by Katy Paige
“Shit!”
Zoë or Holly, or whoever the hell she was, was gone.
Suddenly he heard her words in his head again:
What if Holly was here? What if you could have both of us? What if you didn’t have to choose?
His eyes fluttered closed and he lowered his body raggedly to sit down on the top step of his porch as her words came rushing back to him—puzzle pieces, jagged and anonymous on their own, fitting together with heartbreaking precision. It was all there. All of it. He’d just been too much of a blind idiot to put it all together.
Oh, my God.
There was only one explanation and it smacked like a hit to the chest, shattering the bones of his ribs into shards that staked his gasping heart.
Oh, my God.
Zoë is Holly. Holly is Zoë.
Zoë was an artist and Holly was an art teacher.
Zoë’s bags were left in Rhode Island and Holly lived in Connecticut.
And Zoë was here in Gardiner…to see a man, a man shrouded in confusion and uncertainty every time Zoë mentioned him. Paul had held her, reassuring her, telling her that the guy was an idiot if he didn’t see how great she was. But she had answered that she didn’t know if it would work out, He’s my whole world, but I haven’t been honest with him.
Well, that was a fucking understatement. The whole thing had been a lie.
It suddenly occurred to him that Holly probably didn’t even exist. The blue-eyed blonde schoolteacher with a sunny smile was really an edgy, brown-eyed, dark-haired woman who built websites and had endless amounts of sorrow etched—literally—into her face. Had she just used the persona “Holly” to lure him into her world? That picture had probably been scanned from a magazine or copied off the internet. Holly and Zoë looked nothing alike.
He stood up and sprinted up the stairs, throwing open the front door and not stopping until he sat on the edge of his bed. He took out the framed picture that Zoë had been looking at last night and stared at it. Hard. The woman in the picture had long, blonde wavy hair, but it was impossible to tell her eye color behind the sunglasses. The skin of her face was tan and flawless and her body was much trimmer than Zoë’s, with long, perfect legs. They didn’t look a thing alike. Except for the smile. He stared at it hard, thinking about Zoë smiling at him in the candlelight from across the table last night, and realized in horror that it was the same smile.
He threw the frame across the room angrily and didn’t look up as the glass shattered against his wall, small pieces bouncing from the wall to the carpet below.
A terrible thought suddenly occurred to him, and his face contorted.
Had it all been a game to her? Was this something she did? Meet men over the internet and pretend to be one person only to show up later to reveal herself as someone totally different?
His eyes burned and he covered them with his hands, bowing his head in frustration and anger and confusion and a growing, aching sadness.
He needed answers and he needed them now. Even if Holly’s phone number worked on Zoë’s phone, she wouldn’t have a signal by now, and anyway, she was a big liar. It would take a face-to-face conversation to try to unravel Zoë/Holly’s thick and tawdry web of lies. No. Screw the liar. He’d get his answers somewhere else.
From someone he actually trusted.
Something had happened between Zoë and Maggie when they met for the first time on Saturday night, he was sure of it. There was only one other person in Gardiner who might have some answers, and he wasn’t going to work until he got some.
***
“Maggie! I need to talk to you!” he strode into the café with purpose, his heart racing from the exertion of the fast walk. His eyes narrowed with challenge, and, more and more, with despair and deep embarrassment…and fury.
Maggie’s green eyes widened into saucers and she leaned back from the bar where she was chatting with Miss Phillips, of shingles fame. Paul didn’t even nod to the older woman. He stood by the bar, hands on his hips, fuming, eyes locked with Maggie’s.
Maggie took a deep breath, staring at his eyes, then looking away uncomfortably. She swallowed as she took a step toward him.
Oh, she knew something, all right.
“She told you,” she said softly.
“She told me what?” he bellowed, gaining the attention of every newspaper-reading, coffee-drinking patron in the Prairie Dawn, who stared at the generally good-natured high school principal with eyes wide and mouths dropped open.
