Every Last Lie

by Mary Kubica

  We end the call, and I give Maisie the phone, but it’s not in her possession for thirty seconds when it rings again, and this time, when I go to snatch it from her, she puts up a fight. “Give it to me, Maisie,” I demand. She clutches tightly to the phone so that I have to reach backward and wrench it from her hands. As I do, a fingernail grazes her hand by accident, and she grips tightly to that hand, crying that it hurts. She accuses me of scratching her. She screams.

  But the tantrum doesn’t have a thing to do with her injured hand. She and I both know that.

  “Quiet, Maisie,” I say, and then press the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I ask, out of breath, Maisie in the background kicking her feet at the back of the passenger’s chair and moaning.

  “You hurt me!” she cries as from the other end of the phone line comes a voice, the staid voice of Detective Kaufman asking me if everything is all right, and if I didn’t know any better I’d think he knew I was intentionally breaking the law, talking on the phone while driving.

  “Yes,” I say, though clearly everything is not all right. “Just fine,” I say, hoping he doesn’t hear the car’s engine as we drive on toward the park.

  The detective has called to tell me two things. First, the man with the black car, the one with the tribal tattoo and the Budweiser beers—he has an alibi, airtight, for the day that Nick died. He was with his audiologist in Hinsdale at the time of the crash, which Detective Kaufman has confirmed with the doctor’s office.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, and he says, “I’m certain of it. You must be mistaken about this man’s vehicle,” at which I peer into the rearview mirror to see Maisie glaring back at me with resentment. She’s mad that I scratched her; she wants the phone back. She wants to play Candy Crush.

  “There’s one more thing, Mrs. Solberg,” says the detective. “I was doing a little research, digging up some information. I took the liberty of speaking to a few of your neighbors. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve noticed that your husband has a history of speeding,” he says, and already I know where this conversation is going. Nick has a lead foot; I know. I’ve nagged him about it since the day we met. “Two speeding tickets in the last year, four over the last three years,” he tells me. “He was one more traffic violation away from having his license suspended.”

  This was something I didn’t know.

  Nick received a speeding ticket about six months ago. I was in the car with him at the time, begging him to slow down, but he didn’t. He was trying to outrun a train, to get through the crossing before the train inevitably stopped on the tracks. A cop had a speed trap set up on Route 59 and caught Nick going nearly sixty when he was meant to be going forty-five. But these other tickets and the threat of having his license revoked, these were things I didn’t know.

  “You said you spoke to my neighbors,” I say. “Why?”

  “We had two complaints on file. One from a Sharon Cadwallader and one from Theodore Hart.”

  Theo. Emily’s husband.

  Theo and Nick have never liked each other much, and yet it seems completely ludicrous that he called the police on Nick, and we didn’t know. Or maybe Nick did know, and only I didn’t know, I think, wondering why in the world Nick wouldn’t tell me if a neighbor had phoned in a complaint to the police about him. Maybe Nick felt guilty, maybe he was embarrassed. Nick was never one for gossip; he always tried to see the best in everyone, no matter what they’d done.

  “What?” I ask, utterly surprised. “Complaints for what?”

  “Complaints for speeding,” Detective Kaufman tells me, and I envision Nick driving the car too quickly down the curling streets of our neighborhood, eager to be home. Even I have nagged him about this, worried for the children playing baseball in the middle of the street.

  Sharon Cadwallader I can certainly understand. Sharon Cadwallader, a high-ranking official on the neighborhood council, and the one who fought to have traffic calming measures installed around the community: speed humps or traffic circles, or those ridiculous speed display boards that flashed when one drove too fast. She purchased her own radar gun and sat on her front porch, vetting every car that drove by. I’m quite certain she called the police about everyone who breached the twenty-five mile per hour speed limit.

