The Lies That Bind(87)

“Can I come in?”

“Sure,” he says tersely.

I walk toward him, noticing a rocks glass half-filled with bourbon, the bottle also on the table. “Are you working?” I say, standing at the edge of the table.

“Not really,” he says, still staring at his computer screen. “A little.”

“May I sit down?”

    He shrugs as I sit across from him and say, “So I went to talk to Amy.”

He looks a little surprised as he says, “And? How’d that go?”

“I only stayed for a few minutes. Just long enough to tell her…” My voice trails off.

“What exactly did you tell her?”

“I told her that her husband was cheating on her…with me…but that I had no idea he was married while we were together.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she already knew,” I tell him, my mind still a little blown by this revelation.

“Seriously? She knew about you two?”

“She said she did. At the very least, she strongly suspected it…and then she found that postcard.”

“The one you said you were going to throw out?” he asks, sounding bitter.

“Yes,” I say, taking my punishment, determined not to lie anymore about anything.

“So what else?”

“That was it, really. I told her everything…except that Grant is still alive.”

“Why did you leave that part out?” he says, looking more curious than disapproving.

“Because that’s Grant’s lie. That has nothing to do with me….I told her I didn’t want to be involved anymore—and that we really can’t be friends.”

He nods.

“But I did tell her she should go to the cabin. That she would find answers there….She’ll know soon enough. He can’t hide forever. But that’s not my concern.”

Matthew takes a deep breath, then points to his laptop. “So this Grant guy…he’s a really bad dude. I called Tully—asked him to do a little digging for me.”

    My stomach lurches as I nod, knowing that John Tully is his friend from law school who works in the DA’s office. “And?”

“And it turns out Grant is an unindicted co-conspirator in an insider trading scheme. He was involved with some guy by the name of Ned Pryor—a Goldman banker.”

“Wow,” I say, floored, the legal terms making everything more concrete. “Tully told you that?”

“Yeah. He found the court documents….Pryor was indicted in August, and I guess the only reason Grant hasn’t been indicted is because they couldn’t find him….And, of course, now they think he’s dead.”

I hesitate, then ask what crime they committed.

“Apparently Pryor was feeding Grant tips, and Grant was executing trades in an offshore account. They busted Pryor because the healthcare company they were trading in was his client—and he was traveling back and forth to the Caymans. Customs caught him with three hundred thousand in cash….They probably linked Grant to Pryor through phone records. Once they get the first guy, it’s never hard to find the rest of them.”

I let out a long sigh, then say, “Well, he had me completely fooled. What a con artist.”

“Total dirtbag.”

“Yeah. He is. But that reminds me of something else I wanted to explain. Something I was just thinking on the subway.”

“Yeah?” he says.

“Well, earlier, I told you that I thought I loved him…and you said that if I thought I did, I did….”

“Yes. I believe that,” he says. “And?”

“Well, I don’t believe that. I didn’t know him—not really—so I couldn’t have loved him.”

“You knew enough about him to fall in love.”

I start to reply—but he cuts me off. “You were wrong about the facts. But feelings are subjective. They’re feelings. And you can’t examine them in hindsight—and decide you just want to change what happened.”

    I stare at him, trying to follow his logic while arguing back my own point. “But if the feelings are based on incorrect facts—then the whole thing is an illusion, isn’t it?”

“Okay, so what does that say about us?” Matthew says, his eyes flashing.

I freeze, then tell him I don’t know what he’s asking me.

“I mean, I had some facts wrong. About you. So…does that mean I didn’t love you, say, this morning? Before I knew all of this?” He answers for me. “No. Of course it doesn’t. That’s absurd.”

Even when I’m rested and not emotional, I can’t win an argument with Matthew. So I certainly can’t win a war of words with him now, as I sit here completely drained with a throbbing headache and sore back from driving all day. I remind myself that it’s not a war—or even a battle—it’s simply two people trying to understand each other. So I take a breath, and try to explain what’s in my heart.

“Look, Matthew. Here’s the bottom line. Maybe I did love him, maybe I didn’t. But knowing what I know now? I no longer do. The lies he told changed my feelings for him now. And that makes me question everything I felt back then, too. So can we please stop with semantics?”