Lies She Told(24)

I sip my wine and return my attention to the pale-pink fish on my plate. Wild salmon may be extinct in ten years. Sea lice, prevalent in fish farms, are killing the juveniles before they can properly breed. There’s no getting around procreation problems.

“Forgetfulness.” The candlelight hides the lines in Chris’s forehead, but I can tell her brow is lowered. “You mean like blackouts? Waking up and not knowing where you are or how you got there?”

I eye Christine’s wine glass, already near empty even though she refilled it minutes ago. Drinking like she is could make a person familiar with blackouts. “Nothing that bad.”

“What have you forgotten recently?”

“I don’t know. Stories I’ve told.” She stares at me like I’m withholding key details. “I told my gyno a joke the other day that, judging from her reaction, I’d probably made before.”

“That’s it?”

I shrug. “As far as I know.”

She settles back into her chair and brushes her red hair behind her right ear. This is her nervous tic. She has tucked her copper locks behind her ears since I can remember. If she is really on about something, she’ll twist the hair.

“What’s wrong? You okay?”

“Yeah.” A visible shudder undermines her assurance. She reaches across the table and puts her hand over my own. “I worry about you, Liza.”

The gesture is almost parental. Christine has always been protective of me, but I must be giving off some really helpless vibe for her to go into full-fledged mom mode. Is it that obvious that I’m a weepy wreck from the hormones? I force a smile, embarrassed that I’ve caused my friend such concern. As if she didn’t have enough on her mind juggling the dating scene and a new job while her daughter spends the summer with the woman who stole her husband.

“I’m fine. Really.”

Her gaze travels from my face to the pool. In the darkness, the water resembles a creased black sheet. The switch for the lights is by the grill. I never flip it, though. Makes the pool eerie.

“You need to be very, very careful with drugs that stress out your body and your brain, Lizzie.” She faces me again, as though looking at the pool has given her new resolve to act as my lifeguard. “Anything messing with your memory and your moods could have a major impact on your health, particularly in your case.”

I feel a rush of anxiety followed by pressure in my ears, a hyperawareness of the soreness in my jaw. These are the precursors to a stress headache. I sip my wine, trying to stave off the migraine. “What do you mean?”

Chris twists her hair. I’d intended the question to sound casual, but it shot out as upset as I feel. It’s easy for Christine to say that a side effect is too much to bear—she has a twelve-year-old daughter. She can’t know what she’d actually put up with if a doctor pulled her into a “counseling room” and said that, in all likelihood, she’d never, ever be a mother.

“I mean the mind is a carefully calibrated piece of equipment. You put something out of whack, and next thing you know, you’re irrationally stressed or unable to cope. You could really damage yourself, Lizzie. And it’s not like you don’t have a history with depression. With everything that happened in high school, don’t you think you’re tempting fate a bit? There’s got to be another treatment out there that doesn’t impact your brain. You don’t want—”

I put down my glass. It hits the table more roughly than I’d intended, cutting Chris off with a crack and splattering wine onto the glass surface. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Okay?”

“But—”

“I want a baby. You can’t understand because you have Emma. And you can’t tell me she’s not worth a thousand Georges and you wouldn’t suffer anything to be with her, even him sneaking around with the sitter.” My voice is trembling as though I might burst into tears. I breathe and speak slower. “I’ll be fine.”

Again, Chris sweeps her hair behind her ear. She looks at me like I’m a kid about to go off to college. There are things she’s warned me about, the look says, but sometimes you can’t learn until you suffer the consequences.

I take a long gulp of wine. The act works like a placebo, easing the pressure in my head even though the alcohol can’t have hit yet. “I’m working on a new book.”

Chris’s shoulders sag. “What about?”

“An affair.”

She snorts. “Well, I guess you have the right friend for research. Lucky you.”

I consider Chris. Sunset hair, honey-colored eyes. Brassy personality. “She’s not you. She’s a mousey brunette who slowly becomes a murderer.”

Chris gives me her classic not-amused smirk, perfected during her teenage years. She doesn’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t either if I were her. I’ve fleshed out characters with her features before. Why wouldn’t I base an affair story off of her experience? She’s told me enough.

“In what world would you be mousey?”

She gulps down the rest of her drink and smacks her lips together. “Appearance is a detail.”





Chapter 6

I dress to kill. A skintight sheath, fished from the back of my closet, is glued to my figure, or rather to the full-coverage Spanx cinching my postpartum body into my prepregnancy shape. My hair is blown out, the way I used to wear it before my morning routine included sponge bathing an infant. I’ve applied makeup: lipstick and eyeliner. If I’m going to confront Jake about breaking his marriage vows, I need to resemble the woman to whom he said, “I do.”