Convenient Lies

by Robin Patchen

  Angry voices coming from the English hallway caught her attention. Her nosiness was a bad habit that would eventually get her in trouble.

  Eventually? She was running for her life.

  Compared to that, how bad could this be? She peered down the corridor.

  Two boys were staring each other down, one tall with curly light brown hair, the other slightly shorter with black hair. Both wore muddy practice football uniforms. Odd, since the gym was on the far side of the school. They must’ve been looking for privacy.

  “If it happens again,” the curly-haired one said, “I’ll call the cops.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” The darker one backed up a step, and Rae saw who stood beyond the two boys.

  Caro. The girl stepped forward. “What are you two—?”

  “Go back to the caf, Caro.” Curly barely glanced at her. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “But what—?”

  The dark-haired boy turned and caught Rae watching.

  She pasted on a smile. “Hey, Caro. I was just looking for you.”

  “Oh. Hi. Uh...Finn?” Caro turned to the curly-haired boy. “This is Reagan.”

  The boy turned to her with a short nod. “Hey.”

  The other boy took off in the opposite direction.

  Rae stepped forward and held out her free hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  His hand was warm and sweaty. “Are you the lady who’s helping Caro with the auditions?” When she nodded, he said, “Thanks for doing that. It means a lot.” He turned and kissed Caro on the cheek. “I gotta go.” He brushed past Rae with barely a glance.

  Caro stood beside her and stared at the spot where her boyfriend had disappeared.

  “What was that about?” Rae asked.

  “I have no idea. Trent is his best friend.”

  “Didn’t look like friends to me.”

  “Something’s going on, but Finn won’t tell me what.”

  Rae shrugged. “People fight. Maybe he’ll tell you later. How’d your audition go?”

  She turned to Rae with a bright smile. “Omigosh, so good. I’m sure I’m going to get a part.”

  Caro prattled about her audition until they reached the car. Rae strapped Johnny in, then climbed in beside the girl. “Before I forget, why don’t you give me your cell phone number?”

  “Sure.”

  They exchanged numbers, then Rae said, “You hungry?”

  “Starved. I’m sure Nana has something I can heat up.”

  “I thought we’d grab dinner somewhere.”

  Caro brightened even more and pulled out her phone. While she called her grandmother, Rae pulled out of the school parking lot. She turned to Caro and lifted her eyebrows in question. The girl gave her a thumbs-up, then told her grandmother how the audition went.

  Rae turned toward town. She didn’t want to run into anybody she knew, and the Kentucky Fried Chicken lot was empty except for a few cars in the back. Seemed safe enough, and chicken sounded good.

  They grabbed their meals and chose a booth near the window. Rae lifted Johnny’s carseat and set it on the table. Caro was practically giddy with delight.

  “Nana and Papa never want to go out to eat.” She grabbed a piece of golden goodness from the box. “This is a treat.”

  Rae bit a piece. “For me too. I forgot how much I liked fried chicken.”

  “They don’t have fried chicken in Africa?”

  Rae savored the yummy, salty flavor. “Nothing like this. This is very American.”

  Caro looked down at her chicken, then up at Rae. Then back down again.

  “What?”

  The girl shrugged. “I just wanted to know...” She seemed to force her gaze up. “I’m sorry. I know you asked me not to tell anybody you were home, but I sort of told Finn, just because he wanted to know about the auditions and stuff, but he won’t tell anybody.”

  “It’s fine,” Rae said.

  “So he told me a story about your family.”

  “Oh.” Rae swallowed a sip of her soda. “What did he tell you?”

  She turned a little pink. “It’s not my business.”

  The whole town knew her business. What was one more?

  “About my mom?”

  She nodded but didn’t make eye contact.

  “My mom was bipolar. Have you heard of that?”

  Caro looked up. “Yeah. We talked about a lot of mental stuff in my health class.”

  “Okay. Well, she lived right on the edge. We—Dad and Gram and I—we sort of tiptoed around her, always wondering which Mom was going to wake up any given day. She had medication, and it helped a lot. But it didn’t make her sane. Not really. And she hated taking it. Sometimes when Dad would go out of town or be gone for a while...” Rae thought of her father’s other women. Dad had found a way to escape the madness. Rae hadn’t had the option.

  Caro paused, chicken halfway to her lips, and tilted her head to the side.

  Rae continued. “When Dad would be gone for a while, Mom wouldn’t take her meds. When he died, she went off them altogether. And her illness got really bad.”

  Caro grabbed a potato wedge. “My grandparents are sort of grouchy, but they’re...” She seemed to grope for a word and finally finished with “solid.”

  “Gram was solid,” Rae said. “Thank God for Gram.” A rush of emotion had her pausing again.

  “Anyway,” Rae said, “Mom lost her mind. Gram had gone to her sister’s for the weekend, because her sister’d had surgery. Gram didn’t know Mom had quit taking her medicine, and for the previous few weeks, she’d been amazingly steady. While Gram was gone, Mom drove to Portsmouth. She parked near downtown, walked around the little shops.” This memory used to make Rae ill, but so many things had happened since then.

