I loved him.
I found a place to go. My parents weren’t expecting me back until the summer. I called them once a week with updates, fake stories. Even to me, my life sounded fabulous.
Then, in small towns, there were still places for girls like me. The nuns who worked at the place I went to were kind but censorious. As I grew larger and larger through the spring, I felt as if I was being crushed under the weight of their judgment. I craved my own language, food, city. I wanted to nest.
I wanted to go home.
That was impossible, but I found a place to go that was near enough. A sister organization the nuns approved of. I told my parents I’d been asked to stay on. The university would defer another year, and I could start my courses by correspondence. I made it seem as if it was their choice, and they agreed. They missed me, though. I said I’d call more often.
I flew home in my eighth month, the end of a hot August, passengers staring. I looked so young. A baby having a baby. I remember my hair sticking to my neck. How I could never get cool. How often I had to pee.
The nuns met me at the airport, drove me to Wisconsin. I barely remember anything of the drive, flat land flashing by. Then weeks staring out the window, feeling as if I was forcing myself to eat. Then pain. They never tell you about the pain. A conspiracy of women. I even found myself doing it, so much later, when I was pregnant with my daughter. I must’ve been exaggerating. It couldn’t be that bad.
It was. And then it was over, and I was holding this alien thing. I thought I’d love it. Her. I thought I’d love her because she was a part of him. Instead, I turned my face away. I couldn’t face this, not now, and so the choice was made for me. Forms were signed. The baby was whisked away. I went back to the nuns until the weight had slipped from my body.
The last month I was there, I read every issue of the magazine I was supposed to have contributed to. I made my weekly calls to my parents. I tried not to think of what I’d done. I surprised them the day before Christmas. Twinkling lights and a sprinkle of snow. My parents were delighted. I was so skinny, though—was everything all right? I nodded and brightened my smile and let my mother take me shopping for the college I would finally start in January.
At night I cried. Then I taught myself how to forget. Her smell, her face. I erased each memory one by one by one. The memories of him were the hardest. His laugh, the way he held me. The cold look in his eyes when I told him. But I did it. I did it.
I went to college. Every fall, around her birthday, the one day I couldn’t forget, a dark cloud descended. The fall blahs, I used to say, and take my medication. The clouds would lift, but I was a different person. Cautious. Lacking trust. Looking for security.
The man I married matched the new me. Or so I thought. I fashioned a life. The years rolled away. I wasn’t happy, but I was managing.
Then she came back. My daughter, the one I’d abandoned. She wrote to me. She wrote to me, and I was terrified. She wrote to me, and I was sad. She wrote to me, and I told her I wasn’t her mother. That she had the wrong person. That I never gave a baby up for adoption.
So many lies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book came tougher than some. Keeping me company along the way were:
My sister and first reader, Cam.
My friends on the roller coaster, especially Tasha, Janet, Tanya, Stephanie, Lindsay, Christie, and Candice.
Wait, I have male friends, too: my patient and supportive husband, David; Eric; Presseau; Adrian; and Dan.
My writerly peeps; my agent, Abigail Koons, and the whole Park Literary team; my editor at Lake Union, Jodi Warshaw, and the great author team there; Danielle Marshall and publicists Dennelle Catlett and Kathleen Zrelak; my new team at S&S Canada, Laurie Grassi, Nita Pronovost, and Kevin Hanson. And Paul Benjamin. Thank you all for believing in me and my writing.
The other writers in my life, especially Therese Walsh, Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, Heather Webb, Barbara Claypole White, Kathleen McCleary, Bruce Holsinger, those in the Fiction Writers Co-op, and Shawn Klomparens. You read, you listened, you gave great feedback. This book, and my life, would be less without you.
My readers, who I am so grateful for.
And Sara: who this book is for. She knows why.
This book was written principally in Montreal, Canada; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. February 25, 2016, to January 1, 2017.
THE
GOOD LIAR
CATHERINE McKENZIE
A READING GROUP GUIDE
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
1. Few people knew about the impending divorce between Cecily and Tom. What do you think about Cecily’s motives for keeping it a secret?
2. Do you think Cecily’s anger toward Tom even after his death is a way for her to avoid dealing with her grief and feelings of guilt, or is what he did so awful?
3. What would Cecily have to gain or lose by forgiving Tom?
4. Do you think Cecily is right to eventually tell Cassie and Henry about the difficulties in her marriage?
5. Cecily was supposed to be in the building at the time of the explosion but wasn’t. What role do you think fate played in that situation? How might Cecily and other characters have acted at various times if their beliefs about fate or coincidence were different?
6. Cecily feels too guilty about hiding the trouble in her marriage to see that she’s been a hero to many after the tragedy, while Kaitlyn believes herself to be a “bad mother,” even though she’s a good nanny.
