The Darkest Lie

by Pintip Dunn

  Guess whose job it was to write the thank-you cards? Me. And guess who nearly ripped her hair out trying to figure out who “W.” was? Yep. Me again. It seemed like the entire town showed up at my mother’s funeral. She was well-liked, sure, but I’ll bet most people came not to pay their respects, but to catch a glimpse of Tabitha Brooks’s poor widower and daughter. Hell, maybe even Mr. Willoughby and Liam were there.

  Could the glass cube arrangement have come from Mr. Willoughby? If so, why didn’t he sign his name?

  “She wallpapered our living room and bedrooms, too,” I say. “In fact, she redecorated my room every few years, because she said a girl’s room should reflect her mental state.”

  “She would say something like that.” The sun reappears, highlighting the deep crevices around his eyes. “Your mother was one of my students, you know. When I started teaching twenty-odd years ago. And when she came back as staff, we reconnected.”

  I stiffen. His tone is too hazy, too emotional for the reminiscence of a former student or colleague. Did they have another connection?

  Whatever their relationship, he doesn’t open the truck door. And the box stays out of my reach. “If I find anything that belonged to Tabitha, I’ll pass it on, okay?”

  “But—” I sputter. “Can’t I look through it?”

  “These boxes are the property of the hotline.” His tone shifts from hazy to authoritative. “The contents belong to the organization. As the executive director, I don’t have to release them to anybody, much less a volunteer call counselor.”

  “On the contrary,” Sam interjects, “if that box belonged to Tabitha Brooks, I would think the contents should revert to CeCe.”

  “We have no proof of that. Just Cecilia’s assertion that she has the same wallpaper at home. It’s a common pattern. Anyone could’ve picked it up at the hardware store.”

  Mr. Willoughby takes the keys out of his pocket and gets into the car. I rack my brain for something to say that will change his mind. But he reverses the truck a few feet on the gravel, and it’s clear he’s not in the mood to listen.

  “Liam, would you give Mr. Davidson a tour?” he says through the open window. “Make it quick and make sure he doesn’t touch anything.” He nods at us. “See you kids at school.”

  Before we can respond, he continues reversing and drives away.

  With my mother’s box next to him.

  Chapter 16

  The next day is Sunday and my first shift alone. I tried the basement door when I first arrived, but surprise, surprise, it was locked. Kinda hard to snoop when I have no access.

  The tour provided frustratingly little information. I kept my eyes peeled for a keyhole that would fit my silver key, especially in the basement office. But true to Mr. Willoughby’s orders, Liam kicked us out of the hotline five minutes after the tour began. The only thing I learned was he uses vanilla-scented air fresheners in the closets.

  I sign in to the computer to log my latest call. As I type, my scalp tingles, and a cool, invisible breeze blows against my neck, under my ponytail. Someone’s watching me. I can feel it. If not the computer, then the abstract art on the walls or the floor-standing lamps with their too-realistic limbs.

  Cre-eak.

  I bang my knees on the underside of the desk. Was that a footstep, or is the cabin just settling?

  Stop it! Buildings shift. That’s what they do. I sit down and try to relax. Just this past Wednesday, I couldn’t wait to have the place to myself. But now my mom’s box is gone, and there’s nothing to search. I long for Liam’s company. He’s friendly, warm. And, you know, alive. That counts for a lot right about now.

  I could start sifting through my mom’s call records, but there are so many of them, I don’t even know where to start. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—where the needle could be any shape and may or may not even exist.

  Instead, I flip to the back of my spiral notebook and begin to sketch the places I visited yesterday, after our tour of the hotline. Maybe if I keep my hands busy, my skin won’t feel like it’s about to slough off and crawl away.

  The safety deposit boxes at our local bank. The lockers at the YMCA. I struck out at both places. Where else would a key belong? Some cabinets in my mom’s old classroom? I can check with the school secretary tomorrow. Where else?

  I stare at the exposed wooden beams in the ceiling. Maybe Tommy Farrow has some ideas. If he was close with my mother, maybe she told him about a secret cabinet or locker. It’s worth a try.

