The Good Liar(65)

“But maybe . . . ,” Henry says, then hangs his head in defeat. “He’s really dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He pulls away from me and slumps onto the edge of Cassie’s bed. He curls into a fetal position. “This isn’t fair!”

“I know, sweetheart. It isn’t.”

“But how is Aunt Kaitlyn alive?” Cassie asks. “We went to her funeral, too.”

“I don’t know. Let me go down and find out, okay?”

“Can I come with you?”

“That’s not a good idea. Aunt Kaitlyn and I have some things we have to work out in private.”

“Okay.”

I sit down next to Henry and rub his back. He’s shaking, emitting hiccupping cries I know are the end of his crying cycle. “How about you can download that new game you wanted and play that?”

“For real?”

“Just don’t kill too many bystanders, okay?”

“Seriously, Mom?” Cassie says. “That’s your solution?”

“What do I have to bribe you with?”

“I don’t have to be bribed. God, Mother.”

My heart cracks. She’s never called me “Mother” before. I feel an urgent need to call my own mother and apologize for every time I did that as a teenager.

“Just think of the girls. Kaitlyn’s girls. Imagine if you were them?”

“I kind of am them.”

“You’re right. But you also know what I meant.”

“Okay, okay. I already told you I wasn’t going to say anything.”

I stand and hug her quickly. “Thank you.”

She shrugs away and slinks off. I give Henry another hug and ask him if he’s going to be okay. When he says he will, I creep back down the stairs, passing our montage of family photographs. I purposively avoid looking at the one of all of us on vacation a few years ago. The person I’ve been thinking about since I got those texts has been hanging on my wall this whole time. She was in my house, right next to me, my confidante.

I hear a rushing sound in my ears. I sink to the stairs. I’ve had this feeling before, on the worst days, my own brand of panic attack. I place my head on my knees, wrap my arms around my head, and concentrate on breathing. I will not call Kaitlyn for help. I will not call Kaitlyn for help. I repeat those words to myself over and over until the feeling subsides. It takes only a few minutes, much less than it used to. In fact, it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of these at all. I stare at the wall and think back over the last few weeks. I haven’t had any anxiety since I left Linda’s office a few weeks ago. Was she the cause of it? No. She was the deposit of my memories, the symbol of what was causing the anxiety in the first place.

I stand, straighten myself out, check my reflection in a photograph of Cassie and Henry and my mom from five years ago. I look pale but together.

No more putting this off.

Downstairs, Kaitlyn’s sitting on the living room couch, watching the gas fireplace. There’s only a small lamp on, and the way the shadows work, the weight she’s lost, the difference in her hair color and cut—if I saw her on the street, I might not be sure it was her. I’d probably dismiss an across-the-street sighting, like I have the many times I’ve thought I’ve seen Tom, as a mind trick, my brain swapping out unfamiliar features with the known.

I walk into the room.

“Did you run away with Tom?”

Her head snaps around. She looks like a panicked animal caught on the road. “What? No. Tom is . . . Isn’t Tom dead?”

“Yes, but then again, so are you.”

“But Tom would never . . .”

“Tom would never what? Run away? Sleep with my friend? Betray his family?”

Kaitlyn flinches at each question.

“Tom would never run away. He loved you. He loved your kids.”

“And you didn’t?”

“Of course I love my kids; it’s not like that.”

“So what is it like, Kaitlyn? Please enlighten me.”

She drops her head into her hands. The bones in her neck are sticking out of the unfamiliar argyle sweater she’s wearing. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve had a whole year to figure it out and I just don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I know it isn’t.” She sits back up. The end of her nose is red. I feel violent, the need to reach out and smack someone, her.

See what you’ve done to me, Tom? You’ve turned me into a parody, a woman who might actually slap another woman just for the dramatic impact of it.

“So what, then?”

“Will you sit down, and I’ll try to explain what I can? Please?”

I sit on the couch across from her and grab the blanket off the back. It’s cashmere, soft and cozy. I need to be wrapped in the gentlest thing I can right now; another echo because this is exactly how I felt in that hotel room in New York. A coincidence or just one of life’s little harmonies? Who cares, who cares.

“So what happened?” I say.

“Which part?”

“The Tom part.”

“How do you know about the Tom part?”

“Coincidentally, I just found out.”