Convenient Lies

by Robin Patchen

  “It just...I can’t believe she’s gone.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “What happened?”

  “She died in her sleep. Doctor thought it looked like a heart attack.”

  “Did they do an autopsy?”

  He shook his head. “She was elderly.”

  Steam rose from their coffees. Grief or not, Rae’s stomach growled. She unwrapped her egg sandwich and took a bite. It tasted fantastic, and not just because she was so hungry. “This is delicious.”

  “They hired a chef a few years back. Came from Worcester or Watertown or...Weymouth or something.”

  Rae smiled. “Something with a W, I guess.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rae took another bite, then a sip of her coffee, before speaking again. “So where is Gram now?”

  He took a long breath. “We waited for you to contact us, but when you didn’t—”

  “Did you try to find me?”

  He leveled his gaze at her, the frown familiar. “I gave up trying to find you about eleven years ago.”

  She returned his glare, then looked away. Her reasons for cutting Brady out of her life all seemed so silly now. “So, Gram?”

  “When you didn’t show up...” He shrugged. “She’d already planned and paid for her funeral. She’s in the cemetery.”

  “Next to Gramps and my parents?”

  “Uh-huh. It was a nice service. The whole town came out.”

  Gram would have liked that, lying at rest beside her husband and son. And her daughter-in-law too. As much trouble as Mom had always caused, Gram had loved her. Rae felt the burn of tears again and wiped her eyes.

  They both ate for a few minutes. There’d been a time when she and Brady would fill almost every moment with conversation, and the rare moments of quiet they’d shared were comfortable. Easy. Now, the silence hung like smoke.

  “So.” Brady finished his sandwich and wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Are you going to tell me about him?”

  Rae pictured Johnny sleeping soundly upstairs. “Him?”

  “The man who put that ring on your finger.”

  Right. Him. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Paris.”

  “Why isn’t he with you?”

  “Work.”

  Brady closed his lips in a tight line, and she recognized the look of frustration. “What?”

  He blew out a breath. “You don’t offer much, huh?”

  She shrugged, and he continued. “So Paris. Is that where you’ve been living? Dorothy told me you were in Africa somewhere.”

  “He has an apartment in Paris, and he’s there now.”

  Brady’s eyebrows lifted, then fell. A moment passed before he said, “When are you going back?”

  “Soon as I can.” She grabbed the other breakfast items off the counter and set them on the table. No reason to panic. All she had to do was convince Brady that all was well with her and Julien. Rae’d perfected the art of lying when she started college. The stories that had rolled off her tongue back then had surprised even her. But lying to Brady? That was a whole different ballgame. She pasted on a smile. “You want something else?”

  “You pick first.”

  She unwrapped the scones and took the blueberry one. “That okay?”

  “I knew you’d pick that one.” A tiny smile. “You always were a sucker for blueberries.”

  Once, she and Brady had picked enough blueberries from the bushes out back for a couple of pies, then eaten so many Gram had scolded them. They’d been nine or ten at the time, old enough to know better. They’d both paid for it with stomachaches that night.

  By the look on Brady’s face, he remembered too.

  “Not a lot of blueberries in Tunis.”

  “Tunis,” he repeated. “Never been there.”

  She smiled. “It’s not a hot spot for American tourists, but it’s been home for years.”

  He nodded and bit into the lemon scone. She had a bite of hers, and it melted in her mouth. She swallowed a sip of her coffee and enjoyed the combination of flavors. “Delicious.”

  “Why Africa?”

  She took another bite and swallowed. “I moved to Belgium when I graduated, but it was hard to make a living there. I followed a story to Tunisia and fell in love with the place. It’s in the middle of Northern Africa, so from there I could investigate stories from Cairo to Morocco. And I could afford to live there, which hadn’t been so easy in Brussels.”

  “What’s so special about it that you fell in love with it?”

  “It’s beautiful. The people are big-hearted. It’s fairly safe, at least it was when I first moved there. It’s getting more dangerous, but...” She shrugged. “It was a good place to live.”

  “Was?”

  Oops. “We’re considering staying in Paris for a while,” she lied. “Julien wants to be nearer to his family.” Another lie. She’d been married to the man for a year and had yet to meet any member of his family.

  He set his scone on his plate. “What’s his name?”

  “My husband?”

  One of his eyebrows lifted, and she sighed. “Julien.” She said it the way her husband had taught her, with the French accent, so the J was breathy, and the N sort of fell off the back.

  Now both of Brady’s eyebrows lifted. “You speak French?”

  She nodded. “Helps in Tunisia.”

  “Don’t they speak Arabic there?”

  She nodded slowly. “A form of Arabic. They call it Darija. And I’ve learned some of that. But almost everybody speaks French.”

  “I see. So he’s French, this Julien,” he said with no effort at the French pronunciation.

  Her heartbeat quickened, but she was safe. Julien didn’t know where she was. Thank God she’d kept to her cover story about her past when she’d met him. All those times she’d almost told him the truth... She’d felt guilty about her lies, which had proved so inconsequential compared to his. She sipped her coffee, calmed herself, and answered. “He was raised in the south of France. His mother was French.”

