SEVEN
LIVING A LIE
“Zane tore his eyes away from her plump ass with a frustrated growl. His bear could no longer live this lie: of course, he wanted honey!”
—Lane Tempest, Morning Woods Shifters #1 – Bear to the Bone
We were supposed to take off from Le Bourget. That is, if we ever reached it. Stuck in traffic somewhere northeast of Paris, we watched the sun rise over clusters of cracked gray buildings—they never show you the suburbs in all those tourist pics; guess why . . . I stretched with a long yawn and caught my dad’s tired gaze in the mirror. He sat very straight in the back seat, his fingers rapping on his lap as our SUV slowed down behind a delivery truck. I itched to tease him about that crazy night, but I sensed it was too soon: he had yet to fully recover and come to terms with everything he’d learned.
“There’s a bed in the plane,” March said with a smile I’m pretty sure my dad misinterpreted as some sort of carnal invitation, judging by the way his moustache twitched.
I wrapped my hands around my body and rubbed my arms, yawning some more. “I can’t wait.”
An insistent buzzing coming from the back seat had me twist my neck to check on my dad as he took out his phone from his coat pocket. The mask of mild annoyance he had retreated behind ever since leaving the apartment became surprise, then concern as he took the call. “Yes, it’s me. I’m still in Paris.” His blue gaze set on me. “Yes . . . She’s with me.”
My stomach knotted in sudden anxiety as he offered me the phone. “Honey, Joy wants to talk to you.”
Until that very moment, the life I had left behind back in New York had been a blurry horizon made of faces, places, and memories. As much as I wanted it back, I felt disconnected from it . . . like an old movie whose characters seemed familiar. But Joy’s soft voice calling my name suddenly made it real. “Island, is that really you?”
I wish I could have come up with something better than, “Hey . . .” but my breathing was too shallow, my throat too tight as it all rushed back to me: Joy helping me stalk a guy in her civil law class, Joy ruining our microwave with a miscalculated Gummy bear fondue recipe—yeah it should have been the chocolate in that bowl . . . Joy buying Malibu and cupcakes to comfort me after March broke my heart.
“Oh shit . . . ” She whimpered. “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay!”
“Yeah, I’m peachy.” I sniffed back tears and noticed March’s right hand frantically searching the glove box for a tissue pack, which he gave me. I took it with a trembling nod.
On the other end of the line, I heard her blow her nose much like I was. “Everyone thought you were dead . . . Your dad texted me that you fell into a coma when they pulled you out of the dome, but when you woke, you had amnesia, and no one could figure out who you were for months!”
I stole a glance at the chief screenwriter in the mirror and swallowed hard. He had wasted no time starting to smooth out the way for my return. As uneasy as I felt about the precarious web of lies we were tangling ourselves into, I had to admit it was a pretty solid story . . . Guilt weighed in my chest like a bag of rocks at the idea of keeping Joy in the dark, but I couldn’t see any other way. March wanted—needed—a new life, and it came at the cost of burying the old one. For good.
“Don’t worry. It’s all over now. I’m coming home,” I said in a brittle voice. Neither a lie, nor a denial of my father’s explanations . . . It would have to do.
“Is it true that Valmont is the one who found you?” Joy asked, relief and astonishment coloring her voice.
Valmont? Manipulative French viscount with a wig? “You mean March?” I clarified, remembering the nickname she’d once given him. “Yeah, he found me, and he brought me back.”
She seemed to hesitate before she replied, “So he’s a PI, right? Back when Thom died, he was investigating something with you in Switzerland? Before the Poseidon.”
“Yeah, he’s . . . kind of a PI.”
“I get it. Your dad said you land at ten in Teterboro. I’ll be there. So, don’t disappear again!”
As she finished, a sleepy mumble rose from the phone. “Babe? Who you talking to?”
“It’s Island! She’s coming back!” she whisper-shouted—to Vince-the-cutest-photographer-in-the-world, I presumed. It was weird and maybe a little disheartening to think that he had moved in with her after they thought I was dead. I realized for the first time that, technically, I no longer had a home to return to: I didn’t live there anymore.
