Count My Lies

Chapter 32

32

I turn my key in the lock, opening the door to the Lockharts’ brownstone. The smell of freshly cut peonies fills my nose as I pause in the entryway, surveying the living room, the kitchen.

A dozen half-full moving boxes cover the floor, the kitchen counter, the dining room table. Books have been taken off the shelves, picture frames from the wall, plates and glassware from the cabinets, all bubble-wrapped and carefully packed. Two weeks ago, I put the house on the market; already six offers have come in, two over asking. The real estate agent told me she thinks we can close by the end of the month. By then, Jay will have accepted the plea, will be behind bars for good.

I smile, then start up the stairs. “I’m home!” I call out.

When I reach the top, the bedroom door at the end of the hall opens. Violet emerges. “How’d it go?” she asks.

“You should have seen his face,” I say, grinning. “I wish I could have taken a picture.”

She grins back, her face mirroring my own. Violet, my Gemini twin.

I’d almost lost her, so soon after I’d found her. We’d both been careless, letting Jay come between us, our feelings for him—infatuation in my case, hate in hers—distract us from what really mattered. But in the end, when it counted, we chose each other.

Three months ago, I stared at Violet in horror as she pointed a gun at me. As her finger slipped around the trigger, I turned, prepared to run, then, when the gun went off—the noise so loud it felt like my eardrums were bleeding—I dropped to the floor, my hands over my head.

When I realized she’d missed, I began to crawl, panicked, then scrambled to my feet.

It was something I learned in active shooter training as a teacher at Mockingbird—the only chance you have against someone with a gun is to run; it’s harder to hit a moving target than a still one. So I ran. I ran out of the bedroom, down the stairs, out the front door. I didn’t look back.

By the time I reached the road, I was panting and crying and yelling for help. I had no phone, no car keys.

Frantic, I started toward Anne-Marie’s house, legs pumping. Twice, I glanced behind me, but both times no one was there. Still, I kept running, my face streaked with sweat and tears.

I slowed only when I reached Anne-Marie’s house, gasping for air, lungs burning.

As I started up the walkway, I paused, noticing the car parked in their driveway. It was ours; our rental car. Relief pummeled through me. Jay was here. He was here to get Harper.

I’d heard his fight with Violet as I’d walked up the path to our house after dropping Harper off at Anne-Marie’s, the disgruntled shouting as I stepped onto the porch, both of their voices loud, enraged. Before I’d had a chance to go inside, the front door had opened with a bang. Jay had his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his face twisted into an angry scowl. He’d brushed by me, barely registering my presence, muttering something about going back to the city. I’d been stunned, slightly hurt, but mostly confused. Now it made sense. Of course he’d come here. He would never leave without Harper.

Half sobbing, I climbed the stairs to Anne-Marie’s front door. But then, on the top step, when the living room window came into view, I stopped abruptly, my breath catching, a hand squeezing my heart. No. No, it couldn’t be. I wanted to cry out in pain, but I didn’t.

Through the glass, I could see Jay. And Anne-Marie. Together. Kissing. They were leaning against a wall, his body pressed against hers, Anne-Marie’s hand groping the front of his pants. I stared, gaping, the image not quite computing.

Jay with Anne-Marie. Jay kissing Anne-Marie. Kissing her like he’d kissed me, just the night before. It felt like a kick to the gut, like someone had reached down my throat and ripped out my insides. Five minutes before, I thought I might die; seeing Jay with Anne-Marie, I wished I had. When had it started? During their morning runs? Or some other time, after we’d all gone to sleep?

Since we’d arrived on Block Island, my feelings for him had intensified until it felt like I was on fire, my body aflame, hot, burning. I thought I had found my soulmate.

That first day, when he took me on the island tour, his hand rested on my lower back as we walked into a restaurant, lingering. In the booth, our thighs brushed. Our chemistry had been palpable. He’d teased me, grinned at me, his eyes on mine. I told myself it was all in my head, but I spent every night in bed, hoping it wasn’t, heat between my legs. He was all I thought about, all I wanted to think about.

