Count My Lies

Chapter 21

21

The next morning, when I get back from dropping Harper off at school, I get a text from Sloane: When should I drop the license by?

Now? I write back. If you’re free. The sooner I get it, the better.

Thirty minutes later, I open the door for her. She doesn’t look good. Her hair is still glossy, skin clear, but her eyes are bloodshot, purple-rimmed, and bagged as if she hasn’t slept. She probably hasn’t, worried about how she was going to explain that the name on the license wasn’t the one she’d told me, worried I might recognize it.

“Come on in,” I say. “Want a coffee?” It’s clear she needs one.

But she shakes her head no. She reaches into her back pocket and hands me her license. “Here,” she says, almost shoving it into my hand.

“Thanks.” I glance down at it. When I see the photo, I forget about the name discrepancy. Her picture is hysterically bad. Her mouth is half-open as if she’s about to speak, lips sort of pursed, teeth showing. She’s combed her hair into a bun on top of her head, but it’s flopped to one side and she’s missed a piece near the front. She looks pale, really pale, likely an effect of the harsh DMV lighting, but startling nonetheless, and one eye appears much smaller than the other. On the whole, it’s one of the worst driver’s licenses I’ve seen.

I choke back a laugh. “Wow!” I say. “Just wow!”

“What?” Sloane says. She sounds on the verge of panic.

I angle the license toward her, tapping my finger on the photo. She cringes. “Oh god. I forgot how bad it is. I’ve trained myself never to look at it lest I drop dead of embarrassment. I look like an extra from The Walking Dead . More brains, please.” She rolls her eyes into the back of her head, sticks her tongue out.

I snort. Like I said, she makes me laugh. Then I look back down. “Oh,” I say, pretending to have just noticed something. “Your name, it says…” I look up at her quizzically.

“Oh, right.” Sloane makes a noise that I think is supposed to be a chuckle. “I was a weird kid.”

I cock my head, not sure where she’s going with this.

She rolls her eyes. “For some reason, I told everyone to call me Caitlin when I was little. I thought it was pretty, I guess. And it stuck. Obviously.” She lets out a high-pitched giggle, rubs at the back of her neck. “Like I said, I was weird.” The corner of her mouth twitches as she gnaws on the inside of her lip. These are her tells: a hand to her neck, a twitch of her lip. Sometimes she shifts in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her ankles.

She watches nervously for my reaction, whether I’ll care, whether her real name rings a bell.

I wait a beat before answering, afraid I might start laughing if I speak. That’s the best she could come up with? How fucking lame. Frankly, I’m disappointed; I expected more from her. Finally, I’m able to say, “Well, I pretended to be a cat for most of first grade, which made me just as popular as you’d imagine, so you weren’t the only weird one.” I didn’t. My mother would have had me institutionalized.

I see Sloane’s shoulders drop in relief. She grins back at me.

Then I cast my eyes down toward the countertop. I begin to move my hands back and forth over the smooth marble, hoping I look uneasy. “Can I talk to you about something?” I ask.

There’s one more thing I need from her. Something big.

“Sure,” Sloane says slowly, searching my face, puzzled, unsure of what is coming.

I give her a smile. “Will you sit?” I motion to the couch.

We move into the living room, taking a seat facing each other. Around us, the house is quiet. I wait to speak, letting the tension build between us.

“What’s going on?” Sloane finally asks, her voice an octave higher than usual. She wipes her palms nervously on her pant legs.

“Well.” I clear my throat, take a deep breath. “I wanted to ask you—if anything happens to me, to us , I mean, Jay and me, we were wondering if you’d take guardianship of Harper.” I keep my eyes on hers, don’t blink.

For a minute, she stares at me blankly. “Guardianship?” Sloane shakes her head. “You want me to take guardianship of Harper?”

“I know,” I say, giving a small, apologetic laugh. “It’s a big ask. Monumental. But Jay’s parents are in their late seventies. In a few years, they won’t have the capacity to take care of her.” Also, they barely had the capacity to take care of their own kids. Look how Jay turned out.

