Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) (22 page)

“See how easy that was?” It was too bad both my hands were busy closing the tube because I wanted to use one of them to pat myself on the back. If Katherine had only taken the time to show Mom how to do things instead of insisting on doing everything for her, Mom would be self-sufficient by now.

But that was Katherine for you. She was the family martyr, always making sure everyone knew all she had to go through to keep the family functioning. If Mom were self-sufficient, poor Katherine wouldn’t know what to do with herself.

“You can just pull up here and do all your business. You don’t have to worry about getting attacked on your way in or out of the bank. You don’t have to worry about stumbling and hurting yourself either,” I added, remembering that she was afraid of her shoes.

I stuck my arm out the window to return the tube to the receptacle, but hit a barrier. “What the heck?” I said before I could stop myself. I stared at the receptacle. There was no opening in which to place the tube. The clear plastic cover had slid closed.

“What is it?” Mom asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” I replied quickly. Very quickly. “I guess I took too long explaining everything and the cover closed.”

“Whewie, whewie, whewie!” she chanted. “You mean I have to do everything fast or they shut me out? Whewie, whewie, whewie!” The last
whewie
broke apart with what sounded like a touch of hysteria.

“No, that’s probably not it. The cover closes when you send something, so maybe I hit the
Send
button by mistake.” I knew I hadn’t, but I couldn’t account for the problem I was having. I pressed the
Call
button.

“Good morning, how can I help you?” asked the pleasant, helpful voice.

“Um, I was trying to return the tube, but I can’t put it in there. The plastic cover has closed.”

“What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Could you repeat that, please?”

“The receptacle where I’m supposed to put the tube is shut. I can’t return the tube to you.”

“What do you mean ‘shut’? Just put the tube back in the machine.”

I sighed. Could she not understand plain English? How helpful was that? “That’s what I’m saying. There’s no way to do that.” For emphasis I
thwacked
the tube against the receptacle. “The plastic cover has slid closed, like it does when someone sends the tube to you.” Maybe it really was stuck. I pressed
Send
to see if it would unstick. Nothing happened.

“If you want to send the tube to me, you must first place the tube in the receptacle and
then
press
Send,”
said the pleasant, not so helpful voice.

“Whewie, whewie, whewie!” said Mom.

I glanced at her. She had leaned forward in her seat and was staring with eyes as big as saucers out my window at the machine. She might have been nervous, but she wasn’t going to miss a minute of this.

I shoved open my door and climbed out, tube in hand, planning to tap on the receptacle in full view of the teller so she could understand the problem.

“Please return to your vehicle,” said the teller in a voice that was a lot less pleasant than before. At some point she had left her chair, because now she was standing in front of the glass, her nose pressed against it. “It’s against the law to exit a vehicle in the drive-through. Please return to your vehicle immediately.”

The teller sitting beside her leapt to her feet in support of my teller. They were both glaring out the window at me. The people in the car beside us were staring back and forth between me and the tellers with their mouths hanging open, as though they expected a shoot-out to begin.

“Get in before they arrest you!” Mom yelled. “Whewie! Whewie! Whewie! We’ve got my money. Let’s go!”

“I can’t just go,” I said as I slouched back into the car. “This is their property.”

“Drop it on the ground and go! That idiot lady isn’t going to help you!”

I could see a commotion going on behind the teller window. Now a security guard had joined the party of two. I figured the teller didn’t like being called an idiot.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” I said. “I’m just going to pull around to the front and take this stupid thing into the bank. The person behind me can deal with the mechanical problem.”

“Whewie! Whewie! Whewie!”

The tires squealed rubber as I pulled around to the front of the bank. Mom had braced for collision, so she was doing fine.

Just in case the security guard planned to meet me in the parking lot with gun drawn, I hot-footed it inside before he had a chance. I forced myself to act normal when what I really wanted to do was scream at the top of my lungs. I mean, honestly, their stupid machine had ruined everything. I doubted that Mom would even want to accompany someone to the bank again, let alone go by herself. From now on she’d probably insist that we go
for
her, and I couldn’t blame her one bit.

The security guard stood halfway between the tellers and me, hand on gun. My instinct was to roll my eyes and tell him he looked like a frigging idiot, but I sauntered up to him with the tube in hand. “That machine had some kind of mechanical problem,” I said innocently as I handed the tube over. I couldn’t help adding, “You really should have it looked at. It could have caused an accident the way it slid closed unexpectedly like that. Really, it almost took off my hand.”

