She Told a Lie

by P. D. Workman

  “Okay.”

  “Good.” Dr. Boyle returned to her chair and sat back, looking at the two of them. “So. What would you say are the biggest obstacles in your relationship right now?”

  Zachary snorted. “Me.”

  “That’s not helpful, Zachary.” Dr. Boyle looked at Kenzie. “How about you, Kenzie? What do you see as the roadblocks?”

  Kenzie let go of Zachary’s hand and rubbed her palms together, then wiped them on her pants.

  “The big one right now is Zachary’s dissociation. His PTSD or whatever it is that’s making him check out whenever we start being physical.”

  Dr. Boyle nodded. “How do you feel about that, Zachary?”

  “Helpless. It’s not like I can stop it. I want to be close to Kenzie.”

  “Good. I think it’s helpful to label your feelings about it and to affirm that you do want the physical intimacy.”

  “I didn’t have that problem with Bridget. So it makes me even more frustrated… I love Kenzie.” He looked at her and gave a little nod to emphasize his words. “So why can’t I… show her that? Why do my body and my brain have to block me from feeling that?”

  “And there’s the other one,” Kenzie said with a sigh. “Bridget. It’s like having a third person in our relationship. Whatever we do, I know he’s always comparing me to Bridget. Thinking about her and about how things were when they were together. He idealizes her. Idolizes her. When she’s… you would think from the way that he talks about her that she was the perfect wife. But she’s not a nice person. To put it kindly.”

  “That’s just toward me,” Zachary explained. “Because of… my failings. She had to put up with a lot, and in the end, it was just too much.”

  “It’s not just toward you,” Kenzie said. “She may act nice toward other people, but you know what she’s like on the inside. You know what she’s like behind closed doors. You can bet that person comes out whenever she’s not on public display. You’re not the only one she treats like that.”

  Zachary furrowed his brow and shook his head. “No. She has friends who are very loyal to her. She makes friends wherever she goes. She always had more friends than I did, even in places where I had been for years. In a few minutes, she would have everyone eating out of her hand, and even though I’d been around forever, it would be ‘Zachary who?’”

  Kenzie rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “How do you feel about that, Kenzie?” Dr. Boyle prodded.

  “Like I said, he sees her as perfect. But she’s not. That’s not what she’s like. Did you tell Dr. Boyle about the latest developments?” Kenzie raised her brows.

  Zachary appreciated that she didn’t just drop the bombshell. He shook his head. “No, I didn’t… I didn’t think it was relevant. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Something you want to share?” Dr. Boyle asked.

  Zachary motioned toward Kenzie. “Go ahead. I’d… I don’t even know if I could say it.”

  Kenzie looked at him for a moment as if double-checking, making sure that he really wanted her to say something, before it was too late to take it back. Zachary just shrugged.

  “It’s fine.”

  Kenzie looked at Dr. Boyle. “Bridget is pregnant.”

  “That’s a complication, isn’t it?” Dr. Boyle observed neutrally.

  “It’s nothing to do with me,” Zachary repeated.

  “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you,” Kenzie said. “It obviously does.”

  Zachary stayed silent. He looked down at the carpet. He hadn’t expected to have to talk about Bridget’s pregnancy and all of the issues that it brought up for him.

  “How do you feel about it, Zachary?”

  “She can get pregnant if she wants to. I’m happy for her.”

  Kenzie snorted.

  Zachary grimaced. “Okay, maybe I’m not happy for her. But… it isn’t any of my business.”

  “When they were together, Bridget said she didn’t want children,” Kenzie explained. “When they had a pregnancy scare, she said she was going to get an abortion. Didn’t matter what Zachary wanted. It wasn’t a mutual decision. It was Bridget saying that she wasn’t going to have his baby.”

  “Ouch.” Dr. Boyle nodded. “That makes it hard to see her pregnant in another relationship, without you.”