“But…” Sloane is still gaping at me. “What about your family?”

“We’re not particularly close.” I say it lightly, shrugging. It’s a gross understatement; we haven’t spoken since I left San Francisco. I plan never to speak to them again.

Growing up, my relationship with my parents had always been strained. When I was little, I was pawned off to nannies and tutors, shuttled from piano to ballet, horseback riding on the weekends. I ate dinner with the housekeeper, wishing I had a sibling to eat with instead, while my parents worked long hours, my dad a partner at his law firm, my mother a well-regarded art dealer. They never bothered to kiss me good night when they got home, never tucked me in. If I was ever pulled into a hug, it was with stiff arms, left me cold. I was merely an accessory to their busy lives, a collectible from Christie’s, a Porta Volta chair, admired but never sat in. We were publicly cordial because I was required to be—any perceived disrespect would be met with a sharp slap—but privately distant. The expectation was clear: I played the part of the perfect daughter, my private school uniforms hand-pressed and wrinkle-free, my hair neatly combed, while they played theirs, well-dressed, well-coiffed, smiles bright. My father was handsome, my mother beautiful, both gregarious.

Everything was about appearances, our lives just for show. It was stifling, at best. I felt like a plastic doll they occasionally took out of its packaging, then stored back on the shelf, the closet door shut tightly behind them. They never knew me, never wanted to.

I stood it as long as I could, resentment eating me from the inside out, until I had to surface for air, my lungs on fire. I’d just turned seventeen, at the tail end of my junior year in high school, when it finally became too much to bear.

I’d come home early from school—I had a headache, I think—had pulled into the driveway, was sitting in my car, checking a text that had just come through. When I looked up, about to get out, I saw our front door open. A woman stepped out, her blonde hair swept up into a twist. I’d never seen her before.

My father appeared behind her. He hooked her by the waist and she turned, smiling flirtatiously up at him. Then, he kissed her, hard, his hand sliding over the curve of her hip. My heart dropped into my stomach, a brick. I felt sick.

That evening, I stood nervously in the doorway of my parents’ bathroom, picking at my nails. My mother was removing her makeup; my dad was at a late dinner with clients. “Stop that,” she said without turning around. She hated it when I picked. I put my hands by my sides, cleared my throat. “I saw Dad,” I started, haltingly. “This afternoon. With—”

“I know,” she said, not letting me finish. She didn’t look at me, staring into the mirror instead as she applied eye cream, dabbing gently. Then she met my eyes. “I know,” she said again, more firmly this time, and I understood. This was something she tolerated. But then her mouth quivered, just slightly. She looked back into the mirror. She tolerated it, but she wished she didn’t have to. The conversation was over.

I hated her as much as I hated him. I hated him for his infidelity, her for accepting it. I hated them both for the lies. Their marriage, like everything else, was a sham. I couldn’t stomach it for another second. I wanted no part of their fake fucking lives. When I asked to move out, to stay with my grandmother at the end of the summer instead of flying home, they shrugged, sure . It was like salt in an open wound. Even though I was the one who wanted to leave, it stung that it bothered them so little, that they said yes without a second thought. They rarely called that year. On Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday, but otherwise, silence.

After they dropped me off at college, I didn’t hear from them until my mother called to tell me my grandmother had died. I think it might have been one of the reasons I fell in love with Jay. I’d been living in a loveless desert; his desire felt real after a lifetime of insincerity. What a fool I’d been. Sure, his desire had been real, but almost nothing else was.

Then, four months after the funeral, when I was home for spring break, they asked me to join them in my dad’s office. They had a lawyer on the phone. Through the tiny speaker, he informed me that my grandmother had left an eight-figure trust in my name; I’d receive it when I turned twenty-five. You could see the anger on my parents’ faces, the resentment in the way their jaws twitched. The only thing I cared about, though—the Block Island house—was in my mother’s name.