  “Mrs. Cadwallader clocked your husband going forty-eight miles per hour on your street. That’s nearly double the legal limit,” the detective says to me. “And Mr. Hart says there was some run-in with his son. Just a few weeks ago. The boy’s rubber ball had rolled into the street, it seems, and when he went to fetch it, Nick came tearing around the bend.” He concludes with this, “It was a close call,” and an exaggerated sigh through the phone line. And I picture the speed of Nick’s passing car creating a breeze, eddying the brown hairs on Teddy’s head, his eyes wide with fear as he groped for the ball. Theo in the background, screaming, and Emily at a window, watching the commotion from afar. Did Theo and Nick exchange words in the middle of the street? Was there a blowup, name-calling, or were punches thrown? Did Emily know, and if so, why didn’t she tell me? I have a hard time picturing it. Nick is a pacifist. He avoids conflict at all costs, and is quick to apologize even when he’s done nothing wrong. Anything to avoid a fight. I have no doubt that he was speeding through the neighborhood, whizzing home at forty-eight miles per hour to see Maisie and Felix and me. This comes as no surprise to me.

  But I also see him rushing out into the middle of the street to see if Teddy is all right; I envision him apologizing demonstratively about the near-miss with Teddy and the rubber ball. He would have apologized for it all; he would have atoned for the misdeed.

  So why call the police?

  “Seems your husband had quite a history with speeding,” Detective Kaufman says, and I hear the words he says but also those he doesn’t say: Nick’s frequent speeding is the cause of the crash out on Harvey Road. It’s Nick’s fault that he’s dead. Nick took the turn too quickly and lost control of the car. His speed is the reason he ran into that tree.

  All roads lead to Nick.

  I think of the woman I’ve just met, in the window, smoking her cigarette, and about the car she’d seen leaving the scene of the crash, veering into oncoming traffic. A black Chevrolet.

  “I’ve taken the liberty, Detective Kaufman,” I say, echoing his own words, “of speaking to some of the residents who live off Harvey Road. Just to see if anyone saw or heard anything at the time of the crash.” His sigh is long and loud.

  “And?” he asks, his words stultified. I’m boring him, it seems. I reach into the back seat to pat Maisie’s knee. Almost done, I mouth. Almost done, and then she can have the phone back. Almost done, and then I can ask about her injured hand.

  “There was a woman,” I tell him, “driving home from the market at the time. She came upon the scene just seconds after the crash, passing a black car along the way. It was driving erratically down the road. A black Chevrolet,” I say, pushing from my mind the drug possession charges I spied online for Melinda Grey, wondering if it’s at all possible Nick was under the influence of something at the time of the crash. I won’t put this suggestion in the detective’s mind.

  “Did she get a license?” he asks, but I tell him no, blaming the sun. It was so bright that day she could hardly see a thing. “Then how did she know it was a Chevy?” he asks sagely.

  “Well, that she saw,” I say, knowing how foolish it sounds. “The emblem on the front of the car was easy to see. She remembers seeing the golden bow tie.”

  “What is this woman’s name?” he asks, and I tell him. “Betty Maurer,” I say, and he promises that he’ll speak to her. “Many cars travel on that road every day,” he tells me. “It’s a shortcut, a nice alternative to highway congestion. Just because it was there, passing by around the time of the accident, doesn’t make it a crime,” he says, but I press again, asking if he’ll speak to Betty, and he says that he will. I thank the detective for his time. He says, “Just doing my job,” and we end the call.

 
; As I pass the phone back into Maisie’s expectant hand, asking whether or not her scratch is okay, I’m floundering and confused. Did Nick die because he was driving too fast? He had a history of speeding, that much I know. But there’s so much more to consider, from the canceled life insurance funds to the agent’s suggestion that suicide or homicide are to blame. And then there is the restraining order, and the fact that some man in a hat and gloves has been skulking around my home.

  Was Nick driving too fast because he was chasing someone, rather than the other way around?

  Was he the pursuer and not the pursued?

  And then Maisie’s words come to me again, about the bad man following her and Nick, the obvious fear imbuing her eyes. That can’t just be for show. Maisie saw something that terrified her.

  I watch in the rearview mirror as Maisie—happy as a lark now, having forgotten all about the pilfered phone—points out the window and says to me with decision, with arrant conviction and delight, her voice decked out in a singsong cadence, canarying the words, “An elephant, Mommy. Look, Mommy, an elephant’s in those trees,” and God help me, I look, even though of course there isn’t an elephant in those trees. An elephant wandering around in suburban America? How absurd.