  “It had to be planned,” Zachary told them. “Because of her radiation, the doctor said she should have her eggs frozen. In case she ever changed her mind about having children. So… she didn’t just accidentally get pregnant, and decide to go ahead and have them. She had to have in vitro. It had to be planned, with the eggs she had harvested before her cancer treatment.”

  Kenzie was looking at Zachary. “I didn’t know that part,” she said softly.

  Zachary nodded.

  Dr. Boyle had caught Zachary’s accidental revelation. “Them?”

  “What?” Zachary pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “You said she decided to go ahead and have them. Does that mean she’s having twins?”

  “I… don’t know. When Gordon was talking, he said ‘the babies.’ Not ‘the baby.’ So… I guess she’s having multiples. Hopefully just twins.”

  “So, she refuses to have your baby, but with Gordon, she’ll have two,” Kenzie summarized. “On purpose.”

  Zachary nodded. He swallowed and stared out the window.

  “And how do you feel about that?” Dr. Boyle asked.

  25

  In the car after the session, Kenzie suggested going out for ice cream. Zachary looked at her, frowning, wondering if he had misheard.

  “Ice cream?”

  “We deserve a treat, don’t you think? Where do you want to go? If you prefer something else, I’m game.”

  “A treat for going to therapy?”

  “Sure, why not? Didn’t any of your foster parents ever reward you for going to the doctor or dentist without a fuss?”

  Zachary shook his head.

  “My mom always got us a treat when we went to the doctor,” Kenzie said. “So I think it’s time to go out for a treat. If you’d rather go for steak or Chinese, I’m game.”

  Zachary didn’t feel like a heavy meal. He was feeling drained after his panic attack and the session, and just wanted to go home and zone out.

  “Okay, ice cream,” he agreed. He thought it was still a little cold out to be going for ice cream, but if that was what Kenzie wanted, he didn’t see why she shouldn’t have it.

  “Good.” Kenzie gave him a sunny smile. “I think you deserve a treat especially. I had a hard time going and not giving in to the temptation to cancel at the last minute. I know it was a lot harder for you, but look at how strong you were. I didn’t even hear a word about you not going. And after your… episode… you didn’t even suggest going home. You just went right into it.”

  “Dr. Boyle said it would be easier next time if I did.”

  “Yeah. But you still could have said no.”

  Zachary nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “Where do you want to go for ice cream?”

  There was really only one good ice cream shop in town, assuming Kenzie wanted to go for a cone or bowl of the fancy stuff, and not just stop at the grocery store for a pint. Mostly, Zachary just didn’t want to keep talking about therapy.

  “We have to go to the Fro Zone,” Kenzie said. “No other choice.”

  “Okay.” Zachary headed toward the ice cream shop. “What kind are you going to get?”

  “I won’t know until I get there. I don’t know what their special is today. Or what new flavors they might have added since the last time I was there.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “Well, something with chocolate usually wins out. But I don’t know what kind of chocolate. And they could have something special in another flavor. Something really awesome, like…” Kenzie trailed off, trying to come up with an example.

  “Like double chocolate with chocolate sauce?” Zachary suggest
ed.

  Kenzie giggled. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  Bridget would never have double chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce. It would ruin her figure. She was meticulous about what she ate and how much so that she wouldn’t put an extra ounce on her perfect figure.

  Zachary wondered how she was managing the pregnancy and the extra weight that it entailed. She’d told him she was never going to ruin her body by having a baby.

  Yet another thing she had told him that had turned out not to be true.

  Jocelyn sounded surprised when Zachary called her. She had obviously not expected him to reach out to her after the awkward meeting at Mr. Peterson’s.

  “What’s this about? I have to work, you know. I don’t have loads of free time.”

  “I’ll come to you,” Zachary promised. He worked for himself, but that didn’t mean he had loads of free time either. Especially not when he was doing the investigation for Rhys pro bono. No matter how much time he spent on it, it wasn’t going to bring him in any money. “I just wanted to ask your opinion on some things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “On my case.”

  “Your case? The girl you already found?”

