mom tends to keep this place very cold.

  “What happened back there?” Mom says, bringing over the plate of food and a fork.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With Tyler,” Mom says. “What happened with Tyler?”

  I sigh deeply, gurgling some of the food in my mouth in the most uncouth and unladylike way. She has his name, but not much else. What happened in Big Bear is something that we both have avoided talking about ever since we got together.

  It's funny to say that and it appears probably very unbelievable, but it's the truth. I didn't want to lie to her, too much, and it was just easier this way.

  Now, things are different.

  Time has passed, so it feels safer to share.

  Still, how much do I tell her?

  She knows his first name and that we were traveling together but not that he was an escaped convict. I look up at her and stare into her deep blue eyes. She leans toward me and takes a bite of the casserole. The bite is small and delicate and very much unlike my own.

  “What happened to you?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t pay, so they took me. They knew that you could so they transferred the debt to you.”

  “Who is they?”

  “I don't know. Not exactly. I was dealing with this man Zachariah, who was the one that fronted me the money, but it's not all his. He has friends in high places. It's some aspect of organized crime.”

  I nod, realizing that this isn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.

  “You don't believe me?” Mom asks.

  “It just seems sort of vague,” I say.

  “It's vague because it's all I know. You know that I had a pretty bad gambling addiction in addition to all of my drug use. It wasn't a great combination.”

  “Yes, and you also didn't have a job,” I point out and then feel bad for pushing her when she's down.

  “That's true,” she says. “I had a hard time with everything. I didn't have great coping mechanisms, as they say in AA.”

  “Are you still going?”

  “I haven’t been in years, but I'd like to.”

  “How long have you not been drinking or using drugs?”

  “It has been a while. They
kept me in this little room. They brought me food, a couch, and a television, but that was it.”

  “Did anything else happen to you?” I ask.

  Blood drains from my face. I don't want to say the word rape, but I also want to know what really happened.

  “They got physical with me at first and beat me up really good. Then again when I tried to escape out the window. That's when they put me into an even smaller room with no television, a new couch, and nothing to do all day. I was there for a long time. Weeks, months? I have no idea.”

  “My God, I'm so sorry. I didn't have a way to pay your debt,” I say. “I wasn't even sure if they really had you. It wasn't until they really started to ruin my life that I knew that I had to pay it.”

  “No,” Mom says. “It's not your fault. I'm just glad that you did pay when you did. How did you come up with the money?”

  “Tyler had it,” I say quietly. “It was all of his savings, but I thought that he could make more and I thought that maybe I could get you and the money at the same time.”

  I feel myself starting to break down.

  “Honey, I'm so glad that you did it,” Mom says, taking me into her arms. “If you hadn’t, they would have killed me.”

  “Maybe they wouldn’t have.”

  “Yes, they would,” she says, nodding her head. "They weren’t sure if you were going to come up with the money and they were getting tired of taking care of me.”

  I bury my head in my hands, not sure what to do next.

  Mom runs her hand up and down my back like she used to do when I was little and my sobs turned into a full-on torrent of emotion.

  My tears are not really because of what happened. I just simply feel this release of tension that I haven't felt in a really long time.

  Like maybe, after all of this, we will be okay. Maybe I could even have a mom again.

  The first few texts, from whom I'm assuming is Zachariah or one of his employees, made more threats about getting them the money. Then, much to my surprise, they gave me until Tuesday without adding anything to the interest-rate.

  “The car just arrived, why don't we sell it?” Mom asks.

  “It’s not going to sell anywhere near the price we need,” I say.

  “Okay, but at least it's something and I can always go to a casino and–”

  I glare at her with thunderbolts in my eyes.

  “Don't look at me like that,” she says, raising her hands up. “I'm not going to go back to gambling.”

  “And yet the first thing you think of is gambling,” I say sternly.

  “Your car is worth, what, $3,000, I’m going to guess?”

  “Don't change the subject,” I say, glaring at her. “You're not allowed to pick up a deck of cards, let alone step foot into a casino. You're an addict and you need to stay away from those places. That's how you got me into this shit in the first place.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” Mom asks.

  I wipe my tears and get up off the couch. I don't have a solution. We have more time, but it's not enough.

  The only thing that I can think of doing is getting another credit card and hoping to God that they give me enough of a limit so that I can pay those people back.

  32

  Isabelle

  I do the dishes and try to figure out what to do. I like doing them by hand. I actually prefer it over the dishwasher. Maybe if we had a bunch of guests here it would be different, but there are just two plates and a serving bowl. It's not too much to clean.

  Mom sits in the living room watching something and obviously giving me some space. The credit card is the only way to do this.

  As soon as I put the dishes in the drying rack and dry my hands, I open my laptop and look into my bank account. My savings are depleted and there is less than $300 in my main checking account.

  The sale of the car would give me more money, but it would not be much. Obviously, I can't overdraft my account by much because I don't have a way to pay back the bank.