His yelling seemed to spur Maggie into action and her brow furrowed as she walked out from behind the bar, took hold of his sleeve and pulled him back out the front door. He had no choice but to follow behind her. She held onto his arm as they walked around behind the café toward the river, not stopping until they reached a picnic table by the water that had seen a few too many winters. She maneuvered herself to sit down on the beat-up bench, folded her hands in front of her on the weathered table and looked up at Paul.
He was too angry to sit. “What the fuck, Maggie?”
“You’re not goin’ to be usin’ that language with me, Paul Johansson. No matter how angry you are, you’ll be tonin’ it down.” She held his eyes until he looked away. “Now start over or we’re done here.”
“Am I losing my goddamned mind or is Holly actually Zoë?”
Maggie took a long, deep breath through her nose then nodded. “Holly and Zoë are the same person.”
He placed a palm on his chest as his heart galloped painfully and his breathing hitched uncomfortably, making him ache.
“How—when did you find out?” she asked.
“I called her inn this morning and found out her last name is Flannigan. She forgot to disguise her voice and I recognized it. She must have forgotten to be Zoë for a minute. Little. Fucking. Liar.”
“I’m warnin’ you about the language.”
He wished he could calm the fierce thumping of his heart, which reverberated in his ears, making his head pound. He nodded once in acknowledgment of her words before continuing.
“We had dinner last night. Me and Zoë. It was amazing. I told her I was breaking up with Holly and she said—she said…‘What if Holly was here? What if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could have both of us?’ It wasn’t sitting right with me, so I wanted to call her before she left for the park this morning, and…and…and I called her and…”
His voice was practically a whisper as he sank down on the edge of the table beside Maggie, his anger losing momentum as he felt his heart breaking. He was the stupidest, blindest man who ever walked the earth. How could he not have seen it? How could he have been such an idiot?
“…figured out that Zoë’s Holly,” Maggie murmured. “She came here to tell you.”
Maggie’s words poured heat and anger back into his blood and he almost sighed with relief, grateful for a distraction from the crushing sorrow.
“Tell me what? That everything between us is a big, fat fucking lie? I mean, do I even know who the fuck she is?”
“That’s it.” Maggie slapped her hands on the picnic table and got up like she was leaving. Paul grabbed her wrist.
“Wait. Stop. Please.” He looked up at his friend and knew she had to see it in his eyes by the way hers softened. She had to see that the ground was shifting madly under his feet and the world he’d been living in was crumbling around him. She could see. She knew. She sat back down slowly, giving him a warning look.
“No more f-bombs, Paul. I mean it, now.”
“Sorry. I won’t curse like that, Maggie. I’m sorry. I’m a mess. I’m trying to understand what the f—hell is going on here.”
“She’s just—”
“She’s just a goddamned liar. Jesus, Maggie, I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not real!”
“I don’t think that’s true at all. You’re upset and you’re overreacti—”
“Oh, am I overreacting? Am I? Because it seems like the woman I have fallen in love with—twice n
ow—has been lying to me since day one.”
“Paul, you need to listen to what you’re sayin—”
“How did you know? How did you know, and I didn’t know? Am I that much of an idiot? That blind? Was she laughing at me the whole time?”
“No,” said Maggie gently. “I saw the original picture on the website before she took it down. She looks very different now, but I figured it out. And no, Paul. She wasn’t laughin’ at you. Never once. Not at all. She’s been a wreck since she arrived, tryin’ to figure out how to tell you, how to make it right.”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause this is a pretty good joke on me. She poses as a hot, put-together blonde and then shows up later as an edgy, tattooed—”
“Be careful what you say. I can’t unhear your words.”
“I mean, is this how she gets her kicks? Duping guys into thinking she’s one thing, then—”
“Enough.” Maggie’s tone was harsh and final. “Enough. I don’t even know who you are right now. She made some mistakes. She liked you too much to come clean. For God’s sake, she didn’t kill anyone.”