Then, the night we went to dinner. “I’ve never felt this way before,” he whispered into my ear, Harper asleep in the darkened back seat of the car. “Me either,” I breathed. By then, he’d told me about the divorce, and while I knew what it would do to my friendship with Violet, I was in too deep.

I thought Jay and I would be together when we got back to New York. He’d said as much. “I can’t wait until we’re alone,” he said. “Until we don’t have to sneak around.”

But I’d been a fool. As I watched him through the window, watched his mouth open into Anne-Marie’s, I remembered Violet’s words.

“You think you know him,” she had said plainly, “but you don’t. He’s a liar. Just like you.”

I assumed she was angry at him for leaving her. The bitter, cast-aside wife. But then, when I saw him with Anne-Marie, I realized she meant something else. He’d only told me what I wanted to hear. He told everyone what they wanted to hear. How had I been so blind?

So I went back. To Violet. Without Jay or Anne-Marie seeing me, I walked back down the steps, back to our house.

“Violet?” I called out, easing the front door open. “You’re right. I’m a liar. A good one. Let me help you.” I wasn’t scared anymore. She didn’t want to hurt me; she wanted to hurt Jay. And now so did I.

She was still in the upstairs bathroom, on her knees, the gun tossed aside. Her face was pale, eyes red and puffy. She looked so young. When she looked up at me, tears ran down her cheeks.

I sat down in front of her and told her what I saw. Then she told me everything.

Jay had started cheating on her when she was pregnant with Harper. Well, that’s when she first found proof. When she accused him, he told her she was jealous, making things up. He almost convinced her, too, but then she found the messages on his phone. Nudes from a coworker, plans to meet at a hotel.

He cried when she confronted him. Told her he’d felt lonely, was scared about becoming a dad, that it wouldn’t happen again. Except it did. When Harper was only six months old. And again, a year after that. Those were the times she knew about, at least. Every time, he swore things would change. She wanted to believe him. Needed to.

So when he asked her to start over with him in New York, she agreed. He said it would be his chance to be the breadwinner, to prove to himself that he could provide for their family. They’d relied on her family’s money for so long that he’d lost sight of who he was as a man. That he’d looked to other women for validation. In New York, he promised, things would be different. Things would be better.

And they were, even after she found out he’d known about the trust. He’d been devoted, focused on his start-up. That’s what she thought. Then came the request for a cash infusion, the admission he’d gambled the company dry. And only a few weeks later, the final kick to her gut.

Violet came home early one afternoon to find the house seemingly empty, a Disney movie playing on the living room TV. Nina, their nanny, hadn’t mentioned plans to take Harper anywhere. “Hello?” Violet called out. Then, rustling. She followed the noise into the kitchen, found Harper standing on the counter in front of their snack cabinet. Harper turned at the sound of Violet, wobbled, almost falling, a guilty smile on her face. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be up there. “I was hungry,” she said. She didn’t know where Nina was.

Violet settled Harper back onto the couch with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, then went to look for Nina. The door to Jay’s office was closed. Slowly, barely breathing, she opened it. Jay was in his desk chair, head leaned back, eyes closed, Nina on her knees. Violet pulled the door shut and went back downstairs. Quietly, she packed Harper up and took her to the park.

Suddenly, it became clear to her, like a match had been lit in a pitch-black room. She was living her parents’ life. The one she’d tried so hard to run from. She’d become her mother, her head buried so deep in the sand she was choking on it, married to the same type of man as her father. At the expense of her daughter. Her darling Harper. She was incensed. At herself, yes, but at Jay, too. Finally at Jay.

She waited until Harper was asleep that night before shutting the door to their bedroom. He was already in bed, head crooked over his phone. Texting Nina, probably—maybe a picture of his dick he’d taken earlier that day.

“What?” he asked when he looked up, saw the look on her face.

“How could you?” she yelled. “You left her alone! And for what? A blow job ?” Her voice was shrill, tight.

At first, he acted dismayed. Harper was fine; nothing had happened to her. And Violet was confused; it wasn’t what it looked like. Eventually, he stopped lying, but this time, he wasn’t remorseful.

