Count My Lies

Chapter 13

13

Over the next few weeks, as the days get longer and hotter, pants replaced by shorts, sweaters by T-shirts, Violet, Harper, and I slip into a familiar routine. Just like I’d hoped, my three shifts a week quickly turn into four, then five, Monday through Friday.

Every day I arrive at the Lockharts’ house just after Harper comes home from school. Around one, the three of us head over to the park. On the walk there, she holds both our hands, begging us to swing her until we worry her shoulders might pop from their sockets. We trade off who pushes her on the swings or chases her around the playground. When we’re done, I’ll take Harper to a ballet class, or gymnastics, while Violet goes home to study.

When Violet and I are together, our conversations are easy. We chat about our days and our lives and the latest celebrity gossip, who got sent home on the latest episode of The Bachelor . She mentioned she watched it a few weeks ago, so I started watching it, too, on my laptop, after my mom falls asleep on the couch. I also started buying Vogue after she told me about an article she read, so I can be up on the same things she is.

She talks a lot about Harper, funny things she’s said or done, her latest tricks to get out of bedtime. Lately, it’s asking for her back to be scratched for at least ten minutes. I laugh when Violet tells me how Harper’s coerced her into professing her love to each of her stuffed animals, kissing their cheeks and tucking them in before Violet is allowed to leave the room. Sometimes, Harper requires her to give each stuffed animal a back scratch, too. You can tell how much Violet loves being a mom, how much motherhood suits her.

She also talks about Jay. About his likes and pet peeves, the places they’ve gone together. They traveled a lot before Harper was born, to interesting places like Shanghai and Bali, Patagonia, the Australian outback. I tell her I traveled, too, how I backpacked through Italy after I graduated from college. I didn’t, but it feels like I did when I describe the trip from movies I’ve seen, share details from books I’ve read. Eat, Pray, Lie , if you will.

Actually, I’ve never left the East Coast. When I was growing up, my mom would take me on weeklong vacations to Daytona Beach, where she used to waitress, where she met my dad. We’d load up the car with beach towels and sand toys and coolers full of lunch meat and jars of peanut butter and we’d get a room in a seaside motel, spend our days baking in the sun, me splashing in the waves, her with a book on a lounge chair. It was always special, but it wasn’t Europe.

Violet’s favorite vacation was the trip she and Jay took to Scotland right before she got pregnant with Harper. She talks about it with a hint of nostalgia, and I wonder if she ever misses how things were before they became parents. She laughs as she recounts a story of walking into a bar in the outskirts of Edinburgh and how they thought everyone was speaking another language because the local accents were so thick. Jay pulled out his Google Translate app only to realize his mistake when the bartender typed in, “I am speaking English, ya dobber!”

I hoard these details about Jay like precious stones, carefully wrapping them up and stowing them away in my memory. It feels like I know him, really know him. Where he was born, where he grew up, what he studied in college. I know how he proposed and what his favorite foods are. I wonder if she tells Jay about me, if he feels like he knows me, too.

Twice, Danny has come up again in conversation. Only briefly, in passing, but both times Violet has looked like a schoolgirl, her cheeks coloring, lips fighting a smile. It’s impossible not to wonder if she thinks about him late at night, if she imagines what it would be like if they’d never broken up.

When Violet runs errands, I’ll stay at the house with Harper. I’ll read to her on the couch or we’ll play kitchen, making pancakes and sandwiches and hot dogs out of Play-Doh. She loves listening to Taylor Swift, too, calls her Twaylor, singing along to the choruses of her favorite songs. Three of Harper’s classmates have seen her in concert, she tells me wistfully, so the next time I come over, I bring colorful string and plastic beads, and we make Swiftie friendship bracelets, slip them on, and pretend we have front-row seats at her Eras Tour. At first, I was terrified to be alone with Harper, worried what might happen if I was the only one around, but I’ve gotten more comfortable. I remind myself that I’d call 911 and that I know CPR; if something were to happen, I’d keep her safe.

