The Good Liar(90)

“Does it?”

“Not often, no,” he says. “But all she needs is a wedge of doubt to work with.”

“So this was all wasted effort.”

“I don’t think so. Joshua knows the truth now. What he chooses to do with that information is another thing.”

“I feel like shit.”

“Why? You were only trying to help him.”

“Is that what I was doing?”

He stands in front of me and takes me by the elbows. “You’re much too hard on yourself.”

“Isn’t that always the way with heroes? Never content with the people they’ve saved, always concentrating on the ones they lost?”

His shoulders rise up and down. “Life’s complicated. There are no easy, binary inputs. You can’t expect a particular result where people are concerned.”

“It would be so much easier if you could.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“So what now?”

His hands move up my arms. “I finish the film. And then, hopefully, you’ll go out with me again.”

“Still on that, are we?”

“Is that okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

“What’s that?”

“Confess.”



I stop my car in Sara’s driveway with a heavy heart. Today hasn’t gone according to plan, and I feel that I’ve let Kaitlyn down somehow. Not that I owed her anything, but I don’t like failure. No one does, but these issues with Franny felt like something manageable, something salvageable from this horrendous year. I could check off this box and then move on with my life.

I climb the back stairs and knock on the door. Kaitlyn opens it. She’s wearing her coat. Her backpack’s on the floor, the room clean of her meager possessions.

“Were you even going to wait for me to come back?”

“Of course. But there’s a bus leaving in a few hours. I want to catch it.”

“Where to this time?”

“Better if you don’t know, probably.”

“Probably.”

Kaitlyn scrapes her hair back and fastens it with a hair tie. She pulls her hat over it. She could be anyone now, any woman in her midforties. It’s not just her looks, it’s the way she carries herself. She truly has become someone I don’t know.

“How did it go?” Kaitlyn asks. “What did Joshua say?”

“We laid it all out, and Franny tried to explain everything away.”

“Of course she did. But she can’t.”

“I’m not sure it was that simple for Joshua.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t know what to think. He wanted to talk it out with Franny.”

“He what?”

“They left together.”

“He took her back to my house? To be with my kids?”

“For now. I’m sure that when this all sinks in . . .”

Kaitlyn wrapped her arms around herself. “No, you don’t know her. You don’t know her like I do.”

“What are you talking about . . . Wait, what? You know Franny? You’ve met her?”

“We used to . . . correspond.”

“When?”

“Years ago. She contacted me when I was pregnant with Emily. She thought I was her mother. She seemed so lost. So I wrote her back. I tried to help her. And for a while, I thought I was. But then she changed, things changed, and . . .”

“And what, Kaitlyn? Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you tell me this in the beginning?”

“Because I’m not proud of what I did, and you already thought badly enough of me.”

“What did you do?”

“I disappeared. She was getting aggressive about us meeting, wanting me to take a DNA test, all kinds of crazy things. So I cut her off. I changed my e-mail address and didn’t tell her. I think I’m the reason she ended up in that mental institution. I think she tried to kill herself after I rejected her.”

“But if she was convinced you were her mother, and you’re not, then you were probably right to do that.”

“I wanted to help her. But I had my own issues to deal with and the baby, and she was a lot of work. Very needy. I could’ve tried to get her help. I shouldn’t have disappeared on her. But that’s my MO, isn’t it? The disappearing mother. Franny was just the test run.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think you can blame yourself for this one.”

“I’m the reason Franny’s here, doing this. If I’d handled it better, she wouldn’t have moved in on my family to exact some kind of revenge.”

“You can’t know that.”

“She couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t run away.”

“That’s true. But she’s ill. You’re not responsible for that.”

Kaitlyn closes her eyes, going to her own private space. I watch her. She opens her eyes again. She seems more focused.

“I can’t believe Joshua. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s hurt and confused.”

“My fault again.”