Behind Every Lie(70)

“My dad was a complete bastard to me my whole life,” Jacob said. “For a long time, I thought … I don’t know, that everybody would reject me because he did. Maybe that’s why I ran away. It’s definitely why I came back. Like, if I helped him when he was sick, he’d suddenly love me and I’d mean something to him. But he never said it. He never apologized. In a way, it’s good, I guess. I can see now it has nothing to do with me. He’s fucked up because he’s fucked up, you know? At least you know Kat did her best. She tried. You have to remember that.”

He was right. One year when I was about fourteen, Mom had taken Andrew and me out to one of those places you chop the tree down yourself to get a Christmas tree. We wanted the biggest tree, and it was ridiculous, dwarfing our small car. But Mom managed to cut it down, wrestle it onto the car, get it into the house. But we were so excited, hopping from foot to foot as we hung the decorations and strung the tinsel in messy clumps. Finally Mom plugged in the lights, her face beaming as she watched our faces light up. She was happy that we were happy.

My memory of decorating that Christmas tree was like a perfect photograph in my mind. I was glad it had stayed with me, fully formed when so much else was broken or gone.

Outside, the evening newspaper thudded against the front door. Phone to my ear, I got up to get it, setting my tea on the entrance table and peering out the peephole. The paper was lying facedown on the welcome mat, wrapped in plastic. I unlocked the door, the bolt, and the chain, and grabbed the paper.

A crunching sound came from my right. I jumped.

But it was just a coyote, caught in the glare of the floodlight. It froze, its eyes glinting like wet coal before it sprang into motion, disappearing into the shadows.

“You know, I used to think Mom was like some sort of god.” As I said that, I shut the door, relocked it, and tossed the newspaper onto the entry table next to my art nouveau lamp, the one Liam said was tacky. He’d literally groaned out loud when I told him I got it from a garage sale.

It was one of the rare times I’d ignored him. I needed one thing in this house that was mine.

I pulled the lamp’s dangling metal chain to turn the light on. The bright, stained-glass lampshade cast red and yellow lights over the newspaper, highlighting the headline through the damp plastic.

Second Body Found in Queen Anne Murder



Everything in me froze. Jacob was talking, but I tuned him out as I picked up the paper to read.

A second body has been found at the home of Katherine Hansen, the Queen Anne woman murdered in unexplained circumstances last week. The body was discovered in a septic tank in the backyard and identified as British citizen Sebastian Clarke. Police believe Mr. Clarke was Ms. Hansen’s ex-husband.



The room tilted around me.

Sebastian was dead.

He’d been dead all along.

I raised a shaking hand to my mouth. If Sebastian was dead, who had been following me in London?

If Sebastian is dead, who killed Mom?

From far away, I heard Jacob still talking, telling me about the funeral plans for his dad, the people coming to the service.

Think, Eva, think.

I stared at the picture of Sebastian Clarke in the newspaper, trying to remember the face of the man who’d been following me at the Tube station. My brain juddered to a stop, my fingertips going numb from the adrenaline.

I never saw his face, I realized. A bus had driven by before I ran into the station; I’d only caught a glimpse of the man’s profile. It could have been anyone. Or no one.

I’d drawn that sketch of Sebastian before I realized anybody was following me. Had I transposed Sebastian’s face from my sketch onto a stranger’s, filling in the blanks with my own assumptions?

I couldn’t trust anything. Not what I remembered, not what I thought I saw.

Not myself.

I stumbled, my elbow cracking against my mug sitting on the console table. Tea spilled across the oak surface, the mug hitting the floor with a sickening crack. I stared at the pool of liquid expanding like blood, a memory mushrooming inside me, playing across the backs of my eyelids like a movie.

I was standing in Mom’s living room, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. I looked at my feet, where two bodies lay on the floor. One was my mom.

A few feet away from her was the man from my sketch. The man from the article.

Sebastian Clarke.

The back of his head was split open, blood oozing toward my toes.

And I knew with a horrible certainty.

I killed Sebastian Clarke.

And if I’d killed Sebastian, that meant I was capable of killing Mom.

It was me all along.





thirty-six

kat




4 years before

I SECURED A SEAT at the back of the cocktail bar—always the back, so I could see who entered—and waited for Lily. This waterfront bar was her favorite, overlooking Seattle’s lovely seascape: the snow-tipped Olympic Mountains soaring over Puget Sound; the evergreen-cloaked islands in the distance; the setting sun casting a pink and gold glow over the horizon. A Washington ferry chugged into the blue expanse of Elliott Bay, heading in the direction of Bainbridge Island.

Lily entered like an actress sweeping before her adoring crowd, her long, flowing skirt fluttering behind her, her giant gold earrings dancing. She tossed a wave to the bartender, whose face brightened as he waved back. I stood to hug her.