The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie
Cecily
I was late. That’s why I wasn’t there when it happened.
Not in the building, not even that close.
I lost track of time that morning trying to get the kids organized and out the door. It happens sometimes. I’ll have everything under control and then—poof!—an hour will have gone by and we’ve missed whatever deadline we were supposed to hit. School drop-off, a kid’s birthday party, even an airplane once, despite the fact that we were in the terminal with plenty of time to get to our gate before pushback.
None of those misses ever made a permanent difference in my life. Not that I knew of, anyway. Just consternation and an eye roll from the kids. Mo-om being Mom.
Usually, it seemed beyond my control. I could’ve sworn I’d done everything possible to finish whatever needed to get done for me to arrive on time. That day, though . . . that day, I might’ve been late on purpose.
I can admit that now.
But then, my foot tapped at the sticky floor of the train car as if that might make it go faster. I counted down the stops from ten to one, like I was counting down to a rocket launch. And when the “L” finally pulled into the right station, I pushed past the slow, slow crowd and ran for the stairs.
Like Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit, I was late, late, late.
My heart throbbed as I ran up the concrete stairs. That’s probably why I didn’t notice the first tremor or the panicked looks on the faces of the people I sprinted past. I was too focused on getting to my destination. When I was finally outside, I had to stop to catch my breath.
What I saw stopped me from breathing at all.
The building I was trying so desperately to get to was two blocks away. The October sun should’ve been glinting off its glass panels. Instead, they were engulfed in flames. Before I could process what was happening, screams swallowed me. It felt like being caught in that noise at the beginning of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”—that discordant, reverse sound that has a basis in something melodic, and yet not.
I remember only bits and pieces after that.
People running past me, my nose filling with the awful stench of burned plastic, the crushing heat. A feeling like the building was sucking in its breath, pulling me toward it, before it blew apart, the heat slamming into me. The ringing in my ears that reminded me of the bell on my son’s bike when he was a child. Paper and debris and things I can’t think about raining down around me, burning holes in the belted coat I’d picked out so carefully the night before, back when it felt like it mattered what I wore that day.
Then I lost the thread of time again. It’s probably only minutes I can’t account for, but if you’d told me it was hours, I’d have no basis to disprove you.
Through it all, I couldn’t move. I was the lamppost more than one person rammed up against. I stood there, stuck, as the fire licked the building clean. And then a man’s hand was in mine, tugging, tugging, and I could finally hear the instructions he was shouting and had the power to obey.
Run!
We ran.
PART I
One Year Later
Chapter 1
Poster Child
Cecily
I’m late again.
That’s rarer today than it was a year ago, because now, when I feel the tick of time, my body starts to prickle with an anxiety I can’t shake without medication, and I feel each second pass as if I’m one of the gears in a clock. As a result, more often than not, I’m early, my foot tapping with impatience as I wait for others as they used to wait for me.
After what happened, I can’t believe anymore that being late has no consequence. I’m proof to the contrary. Yet, my changing personality isn’t rationally connected to what happened. I’m alive today because I wasn’t in the building. I wasn’t sitting on the fifteenth floor in a conference room with a river view, trying to remain calm. Because I was late, I was safe. Close by. Marked, scarred even, but alive.
Five hundred and thirteen other people weren’t so lucky.
So I don’t want to tempt fate again or rely on not being where I’m supposed to be to save me from my destiny. Like the man who escaped the Twin Towers, only to die in an airplane crash a few years later. Death had plans for that man; it would not be denied.
But despite my efforts, I am late today, my racing pulse reminds me. I check my watch for the twentieth time. It’s only five minutes past when I’m due, not enough to matter, I tell myself, breathing in and out slowly as I’ve been taught to do in these situations.
My pulse slows. It will be all right. Death will give me a reprieve; even it can’t punish me for my lateness today of all days, the day before the first anniversary of my husband’s death.
“Cecily Grayson?” the receptionist for the Compensation Initiative asks. I try not to notice as every head in the room snaps toward me with a collective so that’s who she is. It would be wrong to notice. Immodest. Selfish. Ungrateful.
I’m not allowed to be any of these things.
Instead, I raise my hand as if I’ve been called on in class, follow the receptionist to my meeting with Teo Jackson, and try not to think about the fact that this building also has a fifteenth floor and I’m on it.
The Initiative said they chose the floor deliberately when they rented the space and announced their intention via press release. They did it to remember—memorialize—the fifteen-floor building that had come crashing down a year ago. Remembering. That’s their purpose, they repeat loudly and often in ads you can’t skip at the beginning of YouTube videos or those pop-ups that follow you around the Internet like a basset hound.