I spun on my heel and scudded toward the door when something caught my eye.
Richard
was the something. Richard and scumbag Mr. Carlson, that is. They were standing just inside an office doorway, grinning at each other like a couple of fools. I could see them through the glass window that made up the upper half of the wall.

I’d said some nasty things about Mr. Carlson to Richard, and Richard had made a point of telling me not once, but twice, that he didn’t know the man. For a couple of guys who didn’t know each other, they sure looked chummy. After everything I’d told Richard, he should be beating Carlson with a stick, not giving him the two-handed shake as he was now. And why wasn’t Richard wearing his back brace?

I slid a look toward the security guard in case he was still watching me, but he was carrying the tube to the tellers. I sneaked down the little hallway until I was a couple of feet from the office door.

“I’ve cost her well over a grand just with the hospital bill and the exterminator,” Richard was saying in a smug voice, “and in a couple of hours I just might get injured on her property again.”

I sucked in air. I could not believe what I’d just heard and then instantly I could. I’d squashed that little voice, the one that told me when something was wrong, and this was what I got for it. I reminded myself that I’d decided to trust that little voice, and from now on I would. Well, starting in a few minutes. I wasn’t planning to start trusting it right now because right now my little voice was saying the smart thing would be to sneak back down the hall and out the door without giving my presence away.

But I really wanted to knock the crap out of Richard, so that was what I did.

T
he small blessing was that my mother stayed in the car and missed the whole thing. The big blessing was that I’d been smart enough to
slap
Richard rather than punch him. For some reason you can get away with slapping a guy, especially if you simultaneously shout that the wedding is off because you found out the sleazeball’s already married.

Although Richard threatened to have me arrested for assault, we both knew he’d do no such thing since I had the better case. When he had grabbed my hand to keep me from planting slap number two, I screamed that he was breaking my arm. Anyone who hadn’t been on my side after hearing Richard was a deceitful bigamist was on my side then. Except Mr. Carlson, of course. Mr. Carlson’s face had turned dark red, and he was sputtering like a volcano before eruption, so I finally paid attention to my little voice and got out.

Mom gave me the twice-over but in spite of my face being flushed and my hair a mess, she didn’t say a word. I think she was emotionally drained from the fiasco at the drive-through because she stared straight ahead like a mannequin the entire way home.

After I dropped her off, I swung by the hardware store and purchased a No Trespassing sign, the kind that comes on a stake, and I hammered it into my yard right in the front where it couldn’t be missed. There was still the possibility that Richard would come over and injure himself on purpose. I didn’t know the law but it seemed to me that if he wasn’t supposed to be on my property, he couldn’t sue me for getting hurt.

What I really needed to do was figure out how to beat them at their game. My first inclination was to go straight to the police. If Carlson and Richard were in cahoots to drive me out of my house, there must be proof somewhere.

But where? Had they been stupid enough to send emails or text messages? Even if they had—and I had no way of knowing either way—would the police take me seriously enough to get warrants against a sterling member of the community such as Carlson to try and find out?

I was thinking
no.

As for the homeowners’ association board, Carlson had relationships with the other members; I did not. I’d annoyed everyone by ignoring my crappy-looking lawn.

If the police didn’t uncover evidence, my accusation would have nothing to back it up. It would be my word against Richard’s and Carlson’s, and after all the weird articles circulating about me, no one would believe me over the president of a bank.

I couldn’t even prove that Carlson had run the ad, which I assumed he must have done so that Richard could answer it and cause me trouble. I had played right into Carlson’s hands, and that irked me most of all. I’d known I wouldn’t marry Richard when all was said and done, but I had dishonestly agreed to take his help. Whichever rule of lying I’d hidden behind had backfired on me.

The fact that Richard had no intention of marrying me either, which meant he’d been dishonest when offering his help, didn’t make me feel any better. The only part of the fiasco that
did
make me feel good was getting to sock Richard in the face.

I was basking in the glow of getting the better of Richard, albeit after he’d gotten the better of my wallet, when Mark showed up on my doorstep. His face was drawn, his eyes were bleak, and his hair was rumpled as though he’d run his fingers through it a couple dozen times. I’d never seen him upset before. Something was very wrong.

“What?” I asked him as I led him into the living room where we took seats on the sofa. If we’d been at Sue’s condo, we could have sprawled on a comfortably squishy—though quite expensive—couch, which might have helped soothe Mark’s troubled nerves, but since we were at my house, we had to perch on my firm, traditional-style sofa like a couple of anxious birds.

