Behind Every Lie

by Christina McDonald

  My gaze drifted up, to the painting of daffodils hanging over the fireplace.

  “Find her.…” I said, my voice failing me. “Your mother. Find …”

  And then I whispered her name in Eva’s ear.

  forty-six

  eva

  WHAT HAVE I DONE?

  The thought charged at me, stark and unrelenting. Blood was everywhere. Under my fingernails. In my mouth. In my hair. It was streaked across my shirt. On the floor, it blackened and congealed, filling the air with its metallic breath. The sickly sweet scent clung to the back of my throat.

  My mother was slumped on the floor in the living room, mouth gaping, brown eyes staring at nothing. A dark pool of blood seeped like molasses from a gaping wound at the base of her neck. The urgent beat of her pulse had faded to an unrelenting nothingness.

  Both my hands were clamped around her throat. An emotion thudded so viciously in my chest it was painful, like searing.

  “Mom!” I tried to scream.

  But only a choked sob came out.

  I looked at her glassy eyes, and a grief so fierce I couldn’t help but howl cinched around me.

  This was my fault. Sebastian had stabbed her because of me, because I tried to run.

  I started to shake uncontrollably.

  All the memories we shared bore down on me. She was my protector, my guardian, the one who’d held me in her arms when I cried after a bad dream. She’d wiped my tears and tucked me into bed. Her cool hand had brushed the hair from my feverish cheeks when I was sick. She’d taught me to play chess and build a tree house and stick up for myself when boys bullied me.

  I’d been so blind, so selfish and self-involved, all the while I’d stupidly ignored her many small gestures of love: leaving the light on when I was out late; waiting up to see I was safely home; double-checking the tire pressure on my car; making sure there was always a fire extinguisher in the house; putting a can of mace in my purse.

  She’d showed me she loved me the only way she knew how. She was my safe place, my home, my roots. And then I touched her cold cheek, already gray and slack, and she was none of these things.

  She was gone.

  And my heart shattered into a million pieces.

  I tried to move. I needed to call the police. But an intense wave of dizziness walloped me across the head.

  I stood, my legs like rubber bands, but Liam’s voice came to me from very far away. “Wait. Eva, don’t go!”

  His words triggered a memory.

  Wait. Eva, don’t go!

  Flashes of an alley slick with rain.

  Someone calling my name.

  The words burst in my ears like tiny grenades, sending me tumbling backward in time. Everything froze; time hung suspended, like it was holding its breath. The moisture drained from my mouth.

  “No.” I shook my head. I was wrong. I was looking for things that didn’t exist.

  Wasn’t I?

  But Liam had come to the hospital after I’d given birth. He’d been there at the club the night I was drugged. He’d followed me outside, watched as I threw up. I could feel his hand on my back, hear his soothing voice.

  Come with me, we’ll get you all cleaned up.

  “It was you,” I said. My hands were shaking. “You were the man I went home with that night. The man who raped me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Eva!” Liam was giving me that look—scrunched brow, pinched frown—that meant he pitied me, that I couldn’t trust myself. But there was something else there, something unfamiliar. A shift to his eyes that scared me.

  I stared at him. I knew I could be wrong about what I was thinking, what I remembered and what I didn’t.

  But then I heard those words echo again in my mind—Wait. Eva, don’t go!—and I knew I could trust myself. More than that, I knew I had to trust myself. I couldn’t let him control me anymore. Because those words were real, and the voice saying them was Liam’s.

  “Hurry up. Get this tape off me right now!” Liam was now using his low, authoritative voice, the one I never questioned.

  But it no longer had any power over me.

  Lightning scrawled across the sky outside the living room window, turning the blood the color of oil. Something else had replaced grief. A curl of white-hot anger sparked in me, scalding my face and arms. It caught fire, turning into a vicious type of fury with a new texture, the consistency warping and changing into something else: hatred.

  I wrenched my engagement ring off, my finger so slick with blood it slipped off easily. I threw it at Liam. It glanced off his shoulder, and he flinched.