He just looked at her with a what do you expect? expression. “You’re not the woman I married anymore,” he said. Like it was Violet’s fault that he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, that he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. There’s nothing wrong with me , he meant. Nothing wrong with what I did. There’s something wrong with you.

That’s when she saw red. That’s when she told him she wanted a divorce. That’s when the fighting escalated, when he followed her downstairs, where she smashed every photo of them together, when she screamed so loudly that the neighbors called the cops. That’s when she threw the glass at him. When it shattered, a shard nicked the side of Jay’s face. The cut wasn’t deep, but blood rushed from the gash, ran down his neck. He played it up, holding his hand to it, wincing like a wounded puppy. No one was arrested, but a report was filed. Violet was drunk, and even though so was Jay, it was her broken glass, his dripping blood.

Jay could have pressed charges, but he didn’t. He would, though, he told her when the police left, as the sun was rising, if she tried to divorce him; the officer on the scene said he had a year to file if he changed his mind. Then he would apply for sole custody. If there was a hearing, what judge would grant custody to a mother with a domestic violence record? He’d take Harper and as much money as he could. If she left him, he threatened, she’d be leaving alone and broke. He was holding her hostage, her hands tied, dirty rag stuffed into her mouth. Their marriage, like her childhood, was a prison.

She tried to fight it, but her lawyer said there was a chance Jay was right, that a judge might deem her unfit, strip her of custody. And order her to pay alimony and child support. There was that trust fund from her grandma, after all. Yes, it was hers, but there were ways to access the income she made from it. It wasn’t worth the risk, in his six-hundred-dollar-an-hour opinion. Could she try and work it out? the lawyer had asked.

But hadn’t she already tried? For years, she’d tried because she loved him, because she believed him when he said he would change. Because despite everything—the infidelity, the money, the digs about what she should wear and how she should look—she thought he was a good dad.

At least, she thought that he could be, if she showed him how to love unconditionally, how to love without expectation.

But now here was proof, definitive proof, that she was wrong. He would never be a good dad. A good dad would never care more about his hard-on than his daughter. And worse, a good dad would never steal a child from their mother. Harper needed her. He might as well be severing their daughter’s limb.

She could finally see the forest through the trees. Who Jay was, why he’d never change. At his core, all he cared about was money and appearances. Himself. And Violet, better than anyone, knew what that could—no, would —do to a child. Maybe, if she was there, she could lessen the blow, but if he was left alone with Harper, who knows the damage he’d do.

It was the other thing she’d turned a blind eye to, subtle now, but for how long?: comments about how much Harper was eating, her portion sizes. He hated the M of this Violet was sure. And that was the one thing, the only thing, she would never allow.

So together, in the bathroom of the beach house, we came up with a plan. There was just one rule: no more lies. At least, not to each other. Never to each other.

When we both had agreed, Violet handed the gun to me. Instead of her shooting me, I would shoot her.

Before I did, Violet called Danny on the burner. When he answered, she began crying again. “I couldn’t do it,” she told him. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed noisily, snot leaking from her nose, voice breaking. “I couldn’t.” On the other end of the phone, I heard his voice. “I know, honey.” It’s why he’d agreed to go along with it. He’d realized that when she picked up the gun, her finger slipping around the trigger, she wouldn’t be able to shoot me. It wasn’t who she was. He’d known it before she had.

The gun was heavier than I expected it to be. I could feel my heartbeat in my palm, pulsing against it. I breathed out shakily. Violet stood only a few feet away, her back to me as if she were running, like I had from her. I needed to shoot her at close range so I wouldn’t miss. Danny had told us to aim for her lower thigh. There would be a lot of blood, but it would be far enough away from any organs, and he could say her femoral artery had been hit. No one would question him; he was at the top of the ladder, his word incontestable.

Violet cried out when the gun went off, a low, guttural wail. I ran to her, but she waved me away. “The gun,” she said, teeth gritted, eyes screwed tightly closed. “Take care of the gun.”

