Never Have I Ever(73)

That was a lie, though. I could fool Maddy, and even my husband, but Roux had shattered my ability to lie to me. She’d unfolded all the hidden spots inside me, then dredged me from the bottom up. I knew there was another person.

At midnight I reached over to my bedside table and got my phone. To my left, Davis was a sloped hill under the duvet, anonymous as landscape. I kept my eyes on the brightness of the screen and navigated to Tig Simms’s number. It took me a moment to find it; he’d added himself to my contacts as “Restoration Garage.”

That gave me a pang. Tig had guessed that I would want to camouflage him. And he’d been right. If I had any business texting him, there would be no reason for a misleading name. So I shouldn’t. I knew it.

I texted anyway. Just to see if he would answer.

Shave and a haircut?



Tig was still a night owl; less than ten seconds later, he answered with an emoji that looked like a quarter: two bits. I smiled in the dark.

Then he sent, Did you get her?

Not yet, I texted.

You will, he sent back, and it heartened me. Two simple words, but I needed someone to give them to me. Another text dropped. Can I help?

No. I got this. Thanks.



The lie came instantly. I sent it before I could consider, before I could process the relief and hope that flooded me at the very thought of not being alone in this. My fingers hovered on the screen, though. Where did my simple human weakness stop, landing me on the far side of betrayal? I was looking for the line. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but it felt close. Too close for comfort. I closed the window before I could change my answer.

I felt another text land, but I didn’t look. I navigated to Settings and turned off vibrations, then put the phone facedown on my bedside table. I had no business asking Tig to do Davis’s rightful job. Especially since I hadn’t given Davis the chance. He might, if only I asked him. It wasn’t my husband’s fault that I was a coward. A coward and a liar.

I tried to tell myself that this tiny call and response with Tig meant nothing. But I knew better. It had mattered, because not ten minutes later I fell deeply asleep, wrapped warmly in Tig’s faith in me. I woke up with a new plan, fully formed.

Roux arrived two minutes after Davis left, letting herself in, Charlotte style. She must have been watching the house, waiting for his car to leave. I wondered how long she’d been out there. She was wearing jeans and a linen shirt, casual and easy-fitting. Maybe she’d dressed for squatting in my neighbor’s bushes with binoculars, making sure I didn’t go creeping out at 4:00 a.m. again.

The day went much like the one before, with Roux watching me go through the motions of my regular life. Luca arrived just before eleven, though unlike his mother he still used the doorbell.

“I finished the next section,” he said, waving the textbook at me, and then went galloping to the keeping room to put the DVD in.

Scuba knocked him out of his cool kid’s saunter, turning him into the kind of boy I could see hanging out with Maddy. I had no idea what Roux had told him about her sudden need to supervise his class up close and personal, but his attitude toward me hadn’t changed at all. Either he still didn’t know I was Roux’s “client” or he was a better actor than even his mother.

I made grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch. I skipped it, and the hunger at my center was both punishment and power. Only a few days in, but my jeans felt looser. I was using up the last of my baby weight to feed the baby. I hoped to God I could finish this, get myself back into a routine with food before I lost my milk. Roux declined a sandwich, and after poking around in my fridge she decided to run home and get a green juice.

The second my front door closed behind her, I stopped spooning baby-food peas into Oliver, scattering some Cheerios on his tray to keep him busy. Luca was eating at the breakfast bar, studying at the same time. I leaned on the counter, trying to look casual, but Roux would be back in five minutes. I hadn’t been alone with him yet today. This moment might not be repeated, and I wanted to get him talking. Roux had said multiple times that she was, or had been, married. Luca would certainly know about that.

“I’m excited to get you in the actual ocean tomorrow. You’re going to love it.”

I sounded like a perky idiot. Thanks to my job and to raising Maddy, I knew a lot of teenagers, but I interacted with them either as an instructor or a parental unit. I had no idea how to get a criminal’s child to yammer about his mom, much less about what she was running from.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing up, but then he went right back to studying.

“I tried to get Davis into it, but it isn’t his thing,” I persevered until he looked up at me again. “He’s claustrophobic, he says. How anyone can feel claustrophobic in the middle of an enormous, wide-open ocean, I have no idea, but it’s a real thing, apparently.”

“That is weird,” Luca said, but his eyes strayed to the book. He was too well mannered to keep blatantly reading with me standing right there talking to him, but his intentions, his desire were both plain to see. I worried about this kid; I couldn’t help it, given his mother. I wondered if he was as deceitful and practiced as she was, but whenever I was around him, I could not believe it. This man-child was so transparent, his gaze flicking to the book again, his hand moving restless on the open pages.

Roux was languorous and unhurried, every move as orchestrated as a yoga pose. Stillness and deliberate motion masked her reactions. I was the same, and getting better at it. Last night had proved that. But Luca? He was a kid, trying to be cool but prone to visible spasms of emotion.