The One I Trust (22 page)

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe it came back with something you took to the dry cleaners or something.”

She looked at me as if I was insane.

“What?” I asked. “You think I had sex with some woman and she left her underwear behind?”

And in an instant I realized that was
exactly
what she was thinking.

“Look,” I said firmly. “I don’t have any idea who that belongs to or how it got in our bed, but I promise you that I’ve never seen this before in my life.”

She looked like she really wanted to believe me. Her eyes filled with tears.

“And I would never cheat on you,” I told her, my voice gentler. “I would
never
do that to you.”

The tears spilled down her face and I put my hand on her arm again. This time she didn’t pull away.

“I love you,” I said, putting my arms around her and holding her close. “I love you so much.”

She cried against my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, it
is
really weird and I can see how you might think the worst . . .”

She continued to cry.

“Since we have it,” I ventured, “you could, you know, try it on.”

I was mostly teasing, but she shook her head and didn’t laugh or even smile. Obviously she wasn’t in the mood for sex
or
jokes.

I took the lingerie out of her hands and walked it out into the kitchen where I dumped it the trash can. When I returned, I found Emily still standing next to the bed, staring at it.

“You ready to go to sleep?” I asked. She nodded and climbed under the sheet while I turned off the lights. By the time I got in bed, she had her back to me, and that was how she stayed all night.

When I got home from work the next day, Emily met me at the door. She was absolutely livid.

“You lied to me!” she yelled.

“I lied to you?”

“You said you loved me! You said you’d never cheat on me!”

“I do love you!” I cried. “And I didn’t cheat on you! I thought you said you believed me!”

“I did believe you,” she screamed, “until I got an email from Tiffany!”

“Who’s Tiffany?”

“You tell me!”

I took a deep breath. “Emily,” I said, trying to speak evenly, hoping that she would calm down. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone named Tiffany.”

“I got an email,” she said through gritted teeth, “from someone named Tiffany. She told me it was
her
lingerie that I found in our bed last night and that she had accidentally left it there the last time you were together. And she said you told her all about it today and that both of you laughed at how stupid I was for believing you.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

“There’s no Tiffany,” I said again.

“Then how did she know about it?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” I admitted. “Did you tell anyone about it?”

“No!”

“Well, I didn’t tell anyone about it either,” I said. “Show me the email.”

She stalked over to the couch and sat down in front of her computer, which was already open on the coffee table. She pecked away at the keys for a few moments and then for a few more, growing more and more frustrated.

“It’s gone,” she finally said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘It’s gone’!” she yelled. “It’s
gone
. It disappeared!”

“How could it disappear?”

“I don’t know!” she cried, tears running down her face. “I don’t know, but it was there! It was from someone named Tiffany and she knew everything that happened last night and she said that the two of you were having an affair!”

“I’m not having an affair with anyone,” I insisted again. I pulled out my phone. “Check my calls. Talk to Ray. See if I talked to anybody today who wasn’t on the crew.”

“It’s someone on the crew!” she said. “It’s somebody you work with!”

“It’s not somebody on the crew!” I argued. “Come with me to work tomorrow and see if there’s anybody there that you honestly think I’m having an affair with.”

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. I knew better than to touch her, but I did try to comfort her.

“Emily,” I said carefully as I sat down on the couch. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

She cried harder.

“Stress can really play tricks with people’s minds—”

“I saw the email!” she insisted. “I know what I saw.”

“Then where is it now?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but it was there.”

“Like your keys, Emily?” I asked. “Remember how you were so sure you remembered putting your keys in your bag, but you didn’t?”

“I did put my keys in my bag!” she cried.

I covered my eyes with my hands and took a deep breath.

“Emily,” I said, finally looking up and shaking my head at her. “I am
not
having an affair. I don’t know what’s going on right now or how that underwear got in our bedroom yesterday, or what you think you saw in your email, but I’m telling you, I’m not having an affair.”

Her face was still wet but she wasn’t crying anymore. She looked at me for a long moment and said, “I have papers I need to grade.”

She looked away and started digging through her school bag, refusing to look up at me anymore.

I sighed.

“Look,” I said. “Why don’t I go pick us up something to eat and bring it back?”

“Sure,” she said. She was nodding, but she still refused to look up from her papers. I waited for another moment to see if she would but when she didn’t, I stood up, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door.

On the way to the Chinese restaurant I tried to get my head around the fact that I had been married twice and both of my wives had accused me of cheating on them.

What in the world is going on?

I actually—for the briefest of moments—wondered if they were both right. What if I
was
actually having an affair and I didn’t know it because I had a split personality or something?

I could check my phone,
I thought.
Emily said that Tiffany told her I’d called her and talked to her today. If I really did, there would be a record of it on my phone . . .

A record of it on my phone? Was I honestly considering that
I
might be the one who was crazy?

After I stopped at the restaurant and placed an order, I stepped outside and called Hale.

“I can’t go tonight,” I said. It was Tuesday, our regular basketball night.

“Everything okay?” he asked, and while I was waiting for my food, I explained everything to him in explicit detail.

After asking a few clarifying questions (“You don’t have any idea where the lingerie came from?” and “You’re sure you didn’t tell anybody what happened?”), he asked, “Is she making it all up?”

“She must be,” I said, “but why? Why would she do something like that?”

“Attention?”

“I’ve given her plenty of attention,” I said. “She’s the one who doesn’t have any time for me.”

“Maybe she’s the kind of person who needs drama.”

“She’s taking drugs,” I said.

“She’s what?”