  “A congressman from New York and his family were vacationing in Portsmouth,” Rae said. “They were in this tiny store, and their baby was in a stroller. According to the news, the parents had walked around the corner to look at something with another one of their kids. They left the baby in his stroller, and my mom just pushed the baby out of the store. I’m sure there was more to it than that.” She glanced at Johnny. His eyes were open, taking in the new environment. “Who would leave their child, even to step a few feet away?”

  “You must have freaked out.”

  “I was spending the night with a friend.” Rae remembered the evening at Samantha’s house. It felt like the last night of Rae’s childhood. “When I came home the next day, the baby was lying in the cradle. She said the baby was God’s way of replacing my father. I’d seen the news. I knew. I tried to get in touch with Gram, but they didn’t answer the phone. That was before cell phones.”

  “So you called the police.”

  “There was a report on TV about it, and this special number to call. I thought... Well, I don’t know what I thought. That Mom would go to a hospital and get some help. That we could trust the police.”

  Caro nodded. “My mother doesn’t trust the police, but Nana says that’s just because she uses drugs, and they’re illegal.”

  “That must be hard.”

  “I think it could be worse.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled at the girl, understanding what Caro was going through. “I really thought they’d put her in a hospital.”

  “They should have.”

  Rae shrugged.

  “And then?” Caro prompted.

  “The story was national news, and suddenly my face was on every screen in America, the girl who rescued the congressman’s kid. And got her mother sent to prison. Reporters descended on Nutfield like mosquitoes in a swamp. They shouted questions at me everywhere I went for weeks. They dug into our family’s lives. My father... He’d been involved with some women over the years. I guess it was hard being married to my mom.” Rae sipped her drink. “Anyway, one of his former mistresses decided to turn our family’s misfortune into her fifteen minutes of fame. She gave interviews, wrote a tell-all book with details about my mother’s
illness. Details she could only have gotten from my father.”

  Caro’s eyes filled. She shook her head. “I can’t... That just sucks. What a witch.”

  Rae managed a smile. “She was.”

  “That’s not the word I wanted to use.”

  “I appreciate your restraint.”

  “So they made you out to be a hero for turning your mother in.”

  “Not all of them. Some figured I did it to be free of her insanity. Some assumed I was crazy too. It occurred to very few people that I was just an eleven-year-old girl who’d now lost both her parents. That didn’t sell any newspapers.”

  “I can’t believe you became a reporter after that.”

  “Ironic, I know. Considering how much I hated them.”

  “So your mom went to prison.”

  “Right. I was sixteen when she killed herself.”

  Twenty-Two

  Julien sat in the office of his Paris apartment. Rae and Jean-Louis had only been gone a few days, and already the place felt cold and abandoned. Dust motes floated in the sunlight streaming in through the window. His lamp illuminated a small circle on his desk, and he stared at the note Rae had tucked into the file cabinet.

  She’d copied and stolen evidence against him, evidence regarding his business, evidence that could implicate his family.

  He crumpled the note and squeezed it, forcing himself to face the truth. He’d made excuses for her. He’d lied to himself about what she was doing, because he’d made the mistake of caring for her.

  All the while, she had disobeyed him, spied on him, betrayed him, and left him for a fool.

  Almost left him for a fool. He’d make sure she wouldn’t get away with it.

  Julien had flown to Paris right after his father left the hotel the night before, leaving word with Farah that he’d be back the next evening. They were to continue to search for Rae, to find her using any means necessary.

  He’d arrived at his apartment by eleven. It only took fifteen minutes to find the note.

  He stared back in time to the first moment he’d seen Rachel, walking into that Tunisian cafe. He’d thought she must lack sense to not be nervous, surrounded as she had been by locals, Muslims who hated the very sight of her, a woman proudly sporting her modern clothes. The hijab covered her head, but her Western ways were too evident in the khakis and T-shirt. Rae had seemed so confident. Now he knew she was a master at hiding fear. Just like he was.

  How long had she known the truth? Had their marriage been a ruse to get information? He’d seen the lengths she’d go to when she was working on a story, but he couldn’t imagine she’d have been willing to have his child on pretense. No, she must have learned the truth afterward. Had one of his enemies tipped her off, or had she simply decided to snoop?

  Both seemed possible. She was an investigative journalist, after all. He should never have trusted her.

  He flattened the note on his desk and reread it. Rachel was naive to think he would let her go. As if he could, even if he wanted to. He needed Jean-Louis, his only heir. And he needed her caught and punished. Nobody escaped the Moreau family, evidence or not.

  She wouldn’t dare take that paltry information to the authorities. His files didn’t prove anything. They could make life complicated for him in the short term, but they wouldn’t bring him down. He’d been too careful with what he kept around. Would she know that? Certainly she would. She was a master at gathering evidence.

  Perhaps she’d gathered more. She must have known he’d follow her. Maybe that’s what she wanted—for him to come after her. Maybe this was a game.

  A very dangerous game.

  He remembered the feeling of holding Rae in his arms the night they’d married. They’d docked the yacht just long enough to send the guests and most of the staff on their way. Then he’d carried her to the bedroom, made her his. Would he have married her if she’d been willing to join him in his bed before that? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t satisfy that particular urge with any number of women, but he’d wanted Rae. Probably more because she’d refused him.

