Lies She Told
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Praise for Lies She Told
“Holahan spins a suffocating double nightmare that provides compelling support for her heroine’s rueful article of faith: ‘To be a writer is to be a life thief.’”
—Kirkus starred review
“Lies She Told had me questioning my own sanity, biting my cuticles well into the night, and jumping at the sound of my cat snacking in the kitchen. The best kind of suspense writer, Holahan will keep readers slightly off balance all the way through the book. Author and character so completely overlap, it makes the reader wonder if art is imitating life or life is imitating art. An excellent and compelling psychological read!”
—Susan Crawford, bestselling author of The Pocket Wife and The Other Widow
“Wow. I could not turn the pages fast enough! Intricate, intense, and completely sinister—the talented Cate Holahan keeps you guessing until the final disturbing page.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of Say No More
“This was a thriller I couldn’t put down. Cate Holahan expertly constructs two parallel stories connected in unexpected ways with a twist that left me thinking about the characters long after I turned the final page. Bravo!”
—Rena Olsen, author of The Girl Before
“Brilliantly conceived, chillingly conveyed, Lies She Told is a mind-bender of a novel within a novel, with a story that is both gut-wrenching and compulsively readable. Cate Holahan is one of the best psychological suspense writers out there, and she’s only getting better. Read her.”
—Brad Parks, Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Award–winning author of Say Nothing
“Wow! You’re going to love this book. You’ll make your sister read it. Your sister will share it with her best friend. If there’s any justice in the literary world, Lies She Told will make Cate Holahan a household name. This is a page-turner of the top order, cleverly conceived, brilliantly executed, and impossible to put down. Cate Holahan has proven herself a master of psychological suspense. She’ll make you love her heroines—and question their sanity—buy into her world—and doubt everything about it. This mind-bending tale of jealousy, love, and revenge should be at the top of everyone’s summer reading list.”
—Allison Leotta, author of The Last Good Girl
“A chilling story about the lengths to which people will go to protect themselves . . . even from their own secrets. Cate Holahan keeps you guessing—and turning the pages—right to the end.”
—Patrick Lee, New York Times bestselling author of the Sam Dryden and Travis Chase trilogies
“Wow. Just wow. As soon as you think you’ve figured it out, Cate Holahan hits you with a twist you did. Not. See. Coming. Lies She Told shines as a taut story driven by strong female characters who make things happen. Part medical thriller, part domestic thriller, all good.”
—Alexia Gordon, award-winning author of Murder in G Major and Death in D Minor
“Each season, editors and publishers race to anoint the next Gone Girl or Girl on the Train. You can set your clock to it. But I promise Cate Holahan’s Lies She Told is worthy of the mantle and can shoulder the heavy burden. Holahan’s latest psychological thriller is nothing short of masterpiece. When every book club is featuring it as their must-read of the summer, and every bookstore is stacking copies in their windows as its staff pick, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Lies She Told is guaranteed to make Cate Holahan a household name.”
—Joe Clifford, author of the Jay Porter thriller series
ALSO BY CATE HOLAHAN:
The Widower’s Wife
Dark Turns
LIES SHE TOLD
Cate Holahan
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Cate Holahan
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-295-6
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-296-3
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-298-7
Cover design by Melanie Sun
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First edition: September 2017
For Brett
“You fill everything.” —Pablo Neruda
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
—Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major
I don’t know this man. Fault lines carve his cheeks from his gaping mouth. His brow bulges above narrowed eyes. This man is capable of violence.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Spittle hits my face as he screams. Fingers tighten around my biceps. My bare heels leave the hardwood. He’s lifting me to his level so that there’s no escape, no choice but to witness his pain. “Did you think I wouldn’t read it?”
I feel my lips part, my jaw drop, but the sheer volume of his voice silences me. His grip loosens enough for my feet to again feel the floor.
“Answer me.” He whispers this time, the hiss of a kettle before the boil.
“I didn’t do anything.” Tears drown my words.
“Why, Liza? Tell me why he had to die.” His speech is measured. I wish he would swear, call me names. If he were out of control, I could calm him down, negotiate, maybe even convince him that everything has been a misunderstanding. But he’s resolved. His questions are rhetorical. There’s a gun on the dining table.
“Please.” Sobs fold me in half. I press my hand to the wall, seeking leverage to stand. “I don’t know.”
He yanks my arm, forcing me from the corner. My knee slams against the jutting edge of the bed as he pulls me toward the oak writing desk and open laptop. The offending document lies on the screen. I’m pushed down into the desk chair and rolled forward.
“You expect me to believe this is a coincidence?” His index finger jabs the monitor.
“It’s a story,” I plead. “It’s only a story.”
Though I catch the hand in my peripheral vision, I can’t calculate the trajectory fast enough. It lands on the laptop, flinging it across the desk and onto the floor. Parts rattle. The bottom panel breaks off and skitters across the hardwood.
