A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  Why that choice and that time? She didn’t know. She did spend a couple of nights bawling through the kind of panic attack she’d thought she’d put behind her, but she never seriously tried to change her mind.

  She called Doug, and she told him, and he listened and said it was a lot to process and could he call back tomorrow? She told him yes because she figured that would be the most pain-free option.

  She was right.

  Three days later, she still hadn’t heard back, so she called again. She got his voice mail. She checked her social media. It didn’t take much looking to figure out she’d been ghosted.

  And that, she figured, was the end of that.

  Rafael’s wife, Angela, arranged a baby shower for her and invited pretty much every venture capital woman in the valley. When her time came, Rafi drove her to the hospital, and Angela held her hand.

  She sent a birth announcement to Doug. He didn’t answer. She heard from a mutual friend he’d moved to Chicago and become an accounts analyst at a major insurance firm—oh, and he had met this really terrific girl he was crazy in love with.

  Beth hired a nanny with excellent references who passed an ironclad background check, and then negotiated a flexible work schedule and set about trying to figure out how to be something approaching the kind of mother she wanted to be.

  A year later, Rafi announced he was moving the firm’s headquarters out to Chicago. He liked the business climate there better. Plus Angela was pregnant, and Silicon Valley was no place to try to put down long-term roots.

  Beth had no plans to join him, until that day she almost lost Dana and suddenly nothing could make San Francisco feel safe again.

  The coffee had finished. Doug was taking his time getting up here. She pictured him pacing back and forth in front of the elevator, trying to get his story straightened out. She considered opening the door to surprise him.

  Instead, she poured herself a cup of coffee and added her usual four spoonfuls of sugar.

  She listened for any sounds of life coming from down the bedroom hallway. Still nothing. How late had Dana stayed up last night? Beth wondered whether she should check on her.

  But before she could move, a tentative knock sounded on the front door.

  Finally. Beth put down her coffee and went to open it.

  Doug stepped in, and Beth had to keep her jaw from dropping.

  Doug was creased and crumpled and stubbled, not to mention wearing the same shirt and pants from yesterday, only the jacket and tie were gone.

  “Jesus, Doug.” Beth did up the door locks. “What happened?”

  “Yeah, I know.” He brushed at his shirt. “I look like shit. I…couldn’t face going home to an empty house just now.”

  “Sit down.” She headed toward the kitchen with Doug trailing along behind. “There’s coffee.”

  “Thanks.” He sat at the breakfast bar while she filled a second cup. She leaned back against the counter and let him drink and smooth his hair back and generally try to pull himself together.

  Naturally, this was the moment when Dana shuffled out of the hall wearing her dancing-unicorn pajama bottoms and a black cami, and yawning loudly. When she registered the fact that someone besides Beth was in the kitchen, she blinked and squinted.

  “Dad?”

  He tried to smile. “Hi, Dana.”

  She brushed past Beth and opened the refrigerator. “What are you doing here?”

  “There’s some stuff your mom and I needed to talk about. Nothing big.”

  Dana’s eyes slid from Doug to Beth and back again. She clearly noticed that her father was a mess and that he was lying just a little more stupidly than usual, and that Beth was keeping her mouth shut.

  “Yeah. Okay.” Dana started loading food onto a TV tray: bread, half an avocado, cream cheese, yogurt, blueberries, and a few anonymous Tupperware containers. “Mom, I’m going over to Chelsea’s after breakfast, okay?”

  “I’d rather she came over here today, Dana.”

  “What?” Dana slapped another container down on her tray. “I’m under house arrest now? Should I call Kimi and tell her she’s got to bring the party to our place because my mom doesn’t think I’m responsible enough to leave the house?”

  So, I guess we’re still mad. Beth made herself exhale before she answered. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hey.” Doug lowered his coffee mug. “You shouldn’t talk to your mother like that.”

  They both stared at him.

  “What? She shouldn’t talk to you like that.”

  Dana rolled her eyes, picked up her heaped tray, and retreated back into the depths of the apartment.