By the time I found this out, they’d already sold it, the money used to upgrade their country club membership. I was livid. They knew how much the house meant to me. It was punishment for my grandmother’s love. That was the last straw, the final nail. I told them I hated them, screamed it again and again until I was hoarse, slamming the door on the way out so hard I thought it might crack in two.

But they were the only family I had left. So when my father called me after three years of no contact, my anger wavered. He’d found out I was applying to law school and offered to write a letter of recommendation from his firm, where I’d interned all throughout high school. I accepted.

We spoke sporadically after that, brief texts or calls, then more frequently, resuming holidays together as a family. I agreed to an externship with his firm as a 3L, then a full-time position when I graduated. Their efforts increased in the months leading up to my twenty-fifth birthday, my dad including me on high-profile cases, invitations from my mother to dinner. He offered to make me partner; she asked me to be on the board of a foundation she belonged to.

It wasn’t hard to see what they were doing. I was interesting to them now that the money was in sight. But I played along because they were finally offering me what I’d always wanted: their attention, their love. It might have come with strings, but it was something.

I thought, maybe—stupidly—our time together was a start, an opportunity for a real relationship. So I let them in, basked in the closeness. Then, after Harper was born, when I brought up moving to New York, Jay’s business opportunity, the illusion fractured, splintered into itty-bitty pieces. Jay and I had been married for five years by then, college sweethearts, like I’d told Sloane, but they’d never warmed to him. They begged me not to go, tried everything to change my mind, heartfelt cajoling at first, then bitter, empty threats.

I saw their desperation for what it was. They were worried their well would dry up, that Jay would take what they felt was theirs. Not me , but my money. I was gutted.

When we moved, I changed my number, deleted my social media. I didn’t give them our new address. There’s been no communication since.

But this is more than Sloane needs to know, of course.

I smile shyly at her. “The truth is, over the last few months, you’ve become like my family.” I look away, then back at her. Then I add, “It feels like you are my family.” It’s a line I’ve been waiting to use for weeks now, for just the right moment.

Sloane stares back at me, her eyes wide. “I feel the same way,” she says hoarsely.

I thought she might. So I put down another card. “This might sound crazy,” I say, leaning forward, “but have you ever thought we might be?”

“Related?” Sloane leans in, too. She sounds almost breathless.

I nod. “Sisters, I mean. I don’t know, it’s just that the only thing you know about your dad is that he’s from Philly. And my dad is from Philly. And we look so similar, now that our hair is the same.” Then I give a little laugh, shake my head. “I mean, it’s probably one in a million, but I guess that’s why you taking guardianship makes sense to me.” I lick my lips. “But if you feel like it’s too much of a responsibility, I completely understand.”

Sloane looks at me, her eyes bright. I know I’ve said the right thing, about us being sisters. Another brick in the house of lies I’m building; I don’t think my dad’s ever set foot in Philly, let alone Daytona, where she was conceived. Then Sloane nods. “Of course I will.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely,” she says.

I reach across the couch and put my hand on top of hers. “Thank you,” I say. “Really, thank you.”

Then I get up and take a sheaf of paper-clipped papers and a pen from my purse. I set the stack on the coffee table and uncap the pen.

“Here.” I tap my finger on a blank line. “This is where you sign.”

I hold my breath as Sloane picks up the pen. She presses it against the page. The dark blue ink bleeds through the page, leaving the paper wet. I’m pleased to notice that instinctively, she signed her real name. Her real name is also listed throughout the document, but I correctly assumed that she wouldn’t ask to see it, too swept up in the fantasy I’ve just sold her.

I downloaded the form—an addendum to our will—off of a legal site last night and forged Jay’s signature earlier this morning, laying the paper over an old signed check and tracing the curvature of his name. It’s critical to my plan, as is the other legal document I’m bringing with me to the island. The other, however, I didn’t need to download—or forge Jay’s signature. My lawyer prepared it and couriered it to me yesterday. I’ve already hidden it in my suitcase, tucked the manila folder between the pages of a magazine in a zippered pocket.