I wiped it down and tossed it under the bed for the police to find. Then, pressing a washcloth to her thigh, I called 911. I was grateful for my too-large hands, my mitts , how they covered the wound, stopped the bleeding. “Help!” I yelled into the phone. “You have to help us! My friend, she was shot. Her husband, he shot her, then left!”

As we waited for the sirens, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like: me moving into their big house, Violet and I going shopping to redecorate Jay’s office, turning it into a bedroom for me. I’d be like an aunt to Harper, a sister to Violet. I saw myself waking up early to pack Harper’s lunch, braiding her hair, taking her to the park after school, helping Violet make dinner, her at the stove while I chopped onions at the island. We’d take turns putting Harper to bed, trade off doing the dishes. At the end of the day, we’d collapse on the couch, bicker affectionately about what to watch.

I smiled down tenderly at her as I squeezed her hand with my free one. Violet had gone from being who her parents wanted her to be, to who Jay wanted her to be, stifling herself until she could barely breathe. She’d given everything she had. Still, it wasn’t enough. Still, she wasn’t enough. But she would be enough for me. We would be enough for each other.

Violet opened her eyes, smiling weakly. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”

I let out a half laugh, half sob. “I’m sorry I tried to sleep with your husband.”

Violet was drenched in sweat by the time help arrived on the scene. Danny arrived first, as promised, along with another EMT, a young, zit-speckled kid who looked barely eighteen, then two cops, one around the same age as the EMT, the other pushing sixty, a round paunch above his belt. In the commotion, I studied him. Violet was right; Danny was beautiful. When he went to her, his touch was tender, his eyes soft, voice low and soothing. It was no wonder every girl—and boy—on the island had been in love with him.

As Danny worked on Violet, bandaging her wound, strapping an oxygen mask to her face, loading her onto a stretcher, I sat with the officers. I told them what we’d rehearsed, that I came home from dropping off Harper from Anne-Marie’s and heard Violet and Jay arguing, him yelling at her. Something about divorce papers, how he’d never let her go. He sounded so angry, I said, my voice quaking. Then I heard a gunshot. Terrified, I hid in a closet. I heard him drive off, but I wasn’t sure if he was planning to come back, so I waited. When I came out and went upstairs, I found Violet like this, on the floor, blood everywhere. “I think he went to find his daughter,” I said finally. “She’s at a sleepover next door.”

At this, the older of the two cops got up abruptly. He made a call on his radio, said the word “backup.” Then they both left, their boots thudding down the hall, the bang of the front door, the wail of police sirens. Sorry, Jay , I’d thought, though I wasn’t sorry at all.

Danny and the other EMT wheeled Violet out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the house. I followed them into the back of the ambulance, Violet lying supine on the stretcher, her face pale. Once the stretcher was secured, the second EMT closed the doors, then, a moment later, appeared in the cab of the ambulance, behind the wheel.

Danny hooked an IV into Violet’s arm. Fluids and painkillers, he told me. Violet’s eyes fluttered closed. Her breathing grew shallow. I couldn’t tell if she was acting or not.

Five minutes into the drive, Danny looked up at me. “She’s lost too much blood,” he said, shaking his head.

His face was so solemn, so drawn, that for a minute, I almost believed him. Then he pounded on the plastic partition to the driver’s cab. “Redirect,” he said. “Redirect to the morgue.”

Our siren cut out abruptly, the ambulance slowing. While we drove, Danny called the police. It was a short conversation, but when he hung up, he told me that they wanted me down at the station to give an official statement. Someone would meet us at the morgue to pick me up.

When the ambulance finally slowed to a stop, Danny pulled a thin white sheet over Violet’s face.

I stood in the parking lot while Danny wheeled her in, feeling like I was in a dream.

A few minutes later, he came out with an empty stretcher. The coroner had been two sheets to the wind, as usual, bottle of gin half-drunk on his desk, barely acknowledged Danny as he signed the intake form, waved him into the back, where Violet got off the stretcher and waited, in a coat closet, for Danny to pick her up after his shift ended. The morphine he had given her in the ambulance would hold her until then.

