Lies That Bind Us(66)

Because it wasn’t. I had never even been in her room before. I certainly hadn’t rooted through her things, cut them up, an act at once petty and deeply, troublingly sadistic.

I watched the others coming and going, avoiding my eyes. An hour passed. Maybe more. I spoke to no one, staying where I was, gazing into the foyer as the others murmured in the living room. I was still sitting there when Gretchen walked in, making for the phone. She had already changed her flight, so I hadn’t expected to see her here, and I think she thought I’d gone to bed. She froze in the act of picking up the receiver, staring at me, though I couldn’t see the expression on her face at this distance.

“I know you think it was me, Gretchen,” I said. “And I know you think I’m jealous of the way you are with Marcus . . .”

“You are,” she said, not moving.

I hung my head, not wanting to say this, not wanting to say anything, but then looked up and nodded.

“Yes,” I said. “I am. But I didn’t go in your room. I didn’t cut up your . . .”

She started walking over to me, a sudden, brisk stride that got me to my feet in case she was going to take a swing at me. I braced myself, but instead of hitting me, she got hold of me by the shoulders and pulled me close.

“I know,” she whispered.

I was dumbfounded.

“But you said . . . ?”

“Yes,” she said, checking over her shoulder to make sure no one else was in earshot. “I’m sorry. I had to.”

“You did it yourself?” I said.

“No!”

“But you know who did?”

She shook her head, but it was less a denial than it was a pushing away of the question.

“I have to get out of this house,” she said.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t get my head around how radically the conversation had shifted. “Why?”

“I can’t be here anymore,” she said. She was still quiet but was, if anything, even more hysterical than when she had first found her shredded underwear. She was trembling, her grip on my shoulders tight, each finger digging into my flesh like a clamp. “You don’t understand, but I can’t be here. It’s not safe.”

“Not safe?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“We’re in danger. Not just me. All of us. You, I think, most of all.”





PART 3

TARTARUS

Theseus and his companion ventured into that point of the underworld known as Tartarus through a secret way and came to the palace of Hades, who ruled that fearful place. They made their request to take Persephone back to the world of the living and Hades seemed to consider their request, but then the king of the dead suggested they sit down to rest themselves and they realized—too late—that the seats were the Chairs of Forgetfulness. Their skin immediately bonded to the chairs so completely that they could not get up again without tearing their flesh away. Snakes surrounded them and, with Hades looking on, Theseus was lashed by the Furies and mauled by the great three-headed dog, Cerberus, so that it seemed they would be trapped there in deepest pain and misery for ever.

—Preston Oldcorn





Chapter Twenty-Five

“Where were you when your mother and sister died in the car wreck?” says Chad.

Not this again. We don’t have time for this.

“I told you. I was at school.”

“Liar,” says the Chad in my head. “You were in the car. Weren’t you, Jan? You were in the car.”

I start to deny it, then stop, suddenly unsure.

I keep very still, eyes shut, feeling for the truth like it is an old dog that cannot be relied upon not to bite. And then I see it, remember it, the darkness, the smell of oil and gasoline, electricity and blood. It all comes back and, for a moment, I’m stunned by the fact of it, as if I hadn’t known till now, even though I had, however many fathoms deep I had buried it.

“Yes,” I say to myself. “I was in the car.”

“But you survived.”

“Yes.”

“Barely a scratch on you,” says my imaginary Chad. “Your mom was driving. You were in the back with your sister. You were both buckled in, but when the car came off the road, when it rolled down the ditch and into the tree, the left side took the brunt of the damage.”

“Yes.”

“You were sitting on the right.”

“Yes.”

“Barely a scratch on you.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” says imaginary Chad. “I’m just wondering if what you say you told your first lie about . . . the reason you lied about having a sister—a living sister, that is—was because you felt guilty. She died. You walked away. Motherless. That can’t feel right to a child. Kids. They always feel responsible for what happens in the world. Step on a crack, break your mother’s—”

Stop.

I can’t think about this. The pain and the fear and the cumulative exhaustion have gotten to my nerves. I’m losing it just when I need to concentrate, to be on my guard. He’s out there, somewhere. The Minotaur, stalking the labyrinth. Hunting for me.

Focus.

I’m out of my cell, but I’m still underground and in the dark. I have to find a way out. I can’t see, and I don’t know what’s there, but it feels like passages spreading in all directions, turning in on themselves like a great hard-angled knot, all blind alleys and long, winding false hopes burrowing back into the center. I think of Daedalus, who made the wooden bull for Pasipha? and built the maze that housed her dreadful offspring, and I remember what James Joyce called him: the “old artificer.”