  “You raped me!”

  “What? No!”

  I knelt and picked up the knife, my fingers wrapping around the blade. The hot steel bit into the flesh of my palm, and yet I liked it, that pain.

  My brain felt too light, like it was full of air. Like I would float away at any moment, a balloon coming untethered. My breath came in short bursts, and a strange darkness tinged the edges of my vision. Lightning forked from the sky, illuminating Mom’s body.

  I stared at Liam, this man to whom I’d given my heart, my soul, my life. But not anymore. The knife was heavy in my hand. For a second I was afraid of what I might do.

  “You raped me.” This time I could only whisper it. Shock slid down my body like ice, making me suddenly numb.

  The knife fell from my fingers as I staggered backward, away from him.

  Suddenly I was outside, the night sky pressing on my skin.

  The burning scent of ozone scorched the fine hairs of my nostrils, mingling with the pungent scent of wet earth. Black and purple clouds roiled in the night sky above. Thunder rumbled ominously. The air crackled with electricity, static lifting the fine hairs along my bare arms. Rain skidded into my scalp, licking at my face.

  I was crying so hard I could barely breathe.

  All I could do was run.

  forty-seven

  eva

  I BLINKED BACK to the present.

  I was lying on my back in the entryway of Mom’s house, Jacob hunched over me, his face crumpled with concern. Raindrops clattered hard against the porch, galloping down the slick surface of the open front door.

  “Are you okay? What happened?” he asked.

  The memories assaulted me like blows, making me see stars. I didn’t want to remember. It hurt so much.

  Jacob grasped my elbows, pulling me to a sitting position.

  “I remember the night she died. I didn’t kill her. Sebastian did.”

  Memories poured in. A familiar voice calling my name. Liam standing in the doorway. The knife in my palm, blade cutting into the tender skin as wave after wave of fury rolled over me.

  I lifted my bare left hand and showed Jacob. “Look. No burns. If I’d been wearing Liam’s ring when I got struck by lightning, the metal would’ve burned my finger. That means the ring was off my finger before I was struck by lightning. Liam—”

  And then, as if I’d conjured him out of the shadows, Liam was there, standing wet and dark in the doorway. He was holding something in his hands. A flash of lightning hissed behind him as he slammed it onto Jacob’s head. Jacob crumpled silently, his eyes rolling back as he sank to the floor, unconscious.

  I screamed and scrambled backward on my butt.

  Liam dropped the cement garden gnome onto the porch and leaned down to me, his face flecked with Jacob’s blood. “Eva, it’s okay. It’s me!”

  “What have you done?” Blood expanded out from a widening black halo around Jacob’s head. But his chest was moving. He was alive. “We need to call an ambulance!” I staggered to my feet and tried to run to him. Cold sweat beaded my face.

  Liam blocked my way. “No.” His voice was flat, his eyes dark.

  He reached for me, but I wrenched away.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Eva!” He pulled something out of his back pocket and held it out. It was two passports, one for Dan McIntosh, the other for Sarah McIntosh. They had our pictures. “
Look! We can run away together. Wherever you want. Forget any of this ever happened. We’ll start new lives. I won’t let the police arrest you.”

  He didn’t know I’d remembered everything. I glanced at Jacob. He still hadn’t moved. I had to figure out a way to get us both out of here.

  Alive.

  Hail clattered outside, wind howling through the open door. The burning scent of ozone was strong in my nose, the hair on my arms standing straight up. Lightning flashed behind Liam, hot bolts of yellow roaming through the air.

  “You were here the night my mom was killed,” I said.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your memories—”

  “You let me think I murdered her!”

  “Babe, come on—”

  “My coat.” My mind was flying, tripping over itself. “You put it in the closet. I wore the coat to Mom’s house, but the paramedics took me straight to the hospital after I was struck by lightning. I couldn’t have gone home and put it in the closet. You did it!”