  “You silly girl,” I say soberly, watching the way the day’s sunlight glints off the white of her eye. “Why would an elephant be here?” I ask, and as she chirps, “Just taking a walk, Mommy,” I’m filled suddenly with a sense of unease.

  Did she tell Nick that there was a car following them? Did she make it all up, and for this he drove faster, manically, anything to get away from the phony car?

  For the first time, I ask Maisie. I ask her about the car. My words come out guardedly, carefully chosen, cautious not to use the wrong ones. “Maisie, honey,” I say, my voice purring the words, “did you see the black car like you just saw that elephant in the trees? The car that was following you and Daddy?” but at the mention of a black car, she goes silent. She turns away from me and peers out the window, any sense of a smile washed clear from her face.

  No, I tell myself. No. Of course not. Nick is much more commonsensical than this. He would never give in to the whims of a child.

  But then I see them in the grocery store together, Maisie set in the basket of a shopping cart, begging, Faster, Daddy, faster, and I see Nick run like greased lightning up and down the aisles, not caring what other shoppers thought because all he cared about was his little girl in the shopping cart, happy, smiling, laughing.

  This has happened. Many times this has happened.

  And now, from the back seat comes Maisie’s crooning voice again as she spots the playground off in the distance, the one we’re en route to, the slides, the swings, the monkey bars mere specks on the horizon. “Faster, Mommy, faster,” she squeals, eager now for a day at the hippo park as my foot presses down on the gas pedal without intent, and the car casually picks up speed.

  NICK

  BEFORE

  Driving home that night, I have every intention of telling Clara about Kat. Every intention in the world. It’s one of the cardinal rules of a happy marriage: no secrets, and this detail—a visit with a former flame—seems too large, too uncontainable, to omit. It’s not the same as the imminent malpractice suit or the sorry state of our finances. This is different. If Clara found out some other way, she’d be hurt, and a completely meaningless reunion would alter into something more, something sordid and wrong, something unforgivable. And so I fully intend to tell her.

  But as I come into the house, I find Clara sound asleep on the living room sofa, her back pressed into the cushions for lumbar support. It’s later than I usually get home. I phoned Clara hours ago and told her that I’d be late—thanks to a few emergency evening appointments, I claimed, when what I really needed to do was cool off for a bit, to collect myself. And I did, thanks to a single dose of Halcion I pulled from the locked storage cabinet once the office ladies left for the night. It made me calm, sleepy and forgetful all at the same time.

  I probably shouldn’t have driven myself home, but I did.

  When I finally get home, it’s after eight o’clock, and Maisie is in bed. Harriet the dog greets me at the door, but the house is quiet, the TV turned on but the volume low. A box fan sits on the floor, plugged into the wall and aimed in Clara’s direction, and though it’s warm in the house, it’s far from hot. The breeze from the fan ruffles her hair as I drop down to the floor before her body to watch her sleep, the flutter of her eyelids, the way her nostrils flare when she inhales. I’d blame the shortcomings of our aging air-conditioning unit for the reasons Clara is hot, and yet, more likely I tell myself, it’s Clara’s hormones, the fact that she’s carrying twenty or thirty pounds of extra weight. She wears a tank top and a pair of stretchy pants that cohere with dog hair, and it’s all I can do not to run my hand along the length of my baby boy, press my lips to Clara’s midsection and whisper to him hello.

  But instead I let her sleep.

  I put off any idea of waking her and telling her about Kat. There’s always tomorrow.

  For now I watch her sleep, enjoying the stasis of the moment, the tranquility, and as I lay myself down on the floor before the sofa with a bolster pillow and a throw blanket, not sure if I can spend the night alone without her by my side, I whisper to her, “Sleep tight.”

