Behind Every Lie

by Christina McDonald

  “That isn’t fair,” I protested. “I had to go to London! I needed to find out if my mom’s past had anything to do with her murder. Don’t you get it? If I can’t prove someone else did it, they’re going to put me in jail!”

  “So sue me for being worried!”

  “Stop. Worrying. Then,” I said between clenched teeth. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “I can’t even believe you just said that. I’m trying to help you!”

  “I’m sorry.…” I couldn’t believe I’d said it either. Where had it come from? This was why nobody trusted me, why I couldn’t trust myself.

  He snatched his keys from the entry table and grabbed my coat. “Let’s go. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “What?” I leaped to my feet. “No. I’m not going!”

  “This is not you, Eva! You aren’t acting like yourself. You were struck by lightning only a week ago, or had you forgotten that too?”

  I gasped, shocked he’d throw my memory problems in my face. “I’m sorry, Liam …”

  His shoulders relaxed, his handsome features dragging downward in relief.

  “. . . no.”

  His mouth hinged open. Of course he was surprised. Because I never said no to him. I never argued with him. I did what he wanted. Was that how our relationship had always worked? How pathetic was I, if that was true?

  “Listen to me.” He was using his calm, grown-up voice, his be reasonable voice. For a second, I fucking hated him. “You were struck by lightning. You ripped an IV out of your arm and ran away from the hospital, then you flew to London on a whim. You’re exhibiting every single one of those psychological symptoms the doctor warned us about. You can’t even remember things right. What about that cut on your hand? You thought it happened at your mom’s house, but you cut it here, with me.”

  I looked at the cut on my palm, now scabbing over.

  “The knife,” I whispered. “If Sebastian killed Mom, why do I remember holding it? And those texts from my mom I remember but aren’t even on my phone …”

  I sank back onto the couch, pressing the heels of my hands into my temples. Nothing made sense. My brain felt like it was full of loose marbles, scattered and confused. I choked back a wave of terror rising in my throat. I didn’t know what to think, what to believe.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Liam was pleading with me now. “Let’s get the doctor to check you out.”

  “Fine,” I relented. “You’re right, I need to go in. They still have my ring anyway.” I showed him my bare hand. “They must’ve forgotten to give it to me after the CAT scan.”

  “Don’t worry about the ring. I’ll get you a new one.”

  “I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow,” I promised. “I have to go in to speak to the detective anyway, and I can’t go tonight. I don’t want him to have any more reason to think I’m a crazy person.”

  * * *

  In the garage, I poured dried cat food into Ginger’s bowl and let her inside to eat. I tuned the radio to my favorite dance station and slipped on a work apron, then slid the heart-shaped piece of jade out of my backpack and shook the broken pieces of the urn onto my work desk.

  My hands were shaking, from fatigue or fear, I wasn’t sure, but I felt a sense of impending doom curling around me like smoke. I closed my eyes and took a few deep yoga breaths. Then I mixed a batch of epoxy with fine gold dust and meticulously applied the mixture to each of the broken pieces, reconstructing the urn like a jigsaw puzzle.

  After an hour the urn was back to its former shape, with just one large piece missing. I slid the heart-shaped jade into the hole and smiled. It was a perfect fit. I filled the cracks with more epoxy and gold dust and held the jade in place until it had set, then carefully painted a lacquer–gold dust mix along each crack.

  When I’d finished, I traced my fingers over the urn’s surface. It was beautiful. A thick line of gold outlined the heart-shaped jade. Fine webs of gold expanded outward across the curls of pinks and browns. Gold dust sparkled in the air, making the urn shimmer, like a mirage. I blinked as it landed on my eyelashes and distorted my vision, a memory suddenly swirling with the gold dust.

  I was reading in bed, Liam sleeping beside me. My phone chimed a text from my mom.

  Eva, can you come over? I realize it’s late, but it’s urgent.

  I sat up abruptly, the bedcovers falling to my waist. Mom wasn’t one for exaggeration. She must really need me. I checked the time. The ferry was still running for a few more hours. I could probably get to her house and back before the last one returned at 2 a.m.

  Ok, but I’ll have to wait for the ferry. Can prob get next one but will still be an hour or so.

  I’ll be waiting. Love you.

  I sneezed, the gold dust tickling my nose and snapping me back to the present. I stared at the labyrinth of gold on the urn’s surface.My brain jolted, and I inhaled sharply. There was something wrong with the texts. Not just that they were missing.

  I closed my eyes, letting the memory replay. I could see the screen hot white in the dim light of my bedroom, the text conversation parading before my mind.

  And suddenly I knew what was wrong.

  The words. The terminology. It was all wrong.

  Mom never signed her texts Love you. She’d never even said it out loud, as far as I could remember. Not that she didn’t love me, just that her love had always been implied instead of explicitly said. Talking about emotions, feeling emotions, was completely off the table for her.

  So who’d really texted me?

  Because if there was one thing I was suddenly certain of, it was that Mom hadn’t sent those texts.

  thirty

  eva

  AFTER I’D FINISHED the last coat of gold lacquer paint, I set the urn aside to dry. Ginger wound around my leg, her familiar purr filling the room. I scooped her up and set her outside. I didn’t want Liam to see her inside. He wasn’t exactly a cat person.

