Tell Me No Lies (11 page)

“So this isn’t your first one of these, I take it?”

Startled, she looked up and shook her head. Jake looked
sympathetic but not especially thrown by her odd fit. And now that she thought
about it, how had he known exactly what to do, what she needed?

“How do you…?”

“I know somebody who gets them.”

“Who?”

He bit his lip, obviously debating whether to tell.
“Well…Mom.”

“
Your
mom?”

“Yeah, my mom, whose mom did you think? She used to have
panic attacks maybe a couple times a year when I was a teenager and I guess
after I left for college too. She didn’t call them that at the time, of course.
One glass of wine, a hot bath and quiet for the rest of the day, that was
always her thing when it happened. She finally went to a psychiatrist about it
and got some kind of medication for them; she puts it under her tongue. But I
think they’re also not as frequent, now that’s she’s gone through, um.
Menopause. Apparently whatever hormones she was taking helped too. Wow, she’s
going to kill me if she ever finds out I told you all this stuff.”

He was talking to distract her, she thought. He really
seemed worried. It was endearing as hell.

Tess tried to imagine Jake’s elegant, self-possessed mother
having anything so crass as a “panic attack”. The closest she could come was “a
fit of the vapors”.

“I don’t know if that’s even what I’m having,” she lied. “I
was probably just a little—”

“Don’t even try. Do not
even
try that with me, Teresa
Abigail Moore.”

Slumping back into the cushions again, Tess closed her eyes,
inexpressibly weary now that the worst moments were past. Her breathing was
steadier but the weight was still there, a leaden cloak between her and any
possible good in the world. This too was familiar. The novelty and excitement
of the past day or so had lifted it, but now it was settling back into place
around her, on top of her, making it an effort to get up and do the simplest
things, make the simplest decisions.

“But you’ve got other stuff going on too, don’t you? Tess,
have you been seeing anyone?”

In her muddled state it took her several seconds to realize
he didn’t mean dating, but doctors.

“No. I mean, I was for a while. After the first time this
happened. And for the other stuff. Talk therapy, you know, not a psychiatrist.
But I stopped.”

“Not because of the insurance?”

“No, no, I was still at the paper. It was months ago. And I
have a COBRA, anyway. I could go if I wanted to. I stopped because…”

How to explain it in a way that didn’t confirm her as crazy?

She’d stopped going because she’d learned she could say
whatever she wanted, with nobody to counter her version of events. She couldn’t
resist the temptation. Tess, the budding fiction writer, had wanted to draw her
listener in as she would a reader. When her own narrative seemed dull, she
began to embellish, to see what she could get away with and what would pique
the therapist’s interest. When she realized she was paying to play mind games
with a stranger, she cancelled her next appointment and never returned.

“I think in technical terms I was what they call an
‘unreliable reporter’. Which is super-ironic.”

“You lied to your shrink?”

Here, of course, she could get away with nothing. She
couldn’t put anything past Jake.

“Only for a few sessions. At a hundred-fifty bucks an hour
it had limited appeal, even if I was getting reimbursed for a lot of it.” She
contemplated her wineglass, the thicker-than-water way the pale liquid clung to
the sides. It went down her throat cleanly, however.

Jake sat on the coffee table, his knees brushing her toes.
“I can see where that might get to be a costly hobby. But I guess what really
matters is how it’s affecting your life. And why it’s happening to begin with.
Do your attacks come out of nowhere, or does something bring them on?”

Being herself brought them on. That in itself was enough of
a struggle to give anyone anxiety. Right now her mood was a heavy weight, but
usually she thought of it as a dark well, and lately she spent most of her time
at the bottom wondering how to get out. The walls were slick stone, not
impossible to climb most days but never easy. And yes, sometimes she couldn’t
scale them at all. Worst of all were the days she didn’t even want to try.
Because it was dark and secret down there, a familiar and fundamentally private
misery that she couldn’t help but wallow in on those bad days.