But my favorite times are when Violet texts me to meet up with her for coffee and take a walk to the marina or up to the Brooklyn Bridge while Harper is still in school. We count our steps on her gold-linked watch, toast with our cappuccinos if we make it to five thousand. Some mornings we take a yoga class, or, if it’s particularly hot, we stretch out on blankets in the park, pulling up our shirts to tan our backs and bellies, holding cold cans of La Croix to our necks to cool ourselves down. On these days, I’m not just Harper’s nanny, but Violet’s friend. And maybe not just her friend, but best friend. I feel like she’s mine, at least.

When Violet and I are together, I want to pinch myself that I’ve been welcomed into her life, that someone like her wants to be friends with someone like me. Sometimes I wonder what she’s getting out of it, if maybe I make her feel better about herself, or if she’s just grateful to have found child care, but then she’ll laugh at one of my jokes, give me a squeeze on my arm, and I know that our friendship is real. Even after all these weeks, I still get a thrill seeing her name on my phone when she texts, a surge of anticipation before I knock on their front door. Some people, when you get to know them, lose their shine. Their newness fades; the mystery evaporates. You start to see the cracks in the surface, their tiny imperfections. But not Violet. She’s just as interesting, just as shiny.

I know I have to tread lightly. Even though I’m myself around her, my list of lies continues to grow. I’m Caitlin, a thirty-two-year-old nursing student with a sick mom, former runner, well traveled. I don’t have a criminal record. Now that we’re friends, I wish I could come clean—really, I do. But I can’t. Not ever. If she ever finds out that I lied about having medical experience, that I’ve compromised her daughter’s safety—even though I’d never let anything happen to Harper—it would be over, all of it. And I can’t let that happen.

Because here’s the real truth. Sometimes, I pretend that we’re not just friends, but that we’re sisters, ever since she told me her dad was born and raised in Philly. Just like my dad. We have the same dimple in our chin, I’ve noticed, a similar heart-shaped face, round in the cheeks, slightly pointed chin. Our noses aren’t that different, either—both strong, a bit angular. She’s prettier than me, of course, her eyes brighter, skin smoother, hair glossier, but the similarities are there.

We could be. Sisters, I mean. It was a game I often played when I was younger. Imagining my dad and his family, make-believe brothers and sisters. They’d be a few years younger than me; my dad was in his early twenties when he met my mom, so it would have taken him another few years to get married and start a family. I’d invent names for my siblings, draw pictures of what I thought they might look like. Violet is only thirty-one; two years younger than I am. Plenty of time for my dad to meet someone and have a baby.

I’ve never really pressed my mom about him. I only know what she’s told me about the night they met: that he was from Philly, that his first name was Joe. Even if the internet had been around when I was a kid, it wasn’t much to go on.

I thought I’d grown out of it. I thought I’d accepted that I would never know if I had any brothers or sisters, but it’s clear I haven’t. And why would I? Doesn’t everyone want to know where they’ve come from? Who else belongs to them? Every so often, I consider taking a DNA test, spitting in one of those little tubes and dropping the envelope in the mail, but I’m not ready to face that the answer might be no one—there’s no one else out there, no one else I belong to.

One night, after dinner, after I’ve spent the day at the Lockharts’, comparing Violet’s face to my own, I can’t help myself. I clear my throat, wet my lips.

“What’s my dad’s last name?” I ask, a little too loudly. I don’t look away from the TV. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my mom turn to look at me, shifting in her chair.

She doesn’t say anything, just stares. Then she looks back toward the TV. “I don’t know. It was so long ago, I can hardly remember.”

I don’t respond. This isn’t true; I can tell by the way her body has stiffened. She doesn’t want to talk about my dad. And why would she?

“Why?” she asks.

“No reason,” I say quickly. “I was just curious.”

“It’s better not to be,” she says. “We’ve done okay on our own, haven’t we?”

“Yeah,” I say. I feel a flicker of guilt. “Of course.” To admit anything else would be a slap in her face. She gave up everything for me. Even still, I want more than “okay.” I want a sister.