Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “Me too,” said Rebecca. “Me too.” She swiped savagely at her eyes. “I didn’t deserve Peter. He was too good for me.” Her emotions were taking a sharp left turn, and she tried to rein them in. Deep breath, then another: in, out, in, out.

  She didn’t deserve Daniel either. Eventually he would figure that out. Her long-term relationship odds were already crummy: fifty-fifty if you were looking at good choices versus bad, zero for two if you were scoring on longevity. If she and Daniel didn’t work out she’d be down to zero for three.

  “Of course you deserved him,” said Sherri. “Of course you did.” She reached across the table and squeezed Rebecca’s hand, and the gesture was so unexpected and so kind that Rebecca had to wipe once more at her eyes with her free hand.

  “Alexa’s dad was an alcoholic,” she said. She hadn’t talked about Alexa’s father in a very long time—even thinking about him dredged up old feelings, feelings that were as messy and muddled as decomposing leaves in the middle of a forest.

  Sherri made a noise that was halfway between a tsk and a sigh. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rebecca’s second drink was three-quarters gone. “It was one of those leave-in-the-middle-of-the-night situations. Like, I had to get Alexa and myself out of there or I thought something really bad might happen. He wasn’t a jolly drunk who just fell asleep and was sweet and regretfully hung over the next morning. He got really angry when he drank. He turned into another person—an awful person. And he wouldn’t get the help he needed to get better. He tried, a couple of times. But it never stuck.”

  Sherri was sitting very still, listening. For a moment, when Rebecca stopped talking, the only sound was the fountain and a very distant siren, probably coming from near the hospital. “So what happened?” Sherri asked. “To make you leave?”

  “He drove drunk with Alexa in the car, and that’s when I said, That’s it. I had threatened to leave before, and I knew if I didn’t do it right then, I’d lose my nerve. So that very night, we packed up, and we left. Alexa wasn’t even three.”

  Sherri sipped her drink and then said, “Just like that? You left?”

  “Just like that. I mean, there was all kinds of legal crap we had to deal with later, lawyers and mediations and the whole bit, but the night we left was the last night we were all three under the same roof. I got full custody of Alexa, and that was it.”

  “That was it completely? You don’t even talk to him anymore?”

  Rebecca held her hand out in front of her. In the moonlight it looked pale and ephemeral, the hand of a ghost. “Well. Yes and no. He got in touch last year. He wrote me a letter, wanting to see Alexa. Claims to be sober now.”

  “What’d you do? What’d you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t answer him. I pretended I never got it. I never told Alexa! That’s terrible, right? But he has such a history of disappointing Alexa, when we were together he used to let her down constantly, even though she was so small he didn’t think she noticed or remembered. But I think she did notice. And this was just a couple of months after Peter died. We were all so fragile.” She squinted at Sherri. “You’re the first person I’ve told about that. Do you think I’m awful?”

  Sherri snorted in a friendly way, if a snort can be said to be friendly. “My bar for awful is set pretty high,” she said. “So: no. I don’t think that’s awful. I think you did what you had to do.”

  “By law he’s allowed to contact her directly once she turns eighteen, which will be in September. I don’t know if he will or not. But at some point I need to have a conversation with her about him.” She turned her head to face Sherri more fully. “See? I’m sure you have nothing quite that bad.”

  Sherri held out her glass and said, “Can I have just a smidge more tequila?”

  “Of course.” Rebecca wondered if she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry I spilled all that. But it felt good to say it. I never talk about that part of my life. Everybody here seems so perfect, and obviously they’re not, not on the inside, nobody is, but I never feel comfortable sharing this part of my past. It seems sort of shameful and sordid in the context of everybody else. You know what I mean?”

  Sherri’s answer could have been mistaken for a breath, it was so soft: “I know.”

  Rebecca shifted and turned to face Sherri more fully. “But how about you? What about your ex? Katie’s father? How much is he still in your lives?”

