Lies That Bind Us(62)

Not that my opinion mattered.

“What was Plato’s myth of the cave?” I said.

“Not really a myth, more a metaphor,” said Marcus. “The people who live in the cave and have never been outside see shadows on the walls cast by the sun. Animals and stuff. Because they’ve never been outside they think the shadows are the real thing rather than just, you know, shadows. Plato thought life was like that. That all we saw were shadows, but that the real things—the ideal forms of them—existed somewhere else.”

“Huh,” I said, remembering. I try to decide if it’s relevant to what I’ve just been told and decide it isn’t.

“We should go back in,” he said.

“Yeah. You know, Marcus, that was very professorial of you just now. The Plato bit, I mean.”

“Ha. Is that a compliment?”

“Well, I know you don’t like being called professor, so . . .”

“I don’t mind it from you,” he said.

I smiled up at him and almost—almost—went to kiss him. For his part, he dithered as only Marcus can and then haltingly started to walk back to the house, each step closing our window of opportunity a fraction till we were back and had to be part of the group once more.



I thought of that window for the rest of the night, wondering if it was steadily closing as the week came to an end. I didn’t know why the possibility of getting back together with Marcus seemed more likely in Crete than it did in Charlotte, where we both lived, but it did, as if the foreignness of the place, its ancient monuments, glorious scenery, and storied towns made everything more exotic, more alive with possibility. Here, I was vacation Jan, not the Great Deal flow team leader who had so disappointed her friends. It also occurred to me that Marcus was looking better to me here too. I didn’t come back intending to rekindle those old, long burned-out fires. Being here had made me consider the possibility.

I wondered if that last part was true or if I was still lying to myself, if I came expressly to be with him and take him home to my apartment like some souvenir statue.

I snorted to myself, and Simon shot me a look as if he thought I was laughing at him, so I smiled and chatted until it was time to go up to bed, and I made a point of not looking at Marcus while Gretchen hung on his every word, of keeping my good night to him brief and nonchalant, even as I felt the window closing a little more, so that there was only a crack of light above the sill. I was considering this overwrought metaphor in my room when the screaming started.





Chapter Twenty-Three

“You said the first lie you told was about your sister,” said Chad. “Any idea why that would be?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, it was a long time ago. I don’t remember. I just liked the idea of having a sister.”

He considered me in that shrewd way of his that was almost mockingly smug. I didn’t like it. I liked it when he listened to me. He was a good listener, and that, in a weird kind of way, was sexy. But his appraising, therapist watchfulness got old fast. He reached for a folder and flicked it open.

“But you did have a sister, didn’t you?” he said.

I sat very still. I had not seen that folder before.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“Gabriella,” he read aloud. “Two years younger than you. Yes? Jan?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’ve never mentioned her before.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant,” I said. “She died a long time ago.”

“In a car accident,” he said, consulting his notes, as if just spotting the detail for the first time. “With your mother.”

I wanted to be somewhere else now, but the longer I sat there, the steadier his gaze became. I considered getting up, screaming some outrage about his nerve in requesting my old medical records, then storming out and never coming back.

“Jan?” he prompted.

“Yes,” I said.

“Your mother and sister both died in a car accident when you were ten.”

“Yes.”

“And your father . . . ?”

“I never knew him. After my mother died I was raised by my grandmother till I went away to school.”

“That must have been very hard.”

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, in some ways, I guess. But it was OK.”

I don’t know why I am thinking about this now. To take my mind off my situation, I guess.

My situation.

It’s a grotesquely inadequate phrase.

The pain in my hand is so great that I have to feel to make sure it is still there, that I didn’t just tear it out at the root, like the chimp, leaving the hand lodged in the manacle on the wall while I sit here bleeding to death from my ravaged wrist. But it’s still attached, though I can barely touch it to be sure.

The brutal surgery had been about as simple and rough as I could imagine. I had just pulled—yanked, really—till enough bones broke that I could drag what was left out of the manacle cuff. It took all my strength, and now I’m horrified by the results. I can move my fingers, just, but my thumb is badly dislocated and probably broken. It hangs loose, resting at a distressing right angle to my palm. It hasn’t bled as much as I thought it would, but the skin around my knuckles and the heel of my hand where the damage to the thumb begins has been peeled away. The muscle beneath feels smooth and soft as raw chicken breast.