The Perfect Lie (The Perfect Stranger)

by Charlotte Byrd

  “No shit.” I nod.

  “Did you know this?”

  “I had no idea.” I shake my head. “I thought it would be thousands. I was hoping it would be under $50,000.”

  “Could it really be this cheap?”

  “I don't know, I had to do some more research. I don't really even know how to get onto the dark web. Do you?”

  She shakes her head and asks, “So, what does this mean?”

  “It means that we're going to have a lot more money, for one, but also that I might actually get this to work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I think I've always had some doubt about what life could really be as an escaped convict. I mean, day-to-day. I thought that I would have to hide out in some cabin in the middle of nowhere forever. Not that I don't enjoy nature, I do, but I thought that I would have to spend the rest of my days living in fear of my own shadow.”

  “Now?”

  “Well, if I can actually get a new identity like this, with a birth certificate, and everything that counts, then I'm not really Tyler McDermott anymore, am I?”

  “No, I guess not,” she says quietly.

  Her face falls and she looks down at the floor.

  I furrow my brows.

  “Is that a good thing?” I ask.

  “I don't know. I kinda like Tyler.”

  “Well, I'll still be him, just a little bit safer.”

  “I'm not sure if I want anyone safer,” she says, smiling at the corner of her lips.

  “Oh, really?” I ask. “You like the idea of being with someone who every cop and federal marshal is out there looking for?”

  “The bad guy, you mean?” she asks.

  I come closer to her and press my lips to hers.

  Her lips feel soft but strong. Her kisses are more forceful this time, more needy even.

  The last time we were together, we did it against the wall while my shoulder throbbed with the kind of pain I haven't felt in a long time.

  Being with her, being inside of her, somehow made the pain so much more bearable.

  She nuzzles up to me and I kiss her again and again. If it were up to me, I would spend the rest of my life just kissing her.

  I have always been someone who could compartmentalize pain. Of course, I feel it, but I can focus my mind and feel something else instead. A thought I pushed away this time.

  That's how I undress before her with a smile on my face.

  It's not what you think. It's not fake.

  I'm smiling through the pain.

  I kiss her through the pain.

  I love her through the pain.

  I take off her clothes and we glide into bed. I kiss her again, not just on the mouth, but also on her cheeks, her neck, and her ears.

  I want to touch every inch of her and then I want to do it all over again. She leans over and presses her lips to mine.

  Her mouth feels strong and forceful, assertive. She climbs on top of me and cradles my head with her hands.

  Her hair cascades down and with the blanket pulled over us, it feels like we are alone in a cave.

  She kisses me again on my lips and then slides down to my stomach. When she puts her mouth around my cock, I tilt my head back slightly and close my eyes.

  Her tongue feels rough, but in a good way. She wraps her hand tightly around, moving it up and down along with her mouth.

  “I can't take it anymore,” I say after a little while. “I want to be inside of you.”

  Giving me a wink, she gets up. Before she climbs on top, I pull out and put on a condom.

  We have been using one and right now is not the time.

  She opens her legs up and slowly descends upon me. I can feel myself filling her up and I reach up to touch her breasts as she tilts her head and lets her hair fall down her back.

  Moving up and down, I lose myself in her.

  It doesn't take either of us very long to get there. I watch her get closer and closer, moaning out little sounds here and there.

  I can see the pleasure wash over her face and then the avalanche that rushes through her body.

  As her body starts to relax, mine takes over and I thrust myself harder and deeper within her.

  She folds in half and breathes into my ear as an explosion bursts out of me.

  12

  Isabelle

  After, we lie in bed together, holding onto one another, whatever tension that existed before seems to have vanished.

  I remember what it's like to be with someone who I care about deeply and who cares deeply about me.

  I listen to him breathe, inhaling then exhaling. His heart beats very slowly, but at a steady rate. I press my ear to his chest and lose myself in the drumbeat.

  Neither of us knew that a new identity, let alone an American one, would be so… affordable.

  I wonder why it's so cheap. Is this actually something that people do all the time? That would be the only reason, I guess.

  The price must be driven down by the big black market for authentic passports, birth certificates, bank accounts, and security numbers.

  I also wonder if Tyler was right after all.

  Maybe after all of this, he could actually live a normal life. Maybe he could go out into the world and just be this other person and no one would ever know.

