“When we played the game.”
“The game? What game? Hide-and-seek?”
“The Bad Guys.”
“The Bad Guys?” I was starting to sound like a demented parrot. “I don’t think I’ve ever played that game.” I looked at Preston, hoping to enlist an ally. “Have you?”
He shook his head.
I knelt beside Sam. “How does it go?”
“So you’re in the—you have to pick the room.” Sam looked at me, prompting.
“The room? Of the house?”
“Mom.” He should have said, Duh.
“Okay. Um . . . here. The living room.”
“Okay. So you’re in the living room and the bad guys come. What are you going to do?”
“What kind of bad guys are these?” And why had I never heard of this game?
“The bad guys.”
“Uh . . . well . . .”
“You’re dead.”
“What?”
“You’re dead. You took too long. Now it’s my turn.”
Preston protested. “It’s my turn!” He raised his hands and jumped. “It hasn’t been my turn yet.” He jumped again.
“Preston’s right, Sam. It’s his turn. But just— I need a second here to get used to being dead. That happened kind of quick, don’t you think?”
“That’s how it happens, Mom. And you don’t get second chances. It’s Preston’s turn now.” He turned to his friend. “So where do you want to be?”
I interrupted. “I still don’t understand how this works. Could you do the living room? So I know how it goes? What do you think, Preston?” I wasn’t beyond using peer pressure to plead my case.
Sam sighed the heartfelt, world-weary sigh of a six-year-old. “Okay. I’m in the living room and the bad guys come so I hide in the couch.”
“The couch?” Preston and I looked at each other. It didn’t seem like that great a hiding place.
“Like this.” Sam dove into the couch, shimmying down into the crack between the seat cushions and the loose pillows. He burrowed in and pulled the pillows over himself. By the time he was finished, he’d completely disappeared. “Can you see me?”
“See you? I can hardly hear you.”
He tossed the pillows off and pried himself out of the cushions.
“Let me try!” Preston repeated the disappearing act.
I put a hand to Sam’s head. “Just out of curiosity, what did Dad say about the couch?”
“He said it was pretty good. Not as good as some of the others, but if you’re in the living room when the bad guys come, it’s good.”
“So you’re just supposed to, what? What are the rules? You stay there in the couch until the bad guys leave?”
Preston was crouched on the hearth, trying to pull a big pot over his head. I walked over and took it from him.
“Only if you have to. Because maybe the bad guys will go into another room and then you can run away.” It was such a reasonable explanation that I had no doubt Sean had spent some time explaining to Sam how those things worked.
The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end.
“If they leave the living room, I run out the front door to Mr. Jim’s house and I ring the doorbell until he or Miss June lets me in.”
“Do they know about this game? About the bad guys?”
“Then I tell them to call the police.”
“Do they know about this?” My voice had taken on a shrill edge that I couldn’t quite control.
He shrugged. “You told me Mr. Jim sees everything.”
He did. Most things. That’s partly why he and Miss June had a spare key to our house; I could trust him. But I didn’t think bad guys were on Jim’s radar. Not the really bad ones.
“My turn! My turn!” Preston was jumping up and down.
Sam turned to him. “What room do you want?”
“Your room!”
“My room’s great! There’s lots of places to hide in there.”
They raced into the dining room and then swerved down the hall while I stood there trying to count just how many kinds of wrong that game of Sean’s was.
6
Sean had been dark and handsome in a mysterious sort of way. He had a five o’clock shadow at noon. And bedroom eyes just about any time of day. He was the sort of man you might overlook until he looked right back at you. That’s when you discovered he had a gaze that could see inside your soul. And the sort of slow, sensuous smile that was a serious turn-on.
But when we first met, I hadn’t been able to figure him out.
He wasn’t constantly eyeing his cell phone the way most people in DC did. And he didn’t seem to be looking for better options when he was with me or thinking of what he was going to say next. He didn’t monopolize the conversation or play more-in-the-know-than-thou the way people in the area often did. In fact, after several weeks of dating, I realized I really didn’t know anything about him. And wasn’t a girl supposed to be suspicious of a man who never mentioned his family? Or his job? Or his hobbies? Or anything about himself at all?
With his dark eyes, dark hair, and swarthy skin, he might have been from anywhere.
So one night, as we were walking back from a restaurant to the apartment I shared with Jenn, I went for it. “I have to ask. Are you— I mean, your family. Where are they from?”
His lips lifted in a half smile. “I’m black Irish.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Black Irish. Not Italian. Not Hispanic. Not Arabic.”
Apparently, though, he spoke Italian. And Spanish.
He took my hand and fit our fingers together as we walked along.
“It’s just— I feel like I don’t know very much about you.”
He sent me a sidelong glance. “What do you want to know?”
Everything.
So he told me. He’d been in the military, special forces; he’d gotten out. He had family—of course he had family, everyone had family—it was just that he’d grown up on the other coast.
Sean had a PhD in history. He worked for the army as a historian. He did have hobbies. A hobby. He liked to read: history, any kind.