Things got poisoned in the well, or lost in translation on
their way up and out into the world of light and laughter, of people who could
enjoy things. Tess’ finer sentiments couldn’t survive being filtered through so
many gallons of self-loathing, second-guessing and resentment. What emerged was
almost invariably not what she’d originally intended. Sometimes she wished she
could explain this so people would understand.

But it was
her
dark well.
Her
secret. She
guarded it ferociously because it was all she had. Her whole life was in there.
“Deeply invested” didn’t begin to cover it. So it didn’t surprise Tess that her
ability to manage it all was sorely taxed sometimes. Who
wouldn’t
freak
out from time to time? And nobody could help, because nobody else could
possibly understand what it was like, living at the bottom of a well.

Depression, her short-term therapist had called it. But she
didn’t feel sad. She felt numb, or anxious, or obsessed, or plain nuts.

Jake was still waiting for an answer. Tess wondered how long
she’d spaced out, but it didn’t really matter now that he knew she was crazy on
top of being a bitch. It didn’t get much less appealing than that combo. She
wrapped the blanket tighter.
Nothing
mattered. Because of serotonin, or
the lack thereof, or so she’d read somewhere. At least she could feel her face
and breathe again.

“Probably I think they’re coming from nowhere, but I’m
actually ignoring some buried psychological response to my circumstances as an
avoidance mechanism so I don’t have to take ownership of all my first-world
problems.”

“Great analysis. Did you get that from the therapist or is
it more of Allison’s stuff?”

“No, the internet. And thank you, it took me a while to come
up with just the right summary of my crazy times.”

He placed his elbows on his knees and pressed his palms
together, resting his chin on his fingertips and contemplating her from that
prayer-like pose. “I can’t help but notice that this came on when I wanted to
talk about—”

“It’s not like that. Not a reaction to stuff that’s going on
right then. More like everything is bad all the time, and sometimes the lid
kinda pops off from the pressure and all that stuff escapes in one big bubble
of extra-gloopy badness. Like…like emotional flatulence.”

Jake bit his lip, then gave in and chuckled. “Tess, your
metaphors. So sophisticated. You want to write all that down so you can use it
in a book sometime?”

“Jerk.” She hauled a throw pillow out from behind her and
whacked him with it, then let him wrest it from her hand and return it to its
spot. “For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’re right, all the stuff you said
earlier. About everything changing, and me freaking out because I can’t control
it.”

“Maybe you need time to adjust. You’re back here because
you’re cocooning.”

“Maybe.” She knocked back the rest of the wine in one go.

“Sometimes the most stressful thing is getting exactly what
you want,” Jake pointed out.

“Because then what do you do? I know. In theory, I know
that. But…did I even want that? Didn’t I want my old job at first too? So how
long is this even going to last?”

“For the answer to these and other important questions, tune
in tomorrow.”

She chuckled. Weakly, but not completely for show. He had
lightened her mood, not only now but all week long, and she wondered how that
could be possible when on the surface so much of what he’d done was either
unremarkable or stuff that most people would consider abusive. And that stuff
had been what made such a difference. Not the talking, not the dinners or
fixing her water heater, but everything since yesterday. Maybe Jake was right,
and it had triggered something, opened up some deeply buried cache of stuff.
She certainly had plenty of those.

“Or maybe it’s just some chemical thing, like my mom’s. The
wrong hormones or something.”

“Serotonin. Maybe. But whatever it is, for now I think the
worst is over. And we don’t have time for this anyway. You need to get to
work,” she reminded him regretfully. “I need to get some clothes on and go get
ready to receive all my junk.”

“You have clothes on. Not one but two of my shirts.”

They felt great too. Especially the one that he’d been
wearing yesterday, which also smelled like him. “I think to greet the movers I
should also opt for pants. And, at a minimum, underwear. No bra though. I’m not
going
that
far.”

He smiled, slow and sexy. “Pants I’ll allow. You can skip
the bra. And no underwear. I stole those and I’m not giving them back. I like
the idea of you running around commando.”

“I like the idea of
you
.” Yikes. Too much? Her filter
had evidently gone down in the attack.

“Only the idea of me? Or the actuality?”

