Lies She Told Page 5

The doctor opens a palm and gestures to me. “She . . . the other woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would she win?”

  “My life.”

  “Your life is your husband?”

  “My life is my family. Me, my husband, and Vicky.”

  “If your husband cheats throughout your marriage, would that still be a good life?”

  He’s lobbing questions too fast, a tennis machine on an expert-level setting. I can’t volley this. I raise my hand as if to block another inquiry from flying at my face. “I don’t know.” A weak answer. How pathetic I must look to a man like him. I cover my face with my hands and lament my life. Respected journalism career, beautiful baby, loving husband: it was all a sham with a charlatan at its center. And yet, I want nothing more than to return to the mirage, to stick my finger down my throat and spit up the red pill. But I can’t. He’s been seen. I’ll never forget what Jake is really capable of, who he really is. I’ll never erase his lover’s face.

  Something soft brushes against my forearm. I lower my palms, revealing my psychiatrist’s outstretched hand. A tissue waves between his fingers like a surrender flag.

  For a moment, I’m offended. I’m not crying. Then I realize that it’s a way for him to get my hands away from my face. “Sorry,” I say.

  “No need to be sorry. You’re dealing with a serious betrayal. Feeling upset is natural.”

  I twist the tissue with both hands. “Is it natural to want them to just die?”

  He cocks his head to his shoulder and offers a noncommittal shrug.

  The digital clock on his desk shows three minutes till. Somehow, an hour has passed. Sadness has slowed my mental processes. The questions that had seemed to fire at me were, in all likelihood, offered after minutes of mulling over my thoughts. Dr. Williams follows my eyeline. “We’ll talk again?” His voice rises in a question. Jake’s only made the one appointment.

  Despite everything I think about this doctor’s inability to help me, I find myself nodding.

  “How about next Friday?” He walks to a closed laptop on his desk and opens it. A calendar is on the screen. “Does this time work?”

  “I don’t really have a napping schedule for Vicky.”

  “Is there another time that is better? Usually, I recommend once a week, but seeing as how something pretty traumatic has happened, I think it would be best to come a bit more frequently at first.”

  I look at my newborn, pupils moving beneath thin eyelids. She sleeps most of the day now, waking up only to feed and briefly play before her next nap. The pediatrician blamed a six-week growth spurt. She’d said it often lasts until two months. “Okay. This is good.”

  He hits a few keys on his computer and informs me that I’ll get an e-mail confirmation. I sniffle a thank you. Part of me wishes I could come sooner. How will I stomach my husband in the interim? What will I do with the time in between?

  LIZA

  I sit alone in David’s office, rereading my last chapter while I wait for him to return from wherever and head out to the Hamptons with me. His only court appearance was a change of venue motion that he’d said would wrap up around two. The time on my laptop reads quarter to four.

  At least the space is conducive to editing. It’s quiet. Dark. David keeps the blackout shades lowered, preventing me from amusing myself by peering into the windows of neighboring buildings. His sparse furnishings don’t tempt distraction, either. The roll-arm leather couch is standard fare, the kind decorating a million NYC bachelor pads. His oak desk is devoid of photos or mementos, as are the wooden bookshelves filled with bound legal volumes. Nothing in David’s office hints that there is someone he may be thinking of besides the law and his client. I assume the lack of personalization is to assure visitors that confidences are kept inside these wood-paneled walls, things David won’t even tell his wife.

  The doorknob jiggles. I save my document and then e-mail it to myself for good measure. Relying on my hard drive alone is not good enough. I learned that a few years ago after a computer virus hijacked all my processing power to send pornographic spam. By the time the Geek Squad had successfully deleted the malware and returned my machine, I’d lost weeks of work.

  David’s secretary, Cameron, enters with a steaming mug of coffee. Amazonian gams scissor beneath a pasted-on pencil skirt as she approaches David’s desk. Her blonde hair bounces above her ample chest. Cameron should really play a secretary on television rather than be one. She has that hot-cheerleader-got-a-job thing going for her. Part of me wishes that David had a less attractive administrative assistant. All the thinking about affairs has made me wary of pretty women in close proximity to my spouse.