  Liam shook his head sadly. “You’re not well, Eva. The lightning scrambled your mind, and you don’t remember anything. But I’m here to help you. I’ll make this right.”

  Events from the past week flashed through my mind. He’d worked so hard to make me doubt myself. To make me think getting struck by lightning was making me paranoid and unreliable.

  I felt a sense of vertigo sweep over me. Things I might once have chalked up to my own self-doubt and fear, I exhumed and reevaluated. That fateful meeting over dinner; how he just happened to be there when my tire blew; how he eagerly, persistently encouraged me to move in, forget the past, trust in him.

  “You switched our dinner date in your calendar to the same day I was having dinner with my mom and Andrew, didn’t you? And the date we were supposed to meet the priest. The faucet in the bathroom—I didn’t leave it on, but you told me I did. And the living room—oh God!—you trashed it, not me! Did you … did you drug me so you could make me think I did it? Why? Were you trying to make me think I was fucked up?”

  “Don’t be so stupid!” Liam snapped. Sweat glistened above his upper lip. “You are fucked up! You would be a wreck if it wasn’t for me! You should be grateful I’ve taken care of you all this time. I deleted the texts from your mom and hid your coat so the police wouldn’t have any evidence you’d been here. Without me, the police would’ve already arrested you. But I’ve got these passports, and we can get away now, together. You don’t have to go to jail.”

  It felt like I was watching the film of my life from a different vantage point, searching for something I’d missed at the time. Stop, rewind. Look again. Oh, there, I see it now: Vista Square Condos, where Liam owned an apartment. For the first time I could see everything as clear as day: Liam loved it when I fell apart so he could put the pieces back together.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You killed her, Eva. But I have a plan to get us out of here.”

  “Stop it, Liam!” I shouted. “I remember everything. I wasn’t angry at my mom. I was angry at you! You were here the night Sebastian killed her. You said you put a tracking device in my purse. And you—you raped me.”

  “That is not what happened!” he roared. “You were sick after that man in the bar drugged you. You went out into the alleyway, and he was going to rape you. I brought you home and I took care of you. I protected you. And then we started kissing and it was magical. I made love to you.”

  I closed my eyes. “I couldn’t move, I’d been drugged! But I said no, I told you to stop!”

  He looked down at the floor, sheepish, and I knew I was right.

  His silence was all the answer I needed.

  Fury boiled inside of me, starting in my bowels, spreading through my veins and infecting my blood. I’d always thought sadness was my default state. Sadness seemed more selfless than anger, like I was holding the pain in rather than making someone else deal with the sharp edges. For years, I’d described myself that way.

  I was so many other things: sad, scared, uncertain. I wrapped my emotions in a tiny box, sealed the lid, and buried them so I didn’t have to confront the truth of what had happened to me. But I was never angry.

  Until suddenly I was.

  “You fucking raped me!” I screamed, hoping my voice would wake Jacob. But he lay silently, not moving.

  “No!” Liam tried to reach for me but I slapped him, backing away until my legs pressed against the dining room table. “I swear what we shared was beautiful, special. That’s why I found you again. I moved to Whidbey Island and I found you so we could be together again!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me the truth then? Why did you hide it?”

  Liam threw his arms up in the air. “Because I was scared of being rejected, okay? But when we met again, it was perfect. You felt it too. We got to have two first times—how many people can say that?”

  A rumble of thunder boomed outside, shaking the floor beneath my feet.

  Anger zipped through my veins. “I hate you! You raped me, you motherfucker!”

  “Stop saying that!” Liam pressed both hands to his ears.

  “You raped me, you raped me, you raped me!”

  I turned to run, but Liam was too quick. He grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking me back. I screamed as the roots tore from my scalp.

  “You can’t leave me!” he howled, a sweaty voice in my ear.

  I fell to the floor, Liam on top of me. His fingers dug into my throat, squeezing. I punched at his chest, clawed fingernails across his hands, his wrists, trying to get away. But it was no use. His fingers were like iron.

