Beautiful Lies

“You will,” I said. “Give it time.”

I’ve come to believe, as I said, that it’s not blood that connects us but experience. For everything we’d been through, for all the lies, for all the wrongs done by my family, they were still my family. I never once stopped thinking about them that way; they never became strangers to my heart. And even though the ideal I had held in my imagination proved to be completely false, it didn’t change the way I felt about them. They could be only what they were. That had to be enough.

We pulled to a stop in front of my parents’ house and sat for a minute. There it was, that picture postcard of my childhood. The house was decorated for Christmas with pretty wreaths in each window, those plug-in candles glowing. I could see the tree with its white lights and tiny red ribbons glinting through the bay window. I didn’t want it to seem like a false front. But it did. I hoped it was a feeling that would pass.

“They don’t want to see me, I’m sure,” said Jake.

“Why would you say that?”

He gave me a look. “I blew the roof off of your life. And theirs.”

“I don’t see it that way,” I said, opening the door and stepping outside.

We made our way carefully up the front walk, worried for the icy patches and Jake’s crutches. My father came out to help; my mother waited, arms folded at the door. We all went inside, had hot chocolate by the tree.

I’d stripped away the script of our lives. Doesn’t it feel that way in your family? Everyone has his role, and as long as everyone keeps true to the part that has been cast for him, things go on as they always have. You laugh about the same things, fight about the same things, harbor all the same old resentments, share the same memories, good and bad. But when one person starts to improvise, starts to write her own lines, the whole script has to be thrown out. Everyone else misses cues, there’s an awkward silence, then chaos. Then, if you’re lucky, you all create a new production together. One based in the present, based on honesty, one that’s fluid and malleable to change. We were in the awkward-silence stage. Lots of uncomfortable pauses. Lots of shared memories, especially those involving Max, that didn’t seem appropriate to mention any longer.

“I want you to know, Jake and Ridley,” my father said during one of those silences that had been precipitated by my noticing an ornament given to my mother by Max. It was a silver ballerina with a delicate crystal tutu, inspired I think by the Degas painting. “I want you to know that I never suspected for a moment the true nature of Project Rescue.” He was silent for a second, not looking at either of us but down at the cup in his hand. “What we did with you, Ridley, was wrong. We’re guilty of a lot of failures with you even beyond that, but I can never be sorry for taking you that night. I can never regret having the chance to be your father. Still, it’s important for me to let you both know that I never would have been a part of the abduction and selling of children. Not for any reason.”

Jake nodded politely, but I knew he wasn’t convinced. I chose to believe my father. I knew him well and really couldn’t see him being a part of it. Jake didn’t know him as well and was having a hard time swallowing it.

“It was Esme Gray, then?” asked Jake. “She flagged the kids she thought were in danger? She was the one who told Max about Jessie?”

That was one of the big unanswered questions for me. Alexander Harriman said that the murder of Teresa Stone was an accident, the point at which Max realized he’d lost control of Project Rescue. But who had arranged for Jessie’s abduction that night? And how had Max wound up with her? There was a big piece missing here. And Esme, the only person who might have answers, wasn’t talking about any of it.

“I don’t know,” my father said after a long pause. “I really don’t know, Jake.”

“And you don’t want to know,” said Jake, holding his eyes.

My father sighed and looked away. “I’m sure there are more answers coming. An investigation is under way, as you well know.”

I heard the resentment in his voice then. And I saw it in my mother, who sat quietly on the far corner of the couch, present but distant, a fake half-smile on her lips. She was enduring this visit, not participating. Jake was the truth they didn’t want to face, the spotlight they couldn’t extinguish. And he was here to stay. They both wished that none of this had ever happened. If they could turn back the clock and keep me from stepping in front of that van, they would. They would choose to go dark again.

You’re probably wondering, What about me? What was my wish? Would I turn back the clock? I can’t answer that. Like I told you, I don’t believe in mistakes or in regret. We don’t know the other road, the one we didn’t take, or where it leads.

Epilogue

Quidam, the stranger, the anonymous passerby. The man walking in the rain on the street after midnight. The sound of a violin through your apartment wall. The homeless man asking for change on the steps of a church. The old woman next to you on the bus. Disconnected from your life but joined to you by a moment in time. All the choices and events of his life and the choices and events of yours have led you to be in the exact same place at the exact same time. Think about it.

I am writing this from my new apartment on Park Avenue South, across from the 4/5-train station. It’s an artist’s loft, big and breezy, washed with light, overlooking downtown Manhattan. The floors don’t sag and there’s no aroma of pastry or pizza, which I really miss. Those little quirks of East Village living. There’s enough room for both our offices, though Jake still keeps his studio downtown. I actually have a room where I write now, not just a corner divided by a screen from the rest of my bedroom. We wanted a new place, where we could start all over again together. New life, new apartment. Makes sense, right?

Jake and I are getting to know Linda better. She’s starting to feel like family. Little by little, Jake is getting to know his parents, too, or at least Linda’s memory of them. They were flawed people to be sure, but aren’t we all? In learning about them, Jake is learning about himself. For the first time in his life he says he doesn’t feel quidam, like a stranger in his skin, disconnected from the world around him. And I like to think I have something to do with that.

Ace is still in rehab, nearly three months now. I see him on Thursdays. I am really getting to know him for the first time. As a child, he was my hero; as an adult, he was the part of me I was always trying to save. Now he’s just Ace, my brother who I’ve known all of my remembered life but who has been a stranger to me, partly because of his addiction and partly because of my addiction to an idea of him. We’re in counseling together. He has told me that he believed I had always loved an idea of him and that I’d never really seen the true person there. Just my memories and my dream of him. I suppose he’s right. Isn’t that so often true with family, that we see them through the filters of our own fears, expectations, and desire to control? He’s struggling with this thing. I don’t know if he’ll succeed, but I know now that I can’t help him. Only be present for him, be honest with him, and love him for who he is rather than who I want him to be.

He never had anything to do with what happened to me. He’s guilty only of never telling me the truth that he knew. And he kept it from me only because he knew the pain it would cause. He did love me, after all. He did want to protect me from the bad guys.

Ace and my parents have begun to tentatively negotiate a new relationship. It’s a series of fits and starts. There’s so much anger there, so many years of hurt. Each meeting so far has ended in yelling and tears, or so I’m told. But at least they keep meeting. That’s something, isn’t it?

Ruby’s gone. She came to see Ace once a few weeks after he’d been in rehab when visitors were allowed. He tried to convince her to try to get clean. I offered to pay for the private facility where Ace is being treated, but she refused. And Ace was smart enough to know you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. We haven’t seen her since. At Ace’s request, I went to the Lower East Side one Sunday with Jake to look in on her, to tell her that Ace was asking after her. But she had gone, packed her things and moved on. Ace is hopeful that he’ll see her again.

Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s this: We don’t have