  She smiles at me like I’m a professional photographer as she sets the cup on the desk. I am about to engage in some polite conversation when she begs off to man the phones. “Things are so busy with Nick gone,” she explains.

  As she opens the door, I spy my spouse hovering in the hallway. He still wears a dark suit jacket and pants, court attire, rather than the khakis I’d expect for a ride to the Hamptons. I hear Cameron announce me, followed by something from him in a lower tone. Something unintelligible. She shuts the door behind her.

  Beth’s voice whispers in my mind. Maybe they’re flirting, not fucking. Maybe you already know. I blink at my screen and try to focus on the last paragraph of Beth’s psychiatrist visit. There’s no reason for me to be suspicious of David and Cameron. More than likely, he is sharing details about a case that I can’t overhear without him violating his attorney-client privilege. Cameron would be covered under the exception for law firm staff. He’s meeting with her in the hallway with the door closed because I’m in his office.

  Though I tell myself all this, I still lift my butt from the couch and peer through the frosted glass window in David’s door. The fuzzy image of a blonde stands beside my husband’s distinct shape. Their outlines don’t overlap. He steps toward the door. Quickly, I drop back onto the couch cushion and pull the computer onto my lap. My snooping is silly. I don’t want him to catch me doing it.

  Jake wouldn’t touch another woman if he knew that I was watching, Beth says . . .

  David enters the room and shuts the door. I jostle the laptop back into a front pocket of my navy travel duffel, as though I’ve only now stopped working, and slip the bag’s strap over my shoulder. “Ready to go?”

  A frown draws down David’s face. I know this expression. It precedes disappointment—usually mine. “I can’t come out this weekend. I have a motion on one of Nick’s cases.”

  “You just found out?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have called before.” It’s a lawyer’s answer. David is not admitting that this information is recent. He’s implying that he learned it today by suggesting that his mistake was not notifying me earlier this afternoon as opposed to belatedly changing his mind. He gestures to my travel bag. “You should go, though. You’re all packed, and I’m going to be stuck here all weekend.”

  “Can’t you write it Sunday? I’ll be off to the conference then.”

  “I need to prepare. I can’t pull legal arguments out of thin air.” David gestures to his shelves. “I need my reference books.”

  “And this was sprung on you this morning?”

  David presses his lips together, annoyed with me for asking the same question in a more direct manner. His lack of affirmative response is all the confirmation I need. He was never actually planning on coming with me to the Hamptons. The agreement was a war tactic, meant to disarm me when I was on my home turf. Now I’m on his.

  I think of my belly, bloated with hormones and swollen follicles. My ripe eggs will rot inside me. There aren’t enough fertility drugs in the world to fix a husband refusing to bed his wife.

  Maybe that’s because he’s sleeping with someone else. I want to shout at Beth to stop projecting her story onto my own. I slump back into the couch and press my thumb and forefinger to my eyelids, trying to forestall the hot, disappointed tea
rs I feel building behind them.

  “What do you want me to do, huh?” David’s tone is not apologetic. “Nick’s cases are more complicated than I thought. I can’t wing it. If the firm is to continue, I need his clients to stick with me. Let me tell you, we won’t be able to keep the apartment if my business is cut in half, unless we sell the summer house, which you don’t want to do.”

  He’s right on all counts. My flailing career certainly can’t pay our mortgage, and I won’t sell my house. Some force—maybe my mother’s spirit or simply the memory of her—will not let me part with the place.

  With no counterargument to David’s case, I wallow in a mental image. I’m lying on our mattress, doubled over with cramps from passing multiple unfertilized eggs at once. No doubt this month will end the same way.

  “Some of Nick’s clients are big names worth a lot of money to us. I can’t just Google some facts and win cases.” This last statement is a dig at me. David often quips that my job is searching random information on the Internet.

