Lie to Me (an OddRocket title) (32 page)

Addie didn't remember anything about the accident. The doctors said it was a blessing and sitting beside her in the car I had to agree. Addie told us what she did remember while we waited for the ferry ride home.

"So I snuck out," she said.

"Yeah, you followed me. You weren't supposed to follow.”

"No." She looked insulted. "I did not follow you."

"You didn't?

Mom turned around in the front seat and I could see Aunt Lucy watching us in the rearview mirror. "I don't do everything you do, Cassie. I had planned this for a long time."

"But I woke you up. I thought you woke up and figured I was going to the marina.”

"No. I was going to chase the Jekyll ghost so I could make a wish. I was going to wish on you, Mom."

“Oh Addie,” Mom whispered.

Addie spoke quickly, her voice breathless and high. "I thought I could make it, I did. And then I remember it getting rough and I couldn’t keep the sails going the right way and then I don't know what happened." Suddenly, Addie lost her momentum and burst into a fountain of tears. "I wanted to wish you better, Mom. I'm so sorry I didn't make it around the island. I'm so sorry."

I held Addie's hand and Mom reached over and grabbed mine. Even Aunt Lucy reached into the backseat and touched our pile of fingers woven together. No one said a word. It felt easier to breathe after Addie explained her plan. I hadn’t been the reason she was out there on the water. Well, not entirely. If I’d listened to my sister even once, I might have known her plan. She’d tried to tell me but I’d gotten so wrapped up in my own world, I hadn’t seen what was right in front of me.

When we got home, there was a car I didn’t recognize in the drive. Inside the house, Mariah sat in the living room right across from Rachel. Duncan played on the floor at her feet.

My knees buckled, but Mom took my arm. Together, we walked into the room.

Rachel held a teacup in her hand. It rattled in its saucer when she looked up. Her face looked ruddy and bloated, as though she hadn’t slept in days.

Mariah jumped up with her eyes wide. "Rachel just came by. She got some very bad news today." Mariah voice sounded unsteady and nervous.

"I didn't know where else to go," Rachel said, putting her teacup down. She reached out and touched her son's golden head. "I got the call while I was driving. I don't know anyone else on the island, so I came here." She took a breath. "They found him. They found RD."

"Rachel, what happened?" Mom asked. I was grateful someone had asked. I didn't think I could speak.

"We haven't been talking." Rachel kept her eyes down. "It's been a rough summer and I don't think we were going to work through it. Not this time. But I never expected this. They found his boat, Kismet. She was drifting. A ghost ship." Rachel wiped her eyes and pulled Duncan into her lap. The boy sat beneath his mother's chin, staring at me with RD's blue eyes. "So I knew something had gone wrong, but I had hope. Until they found him. They found RD in the water this morning."

I gasped. Mom reached over and steadied my arm.

"We don't know what happened, but they think he stayed out in the storm. It looks like he hit his head. He didn't have on a life vest. He might have been drinking. I’ll know more in a few days." She shuddered with tears. Duncan reached up and touched his mother's wet cheek. "I'm so sorry to come over here. I hadn't planned on it, but the Coast Guard said you saw him out there, Cassandra. That he was sailing last night."

"Yes," I whispered. I looked right at her. I could see the grief in her eyes. He was her husband, the father of her child. Even if she'd left him, I could tell she wanted to love him still.

"Is there anything you remember, Cassandra?" Rachel asked. "Anything important?"

I thought about all the things I could tell her. Like how RD was drunk and how everything he'd told her about me was a lie. But what good would that do now? If they ran tests on RD, I was sure she'd learn that he'd been drinking. RD was gone. Not gone. He was dead. And Rachel already knew the truth. I could see it in her sad eyes. She didn't need me to tell her what kind of a man she'd married.

"Why sad?" Duncan said. He put his hand on Rachel's mouth.

Duncan didn't need to know the truth about his dad, either. Maybe Rachel could make up a story about RD's last trip. The way Mom did for Addie and me. She could tell her son that he sailed away in a storm. He saved two girls from drowning and then he slipped below the waves.

"Cassandra?" Mom looked at me. "Do you have anything to say?" I couldn't tell what she wanted me to do, but I'd made up my mind.

"Yes," I said. "I was in the water and RD was there in his boat. He threw me a life ring and I remember holding on to it for a while. And then when I dove down to get Addie, I couldn't swim anymore. I remember that. And I felt him pull me from the water. He saved us. He saved us both."

Rachel nodded and smiled.

I breathed. I would never tell a lie about RD again.

Mariah married Bill on a blue-sky Saturday. They exchanged vows on the water's edge right below the Hideaway. Aunt Lucy, Priya, Nick and I set up an enormous, white tent in case it rained, but we didn't need it. We hung lanterns from the trees and along the porch of the restaurant. When the sun set, it painted the sky above the water with swirls of red and pink. It matched my dress.

Mariah looked beautiful, elegant, like an old movie star. She wore her blond hair up with a simple veil at the base of her neck. She didn't chew gum.