“Liar.” He turns my chair, wresting my attention from the ruined computer. A fist rises toward my face. He’s been building up to this. I shut my eyes. “You’re a fucking liar.”
I don’t protest. He’s right. Blurring fact and fantasy is my trade. I am a con artist. A prevaricator. I make up stories.
So why does he think this one is real?
Contents
Part I
Liza
Chapter 1
Liza
Chapter 2
Liza
Chapter 3
Liza
Chapter 4
Liza
Chapter 5
Liza
Chapter 6
Liza
Chapter 7
Liza
Chapter 8
Liza
Part II
Chapter 9
Liza
Chapter 10
Liza
Chapter 11
Liza
Chapter 12
&n
bsp; Liza
Chapter 13
Liza
Chapter 14
Liza
Chapter 15
Part III
Liza
Chapter 16
Liza
Chapter 17
Liza
Chapter 18
Liza
Chapter 19
Acknowledgments
Part I
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook H
LIZA
He’s tracking my time. Every ten seconds, Trevor’s dark eyes dart to the digital clock on his computer screen, a driver checking his rearview. My pitch has not impressed. He has more important things to attend to, authors who bring in more money. My work is not worth these valuable minutes.
He doesn’t say any of this, of course. Our decade-long relationship has made his thoughts apparent. I read them in the lines crinkling his brow as he sits across from me in his office chair, scratching his goatee while the air conditioner’s hiss recalls the reputational damage wrought by my latest book, Accused Woman. Not my best work, to say the least. Critics dubbed the protagonist “Sandra Dee on diazepam.” She lacked agency, they said. Too many things happened to her. Really, she was too like me to be likeable. My former psychiatrist, Dr. Sally Sertradine, suggested similar failings.
“An affair?” Finally, he speaks . . . barely. A true Brit, Trevor drops the ending r. His accent mocks me, as though my idea has so offended him that even his critique doesn’t require clear articulation.
He removes the wire-framed glasses previously perched on the wide bridge of his nose, sets them on his mouse pad, and walks to his window. Before him lies a landscape of penthouse terraces. In Manhattan, success is determined by view. Trevor’s placement, high above even the city’s wealthy, is a reminder of his importance relative to my own, of the weight his opinion should carry as opposed to mine.
“There’s hardly a new way to do an affair.”
“Well, I think of it as a classic revenge story.” My voice cracks as I make my case. Dr. Sally also said I regress into adolescence at the first whiff of confrontation. The hormones are making things worse. “I think romantic suspense readers want—”
“Right. What they want.” He faces me and nods. Trevor talks with his head the way Italians speak with hand gestures. The angle of his chin conveys his amusement or displeasure. “You must give your audience what they’re craving. Readers are done with love triangles and tortured consciences. Consider what Hollywood is buying: stories about pushing sexual taboos and psychological manipulation. People want to play mind games in the bedroom, eh?”
A forty-two-year-old guy is telling me, a thirty-five-year-old woman smack in the middle of my target audience demographic, what my peers want in the sack. Sad fact is, I should probably take notes. For the past year, David and I have only bothered with intercourse when my basal temp kicks up. Trevor is recently divorced and inarguably attractive: a Bronze Age Rodin of a man. Women must be, as he’d say, “queuing” up.
He snaps to an unknown rhythm. Suddenly, his eyes brighten like he’s figured out the step. “How about something with psychiatrists? Does he love her or is he messing with her mind?”
I could name four books involving twisted therapists that graced the bestseller lists in the past two years. But doing so would just support Trevor’s suggestion. He isn’t claiming that his idea is original, only that it’s “on trend.” Trends sell, whether writers like them or not.
Trevor mistakes my silence as serious consideration. “Think Hannibal Lecter without the horror. The sociopathic doctor meets a young Clarice, and she falls—”
“I don’t know, Trev. Transference? Is that—”
“Trans?” He wrinkles his nose, offended by my attempt to slip esoteric knowledge into our conversation. Trevor often laments this about me. He complains that I bog down my books with details: how a gun shoots, how police detect trace amounts of blood, DNA lingo fit for a biologist. For Accused Woman, I attended a week-long writer’s workshop at the police academy in Queens so I could get down every detail of the way a gun discharges and how detectives investigate. I even bought my own handgun: a Ruger SR22, touted by experts as the most affordable semiautomatic for women. My aim is horrible.
“Transference happens when a person projects unresolved feelings about their past onto people in their present, like a patient transferring romantic emotions onto their psychi—”
Trevor’s full lips press flat against his teeth.
“It’s not important. Forget it.” My voice sounds small. Somehow, I’ve neared forty without gaining the surety that’s supposed to come with middle age. I cough and try to add heft to my tone. The act clenches my stomach, intensifying the persistent queasiness that I’ve suffered for weeks. “What if, by the time the book comes out, interest in psychiatrists has waned?”