  Impulsively, I look up his phone number in our online school directory, which includes alumni information, and dial it. He answers on the second ring.

  “Tommy, this is CeCe Brooks—”

  Click. Dial tone.

  I can’t believe it. That’s my move.

  I’m still trying to make sense of the long, monotonous beep when the phone rings. Not my cell this time, but the crisis line. I snarl at the black box, showing my teeth, and then remember I’m on duty.

  “Hello, Crisis hotline.”

  “Bea?” a girl’s voice says incredulously. “Is that really you? I thought you’d left.”

  “No, it’s not Bea.” The prickles on my neck are back full force. Not because someone’s watching me. But because Bea used to be my mother’s nickname.

  As the story goes, when I was six months old, we were having lunch outside when a bee landed on my arm. Without a second thought, my mother reached out and pinched the bee between her bare fingers, squeezing it to death. When her lunchtime companions gaped, my mother explained calmly, “It was about to sting my baby.”

  Coincidence. It has to be.

  “This is Annie,” I tell the caller. Each counselor picks a nickname to use with callers, to preserve our anonymity. Mine is in honor of Gram’s favorite poker player, Annie Duke.

  “Oh. Sorry about that.” Disappointment spreads through her voice like a grapevine. “I haven’t talked to Bea for a while now, and you sound just like her.”

  My stomach tightens, and I wind the old-fashioned phone cord around my finger. No, not a coincidence. The caller has to be talking about my mother. After I hang up, I can check the pseudonym chart to confirm.

  “What would you like to talk about today?” I curl my fingers to keep from reaching for the resource binder. My first duty is to the caller. Freaking out over personal issues has to wait for my own time.

  “It’s too much to explain in one phone call,” she says. “I was hoping to talk to Bea. She helped me end my last relationship, see. Being with him . . . changed me. The only person who understood was Bea. My life was one big secret, and she knew all about secrets. But then she disappeared. I really want to talk to her again.”

  “She’s not here anymore.” My heart pounds. Secrets. This counselor named Bea knew all about secrets. “Like you said, she hasn’t been here for a long time.”

  “I know that. But I call the hotline every once in a while, hoping I’m wrong. Stupid, isn’t it?”

  “No. That doesn’t sound stupid at all.” I swore I wouldn’t put myself out there. Whatever happened, I promised I wouldn’t let anyone infiltrate my shields. But she sounds so lost, so much like me, I can’t help myself. “If there were a number I could call to get her back, I’d dial it, too. Ten times a day.”

  She laughs, but it’s not so much amused as it is sad. “Thanks for saying that. What was your name again?”

  “Annie.”

  “Maybe I’ll call back and talk to you, Annie. Would that be okay?”

  “Sure. What’s your name?”

  She pauses. “Bea used to call me Lil. I thought that was lovely. A bee and a flower. Like we were meant to have a connection.”

  The call ends, and I leap for the resource binder. Near the beginning, there’s a table of counselors and their nicknames.

  The breath rattling in my lungs, I run my finger down the list. Sure enough, there’s an entry for “Bea.” And the corresponding counselor is none other than Tabitha Br
ooks.

  The blood sings in my ears, so loud I can’t hear the whir of the computer, much less any footsteps, real or imagined. Lil referred to my mother’s secrets. Maybe she knew something. Maybe my mother confided in her. This is the break I’ve been looking for. A way to sort out the irrelevant entries. To pinpoint a particular bale of hay where the needle might be hiding. And maybe—oh please, oh please, oh please—a message for me.

  I log in as my mother. When prompted for a password, I put in my birthday—the same password my mom used for everything. Thousands of records pop up, and I add the keyword of “Lil.” Just as I thought, the field narrows to nine manageable entries.

  I open the entry with the earliest date. My mom’s tone is clinical, relaying the facts in short, declarative sentences. Yet, as I sink into her words, I can almost feel her presence beside me.

  Lil was involved with an older man. Although the relationship started innocently enough, he soon talked her into posing for explicit photos. Pretty soon, that’s all she was doing. Taking off her clothes and contorting her body into acrobatic poses to please the camera—and her so-called boyfriend. She was fourteen years old.