  “He’s—” Sherri paused, seeming to be choosing her words carefully. “He’s hard to get in touch with right now. So for now, it’s just me and Katie.” She stretched her arms above her head. She swung her legs to one side of the chaise and stood, wobbling. “I think I’ll wake Katie and we’ll walk home,” she said. “And pick the car up tomorrow, if that’s really all right.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t need to leave. Or if you need to get home, you can leave Katie here and I’ll return her in the morning.”

  “Thank you. I’m tired. It was a long day. But I’m sure Katie would be delighted to wake up here tomorrow, if you’re positive about that?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Do you want me to help get them into bed?”

  Rebecca waved her hand. “I might just tip them over and put blankets over them. They’ll be fine. Do you want me to walk with you?”

  “No,” said Sherri. “Thank you. You stay with the girls. And, Rebecca—thank you. It was so good to talk.”

  After Sherri had gone Rebecca went around the patio straightening the cushions and picking up the glasses and retrieving a stray cocktail napkin from where it had wafted into the shallow end of the pool. (She was definitely drunk; she realized this when she almost slipped into the water reaching with the skimmer to get the napkin.) The pool pump was running quietly and efficiently in its energy-saving night mode. All was peaceful.

  It wasn’t until she’d covered up the girls and said good night to Alexa and was lying in her bed, waiting for sleep, that she realized that she’d spilled everything about her history while Sherri had said almost nothing. Again.

  43.

  Alexa

  The next day Alexa was so jittery that she did a terrible job on her video about accrual bonds. It was so slipshod that she didn’t even post it: she decided she’d try again later in the day.

  She was working at noon at the Cottage. Her mother asked her if she could drop Morgan and Katie at Theater in the Open camp at nine thirty—Rebecca had a meeting at the school.

  When Alexa was young, before she understood that theater was mainly for the misfits, she too loved this camp, which took place completely outside, in the middle of Maudslay State Park. As she waited in the line of parents to pass through the turnaround line, where the counselors did awkward, theater-y things as the kids jumped out of the cars, she noticed that Morgan and Katie were two of the tallest, oldest campers here. They looked like full-grown trees among the small sprouts of younger kids. Alexa felt a stab of sadness for their departing childhoods. She almost started crying, thinking about how far she’d let herself get from Morgan lately.

  After the girls got out of the Jeep, Alexa thought she saw a man she’d never seen in the rearview mirror, driving a black SUV. He wore dark sunglasses. Her heartbeat picked up, and her hands instantly began to sweat and slide across the steering wheel. There didn’t appear to be anyone else in the car. Didn’t gangsters drive black SUVs? Was this car following her to theater camp drop-off?

  Then three kids with backpacks and lunch boxes slid out of the back seat, and she realized it was just a carpool dad.

  Inhale, exhale. Calm down. The bad men are coming. Inhale, exhale. Calm down. No they aren’t. Yes they are.

  Alexa glanced at her phone. It was only 9:40. Alexa had lots of time to kill before work. From Maudslay it was an easy drive up Hoyts Lane and into Turkey Hill, Cam’s neighborhood, and then down his street. Not that she’d see him. What were the odds that he’d be out front at the very minute she was driving by? He wa
s probably at Market Basket, or raising baby chicks in an incubator, or working on a community garden.

  As luck would or wouldn’t have it, Cam was in his front yard, practicing his golf swing. Peter used to play some golf and he’d once taught Alexa the three parts of a swing: backswing, impact position, follow-through. She was never interested in going to the driving range with Peter. Now she wished she had.

  Alexa slowed the Jeep to a crawl and watched Cam. She didn’t know enough about golf to know if he had a good swing or not, but she admired the way his shoulder and back muscles moved under his shirt.

  Then he saw her. He lifted his hand in a wave. His face remained sober. She pulled into the driveway and jumped out of the Jeep.

  He was wearing a St. Michael’s visor. He smiled, but she calculated it at only half a smile.

  “You look like you’re still mad,” she said.

  “I am still mad.”

  “About the Griffins?”

  Cam said, “Shhhh!” and looked around the neighborhood. Nobody was out except two little kids riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac in furious circles. They looked like they were going to crash into each other, but somehow they never did.