  “His father?”

  “Other things.” She bit her scone.

  “Julien what?”

  She set the scone down and swallowed. Then wiped her mouth. “Julien Moreau.”

  “Moreau. Okay. So why isn’t he here?”

  “Do you do a lot of interrogations for your job?”

  He chuckled, and tiny lines appeared at the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just weird you showing up like this.”

  “Not really,” she said. “Gram quit answering her phones, and I got nervous.”

  He flattened those lips again. “Phones? She just had the one.”

  “I bought her a cell years ago. It had a good international plan, cheaper than her house phone. I tried to get her to carry it for emergencies, but I don’t think she ever did.”

  “Oh. If I’d known...”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And then you just show up. All these years, nothing brings you home, and suddenly—”

  “Just because you haven’t seen me doesn’t mean I haven’t been home.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, Dorothy told me about a few of your visits, but nobody else ever saw you.”

  “So you figured she was lying?”

  Brady had the decency to look embarrassed. “Not lying. Just...covering for you.”

  “Because I’m a terrible granddaughter who abandoned Gram to pursue my own interests.”

  He shrugged.

  “Gram told me to leave. It was her idea.”

  “And staying away for twelve years—was that her idea too?”

  Rae swallowed and stared at what was left of her scone. “I’ve been back. Just not in a while. Tickets from Africa are expensive.”

  “Right.”

  She sighed. What was the use? She pushed back from the table and stood. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  He stood too. “I shouldn’t have... Your life isn’t my business.
Just... Your grandmother missed you. I missed you.”

  The awkward silence was interrupted by a scratchy, metallic sound coming through the old baby monitor.

  Seven

  Brady whipped around. What was that garbled noise? There, on the kitchen counter, sat the old walkie-talkie-thing he’d seen in the barn the night before. He should have realized what it was.

  He turned back to Rae in time to see color rise in her face.

  “What...?” He listened more closely. He recognized that sound. “Better yet, who is that?”

  Rae sighed and walked out of the kitchen. He heard her footfalls on the stairs, a loud creak, and then a moment later, the soft sound of her voice through the device on the counter. Not a walkie-talkie, but a baby monitor.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Rae said. “How was your nap?”

  The crying stopped, replaced by a scratchy cooing sound. He walked to the stairs and watched as Rae carried a tiny bundle down. She passed him with barely a glance and disappeared into the living room.

  Brady followed and watched her set the bundle on the couch in the wedge between two cushions. Not that the kid was big enough to roll over, but he liked that Rae was cautious. She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Soft noises drew him to the sofa. There, wiggling happily, lay a tiny, surprisingly dark-skinned baby. Brady remembered Rae’s evasive answer just a few moments before. Her husband’s mother was French, but his father was... How had she put it? Other things. Had she evaded the question because she’d thought Brady might judge? Surely she knew him better than that. Or maybe, after all these years, they didn’t know each other at all.

  Rae brushed by him, scooped up the baby, and sat on the sofa to feed him.

  He leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms. “So you have a baby.”

  “This is...Johnny.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, and she looked back at the child. Something was wrong. The way she’d said the baby’s name, hesitant, like she hadn’t been sure, the way she’d avoided telling Brady about him, the way she avoided his gaze now. And that remark from earlier about her husband—He has an apartment in Paris. Not we have, but he has. Something was definitely wrong. Brady could question her, wear her down, get the answers he craved. But Reagan was not his suspect. “How old is he?”

  “Two weeks tomorrow.”

  So Johnny had been born the same day Rae’s grandmother had died. The timeline suddenly made sense. Rae called to tell Gram the good news, and Gram never answered. Dorothy must’ve known the baby was on the way, so the fact that she’d never returned Rae’s call had to have worried Rae. Still, to pack up and cross the ocean with an infant? Must’ve been hard.

  “Dorothy would’ve doted on him.”

  Tears filled Rae’s eyes, and she wiped them on the baby’s shirt sleeve.

  “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me you were expecting.”

  Rae never took her gaze from the baby’s face. “Did she tell you I was married?”

  “As a matter of fact, she didn’t.”

  “I asked her not to share my news with the town. I’ve had enough of everyone knowing my business.”

  He could understand that, but the crazy events from Rae’s childhood hadn’t been Brady’s fault, or Dorothy’s. It hadn’t been the town’s fault, either, and most of the townspeople had tried their hardest to protect Rae. After what her mother had done? Well, the people who loved Rae had only been able to do so much.

  And besides that, almost two decades had passed since her father’s death and her mother’s... “Seems you’d be over that by now.”

  She glanced at him before returning her gaze to the child’s face. “Guess not.”

  “You could have called me, you know. You admitted last night you knew I was in town. You knew I was a cop. You had to know I’d help you locate Dorothy.”

  “Sure.” Sarcasm dripped off the word like ice cream on a July day. “You were at the top of my list.”

  “You can trust me, you know.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He sighed. “Are you ever going to forgive me?”

  “I forgave you a long time ago. I just never understood.”

