The Good Liar(28)

TJ: It set you free?

FM: That sounds bad. I didn’t mean that. Of course I’m not happy my mother’s dead.

TJ: Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply—

FM: Can you please cut that part out? I wouldn’t want anyone to think that. Because it’s not true. It’s not.

TJ: It’s all right, Franny. I won’t use it if you don’t want me to.

FM: I know you’re going to, okay? Don’t lie to me.

TJ: Whoa, hold up. I’ve never lied to you.

FM: Sure. Right. Do you think I was born yesterday?

TJ: Of course not. Look, here . . . [Shuffling] I’m erasing the last few minutes, all right?

FM: It’s really erased?

TJ: Yes, I promise.

FM: [Muttering] Pull it together.

TJ: What’s that?

FM: It’s nothing. Are we back on?

TJ: Hold on. Now we are.

FM: So we’re starting again?

TJ: When you’re ready.

FM: Does my makeup look okay?

TJ: You look great, Franny. Ready?

FM: Yes.

TJ: I’ll ask the same question again, okay?

FM: Okay.

TJ: Can you tell us more about meeting your mother for the first time?

FM: It was . . . It was perfect. Like the mother-daughter relationship I always wished I’d had.





Chapter 13


Happy Anniversary


Cecily

We went to New York.

After I received Tom’s texts with my hands stuffed into a display case full of sexy underwear, I still went with him to New York for our twentieth wedding anniversary.

When I got control of myself again, I bought whatever I was holding in Victoria’s Secret, went home, and finished packing. I packed Tom’s bag, too, because he’d texted me an hour later asking me if I could. I was fairly sure that text was a ploy, a tactic to make sure I hadn’t seen the others, that somehow his phone was lying to him and he hadn’t been discovered. Or maybe he was trying to push those texts into the background, hide them from view, which is why he sent a long, rambling one followed by several short ones. Perhaps he was hoping I thought it was some silly joke, something that would be revealed to me on our romantic weekend, and I was waiting for him to enlighten me. Have a ha-ha moment.

I’ve often wondered since then whether Tom thought I was stupid. I never would’ve believed that before, but after a lot of thought, it’s the only explanation I can come up with. That he must’ve assumed I wouldn’t know what the texts meant. That I was so in love with him I’d trust whatever lie he was preparing to spin. That because he’d behaved uncharacteristically—or so I thought, but what the fuck did I know?—he could convince me I was the one causing the problem by misinterpreting his obvious joke. That the problem wasn’t the fact that he’d let some other woman suck his dick, but with me.

Stupid, stupid. I felt so stupid. How could I have let this happen? How could I not know? I needed something, more information, better information, something to keep me occupied. So, before I did the packing, I checked his personal e-mail to see if I could find any further evidence, but there was nothing there. He’d texted me from his work phone—the only phone he had, that I knew of anyway—and he mostly used his work e-mail even for communicating with me. He was the president of the company, after all. He could do what he wanted, apparently. And I didn’t know how to log on to his work e-mail—password protected, he always told me, for security reasons.

Who could it be? Who, who? I sat down on the edge of our bed, surrounded by the clothes I was supposed to be packing, and thought and thought, cycling through the women we knew like a child reciting the alphabet. Allison from down the street? No. I’d actually seen him wrinkle his nose at her once when she wore an unflattering dress to a party. Bea from the office? He didn’t think she was very intelligent, and maybe that wasn’t insulation against her prettiness, but it felt like it was. Carol from the kids’ school? He might be interested in her, but I’d overheard her saying she found him annoying, and she hadn’t even blushed when she realized I heard her, just gave me a challenging look like she knew I agreed with her, deep down.

And so on. I never had any instinct. No name stood out as likely. It was all unbelievable.

I know some people in my situation would’ve felt as if they were to blame, that it was some kind of reflection on them, but I didn’t. I felt like an idiot for not knowing it was going on, but not that it was my fault. I was surprised, though. Not because of the act itself; I always knew cheating was a possibility. I’d had my own opportunities I’d turned away from, and so I knew, I knew, it was something that could happen to me.

No, it was the carelessness. Tom, who was always so, so meticulous, who never made mistakes, not ever, had made a major one. And because of this, I couldn’t help but feel like he wanted me to know. That he wanted me to find out but couldn’t find the words, couldn’t bring himself to make a decision, and so let a thoughtless moment do it for him. I’d always made it clear to Tom that if I found out something like that, it was the end. There’d be no forgiveness, no going back. If you want to end things irrevocably, I’d said more than once—in a mocking tone, in a joking way, the way couples do sometimes, but he knew I was serious—then cheat on me. Cheat on me and tell me. Now he had, and there I was in the place in which I always said I’d know exactly what to do. And you know what took me by surprise?