I shook off this depressing thought and instead tried to reassure Joy, “Don’t worry. I swear I’m not leaving that airport without you. So it’s you who’d better be there, otherwise I’ll have to set up a tent in the lobby, and maybe security will show up to kick me out, and I’ll have to use the extinguishers to fend them off.”
For the first time in eight months, I heard her bubbly laugh. “Okay, now I know you’re really back. I’ll see you in nine hours.” She paused and drew a sigh before adding in a brittle voice, “I love you, girl. I could seriously propose right now.”
“I have a boyfriend,” I said automatically.
She sobered. “I know. I guess I misjudged him . . .”
I noticed that March had pulled onto a smaller street lined with hangars bearing aviation companies’ logos. “I gotta go; I think we’re at the airport. Get ready for my swag; I’m almost home.”
“I’m so ready,” she purred in her best sultry voice.
I hung up and gave my dad his phone with a sorrowful smile as March parked in front of the terminal, a low building surrounded by taxis and luxury cars awaiting travelers. “Thank you for what you told her. I know it’s not easy.”
March’s eyes met my father’s in the mirror. “I’m very grateful,” he said.
For a second, his brow lowered, and I feared he’d explode again, but he breathed out his anger, and his lips quirked. “I’ve been pretending to be a vegan for over a year . . . my life is a lie already.”
•••
It was only after the door had closed that I realized there was no control panel, no buttons to be found on the elevator’s wall. I couldn’t remember why I had entered it in the first place, what I was doing here, or where it was going. I spun on my heels and tried to escape, but the doors had already slammed shut. Oh shit . . . My heart ramming against my ribs, I felt the car move with ominous creaking sounds. I braced myself, filled with the inexplicable certainty that it would fall. I waited, waited in that cramped space that seemed to be closing in on me. But the elevator kept going. It wasn’t falling.
I backed away slowly, up to the wall, noticing for the first time that there was no floor indicator. The car stopped with a jolt, and the lights went out. I screamed in complete panic, banged at the cold brushed-steel walls. I called March’s name, my dad, over and over until all I could produce were barely audible croaking sounds. Exhausted, I fell to my knees and curled in the dark, blind and alone. I cried.
“Island . . .”
My head snapped up, and I blinked frantically, catching a flash of red in the darkness. I felt him. His breath against my neck, the smell of the absinthe. Somehow, he was here, with me. I picked up a rustling sound and groped at the air with trembling hands. My fingertips met skin and something hot and sticky. I recognized the scent of blood, and suddenly I was weightless as the elevator fell, and Anies lunged at me, bathed in red light.
I howled my lungs out and clawed at his face, his chest. His blood was transferring onto me, covering me, drowning me. But I kept fighting.
“Island!”
My eyes fluttered open, and my stomach heaved at the feeling that everything was spinning around, the cabin’s walls, the seats. I was in the bed. No. On the floor, tangled in the blanket I had fallen asleep under. It wasn’t Anies struggling to block my furious kicking—it was March, his body curled around mine, his hands caressing my hair, his breath in my ear. “It’s over, biscuit; you’re safe.”
My father too was kneeling next to him, stroking my leg with a shaky hand. “You had a nightmare, honey.”
I propped myself up on my elbows, taking in the jet’s cabin. March’s tablet rested on one of the seats, the crosswords app still open. Two pillows lay on the floor, which I’d sent flying in my desperate bid to escape Anies’s ghost. I let myself fall back in March’s welcoming arms, feeling nauseated by the cold sweat that made my sweater stick to my back. I could still feel him crawling under my skin. I couldn’t escape Anies yet; I carried him with me.
I let March help me up and into one of the seats while the blond flight attendant I prayed I hadn’t inadvertently kicked went to fetch a glass of water for me. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled as she offered it to me.
With each gulp, I could feel March’s and my dad’s eyes on me, dark and light, but filled with the same anxiety. Maybe they had more in common than they knew . . . “I’m okay. I’m really sorry about this.”
