Behind Every Lie

by Christina McDonald

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Kat was cheating on me. She had an affair with a woman.”

  twenty-eight

  kat

  25 years before

  I MIGHT HAVE BEEN rather a lot of terrible things by then—a thief, a fraud, a kidnapper—but I was certainly no liar. So I transferred the money to Colin Wilson as promised.

  I tucked Eva back into bed and lay on the couch with a package of frozen peas pressed to my sore head. I stayed awake deep into the night watching the door through blurry eyes and trying to figure out what to do. Paying Colin Wilson had only bought us time, but I’d use that time wisely. We had a few months, perhaps, if I was lucky. I had known men like him before.

  The terrifying thing was that he knew where we lived, and he knew I had Eva. At some point, Seb would likely find out.

  We had to leave. But first I needed money. Money besides what Rose had given Laura. I needed to save that to buy off anybody else who came looking for us.

  I needed a job.

  The next morning, the pain in my head was vicious and debilitating but I dressed Eva and myself with shaky fingers and we took the bus to the center of Evanston.

  Eva peppered me with questions the entire way. Why is poop brown when you eat orange carrots? How does snow get on top of mountains if they’re above the clouds? When I get to heaven, can I be a hot dog? I think your boobs look down ’cause they’re grumpy, Mommy. What’s inside a rainbow?

  By the time we got off the bus, the pain was so intense I was ready to throw her against a wall. I kept my jaw firmly locked in place, wishing I had some painkillers to ease the pounding in my head. I couldn’t seem to shake the pain.

  I first went to the public library. Although I hadn’t finished university, I did have some education and felt I would fit well there temperamentally.

  But they had no positions for an unemployed person without a degree.

  Next I went to an upscale hotel, thinking it would be easy enough to answer phones and greet customers. The sleek, blond, pencil-thin girl at the front desk looked me up and down and smirked.

  “Honey, do you even own a pair of heels?” she asked. Her nasal American accent made her sound as if she were stretching her mouth around all the letters simultaneously. I wanted to slap the cruel smile off her face.

  I tried in a series of shops with no success. Just as I was about to take Eva home for lunch, I saw a NOW HIRING sign in a small Chinese restaurant. Inside, the Asian owner thrust an application form at me, barely even looking at me.

  Eva was hungry and grumpy and wandered to the other side of the restaurant to look at the goldfish tank while I filled in the application form.

  “Here. I’ve finished.” I handed the form to the owner. He had small, round glasses and a thin, unkempt mustache. He scowled and snatched the application, adjusting his glasses as he read.

  “You know how to drive?” he asked. “We need a delivery driver.”

  I didn’t even have my license in America. The thought of driving on the opposite side of the road, the opposite side of the car, with all those large vehicles rushing around, filled me with abject terror.

  I swallowed hard and smiled. “Yes, certainly. I can do anything, I just—”

  Suddenly I realized that Eva was not there.

  I spun around. “Eva?” I called.

  I raced to the fish tank, but she wasn’t there. “Where’s Eva? Where’s my daughter?”

  He shrugged.

  I pushed past him to look in the kitchen. A chef looked up from chopping celery, his face a mask of surprise.

  My heart thudded, making the pounding in my head swell to an unbearable crescendo. I felt cold and hot all over, my hands shaking with terror. Had Seb found us already? Had he taken her?

  An intense, all-consuming panic crashed into me, unfamiliar and strange. I had always sat on my emotions. As a child I’d learned no one would listen, and as an adult I knew emotions were simply a chemical reaction in the limbic system, fleeting and unreliable. My ability to remain impassive had suited me well in my adult life. But now, after everything that had happened, to lose Eva a second time …

  I slammed the front door open and stumbled into the street. A bus whizzed by, forcing me to stagger backward.

  “Eva!”

  I crashed into a man dressed in a business suit and smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, watch it!” he shouted angrily.

  “My little girl—” I clutched his forearm, my fingers like claws. I must’ve looked like a madwoman, but I didn’t care. “Have you seen my little girl?”

