Lies She Told(73)

“Even if you intend to divorce your husband, you need time to feel good about not wanting him anymore. To mourn your marriage.”

The word “mourn” recalls Colleen’s dead body. I grab a handful of tissues and press them to my face. Tears swell my nose. My mouth can’t close from crying. As I try to wipe my face, tissue sticks to my wet lips and tongue, bits of wafer that won’t dissolve. I cannot be saved.

“It’s all my fault.” I repeat the phrase, sobbing. “It’s my fault. Something is wrong with me. I don’t deserve to—”

“No, Beth. No. Don’t say that.” Tyler gives my shoulder a supportive squeeze, reminding me that we can be friends even though it’s clear we will not be lovers again. “The disintegration of your marriage is not your fault. And whatever your husband did or didn’t do to his girlfriend is not your fault either.”

I wipe the tissue beneath my snotty nose and take shaky breaths, trying to compose myself.

“You need to be there for Victoria,” Tyler says. “You don’t need to be punished.”

I nod, though I know he’s wrong. A woman is dead. Punishment is coming.





LIZA


It’s dark by the time I reach the Hamptons house. Stars—millions of them, as opposed to the handful visible in Manhattan on a clear night—paint the sky. I see Antares, the heart of the scorpion, glowing red in November’s zodiac constellation. David taught me about that one.

I’m exhausted from the revelations of the past twelve hours. My legs shake as I exit the car, as though I’d been running a marathon rather than occasionally pressing a gas pedal. Fatigue flows through my blood like too many glasses of red wine. Everything has slowed. I can’t confront Christine like this.

After entering through the side door, I flop down on the first available reclined surface: the living room couch. I shut my eyes with a foggy intent to rest for a moment and then call my best friend.

Once my lids lower, the plan dissolves into ether.

*

A black screen fills with the sound of the ocean. Waves rush to an unseen shore in a furious crescendo, only to fizzle on the sand. Gazing at the sea are the watery eyes of a young girl. Ten, maybe older. She has the height of a preteen but lacks the telltale signs of puberty. I feel as though I know her or I did once, long ago. She sits, half naked, on a lounge chair. Her flat chest is covered in a poorly tied Hawaiian-print tankini. The bottom is missing. Her trembling fingers clutch a bloody tissue.

Grunting draws the child’s attention to a pool. The water is tinted like a bruise, blue fading into a purple spot tinged with red. A woman stands waist-deep beside the discoloration, her hands around a handle. Metal slams against concrete.

I know this person too, though my mind can’t piece together where from. She’s the kind of woman about whom people whisper, “She was a beauty in her day.” Now frown lines frame her mouth. Her eyes are pulled down by dark circles. She wears a sopping button-down shirt. Her hair has been yanked haphazardly from a chignon so that half is still pinned while other sections hang to her shoulders.

“Mom.” The girl whispers the call. She hugs her arms over her askew bikini top and shivers. “Mommy.” She starts rubbing her forearms. The bloody tissue in her hand shreds from the friction. Bits of paper fall to the floor. “Mom.” Still, she whispers. “Mom.”

The child drops the tattered tissue and stars clawing her arms. Tracks of blood follow the lines of her jagged nails. Terror fills her dark eyes. “Mom!” She screams. “Mom! Mom!”

The woman splashes to the steps, running beneath the water. Blue slacks cling to her legs as she emerges onto the deck. The spearhead of a garden shovel hangs beside her knees. It clatters to the ground.

The mother kneels beside the girl and grasps her hands, stopping the fingers from tearing into any more flesh. “Shh,” she hushes. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I never thought . . .” Though tears fill the woman’s eyes, she doesn’t let them fall. “We found him in there. Okay? He’d been drinking. None of this happened. Okay? Nothing happened. We just found him.”

The girl considers the woman with a glazed expression and then turns her attention back to the sea. A blank calm erases the terror that had twisted her features.

The mother slowly releases her daughter’s hands. She watches them, waiting for another attack, but they hang limp at the child’s sides. She runs back to the shovel, picks it up over her shoulder like a musket, and rounds the house to the side yard. The girl stands and follows. Her face still, like the ocean just before dawn.

Again, there is grunting. The shovel sticks from the earth beside a line of flowering weigela bushes. The woman steps on its head, burying the metal deep in the ground before heaving it upward to dislodge a mound of dirt. She continues digging until a hole, the depth of a forearm, appears beside her feet.

The shovel goes in. She stands on the blade and then tugs at the handle until it pops out. The stick is tossed to the side. She motions for her daughter. The child crouches beside her. Together, they push back the earth with their hands until there is nothing except a sprawling bush. Wine-colored petals cover the site so that not even the earth looks disturbed.

*

I wake, unable to breathe. Panting. Gasping. Drowning. Tears have soaked my pillow. My neck is wet. Instinctively, I reach to where David would lie next to me and claw air. Everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours returns with dizzying clarity. I have left my husband. I am in my house in Montauk. The woman in my dream was my mom.