“What is it?” I asked.

He glanced over at me and my heart sank. His entire face drooped; his demeanor was as far from Mark-like as I’d ever seen. Whatever was wrong, it was bad. Very bad. His remaining kidney was in failure. Or maybe he had cancer. Something terrible was going on, and I’d been so wrapped up in my own stupid problems, things that weren’t even problems when compared to Mark’s imminent death, that I hadn’t noticed.

“I’m moving away,” he said.

I felt a rush of relief and then confusion. “What do you mean
away?
To where? What’s wrong? You can tell me the truth; I can take it.” I wasn’t sure I could take it, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t take
not
knowing.

He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. He shook his head and shot a wry smile at me, a smile that looked more like a grimace. “I’m in love with someone who is never going to love me back, and I can’t go on living like this.”

“Huh?”
Oh no.
I’d been worried about this since the day I asked him why he’d never married. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to know.

He pushed up from his seat and moved to the window, staring out for a moment, fiddling with the blinds. His shoulders slumped, and he turned to face me. “You know, don’t you?” he asked.

“I didn’t, really. I wondered, yes. But I didn’t really know until now. I don’t know what to say, Mark.” I wished the earth could just swallow me up. How did you tell someone who was crazy about you that you loved him like a brother?

“I know it’s never going to happen,” Mark said. “She loves me like a brother.”

Huh? Did he say
she?

“Oh God,” he said, staring at my frozen expression. “Don’t tell me she doesn’t even love me like a brother. I can’t bear to think that all this time she’s hated me or thought I was a pathetic idiot and I didn’t even know. I mean, I know she likes to party, and I know she likes to date around, but still … I thought she loved me as a friend. She’s always asking me to take the two of you places—like to the fair. She wouldn’t do that if she hated me, would she?”

Oh my God. He was talking about Sue. Mark was in love with
Sue.

Mark was in love with
Sue?
I suddenly felt sick. Why did I feel sick? Oh God. I felt sick because he was in love with Sue and not me. I didn’t even love him that way, so why did his proclamation make me feel as though I’d been rejected by the man I wanted to marry and live with happily ever after? What was wrong with me?

And then I realized it wasn’t jealousy I felt. I was upset because he’d kept his feelings from me. I thought I was his friend, someone he respected. I felt as though he’d just punched me in the gut.

“Well, does she?”

“Does she what?”

“Hate me? Or think I’m a pathetic idiot?”

He was really in pain, so I needed to get over myself. I’d have to think about this later, but for now …

“No, Mark, she doesn’t hate you, and she doesn’t think you’re pathetic. She likes you. A lot. I mean, I never asked her about her feelings for you. I figured they were the same as mine. I didn’t know how you felt about her, so I never asked her anything. I could have asked her and I’m sure if I had asked her, she would have told me the truth.”

Unlike some people.

He sank back onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve tried to get over her,” he said, his voice coming out muffled, “but I just can’t do it. I always had a crush on her, even in high school, but I hardly ever saw her after I went away to college. But when you came back and we started working on your house and she kept coming over to help …”

“Do you want me to talk to her?” I didn’t want to talk to her, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“No! I mean
no.
It’s pointless. I’ve already accepted the job in North Carolina. It’s a great job, even though it’s only for a year. I’ll be the chief scientist, making fifty grand more, and I’ll have all-expenses-paid diving trips all over the world. Yet, as clichéd as it sounds, I’d give it all up for Sue.”

My whole body felt wooden, but I dragged my arms up, wrapped them around Mark, and gave him a little squeeze. Poor Mark. The psychic had been wrong. Mark had gotten the great job she’d told him about, yeah, but she’d gotten
him
all wrong, because just like Sue, maybe just like everyone, what Mark really wanted was true love.

*****

The next day I was standing outside Sue’s condo, rooted to the spot, unable to knock on the door. I wanted to tell her about my conversation with Mark, but I wasn’t sure what she’d say. She didn’t have those feelings for Mark. That is, she’d never mentioned any, and I think she would have. Yeah, she definitely would have. We’d talked about men a zillion times. She often said she didn’t know what she was looking for in a man but would know when she saw it. Well, she’d seen Mark plenty, so what she wanted obviously wasn’t him.

But I didn’t want Mark to move away, at least not for a reason like this. Maybe if I told Sue, she’d talk him into staying. Would that be best for Mark? I didn’t know.