  “If you hadn’t taken off—”

  “I should have stayed so you could justify what you did? Listened to how much you loved me, how you hadn’t wanted to hurt me.”

  “I did love you. And I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You did, though.”

  “Seems after all we’d been through—”

  “All we’d been through,” she said through gritted teeth, “didn’t matter an iota to you.”

  “So you haven’t forgiven me.”

  They stared at each other across Dorothy’s living room. Rae’s living room now, not that she’d stay to take care of it. She’d probably sell it to one more rich Boston family looking to escape the big city life. Just what their town needed.

  This living room, this whole house, reminded him of Dorothy. For years he’d come here and thought how empty it felt without Rae. How strange to be here with Rae and miss her grandmother.

  Rae was sitting on the sofa upholstered in that soft, fuzzy brown fabric. Dorothy’d called it something once—chamois or chardonnay? No, that was wine. Whatever, it was soft. The club chairs with that yellow flowery fabric. He’d spent hours in this room, sipping a soda and eating chips. No tea and crumpets for Dorothy, no matter her age. She liked Ruffles or the Lay’s Classic.

  But now, Dorothy was gone, and Reagan was back. And she didn’t trust him.

  It didn’t matter. Pretty soon she’d be gone, and he’d never see her again. Fine with him. If the previous few years had taught him anything, it was that getting too close gained him nothing and cost him everything.

  Rae lifted the baby to her shoulder and softly patted his back. A moment later, the baby burped, and she shifted him to feed him the rest of his bottle. The way she looked at him, so tenderly... He’d always known she’d be a great mother. Hadn’t he imagined this a million times? Only in Brady’s imagination, the baby had looked like him.

  He shook off the thought. Been there, done that, had the scars to prove it. “Did you get everything you needed out of the barn last night?”

  She looked up. “I was going to grab the cradle, but then I found out about Gram...”

  “Right.” And she hadn’t wanted him to know about Johnny. “It’s locked?”

  “The key’s on the counter next to the stove.”

  He grabbed the key and called, “Right back,” over his shoulder.

  The sun had burned off the little fog he’d driven through that morning, and now it shone bright. It was probably mid-seventies, and it would warm into the eighties today. The last gasp of summer before autumn set in. With the birds chirping in the trees surrounding the house, all should be right with the world.

  He crossed to the barn, unlocked the door, and entered. The room was light now that the sun was out, thanks to the many windows. But the light only managed to illuminate the piles of junk on that old wooden floor. He stopped inside the door and let his gaze roam. Too many pieces of furniture to count, cardboard boxes that looked about to disintegrate from age, plastic storage containers stacked to the ceiling, random papers and files strewn across the cavernous space. A mannequin a seamstress might use. A Persian rug, discolored from dust and age, spread out like an accent piece. Old lamps, shelves, books... He couldn’t take it all in.

  On the far side rested a dark brown cradle. He picked his way toward it, banged his shin against an upended nightstand. “Ouch!” He paused, took a deep breath to keep from kicking the stupid furniture and injuring himself further. Finally he reached the cradle.

  It seemed sturdy. The curved spindles were close enough together that no baby’s head would fit in there. He never would have thought of that before, but now he had just enough experience with babies to know how fragile they were.

  He pushed that thought back down to where it belonged and tested th
e cradle’s sturdiness. While he wiped his dusty hands on his jeans, he walked around it one last time, swiping at a spiderweb stretched along one side. Yes, that should do.

  He stopped beside a trash bag leaning against the cradle. Judging from the thick layer of dust, it had been there a while. It weighed almost nothing. Holes covered it like polka dots, and through them, he saw fabric. He removed the twist-tie and peered inside.

  Blue bumper pads decorated with pictures of footballs. For a baby boy. The baby boy whose presence had signaled the end of Rae’s rocky childhood. And the development of the cynical, angry woman sitting in the house.

  He spun the holey sack, replaced the twist tie, and carried it outside. He spied the trash cans but got a better idea. He threw the dusty sack into the bed of his blue Dodge Ram. He’d throw it out at his house, so Rae’d never have to see it. He turned back toward the barn, then froze.

  The plates on Reagan’s car. Temporary. As if the car had just been purchased. He’d noticed last night, but he’d forgotten.

  If she’d rented it, there’d be permanent license plates. One more piece of the puzzle. Sure would help if he had a picture on a box to help him put these pieces together. Not that the puzzle or the big picture was any of his business. And he didn’t want them to be, either. Rae’d already burned him once. Since then, the lesson she’d taught him had been cemented by every woman he’d ever cared for.

  He returned to the barn for the cradle.

  Eight

  Rae finished feeding Johnny, then fished a notebook and pen from her messenger bag to make a list for the store. She sat beside Johnny, who was cooing and staring at the ceiling. “You need some toys, don’t you?”

  He met her eyes before returning his gaze to the ceiling.

  She noted the food she needed on her list, then added bouncer and baby gym. She couldn’t go crazy, but those things wouldn’t take up too much space. She’d imagined taking Gram with her to the store and picking out all these things together. Instead, she’d be shopping alone. At least she had lots of practice being on her own.