“She denied it,” I said, “but I found a little bag of pills in her pants pocket. Of course she has absolutely no idea how they got there.”

“Do you know what they were?”

“Ritalin and Valium.”

“Uppers
and
downers?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s not good . . .”

“No,” I agreed. “I don’t know if she’s been doing it all along or if she’s just started because of what’s been going on at work, or—”

“What exactly has been going on at work?”

“Oh, everything. She’s not getting emails that she’s supposed to get so she missed some really important meeting, and her lesson plans have been disappearing and she’s getting in trouble for not having those online the way she’s supposed to, and some parent called the principal and said they’ve been leaving phone messages and Emily’s never called her back but Emily said she never got them, and her assistant never does what she’s supposed to do and she undermines everything Emily does in class and tries to make her look bad . . .”

Hale stayed quiet while I stopped and thought about exactly how all that sounded.

“You know,” I said slowly, thinking furiously. “She claims that she caught her fiancé and her best friend having sex, but her own parents didn’t even take her side. She said her mom told her that she ought to go through with the wedding. Who does that? I mean, someone cheats on your daughter and you tell her she should still marry him?”

Hale still didn’t say anything. He just let me work it out for myself.

“You wouldn’t do that unless you didn’t really believe her in the first place,” I said.

“And you wouldn’t believe her in the first place if you knew that she made stuff up all the time,” he finished for me.

Now it was my turn to stay quiet.

“This is the same exact thing that happened with Tori,” Hale said.

“Not exactly,” I argued.

Tori had lied—she’d lied a
lot
actually—but her lies had always been very believable, very thought out, and they had always existed to further her cause . . . to help her get whatever it was that she wanted at the time—like when she’d accused me of sexually abusing Noah so that she could get full custody of him.

“There was always something in it for Tori,” I reminded Hale. “She always did it for a reason.”

“Well maybe Emily’s reason is that she wants attention.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe something else is going on.”

I brought the Chinese food home and set it on the kitchen counter. Emily didn’t even look up from her work.

“Here’s some food,” I said. She might have given me a little nod, but it was hard to tell. I stood there and looked at her for a moment, and then I put some food on a plate and sat out on the back deck and ate my dinner with Gracie.

When I was finished, I went back inside, walked into the living room, and sat down in a chair. Almost immediately, Emily got up and went into the kitchen and got herself her dinner. I actually rolled my eyes and shook my head in frustration, but of course she didn’t notice because she still hadn’t looked at me.

While she ate in the kitchen, I pulled out my phone and did some research.

Pathological lying can be very extensive and complex, and may manifest itself over a period of many years or even a lifetime. Some individuals may be aware they are lying while others may believe that they are telling the truth . . .

That gave me pause. I looked up at Emily for a moment and wondered if she knew that she was lying or if she believed that everything she’d told me was the truth. Tori had always known when she was lying—I was certain of that. But Emily? I decided that if she did know, she was a pretty good actress.

Stories told by pathological liars are usually incredible or amazing; however, they are never completely implausible. The tendency for pathological liars to fabricate is chronic, and is not provoked by immediate situations or circumstances . . .

Which meant that it couldn’t be blamed on the stress of a new job. It was probably something that had been going on for a very long time.

Stories often portray the liar as either a hero or as a victim . . .

Check.

Pathological lying is not widely recognized as a mental disorder and can therefore often be difficult to diagnose. Extensive lying is often a symptom of several mental illnesses including psychopathy, and pathological lying itself frequently presents as a symptom of several personality disorders including histrionic, narcissistic, and antisocial . . . Few methods are documented as effective in the treatment of pathological lying, although psychotherapy has reportedly been beneficial in multiple studies . . .

Psychotherapy.

At eleven o’clock, I asked Emily if she was going to go to bed anytime soon. Continuing to avoid looking at me, she replied curtly that she still had a lot of work to do.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“No.”

I rolled my eyes again and went to bed, and when I got up in the morning, Emily was already gone. I was a pretty sound sleeper and it was entirely possible that she’d come to bed without my knowledge, but I was fairly certain that she’d spent the night on the couch.

During my lunch break on Wednesday, I started looking for therapists and found one in North Raleigh who would be willing to see us.

“We’ll go Monday,” I told Hale when he called to check on things later that day.

“You think she’s going to go for it?” he asked.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Emily got home very late that evening. The spaghetti dinner I’d made was completely cold by the time she walked through the front door.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she managed back even though she was still refusing to look at me.

“We need to talk,” I said, standing up and pointing to the kitchen. “Would you come in here?”

To my surprise, she walked into the kitchen.

“Sit down,” I said. “I made some dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well,” I said. “Would you at least sit down?”

She pulled a chair away from the table. I took the seat opposite from her and studied her face. She looked awful: it didn’t appear that she’d washed her hair that morning or that she’d put on any makeup. She had dark circles under her eyes.

“Emily,” I said carefully. “Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“Emily,” I said again, more forcefully this time. “Please look at me.”

She finally brought her eyes to mine. They were completely bloodshot.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I know things have been really hard for you ever since school started . . . you’ve been under a lot of stress—”

“That email was there,” she interrupted. “I know what I saw.”

“Okay,” I said carefully. “But you’ve still been under a lot of stress and I think it might be a good idea if maybe you went and talked to somebody about everything that’s been going on.”

“Talk to someone?” she asked, her voice rising.

“Yes,” I said. “You know, someone who—”

“You mean a
shrink
?” she cried. “Seriously that’s how you’re going to try to get out of this? By acting like
I’m
the one with the problem?”