State of Lies Read online

  * * *

  I didn’t normally walk Alice at night. Sean did. But if he wasn’t . . . if he didn’t . . . Alice needed someone to take her out. Sam was sleeping; there was no need to wake him. I only went down to the end of the block. I’d forgotten to take my umbrella, but I had remembered my phone. I called Sean again, willing him to answer, willing for it all to be a mistake.

  It kept going to voice mail.

  Hey. It’s Sean. Let me know where to reach you so I can give you a call back.

 

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept calling, waiting for him to pick up.

  When I got back to the house, I decided to try a different number. I called my mother instead.

  “Mom? They told me Sean died.”

  “Georgia Ann?”

  “Sean died. Sean’s dead, Mom. He died.”

  She gasped. “What?” It was a guttural, Southern whut.

  “He went to the store to get a part for the faucet and his car was hit and he died. Mom?” I’d made a list in my head while I was walking Alice. There were things I needed to do. Lots of them. I just couldn’t remember what they were right then. “Mom? What do I do? I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do now.”

  “You just hold yourself together.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We were flying in tomorrow anyway. I’ll call and make them put us on an earlier flight.”

  “I just keep thinking I should have fixed the faucet. I could have fixed it when we first moved in and none of this would have happened. I’ve always been better at fixing things than he is.”

  “Georgia Ann, you listen to me, do you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “This is not your fault.”

  Not my fault. She sounded so sure of it that I wanted to believe her.

  “Mommy?” The call came from the hall. “Mommy?” It was Sam.

  I closed my eyes. I hadn’t even thought of Sam. What was I going to tell him? What was I supposed to tell our son?

  “Georgia Ann? Are you still there? Georgia Ann! What’s happening?”

  “Mommy?” Sam appeared at the entrance to the living room, bleary-eyed and pale, sniffling from his cold. “Mommy? Where’s Daddy? He was supposed to kiss me when he came home.”

  3

  October

  I was sitting in the conference room at work surreptitiously trying to write my grocery list while my boss, Ted, was talking about our upcoming two-day red-team exercise. We were supposed to be playing devil’s advocate on a group of proposals to make sure we weren’t so in love with them that we’d overlooked the obvious or failed to anticipate our customers’ criticisms. But Sam and I had just gotten back from a weekend trip we’d taken with my parents to the Eastern Shore and the refrigerator was bare.

  I’d been doing better handling my parents in small doses since Sean had died. My father passed through DC regularly to visit companies on whose boards he sat or for whom he served as a consultant on classified projects. The trip to the shore, however, had been about a day too long. They just would not let up on trying to get Sam and me to move in with them once my father got confirmed as secretary of defense. They had bombarded me with a barrage of reasons throughout the weekend.

  I forced myself to loosen my grip on my pen. Tried to relax my jaw.

  Every few moments I sent a glance up at the whiteboard, which was illuminated with PowerPoint slides.

  And then I wrote down the next item on my list.

  Bananas.

  “Georgie, you’re going to be red-teaming with Mark, Bill, and Carl on the inertial navigation proposal.”

  “Right.” Applesauce.

  When I refocused on Ted, he was talking about my quantum encryption project.

  “How’s the test prep coming?” He was looking at me.

  Our company was one of several contractors working on a quantum encryption project for the Department of Defense. The Chinese had taken the lead in quantum communication technology and there was an all-hands-on-deck effort to leapfrog them. If our product worked as we’d been promising, then it would put us one step closer to that objective. The goal was to use entanglement to make transmitted information self-report hacking attempts. If everything went as planned, if it passed its upcoming tests, it would be the ultimate in proactive cybersecurity.

  “There’s the test scheduled at White Sands in January. We had to cancel the last one because of a subcontractor issue. Everything looks set this time, though.” He asked me about the details of the delay, then he changed the slide. He moved on to something else.

  Cereal.

  Multitasking was bad. I knew it was bad. My mother always said doing two things at once was like trying to catch a greased pig; it wasn’t going to end well. When I was little I’d wondered why anyone would want to grease a pig and why anyone would want to catch one. But in my house, you didn’t ask questions. You just fell in line and marched along.

  I glanced up at the board.

  And suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

  It felt like the bottom was dropping out of my soul. I locked my gaze on the whiteboard, trying to concentrate. If I could just concentrate, if I could just keep myself in the moment, then maybe everything would stabilize.

  I tried. I heard Ted talking, but I couldn’t decipher what he was saying.

  I was used to grief creeping up on me unawares, but it hadn’t yet done so at work during a meeting. As I stared at the slide, at the jumble of words, I could feel the tingling of rising tears. I blinked at them.

  When that didn’t work, I crooked a finger and pressed it beneath my eye, pretending to scratch an itch I didn’t feel.

  “Georgie?” Ted said my name as if he were repeating it.

  “Yes! What?”

  “Did you have an opinion?”

  Opinion on what? I tried to focus again on the slide. Tried to discern what the topic was, but the words were meaningless. I couldn’t even make them relate to each other. “Um . . . there are some things I would need to look into before I can offer an opinion. Can I get back to you on that?”