As the coroner took another swig in his office, his eyes glazed, head lolling, Danny took Violet’s file into the body storage facility in the back of the morgue. The occupied refrigeration units had similar files affixed to their doors in plastic sleeves. That day, there were three flagged for cremation; there were always at least that many, especially in August, at the height of the heat, throngs of tourists who’d overimbibed, overestimated their swimming abilities, careless with their suntanned bodies, their lives.

There, Danny slipped one of the files out and, in its place, slipped Violet’s in. When the body was cremated, no one would know it hadn’t been Violet. If the cops—or anyone—came looking for her, asking for an autopsy, the coroner would come up empty-handed. It wouldn’t be the first time there’d been a mix-up, intentional or otherwise, not the first time someone wanted something to seem different than what actually was. If it were another police department, another city, another town, there might have been an investigation, but here, the cops wouldn’t press the issue. The coroner was one of their own; the sooner this was buried, the better for everyone.

None of this would have worked anywhere else, but on this tiny island, things were different. Violet knew that when she brought us here; it was why she brought us here.

Danny waited with me until a police officer pulled into the parking lot. I rode in silence to the station where I repeated the same story I’d told the cops at the house. They thanked me, then brought me to Harper. She flung her arms around my neck and I held her tightly.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked finally, pulling back to look at me.

“It’s just going to be us for a little bit,” I told her. I hugged her again, then, into her ear, whispered, “But don’t worry, you’ll see her soon.” Then I handed her a king-sized pack of M the beach house was now a crime scene. There, when Harper was asleep in the double bed next to mine, I called Laura. Laura, my Dolly Parton client from the spa.

I’d run into her while we were shopping for Harper’s dress the day before. As Harper and I started toward the register, Violet waiting for us next door, I heard my name. “Sloane? Is that you? Hi, sweetheart!”

When I turned, I did a double take. I hadn’t expected to see anyone I knew on the island, especially not a nail client.

I told her I was visiting with a friend and her family, introduced her to Harper. She gave me a hug, her heady perfume thick in my nose, then her number. “Call me,” she said, smiling. “If you ever need anything.”

When I did, only two days later, she gasped when I told her what had happened. “How awful ,” she’d said in her deep Texan drawl.

She put me in touch with her lawyer, said her retainer would more than cover a few phone calls. Within a week, I’d been granted temporary custody of Harper; I was awarded full guardianship two months after that.

Ten days after the shooting, Danny drove his car onto the ferry, Violet tucked out of sight in the back seat, and brought her home, home to Harper and me, our arms outstretched.

With the help of Laura’s lawyer, everything has been transferred into my name: the Lockhart home, money for raising Harper.

Violet almost never leaves the house. We don’t want to risk anyone recognizing her. Which is why, as soon as Jay takes the plea, we’re packing up a moving van, driving to California. Not to San Francisco, but somewhere sunnier. We’re looking at houses in San Diego, bright bungalows within walking distance from the beach.

There, we can be a real family, the three of us. Thanks to Violet’s grandmother, we’ll have more than enough money; neither of us will have to work. Legally, we’ll share my identity, both Sloane Caraway, but tell everyone we’re sisters. I go by Caitlin now, to make it easier.

Once we’re settled, I plan to convince my mom to join us. The warm weather will be good for her joints. But not just that. She loves Harper as much as I do; she even comes with us to the park on Fridays, pushes Harper on the swings. She dotes on her the way a grandmother would, pinching her cheeks and slipping her Hershey’s Kisses when she thinks no one is looking.

My list of lies is shorter now. One, I am the only Sloane Caraway. Two, Violet Lockhart, Harper’s mother, is dead. Three, I felt nothing when I saw Jay this morning in the cellblock.

This last lie, about Jay, is what I wish were true. But when our eyes met, my heart skipped a beat, my stomach tightened. This is the only lie Violet can never know. The one I’ll bury so deep it can’t breathe.

Because I’ve found my happy ending. It’s not the ending I fantasized about when I first met Jay at the park, not the one I thought I wanted, but it’s better. Thanks to him, I’ve found what I’ve spent my whole life looking for. A sister. And not just a sister: a Gemini twin.

Not by blood, but by choice.