  How many of these people are walking among us right now?

  Think about it. You meet a person, they tell you their name, you shake hands, and that's the end of it.

  You assume that they are who they say they are, but is that even true?

  Goose bumps make the hair on the back of my arms stand up.

  I still don't know what this means when it comes to me. We haven't talked about it yet, we argued about it a little bit, but I know that the decision is mine alone.

  I also know that if I were to accompany him in this new life, then I could never be Isabelle Nesbit again.

  Isabelle would have to disappear.

  That would be a terrible thing to do to my coworkers and my students.

  I don't have many friends, a few acquaintances, but I could just leave work and never come back, right?

  Perhaps the way to deal with it delicately is to just say that I got a new opportunity elsewhere and that I'm moving.

  We can say our goodbyes and then we can promise to stay in touch over social media but never follow through.

  Yes, that would be a better way to do it. That would be a more humane way.

  I definitely wouldn’t want anyone looking for me, especially the cops, wasting resources on trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found.

  Am I even willing to go that far?

  As I lie here in Tyler's arms, I think about all of these possibilities for my life. Going with Tyler and getting a new identity would also solve another pressing problem of mine.

  There are bad men looking for me for what my mother did and were I to simply vanish and become someone else, they would probably never be able to find me again.

  Then again, neither will my mother.

  Something tickles the back of my throat and I feel myself choking up. I don't like thinking about her or talking about her, mainly because it's too painful.

  There was a time when she was a real mom, sort of, but then she got into drugs and her addiction got the best of her.

  I stopped being able to trust anything that she promised or believe anything that she said.

  Then she disappeared.

  I was already out of college and living on my own, sending her money occasionally, which was probably a big mistake. We usually talked every few days and then suddenly she stopped returning my calls.

  That was very unlike her because I was her lifeline. I was the person that she could always come stay with or turn to for some money. She never called me back.

  A few days later, when I went to her apartment, she wasn't there either. There was an eviction notice on her door. I called the police and made a report, but they put in the minimal effo
rt to find her.

  They told me that adults can go away anytime. You don't have to explain yourself to anyone.

  When they heard about the drug problems, they wrote it off entirely.

  Knowing that I wasn't getting anywhere with the cops, I hired a private detective, but he also came up short.

  How do you find someone with no credit history and who pays for everything in cash? The answer is it's really fucking hard.

  Well, after that, all I could do was worry. I became an insomniac.

  I would walk the streets of Cheswick and talk to every junkie and drug dealer that I saw, showing a picture of my mother.

  I started showing up late to work and I almost got fired. Then I gave up. I hate to say it so bluntly, but that's exactly what happened.

  I just couldn't deal with not knowing where she was and I decided that she just didn't want to be found.

  Two weeks later, I got a call from the men she owed the hundred thousand dollars to. I knew that she gambled, but I had no idea that she had such a big debt.

  They wanted me to pay them back the money, in exchange for her. I didn't have the money and didn't have any way of getting it. They kept calling and I kept stalling.

  Then Tyler showed up and things got a lot more complicated.

  I lift up my head and look into Tyler's eyes. He smiles at me and I smile back.

  “I love you,” he says. “I think I always have.”

  “I love you, too,” I whisper.

  13

  Isabelle

  We spend the rest of the day hanging out, laughing, reading, and watching television. It feels so good to just be a normal couple after all this time.

  It starts to feel like we might actually belong together. I have my doubts, not so much about Tyler, but about everything that we are going through.

  Then there are moments like this, sitting here in his arms on the couch, when it all feels very right.

  When I get up to make dinner, he stops me and says that there's something that he wants to do for me.

  I don't protest. I'm not much of a cook. He makes a vegetable stir-fry with a caprese salad.

  I bought a few bottles of white wine and he pours us two glasses.

  “This feels like a real date now,” I say.

  “One of these days, I’m going to take you on a real date.”

  “Where would that be?” I ask.

  “We can fly to Paris, have dinner at one of those little restaurants that serve exquisite food, right along the Seine. If you want to go to Paris, we can stay somewhere more local. Take a sailboat out from Marina del Rey and set sail. It might get windy and cold, but I’ll pack extra blankets for you to cuddle up with.”

  “That sounds… Great.”

