Tell Me Lies (29 page)

Her head wobbled a little, and her grandma Helena came and bent down beside her. “You be brave, Emily,” she whispered to her, and her perfume was so strong Em wanted to throw up. “You be a brave little soldier for your daddy.”

Em felt like rolling her eyes, but she couldn’t. Her other grandma, her grandma Martha, had told her that people would be watching her at the funeral, so she should try to remember to be a lady. A lady wasn’t what Em wanted to be, but it beat being a brave little soldier any time. Even when he was alive, her daddy hadn’t ever asked her to be a brave little soldier, and she couldn’t imagine him ever asking her that, and he was dead now, so he wouldn’t care anyway, right? Em clenched her teeth together. What she wanted to be was Emily Faraday, with a father and mother, even if they fought, even if they never talked, but she wasn’t.

But she wasn’t going to be a brave little soldier either. When her grandmother stood up, Em slipped out from under her grasp and slid behind the row of people before her grandma could grab her again. Any place was better than this.

Down at the end of the hall there was light, which turned out to be a porch. She didn’t think funeral parlors had back porches, but probably other people had wanted to get out of funerals before, too. She sat on the steps and missed Phoebe and tried not to think about the funeral. She missed Mel, too, Mel who was back in the awful room, stuck between her mother and father, Mel who still had a father, Mel who looked across the room at her with red eyes that she’d gotten crying for Em, Mel who never cried. It all made Em’s head hurt, but most of all it made her head hurt not thinking about her daddy, and not thinking about what was going to happen to her mom and to her.

She was rubbing her eyes when C.L. came out in his suit and sat down beside her without even looking to see if the step was clean.

“You okay?” he asked, and she said, “No. My daddy’s dead.”

“Right,” he said. “Dumb question.”

She nodded. It was that kind of day, the kind of day when people said dumb things because they couldn’t think of anything right to say. She sighed and forgave her grandma Helena for the brave-little-soldier bit.

“What I meant was, is there anything I can do?” C.L. said. “I mean, I know I can’t bring your dad back, but is there anything I can do that might make you feel better?”

“No,” Em said.

C.L. nodded. “Sorry. That was another dumb thing to say. Okay, the thing is, the thing I want you to know is—”

Em lifted her head to look at him when he stopped. He was frowning, but not at her.

“I don’t know how to say this right,” he said. “I want you to know if you need me, I’ll be here. I’m going to be away during the week for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll be here on the weekends and then I’m moving here. I’ll be here.”

Em took a deep breath.
You’re not going to be my daddy, nobody’s my daddy but my daddy,
she wanted to say, but he was trying to be nice, and that would be mean. And besides, she was too tired to talk.

“Listen, I know I’m not your dad,” C.L. said. “I know I never will be. And I know it must be hell knowing he’s not coming back. I’m not trying to tell you that I’ll take his place, that everything’s going to be all right.”

Em nodded, feeling tears behind her eyes again.

“But I’ll be here.” C.L. bent down so he could look into her eyes. “I will be here for you. Always. You can count on it. If you never need me, that’s okay, too, but I’ll be here.”

Em nodded, trying to keep the tears back.

“Okay?” C.L. said, and Em nodded again, her head wobbly, and he said, “So if you want to cry, I mean if you really want to howl on somebody, I’m here and I won’t tell, it’s okay.”

She nodded again, and then she felt herself fall against him, and she sniffed once, she meant it to be just once, just a couple of little tears, but this time the tears came from her stomach, not wimpy little tears but big fat hacking ones, and she pushed her face into his coat and cried out everything: how mad she was, and how afraid she was, and how sorry she was, and how good it felt to just howl, and it all just kept coming and coming while he rocked her back and forth and didn’t say anything at all.

“That woman,” Maddie’s mother said under her breath ten minutes later. “She’s making a spectacle of herself.”

“That’s just Helena,” Maddie said. “She always needs somebody to blame.”

Her mother glared at her, and Maddie shut up. She was already in trouble for allowing a small arrangement of yellow irises and daisies into the room. The arrangement was beautiful, but the card had been signed “B,” and when her mother had come to her with a question on her face, Maddie had said, “It must be Beth’s. Put it over there with the rest.”

“Are you out of your mind?” her mother had said, appalled. “It can go in a closet.”

“No,” Maddie told her. “This isn’t about us, it’s about Brent. And she probably loved him better than anyone else. Let her have her flowers.”

Her mother had complied, but the flowers still rankled, glowing among the mums and lilies, outshone only by Helena Faraday’s glare.

Kristie had sent flowers, too, the card signed in a neat little chicken scratch that bore no resemblance to the loopy hand on the pregnancy letter. Whoever was having Brent’s baby, it wasn’t Kristie. Guilt made Maddie kind when Kristie came into the room, and Kristie burst into tears and said, “I’m
so
sorry,” and went to sit in the back, alone.

“I didn’t know she was that close to Brent,” Maddie’s mother said.

“He was close to a lot of people,” Maddie said, and when her mother gave her a sharp look, she added, “This is awful, but we just have to make it through this and the funeral and the people at the house, and then we can rest. It’ll be over.”

“Where’s Emily?” her mother asked, distracted by her granddaughter’s absence.

