Lies That Bind Us

“Tell her what?” he said. He was quiet and still. Wary. His manner gave nothing away, and his uncertainty turned my smoldering anxiety to anger. It flared white hot in my chest.

“Tell her I wouldn’t do that!” I shouted. “You know I wouldn’t. Marcus, you can’t think . . . I didn’t. I wouldn’t! Why would I . . . ?”

“You didn’t like me near him,” said Gretchen. “I could tell. Everyone could tell.”

I felt the sudden embarrassment in the room and knew she was right, they had all thought it, discussed it . . .

“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”

“Jan,” said Melissa. “I get it, but this is really not the way . . .”

“Shut up!” I shouted. “All of you. I said I didn’t do it, OK?”

“Now, Jan.” Simon this time, also still and quiet but deliberate, like some guy in a movie defusing a bomb. “This isn’t the time for one of your stories.”

I stare at him, breathless, tears starting in my eyes, and then I look to Marcus, who had said they didn’t know about me, not really. He looks down, ashamed, though whether that’s about me or him, I can’t tell.

“I didn’t,” I manage, crying openly now. “I would never . . .”

And I mean it. I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t.

“We can fix this,” said Melissa, turning between Gretchen and me and smiling. “Tomorrow we can head into town, buy you some new things, Gretchen, and then we’ll have a little chat, just us girls, maybe a few drinks, and then—”

“No,” said Gretchen. “I need to call the airline. I’m leaving.”

Melissa protested, of course, said it would all be better in the morning, but Gretchen stuck to her guns, watching me from under her bangs as if I might attack at any moment, and at last the call was made on the ancient rotary phone in the foyer. Kristen sat with her on the tower stairs as Gretchen talked, but she met my eyes and shrugged with noncommittal exhaustion.

So the jury is still out on me.

Simon and Melissa huddled in the stairwell to their room, then went through the motions of searching the house for intruders while I stood at the bottom and stared, unseeing, at the large tapestry that hung in the foyer, all faded birds in threadbare green and gold. Having found nothing, Brad, who had gone with them, armed with a knife from the kitchen, went back to bed—something of a relief to Kristen, I think, since his patience was already worn thin—and Marcus drifted apart like a satellite in high orbit, just barely connected to what was going on. Once I caught his eye and took a step toward him, but he shook his head minutely and I stopped, trying to decide if he wanted to keep whatever conversation we might have for a more private moment, or if he was just done talking to me.

It was impossible not to feel betrayed by the world and him most of all, and the look I gave him was less imploring than it had been and more accusatory.

You’d think that tales about boys crying wolf would make me immune to this sort of thing, but it didn’t. It was an obvious downside of being a known embroiderer of the truth, a distorter, a misleader, that even when you were being absolutely honest, the best you could hope for was a kind of wary détente, a truce between battles while everyone waited for independent confirmation that you weren’t, in fact, lying your ass off. So I should have known better than to be hurt by Marcus’s careful distance and by the way no one had really come to my defense. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that my word counted, apparently, for nothing, but it still hurt.

It hurt like ice pressed deep into my heart. Like fire. Like rejection.

As to the offense itself, anyone could have done it. We had all had the opportunity to slip into Gretchen’s room—she apparently didn’t keep it locked—at any number of times after we got home from Rethymno or even before we left this morning. If someone had broken in, it could have been done while we were out, but no one seemed to be taking that possibility too seriously. Nothing was missing, and the attack—if that was what it was—felt specific. Personal. There was nothing I could say. The more earnest I was in my denials, the more I looked like a stone-cold lying bitch. After a while, I just stopped talking.

I sat on the stone steps to the tower, caught between wanting to flee to my room and wanting to be supportive of the woman who had blamed me, as if that would help. I knew I couldn’t sleep, though I was weary to the point of exhaustion, and I was, ironically, more afraid than the others. They all thought they knew who had gone into Gretchen’s room and cut up her clothes, an act that was more than malicious. It was voyeuristic. Pornographic. It was frightening, particularly for me, the only person in the house who didn’t think they knew who had done it, the only one who knew for a fact that it wasn’t me.

Because it wasn’t. I had never even been in her room before. I certainly hadn’t rooted through her things, cut them up, an act at once petty and deeply, troublingly sadistic.

I watched the others coming and going, avoiding my eyes. An hour passed. Maybe more. I spoke to no one, staying where I was, gazing into the foyer as the others murmured in the living room. I was still sitting there when Gretchen walked in, making for the phone. She had already changed her flight, so I hadn’t expected to see her here, and I think she thought I’d gone to bed. She froze in the act of picking up the receiver, staring at me, though I couldn’t see the expression on her face at this distance.

“I know you think it was me, Gretchen,” I said. “And I know you think I’m jealous of the way you are with Marcus . . .”

“You are,” she said, not moving.

I hung my head, not wanting to say this, not wanting to say anything, but then looked up and nodded.

“Yes,” I said. “I am. But I didn’t go in your room. I didn’t cut up your . . .”

She started walking over to me, a sudden, brisk stride that got me to my feet in case she was going to take a swing at me. I braced myself, but instead of hitting me, she got hold of me by the shoulders and pulled me close.

“I know,” she whispered.

I was dumbfounded.

“But you said . . . ?”

“Yes,” she said, checking over her shoulder to make sure no one else was in earshot. “I’m sorry. I had to.”

“You did it yourself?” I said.

“No!”

“But you know who did?”

She shook her head, but it was less a denial than it was a pushing away of the question.

“I have to get out of this house,” she said.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t get my head around how radically the conversation had shifted. “Why?”

“I can’t be here anymore,” she said. She was still quiet but was, if anything, even more hysterical than when she had first found her shredded underwear. She was trembling, her grip on my shoulders tight, each finger digging into my flesh like a clamp. “You don’t understand, but I can’t be here. It’s not safe.”

“Not safe?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“We’re in danger. Not just me. All of us. You, I think, most of all.”



PART 3

TARTARUS

Theseus and his companion ventured into that point of the underworld known as Tartarus through a secret way and came to the palace of Hades, who ruled that fearful place. They made their request to take Persephone back to the world of the living and Hades seemed to consider their request, but then the king of the dead suggested they sit down to rest themselves and they realized—too late—that the seats were the Chairs of Forgetfulness. Their skin immediately bonded to the chairs so completely that they could not get up again without tearing their flesh away. Snakes surrounded them and, with Hades looking on, Theseus was lashed by the Furies and mauled by the great three-headed dog, Cerberus, so that it seemed they would be trapped there in deepest pain and misery for ever.

—Preston Oldcorn



Chapter Twenty-Five

“Where were you when your mother and sister died in the car wreck?” says Chad.

Not this again. We don’t have time for this.

“I told you. I was at school.”

“Liar,” says the Chad in my head. “You were in the car. Weren’t you, Jan? You were in the car.”

I start to deny it, then stop, suddenly unsure.

I keep very still, eyes shut, feeling for the truth like it is an old dog that cannot be relied upon not to bite. And then I see it, remember it, the darkness, the smell of oil and gasoline, electricity and blood. It all comes back and, for a moment, I’m stunned by the fact of it, as if I hadn’t known till now, even though I had, however many fathoms deep I had buried it.

“Yes,” I say to myself. “I was in the car.”

“But you survived.”

“Yes.”

“Barely a scratch on you,” says my imaginary Chad. “Your mom was driving. You were in the back with your sister. You were both buckled in, but when the car came off the road, when it rolled down the ditch and into the tree, the left side took the brunt of the damage.”

“Yes.”

“You were sitting on the right.”

“Yes.”

“Barely a scratch on you.”