  My paycheck isn’t due to come for another week and even then, I will be short. Opening another credit card is the only way that this will work.

  I search a few online sites to find the best deals on credit cards and eventually decide to go with Capital One. I fill out the application and pause at the space where I have to state my income. Usually, credit cards approve you right away, but that's based on credit history as well as the stated salary.

  Getting approval is one thing. Getting as high a credit limit as I need is a whole other thing.

  I don't want to do this, technically it’s committing fraud, but there's no way that I would get this much credit if I told them the truth about my salary.

  I type in $175,000 into the space for my salary and pray that this is enough.

  A few more pages of information later, I get a pop-up that says that my information has been submitted and I will get my reply via email.

  I keep refreshing my email, but nothing arrives. I check on my phone and browse the news as well as social media to try to take my mind off the situation. Every few minutes, I keep checking my email and then approximately half an hour later, I see it.

  $5,000

  I let out a sigh of relief; that is something but it's not enough. Selling the car would take some time and it still wouldn't get me to the total that I need.

  Without pausing for more than a minute, I look up another credit card company and fill out a form as well. This one has a much higher annual percentage rate, but I don't care about that now. I just need something to make this go away.

  This time I don't have to wait. I get approved for another $5,000 and I jump up to celebrate.

  “What's going on?” Mom asks from the couch.

  “I got it! I got the money!”

  “You got the money? How?”

  I bring over my laptop and show her. She wraps her arms firmly around my neck and gives me a big wet kiss.

  “You have no idea how much this means to me. I'm going to pay you all back. Every last cent.”

  I wonder if she means the total amount, not just this.

  “Both of these credit cards have really high interest rates, the second one is almost 27%,” I say. “There's a reason why I got approved so quickly. It's an out to the situation but is going to take me a really long time to pay off.”

  “Yes, I know. I'm going to get a job soon and then pay back every cent.”

  Mom and I haven't talked about her getting a job or her moving out.

  The tone of the evening changes for the better. The relief that washes over me takes away all the tension that I felt up until this point.

  I even pick up my phone and text him with the good news. It takes him a few minutes to get back to me but we eventually decide to meet at the Barnes & Noble in the Waterworks Plaza, about ten minutes away from my house.

  “See you Thursday at ten a.m.,” he texts. “Put the money in an envelope or brown bag and sit down at the café.”

  Mom has been so excited that she actually suggests that we go on a hike.

  We used to take walks around Hardwood Acres when she was in a good mood and those are some of my fondest memories. We pack a small lunch and go out there for the afternoon.

  “So, what are your plans after this is all behind us?” I ask.

  “I don't know,” Mom says. “I would like to work with children, but I have that drug conviction on my record so I'm not sure that's in the cards anymore.”

  “No, probably not,” I say, shaking my head and feeling bad for her.

  Addiction is a cruel disease. You think they're in control and making all of these decisions on their own. Maybe they were when they first started, but if you go down that rabbit hole long enough, it is very hard to get back.

  Hardwood Acres is a 650 acre park with a large early 20th-century mansion that now acts as a venue for corporate events and weddings. It's heavily forested, but there are lots of trails along with areas for on and off leash dogs, work-out zones wit
h monkey bars, and other equipment.

  I haven't been here in a really long time and I don't remember any of the trails so we go to the first one that we see. It is surrounded on both sides by trees that are quickly turning green.

  “Is there anything else you want to do?” I ask my mom who’s a bit further down the trail. “Besides work with kids?”

  “Listen, I know that you have done so much for me and having a permanent houseguest is not exactly anything that either of us want.”

  “No, that's not what I was getting at, at all. I love having you.”

  She rolls her eyes and laughs.

  “I had a mother. I loved her, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live with her. Not at your age. Not when you're single and dating.”

  I look down at the ground.

  “Are you dating?”

  “No,” I say quietly.

  “Are you single?”

  “I don't know how to answer that,” I say with a shrug. “I thought that we would be together for a long time and then suddenly we weren't.”

  “Well, you did steal his money,” my mom says, making a joke.

  If it were anyone else, then it would have pushed me off, but not her. I get her sense of humor.

  “It was a misunderstanding, but I can't reach him anymore. He changed his phone number.”

  Mom takes a step closer to me and puts her arm around my shoulder.

  I don’t want to cry because I have cried enough about this. Luckily, this time I don't feel like I have to. Instead I just feel numb.

  “So, that's how you ended up in California?” Mom asks. “You and Tyler drove out there?”

  I nod.

  “I was wondering what we were doing,” Mom says, shaking her head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They kept me in a room for a while. Then threw me in the back of that vehicle and we drove for a while. I had no idea where they were going, and neither did they. They complained about that a lot. They wanted to just stop you and get the money from you, but their boss would not let them.”

  I glance over at her and say, “Well, I'm sorry that our road trip inconvenienced you all so much.”