Behind Every Lie

by Christina McDonald

  His face was white as an envelope. He touched a hand to my forehead, almost a caress.

  “He tried to kill us,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. I believe you.”

  Darkness was coming fast. Too fast. And then red. Tendrils of red and black swirling over my vision.

  And then nothing.

  forty-eight

  eva

  A SOFT TAP CAME at the hospital door just as Dr. Simm finished examining me.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Detective Jackson poked his head inside. He smiled, fine lines like little half suns crumpling the corners of his blue eyes. It softened the wolfish blueprint of his face, made him seem younger, less severe. He stepped inside the door.

  “All done! You officially have a clean bill of health,” Dr. Simm said. “Maybe just don’t leave home next time there’s a lightning storm.”

  I chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Okay. You know where to come if you need anything.” She turned to go.

  “Hey, Dr. Simm?” She turned around. “Thank you.”

  She smiled and nodded. Detective Jackson approached my bed as she left. He lifted a bunch of white roses clutched in his hand.

  “Hey there, Eva. I brought you flowers.” His Boston accent came out stronger than usual in the word flawers.

  “Oh. Wow. That’s really sweet of you. Thanks.”

  I propped myself higher on the narrow hospital bed as he set the flowers on the counter and pulled a chair up to sit next to me.

  “So.” He looked at my right arm, which was heavily bandaged and resting in a sling. “The doctor said the bullet went through the front of your shoulder?”

  “Yes. And out the top.”

  “You’re acquiring quite a collection of scars there. You’re lucky the bullet missed any major arteries.”

  “At least I remember getting this scar,” I replied.

  Jackson threw his head back and laughed. “Well, they do say you never get struck by lightning twice.” He sobered. “So you’re being discharged today?”

  “Yep. All official with checkout paperwork and everything.” I plucked at the blanket on my legs. Slanted rays slid through the blinds, heating the material so it was warm beneath my fingers. “Detective, why didn’t you just arrest me after you found my DNA and fingerprints at Mom’s house?”

  He leaned back in the hard plastic chair, stretching his feet in front of him.

  “Your DNA wasn’t under your mom’s fingernails; Sebastian Clarke’s was. Plus you sent me those photos of the articles and the letter from your mom. No guilty person would do that. My gut instinct was to see what you found in London. I saw your credit card activity the minute you bought the ticket. Although I’ll admit I got a little concerned when you took your SIM card out of your phone. But I had a PI following you, so it wasn’t like you could go far.”

  The eyes I’d felt on me in London. The man at the Tube station. It made sense now. Between Liam tracking me and the PI, no wonder I’d felt so watched lately.

  “I wish I’d answered your calls. I could have avoided everything that happened. Maybe Liam would still be …”

  I could barely force the words out. I turned to stare out the window, blinking fast. A hard ache of grief pressed on my chest, surprising me. Why did I care? I shouldn’t. Liam had stalked me. Oppressed me. Raped me. But I’d loved him once, and the hurt and betrayal were still raw.

  “How’d you know Liam was at Mom’s house the night she was killed?” I asked.

  “We looked through video footage from the Mukilteo–Whidbey Island ferry. Liam got the ferry to Seattle Sunday night, shortly after you did. Then, a few hours later, he caught the last ferry back to Whidbey Island. Obviously, that made me suspicious. When I came out to question him the other day, I took a DNA sample. I don’t have the results back yet, but I’m pretty sure it’ll match the DNA we found on the septic tank in your mom’s backyard.”

  I watched the detective as he spoke, all sharp angles and quick eyes, his voice low and intense. He was exactly what I’d needed without even knowing it.

  “When you e-mailed me that sketch, I told our CSIs to go back and widen the search area out from the immediate crime scene. That’s when they found the trailer. There were obvious signs it had been pulled over the septic tank. And then we found Sebastian Clarke’s body.”