  The tingles along my scalp sharpen. Sure, the report itself is disturbing, and I’m reading the words of a dead woman. But it’s more than that. There’s something disconcerting about this entry, something that strikes me as not quite right.

  And then I get to the final sentence, and the prickles turn into a thousand needles stabbing my skull. I reread the final few paragraphs:

  He calls her his darling. “If you love me,” he says, “if you are who I think you are, you won’t waste time reading this situation. You will do as I say.”

  Lil couldn’t remember the rest of his words. Something, something, she said. But it doesn’t matter. The message is clear.

  Oh dear god, it’s happened again. Only this time, it’s not to me.

  Chapter 17

  The air turns solid, and no matter how much I gasp and pant, I can’t draw a proper breath. I want to run and scream. I want to shout to the world that they have it all wrong. My mother wasn’t a slut. She was a victim. She was wronged.

  But I still don’t have any proof. I still don’t have a clear picture of what happened. So I do the only thing I can do: I hit the “print” button.

  The call entry is not directed at me. I don’t even know what the message means. But dammit, these are my mother’s words, and I won’t take them for granted, ever again.

  I tuck the printout into the front pocket of my backpack, but snippets of the entry continue to circle my brain.

  Dear god, it’s happened again. Again. Again.

  What’s happened? I’m guessing it has something to do with Lil’s explicit photographs and her own. But was my mother involved with an older man, too? Was she also coerced into posing for explicit photos?

  At the end of my shift, I gather up my car keys, iced tea, and extra sweatshirt and sling my backpack over my shoulders. I’m just about to leave when Liam comes into the room.

  “Oh, hi.” My voice is stiff. I don’t mean it to be, but I can’t help it. Yesterday, he treated me like he didn’t know me. Like we never had a connection. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, come on, CeCe. Don’t be mad.” He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets, as sheepish as a kid caught sneaking TV past his bedtime. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have been so . . . abrupt.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Abrupt? You couldn’t have gotten rid of us fast enough. It’s like we were these annoying little gnats disrupting your day.”

  “Not you. Him. I don’t like that guy. Asking all these questions, trying to peer into drawers. He was just so nosy.”

  “That’s his job! Sam’s an intern for the Lakewood Sun, and he’s writing an article about the hotline.”

  “Well, this is my job.” Liam squares his shoulders. Not for the first time, I notice how his muscles stretch out the thermal fabric of his shirt. “I have a duty to protect the privacy of my counselors, and I’m not going to let some bozo come in here and jeopardize it.”

  I soften. “I appreciate that. Truly. But that’s not Sam’s intention, I promise.” Even as I say the words, however, I wonder. Sam threatened to broadcast the call counselor list in order to get a tour of the hotline. What else would he be willing to do to get his story?

  “At any rate, I’m sorry.” Liam takes a step closer to me, and the air between us comes alive. Kind of like when I thought somebody was watching me, but different. Better. “I have something for you that I hope will make up for yesterday. A present, you could say.”

  Before I can respond, the door squeaks, and a junior boy named Stanley walks into the cabin. He’s got the school record for the fastest one-hundred-meter dash, and he’s the call counselor for the next shift.

  Liam and I say “hello” and “good-bye” to Stan, and then we amble out of the cabin. Outside, the sky shines blue and clear, and a slight breeze keeps the temperature from being too hot. In the distance, I hear the faint song of geese honking. The perfect fall afternoon—bright, sunny, beautiful.

  Once upon a time, I believed that nothing could go wrong when the sun kissed your skin just so and the leaves seemed to laugh as they fell from the trees. Now I know better. My mother died on a day just like this one. So instead of tilting up my face to catch the rays, I scan the sky for rain clouds. I’ve experienced how quickly the weather can change. How absolutely your world can turn inside out.

  “How about a drive out to East Rock?” Liam asks as we approach his orange car. “I could show you my favorite spot to sit and think.”

  “So long as I get my present,” I say, smiling because both the day and Liam deserve it. It’s neither of their faults what shadows lurk in my past.