Mom gave her away. She couldn't walk her down the aisle, but she sat in a chair in the front row. When the minister asked who from her family was there to offer her hand, Mom nodded and said, "I am." Her voice clear and strong, she looked beautiful. Since Addie's accident, Mom had been doing better. The doctor's weren't going to say it was remission. They wouldn't dare say a word as powerful as that. But certain numbers and charts were looking better, not worse. I felt a little bit of hope when I saw my mother smile. She was a fighter.

After the ceremony, a three-piece band played and I walked through the crowd toward the beach. I wanted to put my feet in the water. I took off my heels, raised my skirt above my ankles and carefully walked into the soft waves.

I stared into the distance, wondering where RD had died. Was a part of him in the water still like my Dad? Would I be able to hear him when I closed my eyes and dove deep?

The waves carried something back and forth, near my feet. It looked like a shirt or a bag. People lost things overboard all the time off boats and ferries. I walked out a little deeper, careful to keep my dress out of the water. My whole body stiffened and I was so startled I dropped the hem of my dress. It was my backpack. The one I'd lost the night Addie had almost drowned.

I fished the bag out of the sea my dress dragging in the waves. I felt dizzy holding the bag in my hand and sat down on a piece of driftwood so I wouldn't fall. My backpack looked like something from a past life.

My heart raced as I unzipped the bag and felt inside. The photograph fell to pieces in my fingers as I took it out. The water had melted us. I could still see fragments of us standing under the tree, but the lights overhead had torn away. We'd disappeared in the saltwater.

I had slipped RD’s note into a small inside pocket. When I pulled the blue envelope out of the backpack it was damp, but not soaking wet. The pocket had protected it from the sea. I held the envelope for a moment and stared at the horizon. Did I really want to know what RD had said to me? Did it matter? Yes. It mattered because it had been real. I took a deep breath and read.

Cassandra

Beautiful Girl. Where did you come from? You have no idea how much power you have, the way you look at me. The way you make me feel. Tonight in the boathouse, loving you completely, I felt your skin next to mine and you made me feel alive. You made me believe in the future, that I can be good like you that I can start over and be the man I was supposed to be. Thank you for letting me love you like that.

RD.

I felt nothing while I read his empty words. I did know my power. I did know how I made him feel, because even though he was a liar, my love was real. It was just a mistake to give it to someone like him.

Looking at his lies written out, I felt sorry for RD, for the empty place in his heart that he'd try to fill with me, for the family he’d left behind, for the broken hearts he’d left in his wake.

I looked behind me at the crooked dance floor. Mariah and Bill slow danced, even though the music called for a much faster tempo. Priya waved and smiled, twirling Addie in circles while the band played. She and Nick were taking turns dancing with my sister. Nick had come by the house a couple of times since the accident to see how we were all doing. We were friends again.

Under the white tent, Mom and Aunt Lucy sat under a yellow lantern. They wore gardenia corsages and had chosen dresses the same shade of blue. They moved their hands the same way as they laughed and talked. They looked like sisters.

This was it, this was my family and RD was gone.

I took the torn photograph and RD's note and walked by myself to the dock. My dress felt heavy with water as I opened the marina gate. I walked to the empty slip that had been RD's, the space where our invisible world had existed. I remembered the times it had felt like love. I wouldn't let his lies take that from me. It had been real. It had been wrong, but it belonged to me, every second from the moment he kissed me until the moment he died.

And RD, wherever he was, knew the truth, too.

I closed my eyes and ripped the photograph and note to pieces. I held my hands out, palms open over the water. I felt the breeze building and opened my eyes to watch as the wind lifted the fragments into the air and carried all those pieces of me away.

I watched the wind scatter the photograph and RD's empty words across the water. They floated back and forth, dancing in rhythm with the waves. I whispered one word to RD. There was nothing more to say. "Goodbye."

Then I walked back up the dock to my family. They'd been waiting for me all summer.

THE END

My deepest gratitude and thanks to the members of the 74
^th
Street critique group who helped shape this story week after week, Billee Escott, Peter Kahle, Lyn MacFarlane, John Santana, Ingrid Scott, and Sheri Short. As for my OddRocket crewmates, Phoebe Kitanidis, Kevin Scott and Peter Greatorex I wouldn’t want to hurtle through space with anyone else.

To all my family, especially my sister, Amy, who has been listening to my stories her entire life. I am convinced this book would not exist without her and her unconditional love and support. And to Michael, my gratitude and love for making all the moments in between this writing business impossibly perfect.

Our cover art is by Agnieszka Szuba.

OddRocket
Seattle

OddRocket was launched to reconnect readers and authors; to find and recover the stories marooned on the moon. It is an extraordinary vehicle. Why not take another ride?

www.oddrocket.co
@oddrocket
@suzannebrahm

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Brahm
Cover design by Agnieszka Szuba for Page Nine Ltd, Copyright © 2012 by OddRocket

ISBN: 978-1-938767-02-9
This edition published in 2012 by OddRocket, Seattle WA

Lie to Me
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.