  “Well, yes. I still have concerns. I’m not sure how to proceed.”

  “You proceed by leaving it alone. You did what you were asked to do, so go on to the next case.”

  “Could I talk to you about it?” Zachary persisted. “Could we meet?”

  “Are you going to pay me for my time as a professional consultant?”

  Zachary winced. He still had money in the bank due to a few of the bigger cases he had taken recently. Gordon Drake had even kicked in some money on the Lauren Barclay case—though that had felt more like hush money than payment for services rendered.

  “I could give you a small stipend,” he said. “I’m not making anything on this case, but I do value your time.”

  She thought about that for a minute. “Fine,” she agreed finally. “Can’t we just discuss it over the phone? Do we need to get together? You’ll have to travel on top of everything else.”

  “I don’t mind driving. And I would like to see you again. I have some pictures and videos that you could look at, give me your opinion, some insight. Things that I wouldn’t know because I’m not close enough to her situation.”

  “Why are you still pursuing it? You think you can talk her into going home?”

  “I have to try. If she’s not safe, I have to do everything I can to get her back.”

  “And if she won’t?”

  “If she won’t, she won’t. But I’m hoping that with your help, I might be able to convince her. It will at least give me a better shot than just approaching her without any understanding of her situation. Would you have left if some random guy just told you that you should?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So I’m going to need something. Some way to at least have a chance.”

  “You know I’m not going to try to help you,” Jocelyn warned. “I’m going to try to talk you out of it.”

  Zachary laughed. At least she was upfront about it. Did he want to waste his time trying to get answers from someone who thought that the whole thing was a mistake?

  He actually did. He wouldn’t be walking into it blind. If Jocelyn didn’t manage to talk him out of it, then he would be ready. And if she did convince him to give it up, then there were obviously good reasons to do so.

  “Fair enough,” he agreed. “I guess I don’t have to warn you that I’m stubborn and don’t always make the smartest decisions.”

  Jocelyn’s answering laugh was more natural. Much more relaxed and familiar to him than anything else she had said or done. Joss remembered what he was like, all right. And that made him feel closer to her.

  26

  He didn’t mind another highway drive to meet with Jocelyn. It gave him a chance to try to sort out his thoughts and marshal his arguments before their conversation. Kenzie was working, so he was on his own and could drive a little faster if he felt like it.

  The land surrounding the highway was turning green. The weather was still chilly, but things had started to come alive again after their long winter hibernation, and it cheered him to see it. Vermont was like a postcard in the winter, but he preferred the summer.

  Would he ever consider moving somewhere that was warm all year? Somewhere people decorated palm trees or cactuses rather than evergreens for Christmas and there was no snow on the ground?

  It was hard to say. He hated anything that reminded him of Christmas, but he wasn’t ever going to be able to find somewhere there was no Christmas. Not in the United States.

  He took the highway exit the GPS told him to, and followed its directions to the book store Jocelyn had directed him to. He thought that a book store was an odd place for a meeting, but they had a social area with a coffee shop and table and chairs, and it was clearly a popular hangout. Jocelyn didn’t need to be worried about being alone with him, a man she barely knew.

  She was there waiting for him, a book in hand. Zachary glanced at it but didn’t recognize the cover or title. It was a thick book, and he wasn’t a reader.

  “Hi,” Zachary greeted. He hesitated, not putting out his hand for a handshake or his arms for a hug. Jocelyn nodded and didn’t offer either method of greeting, so he left it at that.

  “Let’s sit here.” Jocelyn motioned to a table off to the side, by the window. “I ordered a couple of coffees. You drink coffee, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You never know these days. Health nuts, religious freaks, fair trade, blah, blah, blah. We’re just talking about a cup of coffee, not a lifetime commitment.”

  Zachary smiled. He sat down. “If I could live on coffee, I probably would.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that. You really are a Goldman.”

  “Did you ever doubt it?”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “No. You look just like I expected you to.”