She ignored the question but returned his smile. “I’m
keeping your shirts. Collateral for my underwear.”

“You have yourself a deal.”

Chapter Ten

Everything seemed too real and bright in the light of day.
The moving guys, laughing and joking as they hauled her furniture into place,
had been a shade too loud. She’d wanted to be back at Jake’s house, cocooned as
he’d said, silent, not having to decide where dressers and tables should go.
She could stay there forever and he could be her contact with the outside
world. Not very practical.

The cottage was charming though, she had to admit. Not a bad
place to regroup and lick some wounds. It was even cozier and cuter when all
the furniture was in place, despite the unpacked boxes stacked in every corner.

It stopped feeling cozy and just felt too small, Tess
noticed, when it was full of annoyed teenage brother.

“Do you have any idea how worried Dad has been? When he
found out you’d been here for weeks, didn’t even bother to tell anyone your new
address—”

“It wasn’t weeks, it’s been
a
week. And it wasn’t
that I didn’t bother,” she snapped, wishing Mikey would stop pacing around the
tiny living room. He’d shown up unannounced a few minutes after the moving van
had left. He had been pacing across her cottage, furious, ever since. “I wanted
some time to myself. A vacation. Sometimes grownups need a break.”

He stopped in his tracks and glared at her, reminding her of
their father all of a sudden. At eighteen, Mikey topped six feet and had the
kind of looks that high school girls penned odes to in their binders. But he
was more forceful than she’d ever seen her dad act. More confident. Good for
him. “You have to
act
like a grownup before you get a grownup break,
Tess.”

“That sounds like something you heard somebody else say,
Michael. Who, I wonder?”

His jaw tightened and he turned away, picking at the tape on
the closest box. Forceful but still only a teenager. Confidence only took you
so far, and Tess should know. She’d had it in spades once. If she’d
acknowledged her own doubts, her own limitations, she never would have managed
all she had.

Raise a little girl and a baby boy, with next to no training
and a father whose emotions seemed shut off at the source after his wife’s
funeral? No problem, if you told yourself often enough that it
was
no
problem. Two or three years later, when Dad had checked back in, he’d met a
stony wall of resentment from his older daughter that lasted another several
years. Tess could do all the parenting, thank you very much. She had been doing
it since the age of thirteen, after all.

Paying for college by herself, when it was clear Dad’s
hardware store wouldn’t be able to cover tuition and expenses? Mind over
matter. She’d brought her GPA up for the last two years of high school,
remained on the cheerleading squad and applied for every local and state
scholarship she could find, staying up all night to finish essays and
applications on more than one occasion. When she’d hit the university campus,
she hadn’t even unpacked before she was on the search for a job. It would be
the first of many, and she subsidized her sister’s education as well when the
time came.

Journalism wasn’t a practical major, the field too
competitive? So what?
Tess
was competitive, she was talented, and she
knew what she wanted. When she’d interviewed for jobs fresh from college, she
walked into the door every time as though she had already been hired and the
interview was a formality. It worked. Later, when she’d decided to try to
publish her book, she gave herself three months to find an agent. She signed
with one in six weeks.

She’d gotten what she’d wanted, achieved what she’d set out
to do, because she refused to let herself think about what would have happened
if she hadn’t. Or what would’ve happened if she’d decided later that she wanted
something else.

Now her mind seemed to be offering up all those alternatives
and what-ifs after the fact, making her pay a lump-sum price for barreling her
way through so many years.

“Dad’s just worried about you. So is Lindy.” Mikey was still
contemplating the box. He’d peeled the tape all the way off the top and started
rolling it down one side. At least he’d stopped pacing.

“It’s a little late for that. I’m sorry,” she said,
interrupting him when he tried to respond. “I’m sorry. I don’t
want
to
feel that way, but I do. Okay? The time for him to worry about me was right
around the time he turned into a goddamned zombie because his grief for his
dead wife took precedence over anything that was going on with his live kids.
After a couple years of waiting, I figured that ship had sailed. I learned to
do without either parent, and I can’t unlearn that.