  Alexa said, “Cam. Those kids can’t hear you. And if they could, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”

  Cam laid his golf club down on the grass, gently, like he was putting a baby to bed, and walked toward Alexa. He was frowning. “I know those kids can’t hear me, Alexa, but what if somebody else does?”

  They both surveyed the street. From far away came the sound of a car starting, along with the usual summer noises of chirping birds, faraway lawn mowers. A truck for a lawn care business rolled down the street. The guy driving waved, and Alexa shivered. What if it wasn’t a lawn care company? What if it was a front for something? Wasn’t that how the Mob operated, making fronts out of everyday businesses? The woman across the street was weeding her garden, wearing a big floppy hat. But what if she wasn’t really the woman from across the street? What if the floppy hat was hiding someone more sinister? Alexa turned back to Cam and saw her own fear reflected in his eyes.

  “Listen, Alexa. I know we talked about this the other night. And honestly, like I told you then, I don’t really want to talk about it again. But since you’re here, and since you’re asking, yeah, I’m still mad. This is somebody else’s secret, Alexa. This is serious, serious stuff. I don’t think you thought it through before you spread it around.”

  “I didn’t spread it around,” Alexa said defensively. “I told you, Cam, only you.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. “You know what makes me the most mad about this? Nobody gave you this secret. You read it in a little girl’s diary. You took the secret. And when it got too heavy for you, you handed it to me!”

  Her face burned. She was tan enough that she didn’t think it showed, but she could feel it. She thought back to the day she first opened the notebook. In fairness, she didn’t know what it contained. But part of her, glittering evilly in the darkness of her psyche, knew that she would have done it anyway, had she known. In fact, she might have done it faster. In a very small voice she said, “I didn’t think—”

  “That’s right,” Cam said. “You didn’t think. And that’s the problem with this whole situation.” There was something so teacherly about the way he said this, so fatherly and judgmental, that the flame of anger in Alexa burned higher, licking at her, activating the very meanest parts of her.

  “Forget this,” she said. “I don’t care anymore. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can anyway. And not to college either. I gave up my spot at Colby. I’m going farther away than that.” She was trying to shock him into something, some sort of reaction, but when she searched his face she didn’t see any shock. All she saw was a deep, deep well of sadness, so deep she couldn’t find the bottom.

  “Come on, Alexa,” he said. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it.” Her voice rose. “I did give up my spot. It’s gone. There’s nothing here for me!” She thought of Destiny and Caitlin exchanging glances with each other, walling her out. There goes Alexa again. “I’m not like you, Cam. You have your . . . your spirit wear and your golden retriever and your lake house and your pitch-perfect family.” She hadn’t met Cam’s family, but she assumed they were as innocuous, as sunshiny, as Cam. She thought of Caitlin clapping a hand over her mouth. It’s not like he was your real dad anyway. She thought of Morgan: Why can’t you just be nice, Alexa? “I don’t have any of that!” She was screaming so loudly that her throat started to hurt, so loudly that the woman weeding her garden looked over.

  Cam’s voice got soft and he said, “Lots of people care about you. If you’d show everyone your nicest, best self, you’d know that.”

  “This is my best self!” she snarled. She was shaking when she got in her Jeep and peeled out of the driveway. When she was halted at the stop sign at the end of Turkey Hill, waiting for a break in traffic on 113, she realized that she’d never said what she’d come to say to Cam. What she’d come to say was that she didn’t tell Cam about the Griffins to be an asshole, or to burden him just for the hell of it, or to brag about her snooping capabilities. She told him because she was scared. Because she was scared of the bad men, and she wanted his help.

  She turned down Cherry Hill, passing the soccer fields where she’d played as a kid on the town teams. She hated town soccer, all those stupid cheers they made up, the endless standing around, waiting to be subbed in or out.

  What was wrong with her? Who hated soccer?