“Outside,” Maddie said. “C.L. went after her.”

“Well, really, Madeline,” her mother said, and began to move toward the door.

Maddie caught her arm. “Let them be.”

Her mother glared again, but when C.L. and Em came back half an hour later, Em’s face was white and tearstained but calm, the tightness all gone, and Maddie sent a silent thank-you to C.L. with her eyes. C.L. smiled back, a slow, reassuring smile that made her want to go to him so much she almost stepped forward. Then her mother nudged her, and Maddie saw Helena’s face go into meltdown at the sight of her whore of a daughter-in-law flirting at the funeral.

Go away, C.L.,
Maddie thought. She felt hemmed in, even the people who were on her side were making her crazy, and she turned away from him to find Treva for a moment’s sanity.

“Nice funeral,” Treva said, when Maddie found her in a chair by the door. “The gargoyle in the black silk is a gruesome touch.”

“He was her son,” Maddie said. “She lost a lot here. Think if it was Three.”

“Don’t,” Treva said. “Don’t even say it. I couldn’t stand it.” She searched the crowd until she found her son and smiled in relief, and as Maddie watched, Three caught the smile and came to them.

“How are you doing, Aunt Maddie?” he said softly, and she looked up at him and frowned.

“Your voice sounds different,” she said, and he said, “Well, Mom told me to keep it down, so I’ve been whispering all day. Makes me feel creepy.”

“Don’t attract attention to yourself,” Treva said tensely. “Here, sit down. You’re looming over everybody.”

Maddie looked at Three in surprise. He was behaving perfectly well, so why was Treva scolding him? Three shrugged at her and sat, and Treva put her hand on his knee and said, “We’ll go soon.”

He nodded and leaned forward, his arms on his knees, to watch the people. “Mel’s with Em,” he whispered, leaning forward even farther to see. “They look all right. Em’s not crying anymore.”

Maddie glanced over to see and then back to Three, his head bent before her, the cowlick at the crown of his head making him seem so much younger than he was, “Why don’t you take them—” she began and then stopped, the cowlick, and his voice, and his height, and the shape of his jaw all coming together for her, familiar and horrible, the reason for Treva’s agitation suddenly clear.

“Aunt Maddie?” he said, and the room swung around, and she stopped breathing and looked down at Brent’s son and thought,
Treva wrote the pregnancy letter in the box.
Treva. Not Kristie. Treva. Twenty years ago. Her handwriting had changed in twenty years, but her secret hadn’t.

“Aunt Maddie?” Three said again, and she said faintly, “Why don’t you take the girls outside for a while. It’s cooler out there.”

Three gave her a strange look and went to get his sister.
Sisters.
Em had a brother.

Treva had lied to her for twenty years. She’d slept with Brent in high school—
my best friend
—and she’d lied to Maddie, to Howie, to Three, to everyone.

Maddie stared out into the crowd, trying to make sense of it. How could she have missed it for twenty years? Three had grown up in front of her. Maybe that was the problem. He’d grown up in front of her, so she’d grown accustomed to his face, that face that was so much Treva, but now so much Brent, too. It was only in the past two or three years that Three had gotten his height. It was only today that she’d seen him in a suit. It was only today that she’d noticed the cowlick in his new short haircut he must have gotten for the funeral. His father’s funeral.

It was only today she knew the truth.

For a moment she thought,
I wish I didn‘t know. I wish Treva had told her lies better so they’d lasted forever.

“Maddie, are you all right?” Treva said, and Maddie said, “No,” without looking at her and went to sit next to her mother, who was talking to Mary Alice Winterborn.

Treva. She’d told Treva everything; for her entire life Treva had been her best friend. And now she was gone, she’d never been there, it had all been a lie.

“Are you all right, Madeline?” Mary Alice said.

“No,” Maddie said. “I just lost somebody I loved very much. I may never be all right again.” She looked into Mary Alice’s eyes and saw all the disbelief drain away into sympathy.

“I’m so sorry, Maddie,” Mary Alice said, sincerely.

“So am I,” Maddie said, and sat in dull quiet until Mary Alice went on to Helena.

“That’s more like it,” her mother said. “That’s the way to behave at a funeral.”

Maddie stared at the flowers. When she was calm, when this was over, she’d go talk to Treva. She had no idea what she’d say, but she’d talk to Treva. But they’d never be the same again. They weren’t the same now. Treva had slept with Brent and given birth to his son and in twenty years had never told her. They were best friends, but they weren’t. They’d been a lie, the way she and Brent had been a lie, the way the things she told her mother to keep her happy had been a lie, the way C.L.‘s reason for coming to her had been a lie, the way the person he thought she should be was a lie. Everything in her life was a lie. She’d been happy while she believed the lies. And now she knew the truths, and nothing mattered anymore. Except for Em.

Maddie clutched the thought of Em to her. Em was truth, and she’d hold on to Em, and go back to teaching, and live the life her mother had, quietly, concentrating on her child. It was awful, but everything else was lies, and if she didn’t get arrested for murder, that was going to be the best she could do. She didn’t need Treva or C.L. or anybody but Em. At least in that kind of life there wouldn’t be betrayals.

And the only lies she heard would be the ones she told herself.