The Good Liar(58)

Joshua Ring is here, too, but Franny’s in charge. She shows me around the house, a typical suburban living room, dining room, kitchen. As in the other Triple Ten houses I’ve been in, there are photographs of the lost on the mantel—Joshua’s wife, Kaitlyn. And there’s a picture of Franny there, too, taken with her half sisters, two cute girls under ten.

“We never took a picture together,” Franny says as she pauses to gaze at the picture of Kaitlyn on her wedding day. “Me and . . . Kaitlyn. I’m not sure why.”

“She didn’t like having her picture taken,” Joshua says. “I’m not surprised.”

“I’m not a picture taker, either,” Franny says, then breaks into a funny impersonation of a young woman taking a series of selfies. “So silly.”

“Rather,” Joshua says, smiling. He’s a slightly formal man. I suspect he was baffled after his wife died, as so many of the newly single fathers in his situation were. In my experience, the women always seem sadder but more in control—a stereotype, I know, but a truth I’ve observed.

Franny touches his arm. “Shall we sit?”

We move to the couch in the living room. Franny waits for Joshua to take a seat, then sits next to him. Close enough that I note it. Is this what Franny wants me to see? That she’s stepped into her mother’s shoes? Then Franny leans away from Joshua, and I banish the thought. Franny does seem different, though, from our earlier conversations. As if she’s grown up overnight.

We discuss many things. How Joshua learned about Franny, how he’d processed the news. How helpful it had been to have Franny around since then, helping with the girls, distracting the family from their grief. That a part of Kaitlyn lives on in her and how she fits into the family.

Franny speaks very little. When the girls come in to ask for snacks, she leaves to attend to their needs.

Joshua watches her walk out of the room. “She’s great with them, don’t you think?” I agree. “She’s so natural. Almost as if . . .” He trails off. I try to prompt an answer. “Nothing, nothing. I’m a bit nervous today, is all.”

What did he have to be nervous about?

“This interview, for one.”

Franny comes back and sits closer to Joshua. She’s licking something sticky from her fingers. She doesn’t seem nervous. She seems, if I had to use a word to summarize her, triumphant.

She pats Joshua on the knee. “Did you want to tell him or should I?”

“That’s a lady’s prerogative, I think.”

Franny turns to me as she takes Joshua’s hand in hers.

“It’s all a bit sudden but . . . we’re getting married.”





Chapter 27


New Routine


Cecily

The days flip by after the incident with Teo and the police.

When I got back downstairs from making sure the kids were okay, Teo had gone. He responded to my text asking him if he was okay with a terse explanation that he had to go. I’m sorry, he said in a text he sent the next day to which I didn’t respond, because what am I going to do? Go back to being friends? Pretend his rejection doesn’t sting more than I’d like to admit? Besides, I don’t know what to say, so it’s easier to say nothing at all.

I settle into a routine at the restaurant. It’s good to have something to distract me, to pull my focus from myself. I skip my next interview with Teo and cancel coffee with Franny. I keep my therapy appointment, but I’m flirting with cutting that off, too. Linda can tell I’m distracted and asks me if I’d like to take a break. We’ve been over all the same ground, so maybe it would be good for me to see if I can make it through a few weeks on my own? I ask her if this is some kind of tough love, pushing me out so I can find my own bottom and admit the help I need, but no. She’s serious, and when I get out into the parking lot, I feel a weight lifting from my soul. I’m not saying I’ll never go back, but Linda was right. I needed to move on from her and the rut I’d created in her office, the deep depression in her couch that wouldn’t go away no matter how much fluffing we both did.

In the days that follow, I can feel myself cutting ties as if I’m taking an actual pair of scissors to them, snip, snip, snip. The only ones I keep are the children, and Sara, and my mom. These people used to be enough for me, and they ought to be enough for me now. And now it’s October twenty-ninth, a few days before Halloween, and it all seems flat. I hated the attention, but something about it made me feel alive in a way I don’t now. As if the attention was what made me real, and now that it’s gone, I’m like the photograph that made me famous in the first place. Artificial. A picture of someone I used to know.

“Cecily?”

“Yes?”

It’s one of the waiters, Carlos or Carlitos, I haven’t quite learned his name yet, much to my shame. I didn’t use to forget details like that.

“There’s someone on the phone for you. They say it’s an emergency.”

“The kids?”

My fear pushes him back on his heels.

“I don’t think so. It’s a man. I think his name is Joshua?”

I grab the phone from him. “Joshua? What is it? The girls? Franny?”

“No, not . . . I can’t do this on the phone. Can you come over?”