  I stabbed two fingers into Liam’s eyes. He howled and fell to the ground. I kicked hard, my foot landing squarely in his groin. He made a choked oomph sound and curled into the fetal position. I ran to the other side of the living room. The couch blocked my way to the front door. I scanned the room frantically for anything to use as a weapon.

  Liam staggered to his feet. His face was twisted with pain.

  “I can’t let you go!” he roared. “I love you too much, Eva!”

  He practically vibrated with fear, but that didn’t make me feel better; it made me feel worse. He would kill me rather than let me go.

  “You don’t love me. You just love controlling me, and I won’t let you do that anymore!”

  Headlights swept the front windows, casting streaks of light against the living room wall.

  A car door slammed shut. Andrew’s voice filtered in the open front door. “Eva?”

  Suddenly there was a gun in Liam’s hand. A gun I never knew he had.

  The thump of shoes on stairs.

  The taste of blood on my lips.

  The air crackling with electricity.

  The wind a sharp caress on my cheeks.

  My brother’s startled face stared at Liam’s gun.

  “No! Andrew!” I leaped toward Liam, grabbing for the gun.

  And then the cold, hard barrel was against my chest, and I was no match for Liam’s strength. I was never going to beat him. But Andrew was there, and we were engaged in a three-way tug-of-war. Andrew used his whole body to break Liam’s hold, but he stumbled, his knees dropping to the floor, leaving me in control of the gun.

  My eyes met Liam’s.

  I could shoot him, I realized.

  I could shoot him and everybody would think it was self-defense. Even Andrew would say so. I’d failed last time. The night my mom died. I had the chance to kill him then, and instead I’d run. But I didn’t have to run this time.

  Death at my hand was no less than he deserved. I lifted the gun, my finger tightening on the trigger.

  Liam’s eyes on mine were hot, tortured windows into the broken person inside. The pain of my rejection had made him unrecognizable to me.

  “I love you most,” he whispered.

  And in that split second I realized that getting struck by lightning was more than just a close call I was lucky to survive. It had illuminated the
me who’d been buried inside all along. And that woman was not a murderer.

  My grasp on the trigger loosened, my arm going limp. Andrew swayed forward, his hands trying vainly to pluck the weapon from my grasp. My fingers tangled around the barrel, then released it as he wrenched it away, causing me to spin and fall forward as my knees collapsed.

  The crack of the gun firing roared in my ears, a high, hollow ringing. Pain exploded in me. I was submerged in the fire of a kiln, everything raw and red and hot as the bullet ripped through my shoulder. And then I was on the floor inside a mushroom cloud of blood and bone and stringy gray beads of brain matter, the only sound that high-pitched squeal in my ears.

  Something thumped next to me, the reverberations in the floor sending more shock waves of pain ricocheting through my body. I turned and saw it was Liam.

  Half his face was gone.

  I started screaming, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Andrew’s mouth was moving, silent, empty words. The world sharpened around me: a cobweb on the ceiling, the shape of the daffodils in the painting above me, the smudge across Andrew’s glasses, the scrape of the carpet beneath my cheek.

  Andrew ripped his shirt off and pressed it to my shoulder, trying to stop the blood. He was crying, his face splattered with splotches of crimson. His mouth flopped open and closed. Somewhere on some superconscious level, I realized I’d never seen Andrew fall apart like this.

  My hearing had started returning, the sound of Andrew shouting for Siri to dial 911 just beyond the horrific whine swirling in dizzying, painful circles around my head.

  Sirens pierced the air. Uniformed officers burst into the living room. Two paramedics flanked me. A stretcher was rolled out. The shrieking pain was white-hot fire licking at my very core.

  “I shot him,” I babbled over and over. “I shot him.”

  Andrew looked confused but had no time to argue. The paramedics lifted me onto the stretcher. They were carrying me outside, just about to put me in the ambulance when a cop car screeched to a stop, lights flashing. Detective Jackson slammed the door and sprinted to me, his leather jacket flapping open in the wind.