The Good Liar(15)

“You always say that.”

Linda’s eyes crinkle. A natural beauty in her midforties, she has few lines that mar her dark-brown skin. “That is what you pay me for, after all.”

“True. Well, I got through it. He asked all the questions I expected, and I gave the best answers I could. If I had to guess, I told two outright lies and six lies by omission, but I wasn’t keeping strict count.”

“You don’t have to keep a tally of lies.”

I shift my eyes away from hers. Linda’s office is a palette of taupe. I keep meaning to bring a colorful throw with me someday to brighten up the place, but it always slips my mind.

“Don’t I?”

“We’ve discussed this. You could simply unburden yourself. Or, alternatively, make peace with the fact that you’re entitled to certain secrets.”

“I feel like a fraud.”

“You’re not a fraud. Your husband died. You did what you had to do to protect your children’s future. To protect your future.”

“But I hated him. I hated him when he died, and everyone thinks I’m this grieving widow, that I’m missing him, that I wish he was still here. Still with me and our family.”

“Who cares what anyone thinks? And you are grieving him. Maybe not in the way you think others assume you are, but you are. Do you think you’re the only person who wasn’t happy with their spouse that day?”

“It’s not the same. I wanted him dead. I’d even fantasized about how I’d do it.”

“Did your fantasies involve rigging the gas pipes beneath his building so they’d explode and kill five hundred and twelve other people?”

“No. Well, maybe just him and her. I didn’t care how it happened. But I thought it, and then it came true.”

Linda frowns. “You don’t believe your fantasies played a role in what happened that day, do you? Because it was a terrible accident, one that could’ve been avoided with better inspections, perhaps, but nothing more than that.”

“No . . .”

“This is important, Cecily.”

“It is strange, isn’t it?”

“Coincidences aren’t strange or the evidence of anything; they’re a part of life.”

I pluck at a loose thread on the couch, then stop when I feel Linda watching me.

“You aren’t to blame for what happened.”

“I know that rationally, but I wish there was a way I could get some resolution.”

“About what? With Tom?”

“Her. I wish she’d died that day, too, and she probably did, but I don’t know for sure.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve been over it and over it. She had to be someone he worked with. Or someone in the building, maybe someone who worked at another company, because he was at work the night before we went to New York—at least part of the time. Will Blass told me so.”

Will was Tom’s business partner. He’d hemmed and hawed when I’d asked him impulsively at the reception at our house after the funeral where Tom was the night before they launched SecretKeeper, their new privacy software. He’d pretended at first that he didn’t remember, but when I told him I knew Tom was seeing someone, he’d relented and told me Tom had been there until about midnight, if he could remember correctly, and then left for several hours. He didn’t know for sure that Tom was with another woman, though he’d suspected it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who it was.” I was almost certain that was a lie, but when I’d pressed, he said to leave it and walked away. I haven’t spoken to him since.

“Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean she was there that day,” Linda says.

“The not knowing is driving me crazy.”

“Why?”

“Because how could I be so stupid? How could I not know what was going on in my own life?”

“Your husband was an accomplished liar and very, very careful. It’s not a failing of yours that you didn’t figure out he was cheating on you or who he was cheating on you with. As for the other woman, if she’s alive, she’s most likely suffering from loss herself.”

“Am I supposed to care about that?”

“No, but I expect the last thing she’d do is seek you out, so you’re probably never going to know what happened between them or who she is. You have to find a way to be okay with that.”

“So she gets away with it? With destroying my life?”

“This isn’t about her. It’s about you. About you finding a way to get past this. To get closure.”

“How can I get closure when I have to play a role all the time and listen to everyone talk about what a great guy Tom was? When I have to preserve this lie for my kids and our friends? It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

“Will you be stamping your feet anytime soon?”

“No,” I say, pouting. I know I’m being childish, but it isn’t fair. It really isn’t.

“You can do whatever you want in here, Cecily. And I can agree with all those things. But unless you find a way to forgive yourself, and to forgive Tom, too, we are going to end up having a lifelong relationship because you’re going to be stuck in the same place you are today.”