The Lies About Truth

  “Please.”

  Gina thumbed down her eyebrows, massaging away the stress. She looked at my face, from the top of Idaho down to the scar at my mouth, and traced the lines with her index finger.

  I let her. Max had kissed those lines and kept his eyes open.

  This was Gina’s kiss. It was acceptance.

  “I hate looking at you,” she whispered.

  “I’m aware.”

  “I hate it because I feel responsible,” Gina said.

  I focused on the fish tank instead of Gina’s silent sobs. I wanted to put my arms around her, and eventually I did. She cried in earnest while the water bubbled in the tank and the fish swam in circles. I listened with my heart. And for once, I know she felt heard.

  The memory of the wreck burned fresh in Gina’s eyes when she spoke.

  “Gray and I heard screeching tires and turned around. . . .” She cuffed the back of her neck and rubbed. “We watched it. Heard it. That sound of his car crashing into the tree—that’s what I hear at night, and when I wake up, and when I look at you, and when I think about Trent.”

  “I hear it too.”

  She swept my bangs farther to the side and looked, really looked, at Idaho. “Gray probably said this, and you probably don’t understand, but you were so hurt. And not just here.” Slowly, she moved her hands from Idaho to Tennessee to the center of my chest. “You were broken here. We all were in different ways, and we just messed up.”

  She paused to breathe, but I continued to listen. To the silence. To her words.

  “Gray and I thought we were saving you from more pain. But keeping that secret backfired. It created a weird . . . intimacy . . . a guilt pact. After you caught him kissing me, God, I knew all we’d done was make another scar for you to wear. And that scar had my name on it. Sadie, please understand, I couldn’t bear to give you another scar.”

  I wiped her tears away, understanding the intimacy of secrets.

  “You were hurting too,” I said. “And you left me out of it. Hid it.”

  “We all did,” she said.

  “The real scar was that you and Gray chose each other instead of me,” I told her.

  “And you chose Max.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Gina pushed herself into a sitting position and lay against the headboard. I did the same. And when she placed her head on my shoulder, I leaned my cheek against her hair.

  “Sadie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you ever wonder what life would be like if we’d all just gone for ice cream together or didn’t go to the beach at all, or if Trent hadn’t chosen that moment to break up with me?”

  “Every day.”

  We don’t have a time machine.

  “I don’t know what would have happened, but I know what did,” I said.

  She knew too.

  Once upon a time, there were four friends, two couples, who stopped being friends before they stopped being couples. Little questions niggled the back of their heads like splinters buried in the skin. Questions of trust and intention. Who loved whom the most? What if he wasn’t the best person for her? What if she wasn’t?

  No one talked about the questions, because talking ruined plausible deniability. Talking burst the bubble of innocence. Talking ended the happily ever after.

  These were the truths they believed.

  And they were lies.

  They should have talked while there was still something to say.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t know what Gray told you, but you need to know, Trent loved you. That wasn’t a lie.”

  She used my sheet to wipe her eyes. “It sure feels like it.”

  “You know Trent. He was an explorer,” I said, trying to take what I knew about his feelings for Callahan and explain what he’d told me. “That’s what he was doing. He was so uncertain of what he wanted, but certain that he loved you both. He was confused, and scared, and didn’t want to confuse or scare you until he had his head wrapped around his feelings.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “You know I am. Love is just messy sometimes,” I said with certainty.

  Love, unlike relationships, wasn’t simple math. Trent understood he couldn’t be in a relationship with both Callahan and Gina, but he couldn’t stomach changing the way he felt about either.

  “How am I going to tell her, Sadie May?” he’d asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He hadn’t known either, but on June 29 last year, he’d taken the first step toward breaking her heart. In a terrible way, his last act had been incredibly brave.

  “He wasn’t trying to hurt you any more than you were trying to hurt me,” I said. Her head bobbed against mine in understanding.

  Gina zipped her necklace charm back and forth, biting her lip. “Still hurts.”

  “Of course it does.” I touched her hand, stopped it mid-arc. “But at least you can grieve the real thing now. Grieve it all the way to the end.”

  “So can you.”

  We both sank deeper into the pillows, exhausted by the efforts of verity.

  “Can we find a way to be friends again?” she asked. “I don’t want to do this without you anymore.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want to do this without you, either.”

  Forgive Gina. A posse ad esse.

  I had a question for her, but I needed to clear up one more thing first. “Have you been putting letters in my mailbox?” I asked.

  “No.”

  It was a simple answer and I believed her. There was no reason to lie now, and she wasn’t even curious. I leaned against her, relieved, and Gina opened her eyes.

  “We’re okay.”

  “On the road to it,” I confirmed.

  She exhaled and then kissed my cheek, just above Nameless. “I’m gonna go home and sleep for a week,” she said, crawling out of my bed. “My soul is tired.”

  “G, would you do me a favor?”

  Her face lightened considerably. “Anything,” she said.

  “I want to go to St. Augustine. To the Fountain of Youth. Will you go with me?”

  “I’ll go anywhere you want.”

  Now I was the one with bread crumbs.

  She squeezed my hand, I promised to call, and she went home to rest her soul.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Max didn’t respond to calls, texts, or emails.