  My phone rang. It was Andrew.

  “Are you back from London?” he asked when I answered.

  “Just back a few hours ago.”

  “Good. We need to meet Mom’s lawyer to go over her will. Are you free next Thursday?” I heard a police siren in the background and the brisk clip of shoes on pavement.

  “I think so. Why?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What is it, Andrew?”

  “It isn’t my place to say,” Andrew said finally. “We have to address everything together at the lawyer’s office.”

  I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle my brother. “God, Andrew! You could at least tell me what’s going on before I get there.”

  “I can’t,” he said stiffly. “The will stipulates that we read it together.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “Send me the details, I guess, and I’ll try to meet you there.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  “Wait! Andrew, I actually wanted to ask you something. Did Mom ever say ‘I love you’ to you? Like out loud or in a text?” I stroked my fingers over the marks on my arm. The electric tingling was gone now. Instead the feeling running over my skin was dread.

  “Hmmm.” Andrew paused to think about it. “I guess not that I can remember, no. She wasn’t great at expressing emotions. She was raised in a different era, a different country. You know.”

  I nodded. He was right, I did know.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I just have this weird memory of reading a text from her that said, Love you, but it isn’t something I can remember her ever saying. I’m probably just imagining the text anyway. I can’t even find it on my phone.”

  “No offense, but I wouldn’t trust any of your memories right now. You probably just imagined it.” Andrew’s voice was strangely high-pitched.

  I leaned back in my chair and looked outside. Ginger had jumped onto the window ledge and was bathing herself, one hind leg thrown up in the air, looking at me with half-closed eyes. Night was drawing around the house, dark a
nd dreary. Small drops of rain gathered into silver rivers that snaked down the windows.

  “Have you remembered anything else?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “Not really.” A telephone conversation was not the right time to explain everything to my brother, I decided. I would tell him next time I saw him.

  There was silence on Andrew’s end of the phone.

  “I miss her,” I said softly.

  “Yeah, me too. Remember when we had that garage sale, and Mom made you and me, Jacob and Lily write price tags to stick on every single item we were selling? She even filled out a spreadsheet so she could compare what we’d sold against how much we’d intended to sell it for. But then that kid from your school, his house had burned down and his family was renting an empty apartment—”

  “—and Mom hired a moving van and Lily got all the guys in the neighborhood to pack it full of things that they would need instead of doing the garage sale.” I smiled at the memory. It felt nice connecting with my brother.

  I picked at a splotch of gold lacquer on my desk, but my stubby nails were too short to get it off.

  “Are you just getting off work?” I asked.

  “No, I was at the police station. Detective Jackson brought me in for questioning.” Andrew enunciated each word sharply, the way he did when he was pissed off.

  “Why? They don’t suspect you too, do they?”

  He sighed. “They suspect everybody. It’s part of their job.” I could tell when Andrew put our call on the hands-free system, the sound becoming a tinny echo. “Did you know the police found your DNA and fingerprints at Mom’s house?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Eva—” He stopped abruptly, like he was debating what his next words should be. “It’s strange that you can’t remember anything. And you didn’t remember the night you were … you know. You didn’t remember that either.…”

  What was he really trying to ask me? I thought of the knife in my hand, the blinding, all-consuming rage, so intense it hijacked the logical part of my brain. But then I thought of our camping trips on Whidbey Island when I was a kid. Dad always stayed behind to work, but Mom would pack up our camping stuff, and she and Andrew and I would squish into one tiny tent and it would be cold and rainy, even in June, but we’d all be laughing as we set up another game of Uno.

  I loved my mother. I did. That was real.

  “Did you hurt Mom?” Andrew asked.

  “I can’t believe you would even ask me that,” I whispered. My eyes burned. Was I really capable of doing this thing they all thought I did? “It’s just circumstantial evidence. It doesn’t mean I did anything wrong! What about you? Weren’t your DNA and fingerprints there?”

  “Yes, but I was at her house last week.”

  “Why?”

  The sound of shifting gears reverberated over the hands-free.

  “I was meeting her for dinner. She didn’t answer my knock, so I let myself in and waited. Anyway, I was always visiting her. I mowed her lawn, took her to dinner, changed her fucking lightbulbs. What did you do? You were never around! Even now, you’re off in your own world! So explain to me, Eva, why are your fingerprints on the mug? What did you do to Mom?”

  He’d raised his voice so he was almost shouting. I gasped, stunned by the vitriol from my stoic brother.

  “Did you know Mom had a gun?” Andrew bit out. “Did you ever stop to think, maybe she bought a gun because she was afraid of you?”

  * * *

  “Eva.”

  The sound of my name made me jump. I lifted my head from where it was resting on the surface of my desk. Liam was standing in the garage doorway holding a glass of red wine. His eyes were circled with purplish rings, his features dragged down by exhaustion. He held the glass out to me like a peace offering.

  “Thank you.” I took a giant gulp, relishing the acidic burn of the wine sliding down my throat. I rarely drank since that night four years ago, but I needed something to soothe the venom of Andrew’s words.