  “On our next meeting? Just taking a vote. Next week or the week after?”

  “Oh. Um . . .” My vision started to tunnel. My ears started to buzz. I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I pushed away from the conference table, shoved my phone into my pocket, gathered my notebook to my chest. “Sorry.” I forced a cough. “Water.” I dashed down the hall to the bathroom, where I took refuge.

  Any woman working in a male-dominated workplace learns to appreciate the women’s bathroom. It’s the only place where she can be herself. It was the only place where I could afford to show my grief.

  Most of the time I couldn’t do it at home. Not the way I wanted to. I couldn’t yell and scream and rail against the accident that had taken Sean from me. When I left in the mornings, it was to take Sam to school on my way to work. When I returned in the evenings, it was always with Sam in hand. He stayed at school after classes ended, in an extended-day program, until I could pick him up after work.

  I dropped my things on the counter by the sink and sought the privacy of a stall. I shoved the metal door closed. Before I could engage the lock, it bounced back toward me.

  I shoved it again. Harder.

  It swung back, clipping me in the chest.

  I gasped, curling into the pain. Then I reached out and grabbed the door, slamming it shut again. The whole frame shook.

  I did it again.

  And again.

  And then once more for good measure.

  But it flew past the stop and bashed into the door of the neighboring stall.

  I stood there panting for a few moments. Then, swiping at my tears, I took hold of the door and forced it back into position. I went and pulled my pen from the spiral on my notebook and used the cap to tighten all the screws.

  Then I rinsed my face in the sink and patted it dry with paper towels. An advantage of never wearing makeup? I never had
to worry about my mascara smudging. It was the one thing my mother had finally given up on. I gave myself a long, hard stare in the mirror, probing for any sign of weakness. Tried a smile.

  Wobbly.

  Tried again.

  It would have to do.

  At least I worked with a bunch of men. They would never notice.

  * * *

  The get-down-and-get-dirty process that was grief, the two-steps-forward-three-steps-back, had become the rhythm of my life. Most of the time weekends were better. At least during the day. There was so much to do at home that I rarely had time to think.

  That Saturday Sam was with my friend Jenn, so I decided to finally tackle the kitchen sink. It was a day that felt slightly more like summer than fall. I’d opened the windows to let the breeze freshen the air. Then I got out my pliers and applied them to the faucet I had finally found the nerve to fix.

  Didn’t budge.

  I went back down into the basement and dug around for my strap wrench.

  I’d found out that work—physical work—was good therapy. I hadn’t found the time to see an actual therapist, but I’d read all the books I could find. They offered the same advice. I was supposed to be patient with myself, validate all my emotions, and remain connected to the people around me. And I was.

  My neighbors Jim and June had become surrogate parents to me and grandparents to Sam since my own lived so far away. My best friend, Jenn, and I saw each other a couple of times a week.

  I couldn’t be anything but grateful for the friends we had.

  But as I fastened the strap around the pipe, I heard footsteps scuffing up the stairs to the front porch. Since Sean’s death, it had been a sound that left me with a sense of profound dread.

  4

  When I heard the sound of footsteps, my neck began to prickle and my hearing began to fade. In a strange sort of way I was entangled with the memory of the night Sean had died. Though time and space separated me from his death, my body kept reacting as if it had just happened.

  I’d learned that it was best to breathe deeply and try to carry on.

  The doorbell rang.

  Leaving the wrench dangling, I walked through the dining room and living room to the front door. Opened it to find Mr. Hoffman.

  “I thought to come by today. I hope you will forgive me. I know today is difficult.”

  Difficult. That was the perfect word. It had been eight months exactly since Sean had died.

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” I shook the hand he’d gravely offered.

  Alice tried to push her way between us. I pushed her back with my knee. Then I opened the door wider to let him enter.

  Out in the street, a gray car drove by, leaving the rustle of scattering dogwood leaves in its wake. As I shut the door, a smile lifted the corners of Mr. Hoffman’s mouth and animated a face otherwise void of expression. He was wearing his usual dark suit, hat, and solid-colored tie. He was splendidly old-fashioned and quaintly European. He’d escaped from East Germany back in the sixties and found his way to America, where he’d opened a toy shop down in Crystal City.

  Next to him, my frayed jeans and my Think Like a Proton and Stay Positive T-shirt looked even scruffier. “I’m trying to fix my faucet.”

  He shifted the bag he was carrying to his other hand and removed his hat, revealing the bald spot that had been slowly consuming an otherwise enviable mane of hair. He tucked the hat under his arm. “We have a saying in Germany on faucet.”

  I raised a brow.

  “When faucet drips one must call the plumber.”

  I laughed. “We have that saying here too.” I gestured toward the back of the house with a sweep of my chin. He followed me. “Coffee?”

  He demurred with a frown and a shake of his head. “Please.” He nodded toward the sink. “Continue. I must not stop you.”

  The aerator finally came loose with a couple of forceful pulls. I unscrewed it and held it up to the light. “A lot of buildup in there.” It hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Maybe never. The good thing about mineral buildup was that it acted like cement. It kept everything together. Bad thing: it messed up the seal.