  The next morning, he wasn’t in the hammock with a book and he didn’t come to his window when I pecked on the glass.

  I made a blanket fort in my bedroom, reread Peter and the Starcatcher, and prayed my phone would buzz. He’d said he’d call.

  He didn’t.

  He’d felt closer when he was in El Salvador.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  There was still no word from Max the next day as Mom and I cleared away the breakfast dishes. I’d tried everything I could, short of banging on his door and demanding that Sonia tell me where he was. Silence was the price of keeping secrets.

  Mine piled up like dirty laundry.

  At Mom’s insistence, our little family planted ourselves like spokes on a wheel around the kitchen table. This talk smelled of pancake syrup and Clorox.

  I groaned as Mom slid another envelope across the table and into my hands.

  “Open it,” she instructed.

  “Here?”

  Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

  I prayed as I tore the end of the envelope and took out the paper. Please don’t be about sex. Please don’t be about sex. I had a feeling God wasn’t listening to that request. Not that God is smug, but I pictured Him sitting back on a beautiful golden throne, steepling his fingers, and saying, “Sorry, Sister Sadie, you got yourself into this one.”

  Dad leaned toward me, prepared to read over my shoulder.

  “Stop stalling,” Mom said.

  Our kitchen was her courtroom.

  I unfolded the letter and read aloud:

  The five of us broke into the c
ommunity center tonight because Trent decided we needed a dance-off. I came in dead last, Max won, and I laughed until I cried. I’m really lucky to have my friends.

  There was no sweet From a friend closing. Since I’d narrowed the culprit to Gray or Max, that made sense. Neither of them was talking to me.

  “What does that mean?” Dad asked. He checked with Mom instead of me.

  Just then my parents seemed young and unsure. Maybe no one put this type of crap in the parenting magazines and books they scoured. Or maybe, thirty-eight equaled wise on most things, but not wise on all things.

  I lifted my shoulders in a half shrug. “No idea, Dad. I’ve been getting these things since the beginning of June.”

  My shrug was worth a wooden nickel to my mother. “You know more than you’re saying.”

  “Mom, I don’t know.” I wasn’t about to accuse Gray or Max in front of them.

  “You don’t have a clue who wrote that?” Dad asked.

  I bit my bottom lip and proceeded cautiously. “Well, yeah. They’re my words, but I sure as heck didn’t send this to myself.”

  “You wrote that?” Mom repeated the words as a question, even though she already knew the answer.

  “It’s one of the things I put in Big.” I explained that every envelope contained something I’d previously written and stuffed in Big, and I had no idea how anyone had access, much less why they were sending me these things.

  Also, that I wasn’t worried.

  Right. That last part was a whale of a lie, but after the weekend, I needed to de-escalate Mom and Dad’s anxieties.

  “I don’t even know what to say,” Mom said, eyeing the paper as if it were a snake.

  “Me either,” I said.

  Dad examined the envelope and found exactly what I had. Nothing.

  “You broke into the community center,” he stated again, massaging his forehead.

  I tempered my reply. “Well, sort of. Someone left the alley window wide open, and we crawled through. Just . . . you know, for fun. We didn’t hurt anything.”

  “Sadie.” Dad’s voice came with a warning.

  “Dad, Trent volunteered there all the time,” I said, hoping to calm him down.

  Mom was on the same wavelength. “Tony.” She patted the air, a warning to both of us.

  He chewed his thumbnail and searched for a response. Mom put her head on the table as if the whole thing were too much to handle. They were in a delicate catch-22. Battling me on the content of the note might push me into an emotional hole, which they didn’t want to do. Not battling me meant I might engage in stupid behavior again, which they didn’t want me to do.

  “It was a long time ago,” I said.

  “And these other envelopes you’ve gotten, do they have other such . . . frivolity?” Dad asked.

  “Tony,” Mom said again.

  Frivolity? I exhaled at his use of vocabulary, but his eyes sliced into me.

  “Yes, Dad. I believe before Pirates and Paintball you referred to it as spunk.”

  “I’m all for spunk, but not so much for the criminal behavior,” he said.

  It was Mom’s turn to roll her eyes. “Tony, you’re the one who used to steal street signs at her age.”

  I put my head down so I wouldn’t laugh at Mom busting his chops. Dad stood up, wagged his finger at Mom, and said, “This one is all yours.”

  In the end, Mom folded the envelope, put it in her pocket, and announced we were going to be late for therapy. “Talk to Dr. Glasson about all this,” she said.

  Family meeting over and done . . . with slightly more syrup than Clorox.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Ten minutes later, Mom pulled up to the curb at Fletcher’s office and said, “Text when you’re finished.”

  There was no need to text; she never left the parking lot. She was like one of those Little League parents who stayed for practice.

  Dr. Fletcher Glasson kept an office in the basement of a large law firm. Right after my first surgery, Dad found Fletcher through my plastic surgeon. He said Dr. Glasson specialized in visual life transitions, and I might benefit from a few sessions.

  Benefit was an understatement.

  Fletcher was infected with genuine happiness—the kind that couldn’t be faked. Which wasn’t all that strange except the man had zero reasons for smiles.