  I rub my eyes until my vision clears enough to see David standing beside his desk, not yet sure enough in his victory to sit. “I guess I’ll go home and wait for you,” I mumble.

  David’s hands land on his hips. “Oh. So quid pro quo, huh? I don’t do what you want, because I need to work, and you forget about the favor of asking your policeman friend for information on Nick’s case.” He throws up his hands and strides to his desk. “Honestly, Liza, sometimes I can’t believe you’re this selfish.”

  I bite my lip to keep my eyes from watering, again. “I want to have a life with you, David. A family. Why am I the villain for that?”

  Rather than answer, he settles into his rotating desk chair. As he does, I realize that I made a mistake before. His office isn’t bereft of photos. There, on the counter, is a stack of new posters. Each one bears multiple images of Nick, apparently nabbed from Facebook. Instead of Nick staring straight at the camera with a confident, lawyer look, he’s laughing with friends at a table, smoking a cigarette beside a brick wall, pointing to a bar sign. These are flattering photos.

  “I need to work.” He turns his desk chair to his computer screen, dismissing me. Part of me wants to slap him so hard that the seat spins back around to face me. Another part wants to leap into his lap and kiss him until he has no choice but to acknowledge the intimacy that I’m rightfully entitled to as his wife. My fear won’t allow either of those sides to show their faces, though. I’ll never win an argument with David.

  “Okay. I’ll go to the house,” I say quietly. “I’ll stop in Flushing on the way.”

  I leave the door open as I exit, praying that he might change his mind. The hope persists until I’m through the midtown tunnel. As I watch the brake lights shine in the artificial darkness, miles below the East River, I realize that he is not going to surprise me in the Hamptons. He’s staying in New York, waiting for whatever the cops will dredge from the water.

  *

  A summer Friday afternoon is the worst time to drive to Long Island. The financial set clears out of the city as soon as the markets shut down at four. Everyone else who can afford a rental gets on the road even earlier. By four thirty, the traffic on I-495 is as thick and sluggish as cold gravy. It continues consolidating as it travels deeper into the heart of Queens, cholesterol-filled blood forcing itself through narrowing veins. We all know it’s only a matter of time before it stops completely.

  I get trapped in bumper to bumper near Corona Park, where the Grand Central Parkway intersects New York’s main east–west artery. Part of me wants to sit in traffic and forget about the police academy to spite my spouse. The other part of me knows visiting my contact is the sole reason that I am in this mess of cars in the first place. I have to help David find out what happened to Nick so that we can move on with our lives once and for all.

  I escape the gridlock by heading north. Traffic is still heavy, but it’s moving. Within five minutes, I’m sailing on the Whitestone Expressway. Another three minutes and I’m pulling into the home of NYPD’s new recruits.

  The two-year-old building still shines like a new nickel. Skinny maples line the parking lot, their trunks the size of my thin arms. Very young trees are cheaper to plant, but I prefer to think these saplings were chosen for their metaphorical qualities. Like the men and women inside, they yearn to mature over long lives into something solid and powerful.

  I smile and think of Beth. That line would never emerge from her lips. She’s no romantic. At least, not anymore.

  I park in the stadium-sized lot in front of the facility and make my way to a massive portico. Its rectangular shape reminds of a giant metal detector. Walking under it, my keys don’t feel as though they belong in my jeans’ pocket. Glass doors lie on the other side. I pull one back and enter a wide open space that resembles a hotel entrance rather than a police station. The whole building smells faintly of glass cleaner and gunpowder, though the latter scent may be from my memories of the in-house shooting range.

  I’d forgotten the size of this place. It was a mistake thinking that I could barge in and talk to an instructor who had me in class for a mere week. Sergeant Perez must train hundreds of real officers responsible for public lives, let alone writers trying to get fictional details right in shootout scenes. Why would he remember me?

  For a moment, I think about leaving without approaching the annoyed-looking female officer manning the visitors’ desk. I could always tell David that I couldn’t locate my contact. Of course, then I wouldn’t get to be the hero wife who helps her husband move on from his friend’s death and is rewarded with regular sex and a healthy full-term infant.