  “You okay?”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.” Liam knelt next to me, his gaze earnest. “About earlier. I shouldn’t have tried to force you to go to the hospital.”

  I pressed a finger to his lips and kissed him, long and slow. His arms tightened around me, his body solid and steady against mine.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” I said. “You’re just worried about me, and I appreciate it. And you’re right, I do need to go. Maybe the lightning has changed me. I feel like I’ve landed in the wrong country, a million miles from the person I used to be.”

  “Well, I’m here to take care of you. I’ll help you fill in the gaps.”

  I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, my body softening against his. Liam’s heartbeat thrummed against my forehead, steady as a drum. He lifted my chin and kissed me again, a kiss that told me I was his world.

  When he pulled away, he was smiling. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this together, okay? Forever.”

  I nodded, and Liam pulled me to my feet.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re too pale. You need a proper meal, something with lots of protein. Go wash your hands and clean yourself up. I’ll get dinner started. I have a salmon in the fridge. It’s wild and sustainable so we don’t destroy the oceans.”

  He smiled, a teasing glint in his eye. Liam thought it was charming—his word—that I’d spent most of my adult life trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I wore secondhand clothes. I had been a vegetarian since I was a teenager. I recycled everything. These things were completely foreign to a man like Liam.

  Fish was, strictly speaking, against my rules as a vegetarian. But right now I didn’t want to argue. I wanted Liam to be happy, and he was happiest when he was taking charge.

  “Fine.” I followed him into the kitchen. “But after we eat, I need the number for that lawyer. I want to make sure he’ll come with me to the detective’s office in the morning.”

  “No problem.” He gave me a wry little smile. “I’ll even go with you if you want.”

  I washed my hands with soap and hot water, using the dish scrubber to scrape at the epoxy on my fingertips. When I’d finished, my hands were raw and bright red.

  Liam grabbed the salmon out of the fridge.

  I sat at the island, watching him bustle about the kitchen as I sipped my wine. The tannins tingled delicately at the back of my throat. The wine hitting my empty stomach created a glorious sense of floating inside a feather pillow.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what Andrew had said. Had Mom really bought a gun because she was scared of me? I wasn’t in my right mind after the rape, and I was even more messed up after I gave the baby up. But the thought that she’d bought a gun because I scared her made me feel physically sick to my stomach.

  More proof that I couldn’t trust myself.

  Liam washed the salmon and set it on a wooden cutting board. He pulled a gleaming black boning knife from the knife block, pressed the knife into a point behind the fish’s head, and sliced through the ribs to the tail, then backward, from tail to head, until he had two glistening pink fillets. Then he slipped the knife between the rib bones and flesh, grasped the bones, and ripped them out in one swift movement.

  My stomach turned, nausea shimmering in my gut. The knife glinted under the kitchen can lights, sparking the memory again, now sharply etched, demanding to be seen.

  I look down at my hands. A knife is resting in my outstretched palm. One of my mom’s wooden-handled knives. It’s covered in blood. I fold my fingers over the blade, squeezing until the blade digs into the soft skin of my palm, slicing deeply, crimson blood running free.

  I got up and crossed the kitchen to grab the open bottle of wine from the countertop. As I refilled my glass, my eyes fell on the knife block, sitting innocuously next to the microwave. I reached for the other boning knife. Despite being small and narrow, it was surprisingly heavy. I turned it over in my hand, the blade flashing b
lack against my pale skin. The handle scraped against the crusted scab on my left hand and I winced.

  I curled my fingers around the handle. My brain was light as a feather, a cluster of bubbles floating and twisting in the breeze.

  This knife was totally different than the one I remembered from Mom’s, a pale wood handle with black Japanese steel compared to Mom’s dark-wood handle and silver-steel blade. And yet …

  It felt familiar. I could imagine the blade slippery with blood, the weight of it in my hand, the sharp, narrow blade hot and slick as it sliced into my palm.

  I was there.

  I remember.

  Don’t I?

  I closed my eyes as an unexpected anger hissed through my body like poison, screeching a demand to be released. I gritted my teeth, pain shooting from my molars to my temples.

  The problem was, I liked it.

  “Eva?” Liam’s voice snapped me back to reality.

  I whirled around unsteadily. My body weaved as I blinked at him, the walls swaying behind him. He had a strange look on his face. A worried look.

  How long had he been talking to me?

  Liam walked slowly toward me, his hands outstretched. He reached for the knife. I yanked it away from him, rage coursing through me deliciously.

  “Eva.” His voice was firm, authoritative.

  I fucking hated it when he used that stupid boomy voice on me. Like I was one of his minions. Like I was just someone to—

  “Give me the knife, Eva.”

  I looked into his clear blue eyes and the strange black cloak that had descended on me tumbled to the floor.

  “Sorry. Here.” I thrust the knife toward him, blade down. I felt dizzy and light-headed.

  Liam plucked it from my outstretched hand and slid it back into the block. He put his hands on my shoulders and led me back to my seat at the island.

  “Here. Sit back and relax.” He set my wineglass in front of me and returned to preparing dinner in that efficient, single-minded way he had, as if I hadn’t just acted like a completely insane person.