  He listened to a shit-storm of stories from people like me for a living.

  He’d been severely burned in a fire.

  Every session gave me hope that maybe someday I’d come out on the other side of my own shit-storm with a smile too.

  I clung to that hope. Mondays clearly weren’t a busy day at the office. I sat alone with a People magazine from a year ago and a Reader’s Digest from the nineties—both of which I’d already scoured—while the receptionist scrolled through Facebook. Fletcher came around the corner in a matter of moments, smoothing his shirt and stroking his bald head. “Sadie girl,” he said, eyes lit with anticipation. “You ready to chat?”

  I dropped the magazines and followed.

  Seeing the couch opened the portal. His cozy office was as good as an altar and better than a confessional. Fletcher didn’t wear a robe or a cross around his neck. In fact, most of the time, he wore faded jeans, deeply colored polo shirts, and a pair of broken-in boots. I had a crush on the boots. And in a very non-crushy way, for the middle-aged man who wore them. Poor bastard, I didn’t envy him; his clients walked in and spilled their guts. And Fletcher’s job, like a school janitor’s, was to spread that sawdust-like absorbent over the guts and sweep them into a pan. Unlike the janitor, Fletcher examined the guts.

  One of Fletcher’s contagious smiles burned into my eyes as he swiveled his chair away from the desk and faced me. “Sit.” He indicated the couch, as he always did. “Tell me about life.”

  This was our MO.

  I sat. He observed. I talked. He listened.

  Then, he questioned me. Gently. Like a nurse who distracts you with stories and lollipops while she gives you a shot in the ass.

  I began. “Life’s been . . .”

  Guts spilled out.

  Fletcher spread the vomit-sawdust-stuff over everything between my last visit and now. Gray and Gina’s lie. Trent and Callahan. The paintball game. The anniversary. Mom catching me with Sharpies. My fear that Max was the one behind Big’s messages. My fear that I was losing Max altogether, messages or not. The incredible shrinking list of impossible things.

  When I finally stopped talking, Fletcher leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. “Well, wasn’t that just an emotional enema? I’ll bet you feel better already.”

  “Gross.”

  He laughed, but it was a serious sort of laugh. “You told me what happened, but not how you feel. You know the rules, Sadie. Go deeper.”

  I knew the rules because I always tried to break them.

  “I’m feeling . . . worried.”

  “And?”

  “Scared.”

  “And?”

  The man was good with his ands.

  “I don’t want to lose Max.”

  Fletcher passed me the box of tissues he kept on the edge of his desk. I set them down without taking one.

  “He feels unreachable,” I said. “I screwed up, Fletcher, and . . .”

  Worry burrowed under my skin. It had taken me a year to even think about forgiving Gina and Gray; how long would it take Max to forgive me?

  I punched the pillow on the couch. “I. Hate. Screwing. Up. I hate hurting them. All I wanted to do was put this thing in the past, and now . . . it’s messier than ever.”

  Fletcher examined these guts and forced me to do the same through a series of questions. Always with a smile. Always with compassion. Then, he made a suggestion.

  “Sadie, this might be unorthodox, but here’s an idea for some common ground. You talked to Gina about the Fountain trip. Why not talk to all of them?”

  “You mean ask them to go?”

  “Well, it
might knock out more than one thing on that list of yours,” he said.

  “Fletcher, Max isn’t answering his phone, and Gray’s not going to ride to St. Augustine with me after the paintball fiasco.” I shot the guy in the chest at close range.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Pretty damn.”

  “Maybe so, but”—Fletcher drummed his fingers on the desk and pushed another button—“if nothing changes, nothing changes. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting. You want change, make some.”

  He made change sound like a Nike slogan. Just do it.

  It wasn’t that easy.

  “You seriously want me to ask all three of them to go to the Fountain of Youth?” I asked.

  “I seriously want you to take a gigantic leap forward. And honestly, when you talk about everything that’s happened with your friends over the past week, do you know what I hear?”

  “What?”

  “Relief.” Fletcher whispered the word until it shouted at me. “It’s tiny and small, but it’s there in your voice for the first time in nearly a year. And you know what, that relief will grow even more when you stop hiding from which friend sent the envelopes. Talk to them.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them,” he said. “You’re strong enough to ask.”

  Fletcher stared hard at the tissue box, and I surrendered and took one.

  “Strength. What a joke. That’s what really gets me about this Big thing.” I paused to dab my eyes. “This is someone else who thinks I’m so frickin’ precious that I can’t handle the truth. Anonymous letters? Gina and Gray and the Jeep? Dammit, just tell me.”

  “You say that, but you didn’t tell them about Trent. And you don’t want to confront Max about Big.”

  The shovel hit the root.

  I tugged the couch pillow into my lap and squeezed it against my chest. “What if I ask, and Max never forgives me? Or, what if I ask, and I never forgive him?”

  “Sadie, forgiveness isn’t always returning to the old thing. Sometimes forgiveness is making an entirely new thing.” Fletcher’s watch buzzed that our time was up. “Think about that this week.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that on my road trip to St. Augustine,” I joked.