  Jackson’s leather jacket creaked as he leaned forward. “We’ll be closing your mom’s case soon. Sebastian Clarke’s wounds match the fireplace poker at her house, and hers are the only fingerprints on it. And Sebastian’s fingerprints were the only ones other than your mom’s found on the tea canister. It all matches what you remember.”

  I closed my eyes, relieved. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you. And thanks for giving us permission to search your house. We found passports for Liam in various names and thousands of dollars in cash in the safe. We also found documents with the names of local building inspectors he’d paid off to let building code violations slide.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Liam had been pathologically incapable of hearing no. It just wasn’t in him to let anything stand in the way of what he wanted.

  “There were also a number of photo albums in the safe. Mostly …” He cleared his throat. “Mostly long-lens shots of you.”

  I closed my eyes, struggling to accept the magnitude of Liam’s betrayal.

  Jackson slid a thick folder onto the bed. Inside were stacks of photos of me: leaving the hospital empty-handed; getting in my car; crying outside my mom’s house; walking along the edge of the lake by our house; coming out of work one day; leaving a restaurant one night with Holly. My life since the night I was raped was held in this folder.

  “He followed me,” I said bitterly.

  Jackson nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  He pulled an evidence bag out of his jacket pocket and set it on the bed. Inside was an iPhone. “We found this in a locked drawer in Liam’s office. The phone has an app on it called Burner. It lets the user have an anonymous number. Those threatening texts you got were from him.”

  I felt like I’d been elbowed in the throat. I would never be able to explain what it was like knowing my own doubt and fear had blinded me to the biggest threat: my very own fiancé.

  “You know …” I shook my head. “I kept thinking I wasn’t remembering things right. I thought I was losing my mind. And the more I thought I couldn’t trust myself, the more I relied on and trusted him. It’s probably exactly what he wanted me to do.”

  “I believe psychologists call it gaslighting.” Jackson pulled a card out of his wallet, dropped it on top of the folder. ANNI DAVIDSON it said in bold black letters. “Anni’s a good therapist. If you like that sort of thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged.

  “No, seriously. Thank you. For believing me.”

  He nodded. “Sometimes we’re in control of the things that happen to us, and sometimes we’re not. But what he did to you, that wasn’t your fault. Don’t waste any more time blaming yourself. It’ll drive you crazy.”

  I looked him full in the face. “I was sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “Thank you.” Jackson didn’t look surprised that I knew his story. He just looked sad.

  “Did you kill him?” I asked. “The man who murdered her?”

  Jackson didn’t blink; his face didn’t move, not even a muscle, but I saw something darken his eyes. Then he smiled, a contorted twist of his lips. “I’m not the sort of person who could kill someone in cold blood.”

  I didn’t believe him. I knew now that we were all that sort of person when pushed beyond our limits.

  “What happens now?” I asked. “Will I be charged for shooting Liam?”

  “Washington State law allows an individual to use reasonable force to defend themselves when they’re attacked.” Jackson’s eyes sharpened. “It was self-defense, right?”

  “Of course.”

/>   “Well, then.” He smiled. “It sounds pretty clear-cut to me. And I hear the district attorney has no desire to press charges.”

  I closed my eyes in relief as Jackson began gathering his things.

  “How’s your friend doin’?”

  “Jacob? He’s stable,” I said. “Fortunately, he has a hard head. He’ll be out soon.”

  Jackson gazed at me for a moment. “You going to be okay?”

  “Me?” I looked out the window at the mottled sky. Memories flickered before me. My brother hunched over his homework early on a Sunday. Jacob with his grass-stained knees flying down the street on his bike. Mom driving me to school on a cold, rainy morning. The squeeze of her hand as she said some of her last words, I love you.

  “Yeah, I think I will be.” I smiled and held Jackson’s gaze. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  forty-nine

  eva

  A FEW WEEKS AFTER I got out of the hospital I was at Mom’s house—home for now—slicking the last bit of gold lacquer onto a piece of pottery I was repairing. The radio was on, an old dance track by Sandra Collins playing in the background. A car pulled up outside and I peered out the wooden slats. Andrew slammed the car door shut. He walked around the side of the house, returning with a rake, and started scraping leaves into a pile.