  Doug opened his mouth.

  “Doug, you say one word about parenting a teenager, and this conversation is over.”

  Doug closed his mouth. He also drank more coffee.

  “So, listen, Beth, I’m sorry about yesterday. I’d just gotten some bad news, and I wasn’t thinking straight. That’s no excuse, but…”

  Beth sighed. “How bad is it?”

  “We could lose the house.”

  Beth added another spoonful of sugar to her coffee and stirred.

  “What have you told Susan?”

  “Nothing. I wanted to, you know, have things fixed before I did. And I just want to be really up front: I’m not asking for money.”

  “So what are you asking for?”

  “I just…I need you to come with me to see this guy. That’s all.”

  She looked at him again, taking in all the details of his rumpled appearance and shadowed eyes. She remembered his half-drunk desperation from yesterday when he turned up at her workplace, something he’d never done before. The way he looked at her then was the same way he looked at her now—like a little, lost boy pleading for help.

  Disbelief, slow and thick, coursed through her, because all at once Beth knew what he was really asking.

  “Oh my God.” Beth set her coffee down before she dropped it or threw the mug at him. “You did not tell someone you could get Lumination to invest with them.”

  “No! I never said that.”

  “Not directly,” she added for him.

  “Not at all. I swear. They just…they knew you and I had a connection, and they asked if I’d talk to you. I knew you wouldn’t like it, so I tried to put them off. I swear I did!”

  “Shut up, Doug,” said Beth softly. Thankfully, Doug did shut up. Beth drank her coffee and waited until she thought she could speak calmly.

  “All right. You are going to tell me who these people are and exactly what you’ve promised them.”

  Doug did, and Beth listened. It was a fairly standard vaporware scheme, the kind she’d made her living helping Rafi and Lumination avoid. He showed her a business card and gave her a set of names, none of which she’d ever heard of.

  “They’re hounding me, Beth. They’re calling, like, all the time! I can’t let this go under. I’ve got everything tied up in this! And the returns were really good, I mean, for the first year and—”

  “Yes, I’m sure they were,” Beth said, cutting him off.

  With an effort, she kicked her anger aside so there was room in her brain for actual thought. She’d have to call Rafi and let him know. And they had to find out whether targeting Doug was a coincidence, or if these jackasses—whoever they were—knew ahead of time they could use him to get to her.

  “Okay,” said Beth. “When Susan gets home, you tell her what’s happened. I can put you in touch with a good lawyer who specializes in this kind of fraud complaint, and—”

  “Wait, whoa. I don’t need a lawyer. I just need you to come with me. You don’t have to promise anything. You just have to act like you’re listening for maybe fifteen minutes and then—”

  “And then they start using my name and Lumination’s name to recruit more suckers for their scam,” Beth finished for him. “That’s not happening.”

  “Okay, yeah, okay—I can se
e where that’d be a problem.” Doug gripped his coffee mug. “But…then I am going to need that loan, Beth. If I can’t get my investment back, I…”

  “As soon as you tell Susan, we’ll work something out.”

  “I can’t tell her,” he whispered. “It’ll kill her.”

  You mean it’ll kill you. “I am not going to help you lie to your family.”

  “You told me I could count on you. You told me if I needed you—”

  Beth slammed her hand against the countertop. “I didn’t tell you I’d risk my reputation and my daughter’s future for you!”

  “She’s my daughter too!” The shout turned his face red. “This affects her.”

  “Yeah, it does, and I’m going to be booking her a new set of appointments with her therapist. So, thanks loads for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me”—Beth headed over to the front door and started undoing the locks—“I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

  That seemed to genuinely surprise him. “It’s Saturday!”

  Beth pulled the door open. “Yeah, well, as it happens, my parents are in town.”

  “Your…your parents?”

  “Yes, and they’re going to want to extort me too. So you see, I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

  Slowly, like he was trying to understand what she meant by any of this, Doug climbed off the stool. “Beth, you can’t be putting me on the same level—”

  Which was all Beth could take. “No, actually, my parents are way smarter than you ever were.” He started back like she’d slapped him, and Beth found she didn’t really care. “Tell Susan, Doug. When you can bring her with you, I’ll help.”

