The Good Liar(37)

She watched TV for a while. Then she went to the small store and bought a few things she would need. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A backpack. A T-shirt and sweatshirt with the same logo on them. She needed clean underwear, but that wasn’t available. In the bathroom, she took off her blouse and jacket, stuffing them into the bag. She washed the dirt and sweat off her face and neck. Then slipped the T-shirt over her head and then the sweatshirt, pulling the hood up so she’d have something to retreat inside of. Already she felt different. More like the woman she’d been before she got married. Before . . .

She went into a stall and sat down on the toilet and wept. Was she actually going to do this? Walk away from her children, her husband, her life? Let them think she was dead when she wasn’t? Was the pull of something different so great that she had to take such a drastic step? There was divorce, surely. There were alternatives she hadn’t considered.

She sat there for a long time. Her rear end turned numb, and she felt almost faint from the combination of emotion and shock and not having had anything to eat that morning because she hadn’t been able to swallow her breakfast.

She’d almost talked herself into changing course when an announcement sounded over the PA system, a robotic voice like the one used to make announcements on the “L.”

All departures are canceled until further notice.

The city was on lockdown. And it was only then, with her plans most likely thwarted, that she knew she must press ahead. That the only way for her was forward.

That in order to live, she had no alternative but to die.





Interview Transcript

TJ: Who didn’t Kaitlyn tell about you?

FM: Her friends. Her family.

TJ: She didn’t tell her husband? I thought you said she had?

FM: That’s what she told me. But she hadn’t.

TJ: How did you find that out?

FM: You’ve heard the story, haven’t you?

TJ: I’ve heard a few things. Why don’t you tell me what actually happened? I want to hear your side of the story.

FM: You don’t care about my side of the story.

TJ: That’s not true.

FM: I can just picture it, you know. You’re going to do one of those reenactment things at this point, right? Like how they did in that Robert Durst thing? Like, you’ll find some actress who kind of looks like me, and you’ll restage the event. All those horrified women. And the music. The music will be terrible.

TJ: I’m not . . .

FM: I think . . . Can we stop for the day?

TJ: Of course we can, Franny. I’m sorry I’ve upset you.

FM: It doesn’t matter.

TJ: Yes, it does. I know it can be tough to sift through all this, but that’s what makes it real. Do you understand?

FM: It’s not real, though. It’s not even close. Ted gets it, I think. He doesn’t make me talk when I don’t want to.

TJ: Who’s Ted?

FM: Ted Borenstein. You know, the Vanity Fair writer?

TJ: You’ve been talking to Ted Borenstein?

FM: So what if I have?





Chapter 17


Intruder


Cecily

There’s someone trying to get into my house.

I lie in the inky dark, gripping the sheet beneath me, my heart shuddering.

There’s a heavy tread on the deck beneath my open window. It’s not one of the kids. It’s not the sound of anyone I know, even if it made sense for someone I know to be creeping around my house in the middle of the night, which it most obviously does not.

I grope for my phone on the nightstand. It’s not there. I left it downstairs on the counter where I placed it after I got a text from Teo asking me if I’d gotten home all right. We’d ditched our landline two years ago—a decision I’d fought at the time because cell phones could die or not be within easy reach when you needed them. Tom had hushed my fears. We hadn’t received any calls on our landline except for telemarketers for years, and what could possibly happen with us both there safe and snug? I’d agreed rather than fight.

And now look. My life seems to be one long series of my worst fears being realized.

Two more heavy steps, and now it’s the sound of someone rattling the handle on the sliding door. Barely breathing, adrenaline and anxiety fighting for prominence, I roll onto Tom’s side of the bed, trying to keep my breathing regular, trying not to make the bed squeak. I slide my hand under the mattress. It’s still there, the knife Tom kept in case of intruders, the one I was never happy about because what if the kids found it?

“There are plenty of knives in the kitchen,” he’d always say in the tone he used when he thought I was being an irrational mother. And then I’d start to doubt myself, even though I knew that this knife, in its hunting sheath, hidden away, would have an attraction to the kids that all the ordinary, everyday knives sitting in the butcher block never would.

“At least it’s not a gun,” I hear Tom’s voice saying now. But right at this moment, with my children asleep in their rooms down the hall, I wish for a gun. This knife I’m clutching is useless to me if whoever’s trying to get in my house intends violence against the kids or me.

The kids.

The handle rattles again. I force myself to stand and pad quietly across the carpeted bedroom floor. The room’s pitch-black because this is how I’ve always needed to sleep, and now that Tom’s gone, I can shut the blinds and wait until my alarm wakes me rather than rising with the vagaries of the sun.