“And you? You don’t get to judge me. Because while I was
waiting for him to notice he wasn’t the only one hurting, I was busy changing
your diapers and potty-training you and trying to teach you how to eat with
utensils instead of your hands. Not to mention rocking Lindy to sleep every
night while she cried her heart out. I was thirteen, Mikey.
Thirteen
.
Five years younger than you are now. What were
you
doing when you were
in the eighth grade, huh? Perving on Keisha Jackson and spending your allowance
on comic books and computer games.”

She’d gotten to her feet as she spoke, her gestures
expanding to accommodate her rising emotions. Mikey, on the other hand, had
turned with his mouth open then froze in obvious shock.

Tess had never spoken to him that way, not in eighteen
years. She’d scolded, teased, cajoled, lectured and generally made his business
hers, but she’d never spoken any of those deeper things aloud to Mikey or to
anyone.

Such hateful things, awful things. Saying them made them
real. Turned them into truths she couldn’t blow off or pretend not to care
about.

She cared. There it was, plain as day.

“I don’t…I don’t know what to say to that,” Mikey offered
hesitantly. “Thanks, I guess? Sorry? I don’t know. I
didn’t
know. I
don’t remember any of that.”

Of course he didn’t. He’d been a toddler at the time. And by
the time he was five or so, Dad had returned to the land of the living and all
Mikey recalled now was a loving father and a big sister who had always been
kind of bossy and crabby.

“You remind me of him,” he said, echoing Tess’ earlier
thoughts. “You should talk to him about this stuff. Tell him. I think he’d know
what to say, maybe?”

The poor boy radiated discomfort with the turn the
conversation had taken, and Tess couldn’t help but feel for him. He’d had no
idea what he was walking into when he’d stormed in to demand satisfaction for
her crime of needing to get away from the world. He was a good kid, trying to
do the right thing, and for his trouble he’d gotten both barrels of Tess’
pent-up angst right in the face. He’d have been safer to leave her in hiding.

“I never meant for anyone to worry. I’ll call him, okay?
Right now I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do though.”

“Yeah.” Shaking off his stunned look, he scuffed his feet
toward the door but paused with his hand on the knob. “I’m sorry, Tess. I
really didn’t know.”

He was
such
a nice kid.

“Oh sweetie.” She crossed the room and threw her arms around
him, squeezing until he gave in and returned the embrace. “It doesn’t matter.
It was my privilege. Really. I’d do it all over again. You were totally worth
it. Okay? Never forget that. That’s yours to keep, always. You were worth it.”

“Usually you tell me to remember I’m not all that.”

“I think we can risk it this once.” She let him go, but
couldn’t resist sweeping his too-long hair back from his forehead. A
proprietary gesture, maybe even a motherly one. He was beautiful, but he was
also friendly, kind and smart. If she’d played any part in that, she had a lot
to be proud of. “No, you’re right. Don’t let it go to your head, kid.”

“He shouldn’t have had to find out you were here because
Mrs. Eberhardt saw you buying sheets in Smithville and told her husband, who
told some guy who plays cards with the guy who cuts Dad’s hair. Or some dumb
shit like that.”

“Potty mouth! And it was a shower curtain. I
have
sheets, they’re just in a box.”

“She also said that… No, never mind. It’s ridiculous.”

“What?” Suspicion loomed, only to be confirmed a second
later.

“You were with Jake Hogan. Like,
with
him.”

“That’s because I was.” No need to bother lying. It was out
there. By now, knowing how Cranston worked, the rumor mill had them engaged
with a baby on the way. Or
not
engaged with a baby on the way. Denying
it would only make things worse. “He’s also my neighbor, by the way. Not that
any of it’s your business. And aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“I know he’s your neighbor. And you told
him
you were
here but you didn’t tell us.”

“Jake showed up on my doorstep. I didn’t tell him anything,
he found me here. I only made him promise to keep my secret. It was only a
couple of weeks, Mikey. I wanted a couple of weeks by myself.”

“By yourself with Jake Hogan.”

“No. By myself. Jake was an unanticipated complication.”

“Right. And the part where you two were making out in a
restaurant?”