  “Get off me!” He shook himself free, straightened his sleeve, and strode briskly away, throwing a disgusted glance back at me.

  I saw her then. She was a ways up from the Chinese restaurant, looking in the front window of a pet shop. She saw me and waved exuberantly.

  “Mommy, look!” she called. “Puppies!”

  I staggered to her, clutching my chest as if it would burst out of my coat. I wanted to slap her and hold her all at once. I fell to my knees and shook her, just once, hard and sharp. I touched her cheek with my fingertips, stroked a hand down her silken hair, and clasped her to my chest.

  She looked surprised, unused to my touch other than a firmly clasped hand as we walked. She was absolutely fine. Not a scratch on her.

  But at that moment I knew.

  I wouldn’t be getting a job.

  * * *

  I could not survive on my own with a small child.

  I tried to think what Rose would do, and suddenly the solution seemed so obvious. I bought red lipstick and mascara, a low-cut dress from the charity shop, a cheap bottle of red wine.

  That evening I stared at myself in the bedroom mirror. I looked rather good, if I did say so myself. It was a shame I had not found high heels that fit—the girl in the hotel had been correct, I didn’t even own a pair. But it could not be helped. I was as sexy and unlike myself as I could possibly muster.

  When I knew Mike would be home from work, I went to Mrs. Mitchell’s apartment next door and rang her doorbell. She opened the door, peering at me through thick glasses that enlarged her rheumy blue eyes.

  “Oh, hello, Kat! Would you like to come in?” She pulled the door open, the sound of her telly wafting out to me.

  “Thank you, but no. I’ve left Eva inside. I’m meant to have a date, and my babysitter didn’t arrive. I was just wondering, could you watch Eva for a bit? Two hours, tops. I know it’s last-minute, I’m truly sorry. I feel dreadful.”

  She grinned, her eyes lighting up. “A date, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, sure, honey. I don’t mind at all. I was a single mom myself. I know how hard it is. You go enjoy yourself.”

  “Brilliant! Thank you so much!”

  She followed me back to my apartment.

  “Eva, darling, Mrs. Mitchell is going to watch you for a bit this evening.”

  For a moment Eva looked frightened, like she would protest, but Mrs. Mitchell opened her arms, her smile wide and friendly.

  “Come here, honey,” she said. “We can watch some cartoons together. Would you like that?”

  Eva nodded and climbed onto Mrs. Mitchell’s lap. She popped her thumb in her mouth, her gaze on the telly. I hesitated. I knew I should hug her good-bye. That’s what a good mum would do. But I could not seem to get my body to do so. She wasn’t the little girl I wanted to hold.

  I shut the door gently and walked away. There were more pressing matters at hand right now, like how we were going to survive. I continued down the corridor to Mike’s apartment, wiping my damp hands on my dress.

  This had to work.

  Mike’s eyes widened when he opened the door, sweeping from my face to my low-cut dress. I thrust the wine at him. “I brought some wine.”

  “Uhhmmm …” His cheeks flushed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Come in.”

  Mike’s apartment had the same layout as ours, filled with much
the same things: cheap, saggy furniture; crooked, generic photos on the walls; a tattered brown rug in the entryway. His sink was overflowing with unwashed dishes. The air smelled of grease and TV dinners.

  I tried to ignore the mess and faced him. “I have a daughter.”

  Mike smiled, long and slow, and reached for my hand. I hesitated for the barest of moments, fear churning in my belly. I had been burned before, and I feared Mike treating me as Seb had. The fists I could almost endure, but not being controlled and oppressed. I’d had a taste of freedom from a man’s tyranny these last months and I’d rather grown to like it.

  And yet I knew somehow that Mike was not like that. He was a good man, a kind man, I was certain.

  And so I let him take my hand and pull me against his chest.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I have a lot of knock-knock jokes.”