The door swung open. I felt like a deer caught in headlights, which was ridiculous. Sue was my best friend.

“I heard you,” Sue said. “When you first came up. And then you didn’t knock.”

She looked awful. Sort of. I mean, her eyes were swollen, as if she’d been crying, but there was a certain kind of energy reflected in them too. An excitement I wasn’t used to seeing in Sue.

“Come in, come in,” she said. She led me to her taupe-colored microfiber couch where she plopped down. I joined her, but I didn’t feel like plopping.

“I guess you know all about it. I’m going to North Carolina. I can’t believe it.”

“What?” I stared at her, shocked senseless. Not senseless enough to keep my mouth shut, but … “What do you mean you’re going to North Carolina?”

“Mark told you, didn’t he? Told you he’s in love with me?”

“Well, yeah, but you’re not in love with him.”

“But that’s just it. I
am
in love with him. I just never realized it until last night. When he left, I was still in shock. Then I started to think about him leaving, and I couldn’t bear for him to go away.”

“I don’t want him to go away either, but—”

“But you probably didn’t wish you were dead, did you? That’s the way I felt, and that’s when I realized how I truly felt about him. I ran after him and he came back and we talked. I just can’t believe I never knew how I felt until last night!”

I was getting a bad feeling, one I didn’t want to have, but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. “Are you sure you never knew it until last night?” I sounded suspicious, even to myself.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Mark knew how he felt all this time yet kept those feelings a secret. Are you sure you weren’t keeping your own little secret?”

“What are you accusing me of?” Sue’s face was scrunched up now. It didn’t help the
awful
look.

“I’m accusing you of keeping secrets. You and Mark both. I can’t believe you’ve been in love with each other all this time and you never told me. All the times we spent together, and I was the odd man out instead of your best friend.”

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was furious all of a sudden. I was acting like a child, yet I couldn’t stop myself.

“I just told you I didn’t know I was in love with Mark until he confessed his love for me. How could I have been keeping a secret if
I
didn’t even know it?”

I was silent. Glaring, but silent.

“So you don’t believe that I didn’t know?”

All the joy had gone out of Sue’s face. I suddenly felt like a louse. When tears burned the back of my eyes, I wasn’t sure if they were for Sue or for me.

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Deep breathing usually helped. This time it didn't.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not mad, not really. I don’t know why I’m acting like this. It’s just so hard to believe that you could be in love with him and not know it, but I do believe you. I guess I’m angry that Mark kept it a secret all this time.”

“He said he was embarrassed. He said he was sure I didn’t feel the same way because we’d been alone so many times and I never came on to him. It’s funny because there was this one time, when he took me home after I brought the tequila over, when I actually toyed with the idea of grabbing him and kissing him goodnight, but I chastised myself the next day for almost ruining a great friendship. If I’d known then …” She pushed her hair behind her ears and leaned forward to peer into my face. “Are you sure you’re not mad?”

“Mad isn’t the right word. I’m upset. This changes everything between us.”

“But it doesn’t! We’ve always been best friends and we always will be.”

“And you’re moving away—both of you.” My two best friends were leaving me. I tried to swallow my tears, but they settled in my throat like a big, fat lump. And there it was, the real problem. Life was hard enough, but I always knew I had Sue and Mark around. Now I wouldn’t.

“I said I was
going
to North Carolina, I didn’t say I was moving. He’ll only be gone a year and he has to leave in a month. I’m going to help him apartment-hunt, but I can’t commit further than that right now. I have a job here, one I can’t just leave. We haven’t even dated, not really. Unless you count last night.”

She blushed, and I shot a look at the closed bedroom door. “Is he … ?”

“No, he left early, but, Jane, it was so romantic.” She grabbed up one of the pillows from the couch and hugged it to herself. Her expression went from embarrassed to dreamy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so
cherished
by a lover before, you know? I’ve had sweet sex and fun sex and gorilla sex and make-up sex, but it was so different with Mark. I felt as though he had waited his entire life to
cherish
me. His touch made me feel I was the most desirable, the most beautiful woman in the world. I felt so safe. So alive.” She shook her head and laughed. “Everything I’m saying sounds stupid, so clichéd, but I just can’t put it into better words.”

She was doing a pretty good job of it, relating exactly the kind of passion and wonder that made women hungry to read romance novels. I was a romance writer, yet I’d never experienced what Sue was gushing over. Romance, sure. Lust, absolutely. But being cherished was not something I could relate to. What could be sadder than that?