  She closed her door before he had a chance to speak and make things worse. She walked down the hallway, past the TV room. The sound of a cooking show filtered through the door. She went right on past into her study and closed the door.

  I will find a way to talk to Dana. Just not now.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As it turned out, Mike’s was anything but a charming, traditional Irish pub. It was a windowless dive on a block at the very edge of the city’s latest wave of gentrification. This was no surprise to Beth. She’d been in places just like it at least a hundred times before.

  When she walked in, she had to pause for a minute in the doorway to let her eyes adjust. Not that there was a lot to see: a battered bar with a cluster of beery white men at the far end, and a collection of empty tables. The only brightly lit area was the pool table in the back.

  Déjà vu washed over Beth, shrinking her back down to the girl she used to be: skinny, wiry, light. Eyes sharp and focused. Hunger a familiar annoyance. And she’d been so damn fast. At the high school, before it had all gone to hell, the gym teacher had actually tried to talk her into joining girls’ track and field. Beth remembered staring at the woman like she’d dropped in from Mars. Who ran when no one was chasing them?

  “Get you something?” the bartender called from the far end of the room. He was about the same vintage as his customers. He might even have been the owner.

  “No, thanks—I’m good,” she said, because she’d already spotted her father.

  He was with three men—all white guys with gray beards, bulging guts, and Harley-Davidson T-shirts. They clustered around the pool table where Todd Bowen bent over the green felt, lining up his shot.

  Beth took a wide circle around the room, keeping herself in shadow. Todd hadn’t seen her yet, but the handful of shriveled men who weren’t watching the players were all watching her. And why wouldn’t they be? She was the only woman in the place not wiping down a table.

  The person she did not see was her mother, and that worried her. Her parents were a dysfunctional double act. In a place like this, Jeannie Bowen would arrive on her own and install herself in a corner. She’d nurse the fanciest beer the place had to offer and wait for the suckers to come to her.

  Dad pulled his arm back, pretending to keep all his attention on the shot. Beth came quietly up on his left side. The nearest, tallest Harley guy did a double take. Like he wasn’t sure if he was really lucky or about to be served with papers.

  “So, what’d he tell you?” Beth asked Tall Harley Guy. “That he hurt his back at the plant, and he hasn’t been able to shoot straight since? Or was it the one where his girlfriend slammed his hand in her car door and broke three bones?”

  The three fat, gray men looked at one another. One scratched his beard. Another looked at his hand.

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Broken hand. Jesus. All this time and you couldn’t even come up with a new story?”

  Todd’s stick thudded against the cue ball. It shot forward to click against the nine ball, which banked weakly and slow-rolled to a stop in the middle of the felt.

  “You’re late, Star.” Todd straightened and turned, and for the first time in thirty years, Beth faced her father.

  Beth always thought that someone as deceptive and violent as Todd Bowen should have the decency to look the part. But no. Todd Bowen was a medium-size man, narrow through the shoulders. His bright-blue eyes lent him an aura of openness reinforced by his square chin. The hair on his arms had always been thicker and darker than the hair on his head. It was all gray now, and his leathery skin had shrunk tight against his bones. He wore a Cubs cap and a gray T-shirt with a pocket under a green plaid work shirt. There was a big watch on his wrist and good boots on his feet. A faded tattoo decorated his left arm—a fan of cards with the king of diamonds sticking up from the other five. He looked like the neighbor who was always ready to loan out a socket wrench and knew how to fix the lawn mower.

  “He used to bring me into joints like this,” Beth told the Harley guys. “I’d have to wear something low cut and tight—you know, so the jerks would be watching me instead of him. Told me to quit my bitchin’ because it was how we were getting our grocery money that week.”

  “You his girlfriend?” asked the player with the longest beard and the biggest gut. The other two chuckled at the thought.

  “I’m his daughter.”

  Suddenly none of them seemed to find her story so funny anymore.