  * * *

  We had sex that night and nearly every night afterward when Eva was in bed, until I awoke one morning and knew I was pregnant. Was it wrong to trick Mike when I did not love him? Perhaps. But it was the only way. Rose was dead; David could not protect Eva. Her safety, our safety was in my hands. Sexual attraction was simply the release of pheromones in the brain. Androstenone, androstadienone, and androstenol in the right quantity could make you attracted to anybody. It was just biology, after all.

  I could forge a good life out of this situation.

  Mike and I married in a simple ceremony at City Hall with Mrs. Mitchell as our witness, and he adopted Eva soon after. When he told me he was being transferred to Seattle for a management position at a car dealership there, I was utterly thrilled. My plan couldn’t have gone any better.

  In Seattle, with new names, we would finally be safe from Seb.

  twenty-nine

  eva

  DAD DROVE ME to Mom’s house to get Melissa’s car. I put the SIM card back in my phone and turned it on. It immediately sprang to life, vibrating and pinging with app notifications and alerts, missed calls, texts, e-mails.

  Dad glanced at me and smiled. “Popular much?”

  “I turned my phone off for a few days,” I explained.

  I scrolled through the notifications. More condolences on Instagram, a few e-mails from news reporters requesting interviews, a link from Holly to an obituary for my mom, missed calls from Liam, Andrew, and Detective Jackson. I scrolled through texts from Melissa and a few other friends, stopping when I came to a blocked number.

  I stared at the text message. It had been sent two days ago.

  It took a long time for her to die after her throat was slit. Go home or you’ll die the same way.

  My fingers went numb with fear. I scrolled to the next message. It had been sent from a different blocked number.

  Go home now, Eva. Or go home in a body bag.

  “Everything all right?” Dad asked.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.” I forced a laugh. Dad was worried enough about me as it was. I couldn’t tell him about this too. “Just letting Liam know when I’ll be home.”

  Dad pulled up behind Melissa’s car. I leaned across the console and hugged him good-bye, but he grabbed my arm as I turned to go.

  “Eva, promise me you’ll speak to that lawyer. You have to take him in with you when you talk to the detective. I’m serious now, okay? Promise me.”

  I nodded. “I promise, Dad.”

  I hugged him again. An extra one for luck.

  * * *

  The evergreen trees and steel-gray waters of Puget Sound were shrouded in an uneasy fog as I drove off the ferry a little later. I couldn’t get my mind off those texts. Who were they from?

  As I drove through Langley, I decided to swing by the gallery and get Fiona’s broken urn. I had the piece of jade, and I knew exactly how it should be repaired now. I would fix it tonight before I went in to see the detective tomorrow morning.

  Melissa was out to lunch, so I grabbed the things I needed and ran back to the car. I drove home too fast, an invisible urgency pushing at my back. The house was painted in stark bands of light and shadow that fell between the evergreen trees. Dirty-gray clouds lumbered through the sky. The air smelled earthy and damp, like pine and rainwater and rotting leaves and death.

  Shadows danced across the gravel at my feet as I got out of the car. The house looked quiet, almost abandoned in the shifting light. I shivered, that familiar tingling feeling zipping like electricity down my arms and up my spine. I looked around, expecting the weight of someone’s eyes to be boring into me.

  But there was no one there.

  It’s just because it’s so empty out here, I reminded myself.

  Mr. Ayyad appeared around the curve of the lake in the distance, out for a run with his husky faithfully keeping pace. He waved, his lined face creasing into a huge smile. I waved and forced a smile, turning quickly to hurry toward the front door.

  “Liam?” I called as I entered.

  I dropped my backpack on the floor. The gunshot sound of my shoes striking the hardwood floor reminded me to take them off. I was just kicking them into a corner when Liam appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Eva!”

  He jogged down the stairs and swept me into a hug. He was wearing a charcoal-gray business suit with a crisp white shirt and a navy tie. I pressed myself against him, savoring the feel of his body, his smell, the warmth of his skin.

