The Lies That Bind(82)

Grant freezes for a long few seconds before his lips start to tremble. “My brother’s dead, Cecily,” he says, tears finally falling, streaming down his cheeks. “He died a few days after nine eleven.”

I freeze, completely forgetting myself for a moment, and all of the layers of betrayal, and thinking only of twin brothers in that agonizing situation. My heart fills with sympathy for both of them, and I tell him how sorry I am.

“Thank you,” he says. “I know that doesn’t change anything I did…but I wasn’t thinking clearly….I didn’t know what to do….I called the police and pretended to be a concerned neighbor….I left the cabin for a few hours while they came to get the body….”

“I’m so sorry,” I say again. “But—” I shake my head, thinking of everything that came after. The hiding. The lying. “Oh my God, Grant. That was you in the emails. You were pretending to be Byron.”

He stares at me, then says, “I just…I just wanted you to know that what we had was real.”

    “So you keep lying? That’s your way of showing it to me?”

“It was the only way.”

“It wasn’t the only way,” I say. “And it wasn’t real. If it were, you would have told me the truth. You would have taken that risk.”

“I couldn’t, Cecily. Don’t you get that? I did what I thought was better for you. For everyone…and it was better for everyone.”

“Better for your wife?” I say. “Who thinks she’s a nine-eleven widow?”

“Yes. Better for her, too. Look…she hasn’t been up here once to check on Byron—her brother-in-law….She’s too busy moving on with her own life….And you—well, clearly you’re fine, too,” he says with a trace of his own indignation.

“Do I look fine to you?” I say.

He grabs my hand and shakes it a little, staring down at my ring. “Yeah. You do, actually. I saw your lovely engagement announcement online. In your own newspaper. Nice touch. Did you write that yourself?”

I jerk my hand away from him and flip my diamond around with my thumb. “That’s not fair!” I say, shaking my head. “And you know it.”

“Oh, it’s totally fair,” he deadpans. “It’s what happened, Cecily. I mean, look at the facts. You think I’m dead—and you get engaged, like, one month later?”

I stare at him.

“Here I was trying to figure out ways to let you know I was alive…and instead I find that announcement. I mean, wow. That didn’t take long at all.”

I shake my head and shout, “But that happened after I found out you were married and had lied to me!”

“What the hell difference does that make?” he says.

“Are you serious?” I say, my voice shaking. “Are you really asking me what difference it makes that you were married?”

“At least I knew what and who I wanted.”

    “So did I!” I shout.

“Oh really?” he says, his voice turning a little sarcastic, something I’ve never heard before. “Let’s review the facts. You meet me and break up with him—”

“We were already broken up!” I say. “That’s the order you’re supposed to do this in.”

“Right. Right. You were broken up. Fine. But then you meet me. And you fall in love. Supposedly. And then you think I’m dead, so you run back to him. And you don’t just run back to him, you get freaking engaged. Jesus, Cecily,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s almost as if we’re interchangeable to you. Grant, Matthew, what’s the difference, right?”

“Actually. There’s a pretty major difference,” I say, thinking that Matthew has more integrity in his pinkie than Grant does in his whole body. “Matthew would never lie to me.”

“Well, good for Matthew. Great for you. You ended up with the right guy.”

“You know it’s more complicated than that,” I say.

“Oh, so you’re saying things are more complicated than they seem? Well, imagine that,” he says.

“Actually,” I say. “I take that back. It’s not complicated. Not anymore. I figured everything out.”

“Oh? And what did you figure out?”

“I figured out that I can count on Matthew. And that I want to have this baby with him,” I say, putting my left hand on my stomach, my ring showing again.

He stares at me, his turn to be shocked. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes,” I say, feeling suddenly desperate to get back to Matthew. To tell him the truth about everything—what I should have done from the very beginning. I manage to get to my feet.

“You’re leaving?” Grant says. “Just like that?”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s what you did,” I say, before making my way down the ladder and running out the front door.





It takes me the whole drive home to even begin to process what’s just happened, what I now know. The fact that Grant is alive. That Byron is dead. That Grant committed a crime—two crimes, if you include faking your own death. It’s all so surreal—almost as surreal as terrorists flying airplanes into buildings.