  The desk officer’s full cheeks and bright eyes make me guess that she’s no older than twenty-two. Still, she watches me approach with the clinical gaze of a seasoned detective. My tentative walk and sheepish expression do not do me any favors. By the time I reach the desk, she’s staring at me as though I’ve come to sell her magazine subscriptions. She demands my name in the gruff manner that I imagine she’d use to dole out loitering tickets. I provide it and my license, along with a rushed explanation of my purpose at the academy and my history with Sergeant Perez. “He said I could call him when I graduated, but since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d stop by.”

  Her look suggests that she has not decided whether or not I’m a mental patient. Even with the jury out, though, she plugs Sergeant Perez’s name into a field on her computer screen and calls up his extension. A man picks up on the third ring.

  The officer doesn’t do me any favors with her introduction. She explains that she has “a woman here” who “says she is from a writers’ workshop” and “claims that you know her.” She covers the handset and rolls her eyes up at me. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Liza Cole. I’m an author.” Her eyes don’t show any recognition, but I don’t expect them to. While I’ve written half a dozen thrillers, only one of them had the kind of success capable of making me a household name—and that was years ago. I clear my throat. “I wrote Drowned Secrets.”

  The woman’s narrowed eyes open. “Oh. I know that book. My mom read it. It’s about the kid whose dad—”

  “Yup. That’s it,” I deliberately interrupt.

  “Wasn’t it turned into a movie or something?”

  “They still play it on Lifetime.”

  Now convinced I’m not insane, the woman repeats what I’ve said to the sergeant and tells me he’ll be right down. I thank her and step away from the booth to lean against the glass wall. The last thing I want is to discuss my first novel and—to date—my only bestseller. That plot is not the stuff of polite discourse.

  Sergeant Perez emerges from an elevator moments later. He looks exactly the same as he did a year ago: a fade haircut and a Tom Selleck mustache, along with an easy smile that must have short-listed him for a teaching position.

  “Liza Cole,” he says. “Working on a new murder mystery?”

  “Something
like that.” I extend my hand. “It’s actually a real case.”

  His chin pulls back into his neck as he shakes. “I can’t talk about cases on the record without approval.”

  “I’m not writing about it. It’s a personal matter.” His look becomes even more skeptical. “I don’t know if you’ve read any of the articles about a missing lawyer? Nick Landau.”

  The sergeant’s thick black eyebrows rise into Vs. “The guy that won that big judgment against the city?”

  I hesitate before nodding yes. Police are paid out of municipal coffers. It’s possible that David and Nick’s lawsuit didn’t win them any friends on the force. “Nick was—” I clear my throat. There’s no evidence that Nick deserves the past tense—at least, not yet. “Nick is a partner in my husband’s law firm, and he was the best man at our wedding. My husband is pretty distraught. He doesn’t know what to tell clients. He’s also afraid that Nick may have been targeted because of the lawsuit and that he could be in danger himself.”

  “Do you think your husband is in danger?”

  My mouth opens, but no sound emerges. I realize that I’ve never seriously considered the answer. I’d always assumed that Nick’s disappearance/death had been related to his party lifestyle or the rough neighborhood in Brooklyn where he insisted upon living. But I didn’t know about the hate mail until last night. Maybe some nut job had done something horrible to Nick. Or someone who’d lost their job over the suit—a teacher at the kid’s school, maybe—decided to seek revenge. Such things happen in thrillers because they first make headlines.

  “If Nick’s disappearance is related to the lawsuit in any way, I guess it’s possible,” I say. “I also think it’s plausible that he was the victim of a mugging or a drug deal gone wrong.”

  Sergeant Perez scratches the side of his mustache. I may have made a mistake bringing drugs into the mix. Now he’s wondering whether I do coke on the weekends.

  “Nick wasn’t really settled down like me and my husband. He hung with a young crowd and liked to party, and he lived in a higher-crime neighborhood in Brooklyn.”