  “Little Bear is not here?”

  “He’s at a friend’s. Due back anytime.” I was using Sam’s playdates to tackle the enormous to-do list that had accumulated since Sean had died. I kept telling myself I just had to do one thing at a time. But it seemed like every time I crossed one thing off, I added two things to the list in its place.

  “Then this, I give you. To give to him.” He gestured to the bag he’d placed on the floor at his feet.

  I didn’t have to look inside to know what it was. “Mr. Hoffman—you really have to stop!”

  He shrugged. “He is a boy who misses his father.”

  “And another toy is going to help?” Actually, another wooden train to add to his collection of playsets probably would help. For a while.

  Like many things in life, those too were my father’s fault.

  Dad had presented Sam with his first wooden train set just a few months after he was born. And over the years it had been joined by many others.

  When he worked from DC, he’d come to dinner on Saturdays, new toy in hand, and play trains with Sam. Then, after Sam went to sleep, he’d stay and talk with Sean.

  I was just the conduit for bourbon.

  There was a period of time when Sean’s reserve unit deployed and my father was so otherwise occupied that the additions to the playset had ground to a halt. Sam had begged me for something new, but I hadn’t been able to find anything of similar quality online. I finally asked my dad where he’d found them. To my relief, his source was a toy shop—Mr. Hoffman’s shop—just down the road, in the mall in Crystal City.

  That’s when I found out he’d escaped from East Germany with only the clothes on his back. His wife hadn’t been so lucky. Before he’d been able to get her out, she’d died of pneumonia behind the Iron Curtain. Once he told me that, we’d had him join us for Easter. And Thanksgiving too.

  He was a kind, dear man.

  I took a mug from the cabinet, dropped the aerator in, and poured vinegar over it. I was hoping it would dissolve enough of the mineral deposits that I could clean it up and put it back on.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “That’s probably Sam. You can give it to him yourself. Be right back.”

  My friend Jenn and her son, Preston, had returned Sam to me.

  I stepped out onto the porch and leaned out over the boys to give her a hug.

  When I wore a button-down shirt and jeans it always looked like I was planning on digging around in the yard. When she wore a button-down and jeans, like she was that day, it always gave me the impression of yachts, horses, and expensive estates on the Eastern Shore. She had that thing going on. But that afternoon she looked rumpled. And unhappy.

  She kept me close. “Is there any way you could watch Preston for just an hour? I have some things I need to talk about with Mark. So we can come to an agreement on the divorce.”

  The crimp in her mouth and the line between her eyes let me know she wasn’t looking forward to this talk.

  “Sure. Yes. Of course.”

  I stepped aside so the boys could go in. Before they could tear through the house, I caught Sam at the elbow. “Mr. Hoffman’s here. Why don’t you go back to Sam’s room, Preston, and let Sam come say hi first.”

  As Sam and I walked into the kitchen, Mr. Hoffman held the bag out to him. “Something for Little Bear.”

  “Cool!” Sam ran over and took the bag from him.

  The delight on Mr. Hoffman’s face as he watched Sam unwrap the gift? It transformed him. Sam didn’t have a very good grasp of the calendar; there was no way he would have known how many months Sean had been gone. But it had been sweet of Mr. Hoffman to bring him a distraction.

  Sam pulled a train and an add-on playset from the wrapping. “Wow! Thanks!”

  Mr. Hoffman leaned forward. “And tell me: How is ho
ckey lessons?”

  “I’m really good!”

  When Preston came wandering in, Mr. Hoffman stood. “I must go.” He kissed me on the cheek. Nodded at Sam. The two boys ran off down the hall while I walked Mr. Hoffman to the door.

  After he left, I went back to work on the faucet. I took the aerator from the vinegar and scrubbed it free of the accumulation of decades’ worth of hard-water deposits. Then I applied a toothbrush to the threads of the faucet, trying to do the same thing. But as I screwed the newly cleaned aerator back on, I realized something.

  Sean had lied to me.

  5

  The thought landed in my stomach like a deadweight.

  He’d lied to me.

  Whatever it was that he’d put in his pocket the night he’d gone to the store and never returned, it didn’t have anything to do with the faucet, because those parts hadn’t been touched in years. And whatever he’d put in his pocket hadn’t come back to me with the effects from the coroner’s. At least I didn’t think it had.

  I stood there at the sink staring out the window into the sun-drenched autumn afternoon wondering what Sean had actually been doing when he died.

  As I tried to understand the implications, I started to tune in to Sam and Preston’s conversation. They were in the living room.

  “Dad says my hockey bag would be a good place to hide.”

  Sean had told Sam that? When? I put a hand on the counter and turned toward the dining room.

  “Like for hide-and-seek?” I didn’t blame Preston for sounding confused.

  “Just if I ever had to hide.”

  Preston seemed to accept the explanation. “Want to play hide-and-seek?”

  “Okay. Maybe my mom would look for us.”

  Not a chance. And I went into the living room to tell him so. “Hey, Sam? You said Dad told you your hockey bag would be a good place to hide?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did he say that?” I tried to sound nonchalant.