Lies She Told by Cate Holahan
For Brett
“You fill everything.” —Pablo Neruda
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
—Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major
I don’t know this man. Fault lines carve his cheeks from his gaping mouth. His brow bulges above narrowed eyes. This man is capable of violence.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Spittle hits my face as he screams. Fingers tighten around my biceps. My bare heels leave the hardwood. He’s lifting me to his level so that there’s no escape, no choice but to witness his pain. “Did you think I wouldn’t read it?”
I feel my lips part, my jaw drop, but the sheer volume of his voice silences me. His grip loosens enough for my feet to again feel the floor.
“Answer me.” He whispers this time, the hiss of a kettle before the boil.
“I didn’t do anything.” Tears drown my words.
“Why, Liza? Tell me why he had to die.” His speech is measured. I wish he would swear, call me names. If he were out of control, I could calm him down, negotiate, maybe even convince him that everything has been a misunderstanding. But he’s resolved. His questions are rhetorical. There’s a gun on the dining table.
“Please.” Sobs fold me in half. I press my hand to the wall, seeking leverage to stand. “I don’t know.”
He yanks my arm, forcing me from the corner. My knee slams against the jutting edge of the bed as he pulls me toward the oak writing desk and open laptop. The offending document lies on the screen. I’m pushed down into the desk chair and rolled forward.
“You expect me to believe this is a coincidence?” His index finger jabs the monitor.
“It’s a story,” I plead. “It’s only a story.”
Though I catch the hand in my peripheral vision, I can’t calculate the trajectory fast enough. It lands on the laptop, flinging it across the desk and onto the floor. Parts rattle. The bottom panel breaks off and skitters across the hardwood.
“Liar.” He turns my chair, wresting my attention from the ruined computer. A fist rises toward my face. He’s been building up to this. I shut my eyes. “You’re a fucking liar.”
I don’t protest. He’s right. Blurring fact and fantasy is my trade. I am a con artist. A prevaricator. I make up stories.
So why does he think this one is real?
Contents
Part I
Liza
Chapter 1
Liza
Chapter 2
Liza
Chapter 3
Liza
Chapter 4
Liza
Chapter 5
Liza
Chapter 6
Liza
Chapter 7
Liza
Chapter 8
Liza
Part II
Chapter 9
Liza
Chapter 10
Liza
Chapter 11
Liza
Chapter 12
Liza
Chapter 13
Liza
Chapter 14
Liza
Chapter 15
Part III
Liza
Chapter 16
Liza
Chapter 17
Liza
Chapter 18
Liza
Chapter 19
Acknowledgments
Part I
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook H
LIZA
He’s tracking my time. Every ten seconds, Trevor’s dark eyes dart to the digital clock on his computer screen, a driver checking his rearview. My pitch has not impressed. He has more important things to attend to, authors who bring in more money. My work is not worth these valuable minutes.
He doesn’t say any of this, of course. Our decade-long relationship has made his thoughts apparent. I read them in the lines crinkling his brow as he sits across from me in his office chair, scratching his goatee while the air conditioner’s hiss recalls the reputational damage wrought by my latest book, Accused Woman. Not my best work, to say the least. Critics dubbed the protagonist “Sandra Dee on diazepam.” She lacked agency, they said. Too many things happened to her. Really, she was too like me to be likeable. My former psychiatrist, Dr. Sally Sertradine, suggested similar failings.
“An affair?” Finally, he speaks . . . barely. A true Brit, Trevor drops the ending r. His accent mocks me, as though my idea has so offended him that even his critique doesn’t require clear articulation.
He removes the wire-framed glasses previously perched on the wide bridge of his nose, sets them on his mouse pad, and walks to his window. Before him lies a landscape of penthouse terraces. In Manhattan, success is determined by view. Trevor’s placement, high above even the city’s wealthy, is a reminder of his importance relative to my own, of the weight his opinion should carry as opposed to mine.
“There’s hardly a new way to do an affair.”
“Well, I think of it as a classic revenge story.” My voice cracks as I make my case. Dr. Sally also said I regress into adolescence at the first whiff of confrontation. The hormones are making things worse. “I think romantic suspense readers want—”