  “I was thirteen when he started using me to distract jackasses like you.”

  “And now this is you.” Dad planted the butt of his pool cue on the floor. “Star Bowen, all grown up.”

  She’d thought she’d tell him not to call her that. She’d planned to insist her name was Elizabeth Fraser and he’d better fucking remember that. But hearing her old name coming out of her father’s mouth was a searing reminder of who he really was and who she’d been when she was with him.

  Go on, Star, just like I told you. When your grandmother answers, you give her the whole thing, just like your mother said. You understand? Remember, she’s the reason we’re in this mess. She’s got plenty of money, and if she really loved you like she says, she’d be ready to share it with you…Go on, now. Take the phone. What’re you waiting for?

  “And this is you,” Beth said. “Todd Bowen, who hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “Can’t say the same about you.” He looked at his pool buddies. “She used to be scared of her own shadow.” The admiration in his voice might even have been real.

  “I used to be scared you’d beat the crap out of me.”

  Twenty bucks! What the hell are we supposed to do with twenty bucks? Jesus, what’s the matter with you! Did you even try to convince her?

  Todd sighed and tossed his cue to the nearest Harley guy. “Sorry, fellas. I’m out. Family comes first, right?”

  Dad sauntered across to a scarred table in the corner. Beth slid into place opposite him. Behind her, the sounds of voices and pool balls being racked started up.

  And the world goes on. Beth put her purse on the floor between her feet.

  “So, Dad, what do you want bad enough to threaten my daughter? And where’s Mom?”

  “Now, Star.” Dad shook his head slowly. “You know I never threatened your girl. I just asked after my granddaughter.”

 
“To-may-to, to-mah-to. So, where’s Mom again?”

  The server, a tired-eyed white woman, came over. She looked like she could be related to the bartender. A younger sister, maybe, or even a daughter.

  She pulled an order pad out of her apron. “Get you something?”

  Dad looked up, and in that split second, the bar hustler was replaced by a cheerful, avuncular man. “I’ll say. I am starving! What’s good?”

  That server met his teasing smile, and her expression thawed just a little. “The chili’s not too bad.”

  “I’ll take that. Loaded. And a Budweiser, and you are a goddess.” The server smirked, letting him know he wasn’t getting anywhere, but she appreciated his talk and his Paul Newman blue eyes. She looked at Beth, but Beth just shook her head. The server left, moving a little more comfortably than she had been before.

  Dad could do that to you. When he wanted to.

  Beth leaned her elbows on the table, taking the time to let her eyes adjust to the corner’s shadows. In return, Dad considered her.

  “Looks like you’re doing all right, Star. All set up in the big city and raking it in from the billionaires. Your mom always said you’d go places.”

  Beth was in no mood to follow his lead. “Why are you here? Oh, no wait…” Beth pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “It’s coming to me…Can’t a man come see his own daughter once in a while? Where’s the crime in that?” She lowered her hand. “Did I get it?”

  The waitress brought his beer. “My angel of mercy.” Dad grinned at her. She still wasn’t quite buying it, but that didn’t matter. She would, if Dad really wanted to sell.

  He drank a solid slug of Budweiser. “You know, Star, you look like your mother now. You’re getting up there, but you’re holding your own. Sorry I missed seeing you in your twenties. Bet you were something else.”

  He was settling into his patter now, finding his rhythm and relishing the sound of his own voice.

  “God, I remember the first time I saw your mother. I ever tell you that story? I was fresh outta high school and decided to bum around for a while. Worked my way across to Europe and down the coast. There’s always something for a guy who knows boats, and I’d spent all those summers working for my father up in Marquette. I was in Greece and just in off a three-day run. I was hungry and horny and greasy. And there she was…” He paused, watching the sun-soaked vision form in his mind. “Sitting on the cobblestones in this faded sundress, dangling her feet over the edge of the pier, that cloud of dark hair shining in the sun. Then she turned to me and she just…smiled—Christ! That smile! It was like she already knew me. I remember thinking, This is why people believe in past lives.”