Paul’s eyes widened at Maggie’s tone and he swallowed, clenching his jaw painfully.
“She killed my heart,” he whispered, staring, crestfallen, at his friend. “I don’t understand.”
“Will you let me talk? Let me help you understand.” Her voice softened and she cocked her head to the side, her eyes compassionate and gentle. “Take a deep breath…good. Now another. I need you to calm down and then we’ll talk about it all.”
Paul swallowed the gigantic lump in his throat, taking two deep breaths. He glanced at his watch. “I have to call school and tell them I’m running late.”
He took his phone out of his back pocket and moved away from Maggie, dialing the number of the school secretary. In seven years, he’d never missed a day of school and now he was deliberately going in late to sort out his train wreck of a love life. He took another deep breath, explained to the secretary that he’d be about an hour late and then hung up. Turning to Maggie, he came and sat across from her at the table.
“Okay. I’ll shut up. Please tell me what’s going on?”
Maggie held his eyes for a moment before nodding.
“The picture? The girl in the white sundress? That’s her. The same girl that’s here in Gardiner now. Zoë. Zoë Holly Flannigan. It was taken two years ago at her aunt’s weddin’ by her sister. Two years ago—when she was sunny and bright, when she was an art teacher with her whole life ahead of her—she placed an ad on MeettheOne.com one night with a girlfriend. A week or two later, she was in a car accident and it changed her life.
“When I first found Zoë on the datin’ website, there’d been another picture up of her smilin’ face, but I only saw it once before she took it down. You never saw it at all. When she walked into the Prairie Dawn with you on Saturday, I recognized her right away, but couldn’t place her immediately. I knew her, I just didn’t know from where. And then I watched her face as you talked about Miss Mystic. She squirmed in her seat and—I don’t know. I knew. I just knew it was her. I mean, she looks worlds different. The dark hair, dark eyes, the scar—”
“Her eyes are brown now. Did the accident change her eye color too?” he asked acidly. “This is insane, Maggie.”
“They’re contacts,” Maggie told him. “She showed them to me.”
Paul’s jaw dropped, staring at Maggie, trying to process all of this information.
“She showed you her contacts? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I confronted her at the Prairie Dawn on Saturday night. Right before she left…I told her that I knew who she was. I was angry and suspicious of her, just like you are now. You knew somethin’ was up between us because after I upset her, you chased after her. I thought about tellin’ you the truth then, but I just—” She shrugged, looking like she might cry. “You already liked her. Zoë. I couldn’t tell you who she was because I was afraid you wouldn’t give her a chance.”
“And why should I?” he muttered.
Maggie ignored him. “I needed to be sure she wasn’t playin’ games with you or settin’ you up for a fall, so that night, I went to her room at the Mountain View.”
“Wow,” he deadpanned. “Good thing I didn’t take a fall.”
Maggie shook her head, glancing up at him with sad eyes.
“I did what I thought was best,” she whispered. “There’s no guidebook for this situation.”
“You don’t say.” He clenched his jaw. “Keep going.”
“I asked her the same questions you’re askin’ me now…why her hair and eyes were dark. The scar on her face. I wanted to know why she was here and if she was goin’ to hurt my friend. She told me about the accident. Told me she’d filled out that web profile a week before the accident and forgot to take it down. She said that when I wrote to her…Oh, Paul.” Maggie shook her head, looking away from him. Finally she composed herself and looked him right in the eyes when she continued. “She said it was like the sun comin’ out after two years of darkness. That you were just so wonderful. She said she tried to tell you several times that she wasn’t the same girl she’d been in the picture, but she couldn’t do it. She said she couldn’t risk losin’ you.”
He winced, exhaling, not even realizing he’d been holding his breath as Maggie was speaking. Her words felt like hope to him, like possibility and hope, but he pushed them away. He needed his anger right now. He needed to protect himself.