  They waited. Zachary tried to make small talk with her and looked out the window at the people coming and going in the parking lot. Jocelyn waved to a barista who was looking around at the tables with two cups of coffee in her hands.

  “Over here.”

  The woman saw Jocelyn’s waving arm and approached them. “Jocelyn and Zachary?”

  “Yes.”

  She put the cups down in front of them, and Zachary picked his up and took a sip, even though it was boiling hot.

  “Thanks. Good stuff.”

  “Yeah. You bet.”

  Zachary sighed. He put his notepad on the table beside him. “So… you know that I’m trying to figure out how to get Madison back home.”

  “You should just stay out of it.”

  “She’s only a kid. Don’t you think it’s best to get her out early? Before she gets in too deep?”

  “No. I think you should leave her alone. It’s her life, not yours. You don’t have any right to tell her what to do.”

  “I know. I’m not trying to force her or tell her what to do, just to help her out. Wouldn’t you have wanted someone to help you?”

  “No. Plenty of people tried to interfere and get me to do what they thought I should be doing. And it didn’t do anything but get me in grief. I just wanted everyone to stay out of it and let me live my own life the way I wanted to.”

  Zachary swirled the coffee cup. “But did you really know what you were getting into? Did you really understand what kind of life it was going to be? Or what kind of life you could have if you got out?”

  “Life outside the business isn’t all roses.”

  He thought about that. Zachary wasn’t about to tell her that he knew better than she did. She had lived the life that Madison had been in, and she had gotten out. She was the one who had seen both sides.

  “I don’t know if anyone’s life is all roses. Do you think things were better when you were…”

  “In some ways, yes. I had drugs, and they helped me
to feel better. As long as I was getting what I needed, I felt okay. I didn’t have to think about whether it was right or wrong, or whether I could be doing something else or living another life. None of that came up while I was high. I could… be what I was, and no one cared. Least of all me.”

  “But that does things to your body. Makes you sick. Could kill you.”

  “But I didn’t care. That’s the magic of it. I knew I was living a crappy life and I wasn’t going anywhere, but I didn’t care. I knew drugs were destroying my body, but that didn’t matter. When I almost died… that was the best high I ever had. I wished they hadn’t brought me out of it. They should have just left me alone. Let me die.”

  “Did you think… no one would care? Or you didn’t care if anyone did?”

  “No one did,” Jocelyn said flatly. She shook her head. “I didn’t have anyone, Zachary. I didn’t have any family or friends. I had my Romeo, and that was enough for me. He made me feel good, when I was doing what I was supposed to and keeping him happy. As long as I was bringing money in and keeping his clients satisfied, he would give me all the good strokes. Tell me that I was smart and funny and pretty. That he didn’t want anything else in a girlfriend. He’d give me new clothes and tell me how nice I looked. He’d bring me drugs, and we’d get high together, and I would feel so good. Why would I want to get out of that?”

  “But you did, eventually. What changed your mind?”

  Jocelyn stared off into the distance. “There was bad stuff too. Of course. There always is. Clients who weren’t happy or who wanted to hurt someone just because they were sadists. So then I’d get in trouble with my boyfriend. And I was getting older. Not in as much demand. They were looking for younger girls, and they wanted me to help bring them up and turn them out. I could never agree with that. I never got on board with bringing someone else in. Seducing them, or punishing them and keeping them in line. It wasn’t my thing.” She took a long swallow from her cup. “I never liked to see Matt with other girls. I was jealous, but I couldn’t show it. He didn’t spend much time with me. Neglected me, didn’t bring me drugs, left me to my own devices. While he was off partying with the little girls. Getting older isn’t as bad for men. Older guys are still sexy. Look at Hollywood. But for women… we just get worn out, tired, ugly. Too fat and flabby or thin and bony. Our bodies change, so we don’t look and feel like younger women anymore. Sure, there are some great looking old broads in Hollywood too, but they have plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They’re not getting worn out by the constant demands of men and strung out on drugs all the time.”