  We drive east out of the town limits, heading toward the hill where families like to go to barbecue and hike. I sneak looks at him, picking up on details I missed when we first met. Like the deliberate, thoughtful way he moves. Or the way his lips quirk, as though he’s always laughing. Or the chain hanging around his neck, with a pendant that displays an ancient-looking symbol with wavy swirls and dots. All of these things suggest he’s way more than the popular jock I’d initially dismissed.

  Eventually, we pull into a clearing at the foot of the hill, a good distance from the picnic tables and well-populated trails my mom, dad, and I used to frequent not even a year ago. Back when we were still a family.

  “Come on.” Liam turns off the ignition. “It’s a short hike from here, but the view is worth it.”

  He takes a package wrapped in brown paper out of his backpack and sticks it in the pocket of his hoodie, the same one I was wearing the other night. My present, I assume. It’s about the size of a small stuffed animal. All of a sudden, curiosity hums through me.

  “Can’t you give it to me now?” I eye the bulge in his hoodie.

  “I could.” He walks to my side of the car and opens the door. “But I think I’m going to make you wait.”

  I stick my lower lip out. “That’s mean.”

  “Actually, it’s selfish.” He holds out his hand and helps me out of the car. “I want to remember your face when you open it. And I want the backdrop to be as beautiful as you are.”

  I flush. A line. It has to be. Someone as good-looking as Liam probably has dozens of lines stashed in the pockets of his well-worn jeans. Yet, when he looks at me like that, I believe he means every single word.

  We enter a thicket of trees, where there is a barely visible trail—a path that was created by the tread of feet rather than a machine, with the worst of the bramble shoved to the side. Liam goes first, so that he can hold back low-hanging branches while I pass. I’m wearing torn jeans and dirty sneakers, an old sweatshirt and a loose ponytail, but I feel cherished. Special. I haven’t felt this way since I was folded in my mom’s arms.

  We slowly make our way up, up, up. And then the man-made trail opens into a creek next to the hillside. A thin but
constant stream of water runs down the rock wall.

  My mouth falls open. “Is that a waterfall?”

  “Yep.” Liam beams. “It might be the world’s smallest waterfall, but it’s the only one I know of in all of Lakewood. Sometimes it’s a trickle, and sometimes it’s a stream, but it’s always here. What do you think?”

  “It’s perfect,” I say. Just like the sun peeking through a gap in the leaves. Just like—I’m beginning to suspect—the boy in front of me.

  And then he takes the package out of his hoodie and hands it to me, and I forget everything else.

  Carefully, so I don’t rip the brown paper, I unwrap the present. It’s a snow globe. Three figurines are inside. The mom and grandma are drinking hot cocoa with their arms linked, while the little girl builds a snowman.

  My eyes widen, and it’s like someone turned up the volume on my heartbeat. I feel and hear it everywhere—in my ears, at my throat, on my chest. I gave this snow globe to my mother when I was eight years old. On the anniversary of my grandma’s death, I caught her sobbing in her bedroom after she thought I was asleep. The next day, I broke open my cupcake bank and asked my dad to take me to the corner store, where I bought the snow globe.

  “I don’t want you to be sad anymore,” I’d said to my mom when I gave her the globe. “I know you miss your mom, but I want you to know she’s still here with you, the way you’re with me. You see.” I’d pointed to the mom and grandma under the snow. “You’ll always be together, no matter what.”

  I haven’t seen—nor thought about—this globe in years. If pressed, I would’ve guessed it was somewhere in the back of my mom’s old closet.

  “Where . . . where did you get this?” I ask Liam, my heart tight, my mouth dry. All the moisture must have fled to build up in a wet, hot pressure behind my eyes.

  “It was in your mother’s box,” he says slowly. “The one wrapped in the wallpaper. After our tour yesterday, I went to Mr. Willoughby’s house to help him sort through the boxes, and I saw this. Your mom used to keep it on her desk at the hotline, so I knew it was important to her. I stuffed it in my bag when Mr. W. wasn’t looking.”