  That night, he’d studied her body while she lay beside him. She belonged to him now. The pale skin, the spray of freckles across her shoulders, the tiny mole on her hip. Even now he could imagine her sun-kissed red hair splayed across the rumpled sheets, her hazel eyes dancing in the pale light that filtered in through the porthole. He could hear her broken French. He’d laughed at her terrible attempt at his language. She’d swooned when he’d romanced her in words she didn’t even understand.

  She was his. She always would be, whatever her reasons for marrying him. She was his to do with as he pleased.

  If Papa knew, he’d insist Julien kill her. But no. Julien would find her, and he’d take her back to Tunis, and he’d keep her there. He’d give her child after child, and she’d be safe as long as she stayed put and kept quiet. And if he felt she might whisper the truth in somebody’s ear? Well, death wasn’t the only way to silence a person. People could be broken.

  He touched the image of his son in the photograph on his desk. He missed him. And he needed the boy to solidify his place in the family. Without his son, all would be lost. If anything happened to his child while Rae had her little escapade, she would pay dearly. She would pray for death if anything happened to his son.

  He stood, shoved the note in his pocket, and opened his safe. The flash drive rested right where he’d left it. Thank God she hadn’t found that. He slipped it into his pocket with the note. He might need it sooner than he’d thought.

  One day, Julien would run the business. He would legitimize segments, and he would end the distasteful trades Geoffrey had begun, focus on what his grandfather had started. To be equalizers, to give the lowest among them a voice, so they could fight back against tyrants. It was the American second amendment—applied to the world. It was fair. It was just.

  It was profitable.

  One day, Rae would understand. She would stand beside him like Maman stood with Papa. Rae would be his partner. Or she would be his captive, perhaps his victim.

  She would not be his downfall.

  Twenty-Three

  Something was different. Rae waited for the fluorescent lights in the barn to brighten the space. Rain tapped against the shingled roof in a low hum, mingling with Johnny’s soft snoring, which was coming through the monitor in her left hand. She didn’t love the idea of leaving him in the house, but he’d fallen asleep in his bouncer on the kitchen table, and she hadn’t wanted to wake him.

  The brighter the lights became, the more Rae could tell that someone had been there.

  She studied the desk, the papers she’d planned to go through. Too neat. The old leather chair was pushed beneath the desk, but she’d moved it out of the way to crawl under the desk. A futile attempt to find a hidden box that didn’t seem to be anywhere.

  Her gaze landed on the furniture beneath the stairs. The two doors of the buffet sat ajar. Had they been like that the day before?

  Rae had no idea. But something was off.

  A chill ran down her spine. Surely if Julien had found her, he wouldn’t waste his time in the old barn. There was nothing in here he’d want. No, if Julien had found her, Rae wouldn’t be around to contemplate her barn.

  Still, someone had been here. They were gone now. Nice of them to lock up when they left.

  She checked the windows. All closed, all locked. How in the world...?

  There was no way she was leaving Johnny alone in the house, knowing there’d been someone in the barn. She ran back, grabbed the afghan off the back of the club chair, and tucked the blanket around her baby. Then she lifted the bouncer—baby and all—and carried it to the barn with her. Sweet Johnny barely stirred.

  She hated to risk waking him, but she had to find that treasure. She’d spent too much time in town as it was.

  She looked at the papers she’d left on the desk. She’d dealt with enough paperwork today after looking through the stuff she’d found in t
he safe deposit box, hoping for some clue as to the whereabouts of the treasure. She’d made some phone calls and discovered the papers had turned out to be nothing helpful, a few stocks her father had liquidated before his death, a bank account that had been closed for years.

  Might as well see if the prowlers had left anything in that buffet.

  She froze halfway across the room. What if the prowlers had been looking for the treasure? How could they have found out about it? The treasure had been her and Dad’s secret. In all the years since his death, Rae’d never told a soul, not even Brady. It had been hidden on the property for all that time. If someone knew about it, why had that person waited eighteen years to search for it?

  Maybe the prowlers had just picked Gram’s house at random, decided to go exploring. Or maybe, if they did know about the treasure but continued to break in, that meant they hadn’t found it. So it must still be here.

  It had to be.

  She searched the buffet, then moved on to other pieces of furniture. She found nothing worthwhile. By the time she heard a car door slam, Rae was coated in a thick layer of dust and memories. She checked her watch. Four o’clock. She peeked at Johnny. He’d been asleep an hour, but he’d wake soon. It was nearly time for his dinner.

  She was brushing dust off her jeans when it occurred to her that the slamming of the car door hadn’t set her heart beating too fast. She’d become comfortable in this house, as if she were safe here.

  She wasn’t safe. As long as Julien was searching for her, she’d never be safe. She couldn’t let her guard down.

  She made her way to the window and looked out in time to see Brady approaching the house. She stepped out the door. “Hey.”

  He stopped on the porch steps and turned. “Hey.” No smile. He leaned against the railing. “What are you doing out there?”

  “Just going through stuff.”