  I watched my brother move the rake in precise parallel lines. He looked older than I remembered. Lines bracketed his blue eyes, worry and grief chiseling his face. I awkwardly pulled a heavy sweater over my sling and went to greet him. The November day was crisp and clear, the sky a strip of brilliant blue.

  I hugged Andrew with one arm. His brown knitted sweater smelled of rain and freshly cut apples. He straightened his glasses and returned the hug, a rare but much appreciated gift.

  Andrew resumed raking the leaves, and I used my feet to drag smaller piles into Andrew’s larger one. When the yard was clear, Andrew and I stood in front of the pile of leaves. With a sort of silent acknowledgment only known between siblings, we fell backward onto the pile.

  We stared up as a plane bisected the sky, leaving puffy white trails in its wake. Fall leaves shivered and spun in the air, a gust of wind causing a riot of burnt orange and scarlet and sienna to sprinkle onto the lawn.

  Andrew and I laughed. “Well. That was a little bit pointless!” he said.

  “No. Not pointless,” I replied. “Sometimes you have to clear up the mess before you can start over fresh.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “So. When do I get to meet your new girlfriend?”

  Andrew blushed. “Soon,” he promised.

  I dropped it. He’d tell me more when he was ready.

  After a moment, he asked. “Are you glad he’s dead?”

  I thought about it. Liam had lied to me every day I knew him. He’d violated my trust, betrayed me, controlled me. But he had loved me too. That was real. Wasn’t it?

  I tried not to question myself or doubt myself too much these days. Most days I failed. Maybe doubt never really went entirely away. Maybe all you had to do to silence it was ignore it long enough.

  “I’m … relieved. I don’t think Liam was evil, just broken. Maybe we all are a little bit.”

  “I’m glad I sh—”

  “I shot him,” I cut him off. “Me. Remember? It was self-defense.”

  Now Andrew rolled onto his elbow; his eyes behind his glasses were a battleground I’d never seen before. My brother had spent his life playing by the rules, coloring inside the lines. But he was learning there were an awful lot of shades of gray in there.

  “You can’t blame yourself,” I said. I stood and brushed the bits of dead leaves from my jeans. “Trust me. It’s a waste of time.”

  Andrew glanced at his watch. “You ready to go? We don’t want to miss the ferry.”

  * * *

  The tires of Andrew’s car crackled on the gravel as we pulled up to Liam’s house. He turned the ignition off, and for a moment we sat in silence. The red Douglas fir timbers of the house were brightly lit by the afternoon sun, the lake a perfect mirror for the jean-blue sky. A sharp breeze skimmed the rippled surface. The muddy shoreline was a twisted mass of reeds and roots writhing down into the water.

  “What’s going to happen to this house?” Andrew asked.

  “Liam named me next of kin in his will. I’ll sell it once everything is finalized. All the money from his estate will go to a charity for those who’ve been sexually assaulted.”

  “Do you really need to go back in there?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I need to get my cat. Melissa’s been driving out here to feed her for long enough.”

  He sighed. “All right, come on, then.”

  He pushed the car door open, but I laid a hand on his arm. “I think I need to do this on my own,” I said.

  He nodded. I stepped out of the car and my shoes crunched across the gravel to the front door; I was trying not to think about the last time I was here. I was glad it was daytime, the sunlight making everything shimmer.

  Inside, I stood in the middle of the living room, letting memory after memory assault me. Liam’s hands gently massaging my feet. The tender caress of his fingers on my cheek. We could sit and talk for hours and it felt like minutes. I had loved him, and I knew he’d loved me too. Just not in the right way.

  “Why did I love him, and trust him?” I’d asked my therapist in our last session. “Shouldn’t I have known on some level he was my rapist?”

  She’d leaned forward so I was forced to look her fully in the eye. “Trust involves a unique juxtaposition of a person’s loftiest hopes and deepest fears. You were deeply, deeply hurt, but you still wanted to be loved. You just needed to learn to love and trust yourself first. Don’t be afraid to give yourself permission to accept both the love and the betrayal. You’re allowed to trust all your emotions, not just the easy ones.”