Later, when Sloane leaves, I’ll log into Jay’s email and send the newly signed documents to our lawyer from his account, copying myself. Then I’ll block our lawyer’s email address so when he writes back a confirmation of receipt, Jay won’t get it, Jay none the wiser. Who’s the fucking fool now, Jay?

Sloane finishes signing, then re-caps the pen.

“Seriously, thank you,” I say again, with as much earnestness as I can muster. I shuffle the papers back into a neat stack. Then, “Oh, before I forget!” I get up and go to the hall closet. I return with a big Bloomingdale’s gift bag, a crumple of pink tissue paper peeking up from the top. “Here.” I hand it to Sloane, grinning.

“What is it?” she asks.

I shrug coyly. “Open it.”

Carefully, Sloane reaches inside and pulls out a soft bundle, unwrapping it gently. It’s a white, gauzy, robe-like shirt, soft and expensive-looking, delicate stitching around the seams and a braided tie around the waist. She looks up at me in wonder. “It’s a swimsuit cover-up,” I say. “Keep opening!”

She reaches in again and removes another wrapped item, this time a sleek black bathing suit. It’s a one-piece, but sexy, with a plunging neckline. “There’s more!” I wink.

When she’s done, she’s opened three swimsuits in total, another cover-up, a pair of brightly patterned, wide-legged linen pants, shorts, a button-up cotton shirt, and two pairs of sunglasses. I spent the afternoon at Bloomingdale’s with Harper last Sunday, picking out a new summer wardrobe for Sloane. I wanted to make sure she was dressed the part of Mrs. Lockhart. I have a look, remember? Carefully cultivated, aimed to please—please my husband, to be specific. Speaking of Jay, he’ll love Sloane in these clothes.

Like my parents, Jay has always been clear about what he thinks a woman should wear, what she should weigh, the clothes he prefers. Of course, his preferences were different from theirs, though, again, like my parents, the more zeros on the price tag, the better. I loved it, at first, when he came shopping with me, grinning wolfishly as I twirled around in an outfit he’d picked out. “Now try that one,” he’d say, and I would, gladly. Once, he went down on me in a dressing room, following me in and locking the door behind him. I came hard and fast, my left hand gripping his hair, my right clasped over my mouth as I moaned. He always knew how to touch me, what I liked. I was happy to fill my closet with things that made him happy, to keep my stomach flat, my body tight, happy knowing he couldn’t wait to take off what I put on. This was before I knew he’d be happy to take off anything, off anyone.

“Violet, this is—” Sloane starts.

“For the trip!” I say, shrugging. “As a thank-you for coming with us.”

“I should be the one thanking you!” she says. No, she shouldn’t. Really.

I tell her to take the rest of the day off to pack, then walk her to the door, giving her a quick hug before she steps onto the porch. “Be here at nine on Sunday,” I say. “Our car leaves at nine thirty!”

When Sloane’s gone, I check my watch. It’s only ten, which means I have almost three hours until I have to go get Harper. Plenty of time to take Sloane’s driver’s license to the DMV.

Before I leave, I change out of my clothes into the ones Sloane left for me to donate, then scrub the makeup from my face. I rake my hair into a messy bun and take a pair of plastic-framed glasses out of a shopping bag I’ve hidden in the back of my closet, put them on.

In the dingy, poorly lit DMV waiting room, I sit for almost an hour and a half before my number is called. “I was hoping to take a new picture,” I say, sliding Sloane’s license across the counter, underneath the plastic partition. The woman on the other side of the desk barely glances at me or the license before directing me to another line, where another monotone employee instructs me to look straight into the camera. We look alike, yes, but I want the picture on her license to be of me. It’ll make things easier, more believable.

I update Sloane’s mailing address to a PO Box I set up on Block Island, so when it’s mailed out, I’ll be the one to receive it, and pay an extra thirty-five dollars for expedited processing. I should receive it by the end of next week. Then I leave, smiling, with just enough time to change back into my own jeans and reapply the makeup I removed before leaving to pick up Harper.

Now, the only thing left for me to do is pack.