The Good Liar(8)

This is how I think now. I don’t know how to stop it.

Teo gets me to give my basic details: name, age, occupation. And then: “Why don’t you tell me about that day?” Teo says. “From the beginning.”

He wore a suit for the event, but now he’s changed back into his trademark T-shirt and jeans. How many versions of this outfit does he have?

“It was an ordinary day,” I say, trying to focus on the now. “Nothing about it stands out.”

Teo raises an eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“I mean before the explosion. It was the usual getting the kids ready for school and getting myself ready, and . . . I know that probably doesn’t help you.”

“It’s fine. I’m just surprised because the other people I’ve talked to, well, most of them seem to remember everything that happened that day.”

We’re sitting in the solarium off the kitchen. It smells like slightly rotted rosemary; the plant it was Tom’s job to water barely survived this year without him, putting up with Henry’s imperfect memory as best it could. Beyond it lies the backyard—a cedar hedge, a covered barbecue that hasn’t been used since last summer, burnished gold mums in a set of planters my mother gave me years ago.

“I think people enjoy saying stuff like that,” I say. “Like, if they missed a flight that ended up crashing, they’ll say: Something was bugging me all day. I just knew from the moment I woke up I shouldn’t get on that airplane. I think that’s why I was late, et cetera. But think of all the times you feel that way and nothing happens.”

A shiver runs through me, because that is how I feel now all the time, that nervous feeling like something bad’s about to happen, something I could avoid if I knew which event to skip, which route not to take, which call not to answer. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, trapping me in the house because if I don’t leave, then I can’t make a bad decision. Most of the time, like now, it’s simply a companion, a new part of me I have to carry around, like weight I can’t shed.

“What is it?” Teo asks. “Have you remembered something?”

“Nothing, really . . .”

“Tell me.”

“This is probably ironic given what I just said, but I was late that day. I got behind with the kids and . . . I was late. Nothing unusual for me, but that’s why I wasn’t in the building.”

“Did you have a bad feeling? Is that what made you late?”

“No . . . I was annoyed with myself, but it wasn’t a premonition or anything. I used to be late all the time. If you asked Tom, it was my main character flaw.”

“You were going to meet Tom that day, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“An early lunch?”

“Pardon me?”

“It was ten in the morning. Seems like an odd time to meet your husband at his office.”

I look out the window. The grass is longer than Tom kept it, and it hasn’t received the final mowing he used to give it before the snow flew. We have a service that comes now, but they close up in September. A burst of Indian summer a week ago pushed a few inches out of the ground. What would Tom think if he came back? Would he find things to complain about, or would he just be so happy to be alive everything else would pale by comparison?

“We did that sometimes. Met up when he had a break in his schedule. We were going to go look at some furniture. At CORT, I think, that discount place on Lake Shore.”

Teo looks around. “Seems like you have all the furniture you could use, here.”

“I know, right?” I bring my attention back to him, looking right into his brown eyes. “There are so many things—after—that seem silly in retrospect.”

Even though he’s filming this, Teo’s taking notes. He’s got his questions typed up on pieces of paper with spaces below for my answers. I don’t feel anything as I watch him write down my lies.

After a year of telling them, it’s become second nature.





Chapter 4


Dreams


Kate

In Montreal, Kate was dreaming. A few hours before, she thought she’d have a sleepless night, a “white night,” she used to call them, back in her old life, when it still seemed as if a night without sleep could be benign. But sometime soon after two, she’d gone under, and her brain, like her daughter’s, was torturing her.

In the dream, she was in her old house. She’d forgotten to pull the shades on her bedroom windows tightly closed. They hadn’t wound the clocks back yet, so the light that pushed her awake wasn’t the sun but the street lamp on their front lawn that her children would decorate in a few weeks for Halloween. Kate knew without looking that her alarm would sound soon. That she’d have to pry herself away from the warmth embracing her and face another morning of getting the kids ready for school and herself ready for work.

She could feel her husband sleeping next to her. When she thought of him, Kate was always split in two. Sometimes even being married seemed weird, like a word you repeat so many times it loses its meaning. Other times Kate wondered how they’d ended up together. Had it simply been a case of musical chairs? That he was the one she was sitting next to when it was time for the music to stop? She knew she was being unfair to him, forgetting all the great things that were the reasons she was lying next to him in the first place. But instead, often, all she could focus on were things like the fact that he’d become a great father against his will.