March gave me the soft smile I needed so much right now. “We’ll be landing soon. You’re going to see Joy.”
My dad sat next to me and pulled me into a hug. “Janice has prepared your room, and I’ve kept all your things.”
I noticed the flash of surprise in March’s eyes, soon followed by resignation. Something passed between us that didn’t need words because I was certain we were on the same wavelength: I had no intention of returning to live with my parents. Which begged the question: where would I live then?
•••
Joy wasn’t alone on the tarmac; standing next to her was a shorter, dark-skinned figure wearing a dramatic black-and-white ethnic poncho that I bet was wool-free. Joy ran toward the airstair and hugged me the second my feet touched solid ground. I returned the favor, smothered in her blond curls and the sugary scent of her perfume. As soon as she let go, Janice took over, and I think it was the first time I ever saw her moved to tears. She had no children of her own by choice, but as she smoothed the front of my coat with shaky hands, I realized that there was motherly love in her nonetheless, more so than I had ever suspected.
My dad was next, and he got some smooching action, which I’m certain made up for all that veganism. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and planted a kiss in the silvery frizz that surrounded her like a mist and fell on her shoulders. Her blissful expression turned suspicious though as she lowered her head to sniff his wool coat. “Simon, is that . . . ?”
He cleared his throat, and I noticed his neck was a little red. “No, no. It’s synthetic; don’t worry.”
What could she possibly respond to that? Question the ethics and devotion of a PETA hero? Well played, Dad!
As for March, Janice greeted him with a mixture of distance and curiosity. I gathered she had sensed my father’s discomfort even through his lies, perhaps on an instinctual level, and it echoed in her reserved, watchful stance. Joy, on the other hand . . .
“Okay, a lot will be forgiven to you because you’re hot.”
My mouth fell open in horror, and March raised an eyebrow as she scanned him up and down with a frown. “Thank you, Joy.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t thank me yet. There’s a whole host of shit that doesn’t add up in Simon’s story.” When she saw me blanch, her expression softened into a sad smile. “I just hope that someday, when you’re ready, you’ll tell me the truth.”
I remained speechless, as did March. How I ever thought I could successfully lie to a lawyer, I have no idea, but being sort-of-but-not-quite exposed lifted an incredible weight off my shoulders. Joy didn’t have to know everything just yet, but she understood, and there was no need to bullshit her and enrich my dad’s tale with farfetched details. I took her hands. “When we’re old ladies in our retirement home in Florida and I’m worried I have to write my memoirs before my Alzheimer catches up with me and also I need to make money in self-publishing because I’ve lost my 401k in a banking bubble . . . I’ll tell you everything. And you probably won’t believe it.”
She looked down at our joined hands with a grin. “I can’t wait.”
•••
It’s when we reached the airport’s parking lot and my dad marched to his Lincoln, fully expecting me to follow, that things became awkward.
“So you’re gonna stay with your parents for now?” Joy was asking me, but I got the feeling that she was, in fact, looking at March.
“I, um . . . I haven’t really decided.”
My dad whirled around and stared at me. Then at March. Then back at me. I felt myself shrink under his disapproving scrutiny. His chest heaved, and he seemed ready to speak, but a dark and mysterious hero stepped into the line of fire to rescue me. “I still have my apartment on Central Park West. You’re obviously welcome to stay there, biscuit. As long as you wish.”
I didn’t dare to beam in front of my father, given how pissed he looked at the moment, but I could hardly contain the joy and relief bubbling in my chest. He’d said the words, made it tangible: we would be living together. With his orange tree!
My dad counterattacked. “That’s very kind of you, but Island probably wants to spend time with her family, and all of her things have already been moved to our apartment anyway—”
“I’ll help you move them again,” Joy offered with a shrug. “Vince and I are having lunch with my parents tomorrow, but I can come on Sunday. We can meet at nine at Simon’s place.”
Janice gave a firm nod. “And I’ll have pancakes for all of you!”
“What do you think, Island?” March asked with a smile that was just a tiny bit smug.
I breathed in, breathed out, and forced myself to face my dad’s wounded look. “I’d like that.”