Friends? He’d never mentioned friends. But that was normal, wasn’t it? For someone who had grown up on the other side of the country and never had time to do anything with anyone but me?
“But what do you really know about him?” Jenn asked me the question one Saturday morning about six months after I’d met Sean. She was doing yoga in the living room. Her eyes were filled with concern as she regarded me, upside down, from a pose.
“Pfft. Everything.”
“I mean, really. How much?”
“Enough.”
“Because he’s the silent, mysterious type, and sometimes mysteries aren’t like, ‘Oh, who keeps sending me flowers anonymously?’ Sometimes they’re more, ‘Oh, who keeps torturing all these cute little kittens?’”
“Jenn, he’s fine. Trust me.”
To my great relief, Jenn shut up about Sean. But eventually I felt like I had to tell my parents about him. My father was still in the military and they were living in the area at the time, so of course my mother insisted that we come for dinner. And that I stay afterward.
Within five minutes of meeting Sean, my mother had managed to convey all the important information: she was from Mobile, born a Sinclair. Some people thought the Sinclairs were French, but they really weren’t. Although she’d been brought up country club, she’d somehow ended up officers’ club. No one in her family had thought my father would ever amount to anything, but she’d known better. Just look at him now; he was everyone’s hero. Regardless, family was important, wasn’t it? And a person would do anything for family, wouldn’t they? She flashed her beauty-queen smile.
As always, her blonde hair was flawless. Her lightly tanned skin glowed against the red of her jumpsuit and the gold of her bangles and earrings that night.
As she started to ask Sean about his family, my father sent me a wink and diverted her
attention. Mentally, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Look here, Mary Grace! The poor man doesn’t care about all that. Here’s what you need to know, son: we’re having brisket for dinner.”
My mother smiled. “And slaw and coconut cake. Which I made.”
My father raised his beer glass in her direction. “Which you made. To perfection.”
She beamed. “What would you ever do without me?”
“Eat pork rinds and peanuts?”
“Be nice.” She sent a glance to Sean. “People have always said we’re like sweet and tea.”
“Or bats and hell.” My father mumbled the words under his breath as he brought the glass to his lips.
My father was gung-ho about life in general. The moment he sat down, he’d invariably get right back up. His favorite exercise, aside from running marathons, was pacing. My mother’s job was to manage. She managed everything. If he was guns blazing, full speed ahead, she was the coolheaded analyst who always proceeded carefully, checklist in hand. He was big picture. She was details. All in all, they made the perfect team.
A very attractive, very perfect, quite formidable team.
At least they waited to talk about Sean until after he left. My father looked at the door that had just swung shut, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. “At least his discharge was honorable.”
How would he know that Sean’s discharge was . . . I felt my mouth drop open. “You checked? Mom!”
She kissed me on the cheek. “Your father loves you, sugar pie. Let him do what he has to do.”
My father left the front hall and went into the living room. “He was awarded a silver star. Did you know that?”
I couldn’t stop an eye roll. “No. I didn’t ask for his evaluations.” Not the way my father had apparently done. The stars he wore on his uniform guaranteed him just about anything he asked for.
Dad took up a post in front of the window. “He did the serious sh—”
“JB!” My mother tsked.
“What? It’s true.”
I joined him.
Sean glanced up before getting into his car. He pulled himself straight and threw a salute. Dad nodded.
For heaven’s sake! I left my father standing there and followed my mother into the kitchen.
* * *
If I had still harbored the slightest, tiniest, slimmest reservations about Sean, our wedding wouldn’t have soothed them. On the Slater side of the aisle: a veritable Who’s Who of the Washington and military establishments. On the Brennan side? His sister. A handful of coworkers and the overflow from my side.
My mother approached me just before she was walked down the aisle. She fluffed my veil. Straightened my gown. “I only have one piece of advice.”
I’d been hoping that, considering the occasion, I might get by with no pieces of advice that day.
But she grabbed my hand, leaned toward my ear. “In any marriage, there are some things you might not want to know. Understand me? So don’t you go asking questions that you don’t want to know the answers to.”
Before I could think of any reply, she’d pasted her beauty-pageant smile back on and was adjusting the groomsmen’s boutonnieres.
I didn’t know what to think of my mother’s advice, so I decided not to think about it at all. Jenn, my maid of honor, had been flirting with a senator’s aide as she waited for her own cue to walk down the aisle. Somehow she’d turned her scoop-neck bridesmaid gown into a shoulder-baring one.
I poked her in the ribs with my elbow. Gestured with my bouquet toward Sean, who was waiting at the front of the church. “See? He’s not some sort of ax-wielding serial killer.”
“I never said he was ax-wielding.”
“You thought it.”
“He always struck me as more of a knife-wielding kind of guy.”
“Seriously, Jenn.”
“Seriously? It’s your wedding day. Why are you worried about knives and axes?”
It wasn’t until later in the evening, at the country club where my mother had planned the reception, that I had a chance to talk to Sean’s sister. She was too reserved to be described as friendly, but she and Sean shared the same brown eyes and the same Brennan smile.
