Beautiful Lies

“I’m your father,” he said after another pause.

“What’s your name?” I repeated.

“I’ll see you in an hour,” he said, and hung up.

I ended the call and handed the phone back to Jake.

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No.”

Jake shifted in his seat. “I guess I wouldn’t, either.”

I looked at him, puzzled.

“If I were a fugitive? I told you my name, you could call the police and have a hundred squad cars waiting for me. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

I shrugged. “Then why risk it at all?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

fifteen

We waited until he left the row house and watched as he walked toward the park entrance. Jake said he wanted to see him leave to make sure he was in this alone. I wasn’t sure who else he thought might be involved but I didn’t ask. Jake seemed oddly comfortable with the scenario of waiting and observing, plotting action, making sure things were safe—the whole thing. To me, the situation was surreal, strange enough for me to wonder a few times whether I was dreaming. A couple of times I thought I might actually wake up.

After a few minutes had passed, we trailed behind him in the Firebird. He was hunched again but walking fast. He threw a glance over his shoulder a couple of times, but I don’t think he was looking at us.

“He seems so lonely. Lonely and sad,” I said.

After a strangely long pause, Jake said, “You can’t tell that by looking at him. You only see what he wants you to see.”

I thought this was a very odd thing to say and I turned to see Jake’s face. But he was totally focused on the dark form in front of us, his eyes trained on the man like a preying owl on a mouse far below.

“You can tell a lot about how someone holds himself when he thinks no one’s looking,” I said. “I saw him. I saw the sadness.”

“I don’t believe that. I think we project what we’re feeling on the people we see. If you’re dishonest, you see dishonesty in people. If you’re good, you see only good things when you look at someone’s face. Physical cues might tell you if someone’s lying or if someone’s nervous, but I don’t think you can read much about a person, about who they are, by just looking at them.”

I considered this for a moment. “So are you saying you think I’m sad and lonely?”

Another pause. The darkness was like a physical substance between us, keeping me from connecting with his eyes.

“Aren’t you?”

Denial rose in my throat, indignation pulled my shoulders back. But before I spoke I realized he was right. That was exactly how I felt. It was how I’d felt from the second I got that envelope in the mail. And maybe on some deep, subconscious level even before that, if I was really honest with myself. I didn’t say anything and felt a kind of numbness wash over me as we got closer to the park entrance. Jake reached through the darkness and took my hand and squeezed it hard. I squeezed back and wished he’d never let go.

He drove past the entrance, did another U-turn, and parked the Firebird. We both got out. This time I got a good look at the car. It really was mint; an extremely tough, hot car with a shiny paint job. Not exactly inconspicuous.

“You like it?” he said when he saw me looking at the car. I smiled.

“You know what they say about guys who feel compelled to drive a muscle car like this?”

“What’s that?” he said, moving into me.

“Overcompensation.”

“Well,” he said, pulling me close. “You know better than that.”

I felt heat rise to my cheeks. “I guess I do.”

He placed his lips to mine and kissed me, long and soft, lighting me up inside. He pulled back and placed a hand on my face. His expression had gone from playful to serious.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding an assurance that I didn’t feel. “I know.”

“You don’t,” he said softly. “But I do. Let’s go.”

Jake and I walked into the park about two blocks from where I’d told Christian Luna—or whoever he was—to meet me. Jake hung back in the trees, about a hundred feet away, as I walked up to the path where the man sat on a bench. He turned, startled, when he heard my footsteps on the asphalt, then stood. I stopped walking and he came a little closer.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said when he was about five feet from me. I was afraid; I wanted him to keep his distance.

He was older and seemed smaller than I would have imagined, but there was no mistaking that he was the man in the picture. It was the dark intensity of his eyes, the heavy brows, the fullness of his lips. We stared at each other, as though we were separated by a sheet of glass and could only see our own reflections. For a moment, I thought I saw something in him that I had never seen in anyone else. The shadow of my own features. I’m not sure it’s anything that I could put my finger on, exactly. Something around the eyes, maybe something in the shape of his jaw. I thought, Maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe I’m seeing only what I want to see…or what I fear the most. Maybe it’s the drama of the moment.

“Jessie,” he said. Relief, joy, and an intense grief mingled in his tone. He took a step closer and I took one back. He raised his arms slightly, as though he thought he would embrace me. But I wrapped my arms around myself tightly, moved back even farther. I hated him suddenly. Hated him for looking like me.

“Did you kill her?” I said. My voice was an open hand, hard and unyielding, and he jerked as though he’d been slapped.

“What?” he said softly, almost a whisper.

“Teresa Elizabeth Stone. Did you kill her?”

“Your mother,” he said, and sat down on the bench as if he’d lost his strength to stand. “No.” He dropped his head into his hands and began to sob. It was embarrassing, really, in its intensity, in the depth of its misery. I sat on the bench next to his and waited until he’d stopped crying. I couldn’t look at him and I couldn’t bring myself to comfort him, but the hatred I’d briefly felt drained away. I leaned back and looked up at the few stars I could see twinkling in the sky. I placed my cold fingers in the pockets of my jacket.

“Are you Christian Luna?” I asked when his sobbing had stopped.

“How do you know all of this?” he asked.

“That’s not important,” I answered.

Does it sound like I was cold? I was. Hard. Cold. Colder than liquid nitrogen. I have come to regret this. He might have deserved more compassion from me, but I just couldn’t afford it at that moment. I was wrecked inside. His face had done it.

“Look,” I said after more silence where he seemed to be wrestling with what to say. “What do you want from me?”

I could see disappointment and disbelief in his eyes. Whatever he had imagined of this moment, I was pretty sure he wasn’t getting it. And in the state I was in, I took a small, dark victory in depriving him of his fantasy reunion.

“What do I want? You’re my daughter,” he said, sounding incredulous. “My Jessie.” His voice and his eyes were pleading with me, but he would have had more luck moving the Statue of Liberty.

“You don’t know that really,” I said, stubborn, my arms folded across my chest like a judge. Judgment is such a useful shield, isn’t it? We can hide behind it, rise above others on its crest, keep ourselves safe and separate.

He laughed then, just a little. “Look at me, Jessie. You see it, don’t you?”