Trevor gives a What-you-gonna-do? shrug. “Well, think about it. And send me an outline before you go too deep into anything.”
The request spurs me from my seat quicker than a cattle prod. Not once in my career has Trevor demanded anything more than a rough idea and a finished draft. Now he needs a chapter-by-chapter breakdown? The suddenness of my movement topples the chair onto Trevor’s floor. I recoil at the spectacle of its four legs sticking in the air like a poisoned cockroach. I promised myself I’d stay calm.
I right the seat and stand behind it, head lowered. My temples throb their early warning alarm for a migraine. “That’s really not how I work. I let the characters dictate the action.” My tone is apologetic. Sorry, Trev. I’m not good enough to write an outline. That’s what he thinks I’m saying.
“Maybe it’s worth a try. New methods can lead to new results.”
“If I could just write through a draft—”
“Liza, come on. You’re a fast writer. An outline’s no big deal for you.”
“A draft barely takes longer. I’ll spend twelve hours a day writing. Fourteen—”
“You’ve got the MWO conference coming up.”
“I’m only staying through my panel.” Nerves add unnecessary vibrato to my voice. “Hey, if you like the story, then we’re both happy. If not, I’ll start over.” I force a laugh. “I’ll even throw in a psychiatrist.”
He runs his hand through his grown-out buzz cut. The longer hairstyle is new, postdivorce. It makes him look younger.
“Please, Trev.” I’m actually begging. “I think this idea could have legs. Let me run with it. Give me one month. Thirty days.”
Trevor reclaims his glasses and places them on his face. The spectacles magnify the teardrop shape of his eyes as he checks in with his computer clock. “All right.” His head shakes in disagreement with his words. “You have until September fifteenth. One month. I can’t give you any more than that.”
He crosses the room, passing his bookcase of edited award winners. The Wall of Fame. I have a novel on there, though it’s long been bumped from the center shelves. The door opens, inviting in the pattering of computer keys and one-sided phone conversations. Trevor smiles as he holds it. I try to mirror his expression, as though he’s being chivalrous rather than kicking me out.
As I pass him, he gives my shoulder a supportive squeeze, reminding me that we’re still friends, regardless of business. “Hey. I meant to ask, how’s the search going?”
His expression is appropriately pained. In the beginning, everyone inquired with overacted enthusiasm, as though it was possible that we’d find Nick unharmed, wandering the streets tripping on acid, too busy admiring the pretty colors of the New York City lights to realize that he’d been staring at them for days. Nick didn’t use hallucinogens to David’s knowledge, but there was always a first time. An offer in a club by someone cute. Younger. Nick wouldn’t have dared seem not “with it.” He prided himself on hanging out with models and misfits, the artsy types that applauded themselves for gentrifying the Brooklyn neighb
orhoods where even hipsters feared to tread.
“I read that the police are watching the water.” My throat goes dry. “Warm weather speeds decomposition. If he ended up in the East River, his body is likely to float to the surface.”
Trevor winces. Once again, I’ve provided too much information for him. He’s surprised that I would be this clinical. But it’s been a month. We all know Nick is dead at this point. Well, nearly all of us.
“Give my best to David, eh? Tell him I’m sorry about his law partner.”
I have a desire to scratch the bridge of my nose. Thinking too hard about Nick makes me itchy. “I will. It’s been difficult for him. Nick was the best man at our wedding.”
Trevor offers a weak smile. “Sorry for you as well, then.”
“Oh. Thanks.” The words come out flat. Accepting condolences on behalf of Nick Landau is as uncomfortable as constipation on a car ride. Twelve years married to his closest friend, yet I knew him about as well as the public knows A-list celebrities. I could tell police what he looked like, where he’d worked, the general area where he’d lived. But that’s it, really. Truth is, Nick never liked me much.
Chapter 1
Bastard. His nose is buried in her long neck, his vision blurred by a cascade of black hair and the restaurant’s mood lighting. He doesn’t see me. I see him, though, despite the dying light outside and the dimness beyond the picture window. Despite the fact that I’m standing across the street from the Italian eatery where he took me just last week—me with my hair flowing like the woman’s whose lips now part as my husband brings his mouth to her ear.
Bitch. I recognize her. She testified for him four months ago, hiding her beauty behind her butch blue police uniform, her hair yanked into that severe, standard-issue bun. The hairstyle had emphasized her humped nose, making it overwhelm her face. I hadn’t judged her pretty enough to grab my husband’s attention, to compete with me, given my circumstances. I’d failed to consider her chest, covered by a bulky button-down, or the way candlelight might soften her features. I’d failed to consider that my husband might cheat while I carried his child.