  CLARA

  What I discover is that she’s beautiful. Utterly stunning, in an exquisite, fine-china sort of way. The woman with the Seattle phone number who knows my name, sitting in a chiffon tank top and a pair of formfitting jeans beside a boy on a park bench, a boy whom she calls Gus. Gus looks to be eleven or twelve years old to me, stuck in that gap between childhood and adolescence, wearing a black polyester T and a pair of shorts. His legs are long and lanky, a set of earbuds plugged into his ears so he can mute the outside world. He holds two figures in his hands, two molded green army men who duke it out on his kneecap, punching each other in the face until one falls to the concrete below.

  My breath catches; I try not to make more of this than there is.

  There must be billions of little green army men in our town alone. This means nothing. These army men have nothing to do with the one I found in the plastic sack of Nick’s possessions, given to me from the morgue after he had died.

  Or do they?

  The woman looks to me like she stems from one of those countries that produce tall, light-haired, light-eyed people by the yard. Her hair is so blond it tends toward white; her eyes are blue like beach glass. She says to Gus, “Go play,” and he mopes, yanking the earbuds from his ears and abandoning them along with the army men on the park bench, rising lethargically and meandering to a swing. Maisie, on the other hand, takes off full tilt, headed toward a sandbox where she wiggles out of her hot-pink Crocs and gets down to work.

  The woman says that her name is Kat; I say that my name is Clara. She has the most perfect posture, and though it isn’t intentional, her hair, her clothing, her eyes make me feel subordinate. I sit beside her and cross my feet at the ankles, feeling huge in the woman’s presence, my midsection still round and flabby. I try to ignore the charm of her adorable espadrilles and to avoid looking at my own bloated feet, the polish chipping quickly off the nails. The baby weight weighs heavily on me, my breasts engorged with milk. Just because I’ve begun feeding Felix formula doesn’t mean my body has adapted to the change. Not yet anyway, and so I fill to capacity with surplus milk, my breasts flattened beneath an old sports bra that only adds to my revulsion. I haul Felix from the stroller and feed him a baby bottle to satisfy his needs while my own stomach growls, a reminder that I’ve eaten nothing today, nearly nothing this week. I should eat, I tell myself, knowing I won’t eat.

  Harriet lays herself in the shade beneath a tree.

  “Who are you?” I ask the woman as we watch her boy, Gus, descend upon Maisie in the sandbox, asking indifferently if he, too, can play. I half expect Maisie to say no and throw a fuss that some newbie has infringe
d upon her sandbox, in an attempt to maraud the best, wet, packable sand, and I ready myself with the need to intervene, to explain to Maisie about sharing and playing nice, and how this sandbox isn’t all hers as she’s convinced herself it is.

  And yet she doesn’t make a fuss but instead nods her head okay, and together she and Gus begin to build. Good girl, Maisie, I silently say.

  “Nick and I were friends way back when,” Kat says to me as she picks at the flat-felled seam on a pair of vintage wash jeans. She doesn’t look at me, her eyes instead placed on the jeans. Her fingernails are freshly painted, a dark grape, freshly manicured.

  But this is too ambiguous to me, too abstruse. Way back when. “When?” I ask, needing specifics, and Kat reluctantly tells me how she and Nick went to high school together.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “Seattle,” she tells me. “Bainbridge Island. We were close,” she says. “Good friends,” though I wager a guess from the tears that fill her eyes that they were more than good friends. I’m afflicted with a sudden pang of jealousy; were Kat and Nick better friends than Nick and me? But, no, I reassure myself, thinking of Nick and me lying together in bed, my head on his chest as he stroked my hair with those gentle, loving hands of his, the same hands that held our wrinkly baby boy all covered in vernix days later when he finally emerged from my womb after eighteen hours of painful labor.

  He married me. We had a child together. Two children. He loved me, not her.

  “You’ve kept in touch all these years?” I ask, wondering why Nick never mentioned Kat before. I think hard, trying to decide whether he did tell me about Kat and I wasn’t listening. It’s not like me not to listen, and yet I’d been so consumed in recent months with the pregnancy, with my own expanding body, with my mother’s ever-failing mind. Maybe he mentioned a Kat, and somehow or other I didn’t hear.