  Suddenly she was crying, for all sorts of reasons. She was crying for Peter, whose loss she had never felt entitled enough to truly cry about, and for Madison Miller, who left her house one day and never came back, and for her mother, who might have a new boyfriend, who was moving on, leaving Alexa behind. She was crying about Morgan, who needed her big sister but didn’t know where to find her.

  The tears kept on coming, streaming down her face, blocking her vision. It didn’t seem safe to drive when she was crying so hard, so she hooked a left on Curzon Mill and pulled into the giant parking lot that belonged to Maudslay State Park and she found a spot in the very back, near the smelly bathrooms, where she cried and she cried and she cried. The parking lot was full of summer hikers and people getting ready to exercise their dogs and people examining their post-walk legs for ticks. There was a moment when one of the park rangers in his khaki outfit walked over to her, probably to see if she had an annual parking pass or if she cared to pay the daily fee instead, but when he saw her crying he backed away. She appreciated the ranger’s understanding. It felt like the kindest thing anyone had done for her in a long time.

  When she was all done crying, she looked in the rearview mirror and was met by the terrifying sight of her red, swollen eyes. Clearly she wouldn’t be able to re-do the video about accrual bonds until at least tomorrow. No amount of concealer was going to fix this.

  44.

  Rebecca

  “It’s so big,” said Rebecca. “Way bigger than I ever imagined.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Daniel.

  She hit him on the arm and said, “Get your mind out of the gutter.” They had gotten gelato and were sitting on a bench among the hordes of people, looking at the replica of the Nao Santa Maria, one of the tall ships that was visiting Newburyport Harbor and had docked at the waterfront.

  Rebecca studied the steep, narrow gangway, the multiple decks, the tall wooden masts. “To think,” she said. “The ship this one is based on was responsible for the discovery of America. I can’t help but be cowed by it.”

  “Well, yes,” said Daniel. “Although of course the country had already been discovered by the Native Americans.”

  “Yes of course,” said Rebecca, abashed. “But it’s still a beautiful ship.”

  “It’s still a beautiful ship,” agreed Daniel.

  Once they finished their gelato, Daniel
stacked their cups neatly and walked to a nearby garbage can. When he regained his seat beside her, he put his hand on the back of her neck and turned her face gently toward his. They kissed. She was going to pull away—what if somebody saw them?—but just for a second, hidden by the crowds, she didn’t care about keeping Daniel a secret.

  When they pulled away—it was a brief kiss, but enough to get Rebecca’s heart racing—Daniel had a faraway look in his eyes.

  “What?” Rebecca said. “You look like you just found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “I was thinking about the houseboat,” he said, pointing. Sure enough, there was a little floating house out there that Rebecca had never noticed. On the upper deck she could see two people sitting in Adirondack chairs.

  “It’s adorable,” she said. “Is that someone’s actual house?”

  He had his phone out. “It could be ours,” he said. “I mean, for a night.” He tapped on the screen. “It’s a rental. Newburyport Houseboats. A buddy of mine manages them. Look, they have availability for the day after tomorrow. Should I book it? Here, look at this.” He held the phone out to her. “See how great it is? There’s a little kitchen with a two-burner stove, and a bathroom. There’s a hair dryer! And a bed, of course.” He winked. “There’s a really nice bed. Let’s book it!”

  “Daniel!” She tried to keep the note of exasperation out of her voice. “I can’t do that. I can’t just—stay on a houseboat with you. I have children. And they don’t know about you. What would I tell the girls?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That you’re seeing somebody? That you’re a tiny bit happy?”

  “No,” she said. “Nope. I can’t do it. They’re not ready. I’m not ready.”

  He put the phone in his pocket and sighed. She fixed her gaze on a family looking up at the tall ship. Their heads were all pointed at the exact same angle. She didn’t want to fight with Daniel. She really, really didn’t want to, but she could sense the fight coming the way an animal could sense a thunderstorm from a change in the air. “Rebecca, we’ve been together for almost six months now. You know I’m going to be as respectful of your grief as anyone else, but I don’t think I can live in the shadows forever. You don’t even have me as a contact on your phone!”