I lifted the massive skirts of my dress and sat down next to her for a moment. I thought I’d been in the market for a simple and plain wedding dress. Somehow my mother had talked me into an extravaganza of ruffles and lace and even more ruffles and lace, and when I looked in the mirror just before I walked down the aisle, I thought it might have been a mistake.
Sean’s lifted brow as he offered me his arm at the front of the church during the ceremony just proved the theory.
I’d leaned close. “Pretend this isn’t me.”
His mouth had quirked. “Really hoping it is you under all of that. Kind of why I’m here today.”
I stuffed the extra froth of petticoats underneath the table as I leaned close to his sister and thanked her for coming. Kelly was her name.
“I didn’t want to miss it. He never said much, but Sean always wanted a family.”
It wasn’t an odd thought to share. Most people grew up imagining themselves married, having children one day. But she said it in such a strange way. “Didn’t you have one?”
“Not really. Not after Mom and Dad died. We got farmed out to relatives. You know how it is. I went to stay with Aunt Colleen and Uncle Bill. Sean got sent to Uncle Mac and Aunt Sue. Then we were together for a while, but Sean was kind of a handful. When we got put into foster care, he sort of fell in with the wrong crowd. Then he enlisted.” She shook her head to dismiss the conversation. “But you don’t want to talk about all that today.”
“I knew your parents had died.” Sean told me when we’d been planning the wedding. “But I don’t think I’ve ever heard how.”
“He wouldn’t have told you. He still feels guilty about it.”
7
Guilty about it? Visions of axes and knives floated through my head. “Why? Um, why would he feel guilty?”
“It’s just that he was so small.”
The backs of my ears began to tingle. From across the room, Sean caught my eye and raised his champagne glass in my direction.
“Small? How small?”
“He was six.” She said it as if that explained everything.
“I see.”
She plucked at her sleeve. “We’ve all told him there’s nothing he could have done. And he saved me, so . . .” Her smile flickered. Died.
Her demeanor didn’t exactly shout Crazy Person, but she kept saying the strangest things. “I have to be honest. I’ve never heard any of this. Do you mind telling me what happened?” So I could have the marriage annulled right away if I needed to?
“Oh.” She sent me a searching gaze. “Sure. It was a robbery. I guess they thought no one was home. But we were. The lights were off because my parents had promised Sean a camping trip. But it was raining that weekend, so they’d decided to do their camping in the living room instead. They’d already set up the tent. Sean was coming downstairs when the thieves came in the front door. Sean watched them shoot Mom and Dad, then he went upstairs and took me from my crib and hid me underneath the bathroom sink.”
“He saw them do it?”
She nodded. “He went over to the neighbors after, crying, saying the bad guys came.”
* * *
The only real argument Sean and I ever had happened that first night of our marriage. I brought up the death of his parents.
“I just wish you would have told me yourself.”
He was sitting on the bed in the hotel room, pulling off his bow tie. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.” Those were the words he said, but his eyes were asking me a question. Would it have?
“Why should it have?”
He glanced away, but I saw his shoulders relax.
“But it seems like—” I huffed a sigh in exasperation. “That was a big deal. And it changed everything for you. Both you and Kelly. I just feel li
ke if I didn’t know that about you, then . . .” I let my voice trail off.
He said nothing.
“Parents, family. They’re really important.”
“I can see that.” He sent a sardonic look toward my wedding dress, which seemed to be expanding like Gorilla Glue, trying to take over the hotel room.
I ignored the barb. “And if you’re that closed off about them, then maybe it’s something you still have to work through. Maybe you haven’t gotten over them.”
“Maybe I’ve never gotten over my parents, but you’ve never gotten out from under yours.”
The sting of his words stole my breath. I blinked back tears as I replied, “My strategy has been to keep my distance.” I didn’t like what happened, how easily my resolve wavered, when I was drawn into their orbit.
“How’s that working for you?” He shrugged out of his jacket and stalked over toward the closet.
But he had to pass me on the way, so I reached out. “It’s difficult! They’re just so . . . so . . .” They were just so everything that they defied description. “And anyway, how would you know what it’s like?” I clapped my other hand over my mouth as soon as I’d said it.
He stepped away from me and held his own hands up as if in surrender. “I wouldn’t.” He slipped by and hung up his jacket.
The first, some might say foundational, law of physics is that objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. It was vitally important to me that we not start our lives together moving away from each other.
“I’m sorry.” I went to him. Put my arms around his waist. Pressed my cheek against his back. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself with your memories either.” He’d thrown me a zinger, but what he’d said was true. I released him. Stepped back. “So let’s try to help each other. Over.” I pointed at him. “Out from under.” I pointed at me. “Deal?”
We might have shaken on it, but it was our honeymoon. We came up with a different way of sealing our bargain.
* * *
Considering his past, it was perfectly logical that Sean would teach Sam to play the Bad Guys. But in another sense? It was completely and horribly wrong.
State of Lies Page 3