“
Never
happened. Christ. Mrs. Eberhardt needs to get
her mind out of the gutter. And what the hell, was she stalking us or
something?”

Mikey shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Nothing happened in that diner.” After she said it, it
occurred to her that her inflection had revealed everything her words had not.

He pondered the unspoken implication for a moment then
nodded. “I’m leaving. If I skip more than one period I’ll get caught. Call
Dad.”

“I will. See you, baby brother.”

With a wave, he was gone, the screen door slapping shut
behind him. Tess watched his battered black Mustang until it disappeared down
the road.

She’d always known she’d have to have it out with her dad at
some point. She even knew that avoiding it so long had made it harder. But
there’d always been that hope in the back of her mind that one day she’d look
at him, and he’d look at her, and they’d each know what the other was thinking
and it would all be okay again.

Tess knew relationships didn’t work that way. People didn’t
understand each other that way. Believing in that fairytale was a recipe for
misery, and it was better by far to avoid letting anyone get close. That way
you were safe, because there could be no betrayal, no huge misunderstanding
down the line. No failure to communicate that ruined everything. There was
nothing to ruin, nothing to misunderstand.

She plunked herself down on the folding chair she’d dragged
out to the porch and promptly winced at the reminder of how she’d spent the
previous day.

And what the hell had all
that
been about? Tess
wanted to believe it was the final proof of her insanity, but couldn’t deny
that the whole interlude—even considering the panic attack, Jesus H.
Christ
that was odd—had been the most lucid, happy experience she’d had in months.
Maybe ever. For the first time she understood the euphemism “to know someone in
the Biblical sense”. Jake had demonstrated that he knew Tess far, far better
than she knew herself.

He’d stripped off a lot of protective coating in the process
though. Knowledge was power, knowledge was dangerous, and even without the
kinky extras she wasn’t sure she could withstand being known by Jake in that
way. Being that exposed to anyone. And besides, weren’t you supposed to like
yourself before you were ready for a healthy relationship? Tess didn’t like
herself. She wasn’t even sure she had a self to like anymore.

It would have to be a one-time thing. It had been too much,
too intense to be healthy. They were better off sticking to friendly meals and
harmless chats about the good old days. She would tell him tonight. He was
probably thinking the same thing, anyway, so she’d tell him before he had a
chance to say it first.

The idea made her throat clench, tightening enough to choke
her. She was worn out from crying, but now it seemed the dam had burst and she
had no way to stop herself anymore. Maybe this was just the way she’d be now,
crying over everything, crying over nothing.

She felt better afterward though. Like she had the day
before. Cleansed. After a few minutes she sniffled her way into the house,
washed her face and thawed a frozen burrito in the microwave. It scalded the
roof of her mouth, but she was too hungry to care.

* * * * *

Less than twenty-four hours. That was how long it took a
juicy rumor to spread from one end of Cranston to the other, and if anybody
ought to have known that, it was a third-generation small-town newspaper man.

Still, Jake was caught off guard when his father greeted him
at the newsroom door with a patrician “I am not amused” expression.

“Feeling better?” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable. His
dad had a good sense of humor, but was great at dripping sarcasm when he wanted
to.

Jake glanced around at the receptionist, the layout guy and
the one full-time reporter, who was also one of his mother’s oldest friends.
They were all staring at him while pretending not to, eyes full of gleeful
curiosity. He felt fifteen again.

Not comfortable.

He tried to play it cool, lifting an eyebrow, acting politely
puzzled. “Much. Thanks.”

“I hear the air in Smithville is like a tonic this time of
year.”

Ah
. “Yep. It’s downright bracing.”

“You know what else is supposedly like a tonic?”

“I think you’re about to tell me, Dad. Right in front of
everybody too.”

The old man couldn’t keep a grin from flashing across his
face. “Oh yes. Yes indeedy.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time, son. The answer,” he projected across the room,
“is
young love
. Young love is like a tonic, Jake. Even when it isn’t
quite so young anymore. Had quite a bit of time to think
that
one over,
haven’t you?”