  I went to the garage and lifted Fiona Hudson’s urn from my work desk. Using kintsugi to mend it had taught me so much: that true repair requires transformation, that our full potential is impossible to see until a crack opens us up.

  Ginger came running when I opened the door and called for her. I tucked her into a cat carrier, grabbed my art nouveau lamp, and left. I didn’t look back.

  On the way to the ferry, Andrew stopped by the Crafted Artisan so I could say good-bye to Melissa. She’d just returned from the lunchtime yoga class, her legs lean, arms sinewy under her I Am a Warrior T-shirt.

  “It’s so good to see you!” she said, hugging me warmly. “And your hair, oh my God, it’s gorgeous!”

  I’d dyed it back to its natural mahogany red. It had grown out a little, the waves flicking along the collar of my shirt.

  “Thanks. How’ve you been?”

  “Oh, you know!” Melissa rolled her eyes. “Claire wanted lessons on the tuba. I think she likes a boy in band class or something. So I got her a private tutor, but every time he’s over she suddenly needs to poo. Like, blowing makes her need to have a shit! Last week she was in the bathroom for half an hour. That’s half her lesson, for Christ’s sake!”

  I laughed. Melissa never changed. It was refreshing.

  “And, big news, I’ve reinstated Claire’s weekend visits at her dad’s house.”

  “That is big news!”

  She shrugged. “She’s been asking, and so has he. He’s still her dad and he loves her. I have to make the best choice for her, right? I guess I’ll see how it goes. What about you? Are you staying in Seattle, then?”

  “For now,” I said. “I have so much work coming in lately.”

  The truth was, I didn’t have to work right now. There was enough in the savings account Mom had for me in London. That was what Andrew hadn’t wanted to tell me about the will without the lawyer being there to explain. But I found kintsugi therapeutic, the pottery I repaired a canvas for my scars. And I was busy. It turned out people loved the art of kintsugi as much as I did.

  “I called that gallery in Seattle about their spring art exhibit,” I said. “
I asked if they’d be interested in displaying a few of the pieces I’ve repaired with kintsugi, and they said yes.”

  “That’s fantastic! I’m so proud of you. Oh! Before I forget—!” Melissa dug in her purse and pulled out a blue ribbon. “Mr. Ayyad wanted you to have this. He won that race last weekend. He dedicated his win to you.”

  I grinned and took the ribbon. “That’s so sweet! I’ll visit him next time I’m back.”

  “So … Eva Hansen.” She gave me a hesitant smile. “Or is it Laura?”

  I hesitated. “I used to be Laura.”

  “Are you going to change it?”

  I think having two childhoods, two identities at such a young age gave me a warped sense of identity. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be for a really long time.

  But I did now.

  “No. I’m Eva.”

  fifty

  eva

  ANDREW AND I RELEASED Mom’s ashes into Puget Sound on the ferry home. It was hard to describe how painful saying good-bye was. Like she’d slipped through my fingers.

  I wanted more time, just a little bit, to tell her I loved her. To say thank you for everything.

  Afterward, Andrew dropped me off at home and I drove myself down to the beach to build a bonfire.

  It wasn’t easy. The pain in my shoulder was still pretty bad, but a crapload of kerosene and some dry kindling got the fire going fine.

  It had been a beautiful day. One of those November days that makes you feel like winter will never come. A child’s moon dangled low in the sky, floating against a strip of blue that hung opposite the sinking sun, two personas inhabiting one body. I sat in front of the flames and opened the folder Detective Jackson had given me.

  I fed the pictures into the flames. And in that moment, I was fine. Everything was fine. And sometimes that’s all you can ask for. Fine.

  The heat from the fire warmed my face and I leaned back to stare at the sky. The moon lit the world in ethereal shades of pale yellow, the velvet-black tapestry littered with pinprick stars.