  “I’ve been so worried about you!” he murmured into my hair. “How’s your head? How are you feeling?” He held me at arm’s length, his eyes caressing my face, checking to make sure I was okay.

  “Fine. Look.” I shrugged my coat off, dropped it to the ground, and lifted my shirtsleeve to show him my arm. “The marks are almost gone.”

  Liam hung my coat and backpack on the coatrack and tugged me over to the couch. I sat next to him, letting myself relax into him, his presence like a warm cup of tea after coming in from the rain.

  For the first time in days, I felt safe.

  I leaned my head back against the couch. “It is so good to be home,” I said.

  “Err … not to bring you down, but that detective was here again yesterday,” Liam said. “He wants you to call him.”

  I stiffened. “Why was he here?”

  “He had more questions. I think he wants to formally question me, and I’m sure he’ll want the same from you. I told him we wouldn’t answer his questions without our lawyer.”

  “What sort of questions was he asking?”

  “The same ones, really. Where were you that night? What time did you leave? He mentioned …” Liam hesitated.

  “What, Liam? What did he mention?”

  He froze, his face blank. Too blank. He pulled a blanket from the side of the couch and tucked it tight across my lap, like I was a child.

  “Just … that night, the night your mom was killed. You had a migraine and said you were going to take some medicine and go to bed. Did you take anxiety medication with the migraine meds?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said finally.

  Liam looked disappointed, like I’d failed a particularly important question, so I rushed to add, “But I did learn some things while I was in London. Apparently my mom kidnapped me when I was three years old. My name isn’t Eva.…” I hesitated, unsure I wanted to say it out loud, to make it real. I took a deep breath. “My name is really Laura Ashford.”

  Liam stared at me, his face slack, the color of old putty. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. It was the first time I’d ever seen him completely speechless.

  I laughed drily. “Imagine what you’re feeling now and multiply it by a thousand. That was me a couple days ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “You were kidnapped?”

  “Sort of.…”

  I told him everything I’d learned about Mom’s past, excluding everything about my own. Call it pride, call it shame, I still didn’t want Liam to know what happened to me. Maybe I should’ve told him in the beginning, but how could I when I doubted my own memor
ies? I couldn’t risk losing him, then or now. Besides, it was too late to sit around stroking my Freudian beard and pondering all the things I should’ve done instead.

  “I think it was Sebastian who killed her,” I told Liam. He stared at me, horrified. “Someone was following me while I was in London.

  “Have you told the detective?”

  “No, I haven’t spoken to him yet. I’ll tell him when I go in to his office tomorrow. I just need to make sure that lawyer you spoke to can come in with me.”

  Liam stood and started pacing. He clasped his hands behind his back, the corners of his mouth tugging down the way they did when he was thinking. Relief swelled in my chest. Liam would fix this. After days of dealing with it on my own, I was glad to let him take control.

  “Are you absolutely sure someone was following you?” he asked.

  I hesitated, suddenly unsure. Had somebody been following me? That prickly feeling of someone watching me wasn’t new. But no one was ever there.

  “We can’t tell the detective somebody maybe, possibly followed you. Especially after you got struck by lightning. They’ll think you’re …” I knew he was about to say crazy. “Unreliable.”

  “Well, I definitely got these texts.” I handed him my phone, and he scanned the sinister texts. “I think they’re from him.”

  Liam’s eyes widened. “Oh my God.” For a second, he looked a little unhinged. He pulled me against his chest, cupping my head in his hand. “We need to get out of here, get you someplace safe, away from whoever this lunatic is. I have a property over on Orcas Island. It’s totally secluded and the security system is state of the art. We’ll be safe there.”

  “Wait. What?” I shook my head. If there was one thing I’d learned lately, it was that running away from a problem didn’t make it go away.

  “Just for a little while,” he reassured me, “until all of this dies down.”

  “I have to talk to the detective tomorrow. I can’t leave now.”

  He pressed his mouth together, his lips turning white. “You certainly didn’t have a problem leaving last time!”