The Good Liar(19)

TJ: How do you mean?

FM: If I found out something like that about my mother, I mean the one who raised me, after she’d died, I’d feel like I didn’t know her at all. Like I had to revisit every moment I had with her. Was she missing this other kid the whole time she was with me? Was I only a replacement for the one she gave up? Shit like that. Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t swear.

TJ: It’s fine. We can edit it out if we need to.

FM: Right. That’s what you do. Splice and dice people’s stories together. Making them into good people and bad people. Turning people into villains. Like on The Bachelor.

TJ: That’s not my intention.

FM: We’ll see, I guess. But I’m not the villain, you know.

TJ: Who said you were?

FM: Lots of people. But it’s not my fault. I didn’t mean for everyone to find out like that. I didn’t.





Chapter 9


Earthquake Weather


Cecily

I have this theory about cheating.

I don’t think it’s inbred, necessarily, that some people are programmed that way and some aren’t. I think, often, it’s born out of circumstance.

Take Tom. When I met Tom in college, he was an average guy. A “nice guy,” my friends called him, as opposed to the assholes I’d dated before, but not too nice. Not some geeky guy who was grateful I was going out with him, which would make him a boring guy and not enough protection against the bad guys I was trying to stay away from. Tom was his own man. He had plans. He’d had a serious girlfriend before me, and they’d drifted apart. They were still friendly without being friends, which seemed like the right balance. He even had a few women friends, which I liked, too. Women were people to him. He’d played the field a bit, but he was always someone who was happier with a home base. He wanted to get married, to be settled, to start his business and build something with me. He didn’t want a wife who stayed at home with the kids—he liked that I worked, that I had passions outside of us. He didn’t want to be the sun and the moon and the stars: just the stars would do.

That’s what he used to say to me: just the stars would do. It was kind of our thing, our motto, our secret exchange that would make us smile and my heart flutter. Back then, it felt like a nice sentiment. It’s what I wanted, also. I’d had that stomach-churning, crying-in-the-shower-when-a-guy-canceled-plans-for-the-third-day-in-a-row love. That sucked. I wanted a partner, a man, someone who understood I might need to disappear inside my work for a while and we’d see each other on the other side. We’d be each other’s touchstones, our lodestars.

And we were. Through the end of college, Tom starting his business, me my career, and buying our first house, we kept true to what we’d promised—we were together but apart when we needed to be. Secure. When we felt ready for kids, we started trying, and it happened right away. Tom was ecstatic, calling his friends and family and telling everyone he met even as I shushed him because it was too soon.

Having kids changes a lot of couples, and we weren’t an exception, but we weren’t changed in any fundamental way. We were still Lily and Tom, a team. He changed diapers. He did pediatrician runs when the kids needed shots or had a fever. He knew the bedtime routine as well as I did. We both cooked and cleaned. I don’t think it’s possible to be exactly fifty-fifty at anything, but we did our best. We came close.

I’ll admit—we were complacent. We looked down, sometimes, at our friends who didn’t have the same kind of balance. We were self-satisfied with our life, which had turned out mostly as we’d planned when snuggled up in my single college bed. We had this thing figured out, we thought, dialed in. We were doing it. It wasn’t perfect, it got messy sometimes, but we had each other. We’d make it through.

Here’s what I didn’t factor in: because we were just the stars, one of us might start to miss the moon or long for the sun. We’d packed those things away as unattainable, unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, but they weren’t. I’d forgotten to account for the fact that even the brightest of stars may dim as the years tick by because of compromise, because of time, because of life.

And if you’re used to the stars, however clear they may be in a country sky, how can you even see them if the moon is full? What chance do they have in the face of the sun? If you looked at the sun for the first time, really looked, after all that stargazing, you’d be blinded. And then sunlight begins to feel essential in a way it never did before; starlight pales by comparison.

That’s what I think happened with Tom. Now, with all this distance between the receipt of those horrible texts and the last memorial I’ll attend for him, I feel like I might get why he did it. Maybe a little, maybe enough. Or then again, maybe not.

Because you can turn away from the sun. You can shield your eyes.

You can be more fucking careful with your texts.

I’ve tried to forgive him, and to hate him, too, but the Tom I met on campus at a stupid mixer my dorm was throwing who pushed his glasses up his nose and then up on top of his head, that Tom who never let me treat him like I was his mother and who was perfectly capable of doing his own laundry, who stayed up all night with the kids when they had croup, who held first Cassie then Henry in his arms as if they were the best present I could ever give him . . . I still love that guy. Most of the time, I still think I made the right choice. Many days I’d probably make that choice again. But in this new life, post-texts and death and anger and grief, if ever faced with the possibility again?