“It made her happy. You made her happy. So, she just pretended to be the girl in the picture. The girl she was before the accident. But when you told her you were comin’ for a visit, she panicked. She decided she should come out here and try to tell you the truth. But then she met you and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear to hurt you or have you…reject her.”
Paul tented his hands in front of him and bent his head, resting his forehead on his hands.
“She’s in love with you,” Maggie said softly, and Paul’s eyes whipped up to lock onto hers. “She loves you. I asked her three times and she said yes every time. She was tellin’ the truth.”
He’d be lying if he said the words didn’t matter. They mattered. They were everything to him. But he only had a moment to enjoy them before his wary disappointment returned with crushing force. He scoffed bitterly.
“Telling the truth, Maggie? That’s a laugh. She wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and punched her in the nose.”
“Paul,” Maggie started, shaking her head. “Look in your heart. She’s the same person. Holly. Zoë. It’s just a name. Who she is, the woman who loves you, the woman you fell for…is her.”
He felt his anger slip away again until he was defenseless, emotionally naked, laid out and flayed open. Hopeful. Hurt. Longing. Oozing.
Hurt won. It didn’t matter that she told Maggie that she loved him because whatever she felt for him couldn’t be real if it was built on lies and deception. Not to mention, she’d told Maggie, not him. She hadn’t even trusted him enough to tell him the truth after meeting him. And it hurt so badly, he felt like his heart might stop beating and he’d just die. Right there on a beat-up picnic table.
“My mind is…blown. I just feel so…” Sad. So fucking sad.
Maggie reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“For not telling me? For finding her in the first place? For knowing who she was three days before I did? For what, Maggie?”
“For all of it.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, covering her hand with his gently. “She deceived you too.”
“I don’t think that was her intention. I think it just…happened.”
“Lies don’t just happen. She knew what she was doing.” He shook his head back and forth, biting on his lower lip. “You know the weird thing? I was so worried that I was going to hurt one of them. Holly or Zoë. It never occurred to me I’d be the one in pain.”
“I think you’re lookin’ at it all
wrong,” said Maggie gently.
“How’s that? What other way is there?”
“We all lie. In little ways. Sometimes in big ways. Sometimes outright. Sometimes,” she shrugged, moving her hands to her stomach, where they lay still, one over the other, “by omission. Think of what she’s been through. Think of why she did it. Maybe she felt you wouldn’t want her if she told you the truth. If you knew, she’d hurt you emotionally the way the accident had hurt her nephew physically. If you knew she lied about her life. If you knew she wasn’t sunny and perfect anymore. If you found out she wasn’t a teacher. You set the bar so high. She thought she’d lose you.”
“So, this is my fault?”
“No. Of course not. But give her a chance. Try to see it through her eyes.”
“Her brown eyes?”
“Her blue eyes. Her real eyes,” said Maggie. “They’re still there. They’re just hidin’.”
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? We had the same amount to lose, but we weren’t on a level playing field. She was hiding. She got to know me, but I never got to know her. I have no idea who she is. She lied to me from the beginning. There’s nothing else to say.”
“She’s not perfect. Sometimes you have to hold things back. To protect yourself. To protect someone else,” Maggie said softly, intensely, more to herself than Paul.
“Well, I certainly wasn’t the one she protected,” said Paul, standing up and pulling his legs out from under the table.
“Are you so sure about that?”
“Yeah, I am. Because I’ve never hurt this badly in my life.”
Maggie’s face was unspeakably sad as she looked up at her friend. “She loves you, Paul. I’m sure of it.”
Paul winced. “Who loves me? I don’t even know who she is.”
Then he turned, walking away, leaving Maggie alone at the weather-beaten picnic table overlooking the rushing river.
CHAPTER 17
Zoë opted to sit shotgun beside Nils in the van, but the beauty of Yellowstone blurred into a watercolor of blues, browns and greens as she stared out the window, biting on her nails, worry making her stomach roll around until she felt sick.