  “I just really wish that we had met earlier,” Tyler says. “I left you back in middle school, even though I didn't feel it or understand it. I kept thinking back to you, comparing other women to you, through my life.”

  “That's not really good,” I point out.

  “I know. It's cruel, unkind, and unfair, but I should have just listened to my inner voice. I knew you were the one when I was twelve and I just let life get in the way when I was twenty-four.”

  “I'm sorry that you have some regrets,” I say.

  “I know that we're not supposed to have regrets anymore. Everyone is so certain about saying that they don't regret any mistake that they have ever made because then they wouldn’t have learned from it and wouldn’t be the person that they are today. I don't find that completely honest.”

  “You don't?”

  “It's normal to have regrets. You look back on your life and you think, huh, that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that. My life would have been a lot better if I’d avoided all that pain. When I look back on my marriage, I know that I wasn't being authentic when I got married.”

  “Why didn't you just get divorced?”

  He thinks about it for a minute.

  This isn’t the first time that we've talked about his wife. I know that he feels like none of what happened would have happened if he wasn't married to her at the time of her death.

  “I got busy at work and frankly, it didn't seem that broken. We didn't really fight that much. We’d just avoid each other like ships in the night. I was just distracted as the years went by.”

  I don't know what to say so I just look down at the floor.

  “I just keep thinking what would've happened if I had broken up with her and gone out and tried to find you. You were the first person I thought about when I planned the escape because you were in my thoughts all along. I wanted to write you from in there, but then I wasn't sure what to say. If you hadn't heard what happened, I didn't want you to think the worst of me.”

  “I would not have,” I say.

  “Yes, you probably would. If you looked me up, you would've seen all those articles and all those lies that were printed about me.”

  I consider bringing up Mallory again, but I bite my tongue.

  He told me not to a couple of times already and I don't want to steer this conversation from an opportunity to open up to something that goes off course.

  Later that night, when Tyler takes a painkiller and falls asleep, I get back on the computer and I see that Mallory has written me back.

  My heart jumps into my throat. I wasn't supposed to contact him. Tyler pretty much told me that much, but still I couldn’t stop myself.

  I wrote to Mallory simply as a fan of the show and of the case. I told him that I believed in Tyler's innocence and that I wanted to reach out to see if there was anything that I could do to help.

  Much to my surprise, Mallory wrote back with his phone number and asked me to call anytime.

  I consider waiting until tomorrow, but with Tyler in the other room asleep, I decide to just call him right now.

  I grab my jacket and put on my shoes, stepping outside with my phone.

  “Mr. Deals?” I ask when the man answers.

  His voice is deep, but not particularly old. He sounds exactly like he does on the podcast and in the YouTube videos.

  “Please, call me Mallory.”

  “My name is Courtney LaRoche and I just wanted to reach out to you about the Tyler McDermott case.”

  “Yes, it's very nice to hear from you.”

  “Thank you for giving me your phone number,” I say. “I definitely wasn't expecting that.”

  “I find it a lot less time-consuming to talk to people on the phone than to have a whole back and forth via email. I hope you don't mind.”

  “No, of course not,” I say, acting like talking to a stranger on the phone is the most natural thing in the world.

  In that regard, much like many people of my generation, I'm not a big fan.

  We talk a little bit about the broad strokes of the case. I keep trying to get some more information out of him, but he is pretty much an open book. In this case, he's a reporter and whatever he has uncovered, he is putting out in his blog.

  “As I was reading through everything that you posted and listening to your videos, something occurred to me. Have you ever thought about the possibility that Tyler might have an alibi for that night?”

  “An alibi? What makes you say that?”

  “Well, I was just thinking that he didn't really have a good alibi for where he was that night, but what if he actually did?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  I hesitate.

  I want to tell the truth about Tessa, but Mallory isn’t his attorney and attorney-client privilege wouldn’t apply. Besides, I'm doing all of this behind Tyler's back. He senses my hesitation.

  “I thought about this myself,” Mallory says. “It all sounds very shady. Of course, he could've been working late, but with everything else not adding up in this case, he could've also been framed.”

  “So, what are you thinking in terms of who could've done it besides Tyler?” I decide to pivot the conversation in another direction.

  “I
don't know yet. There are so many unknowns. There's also a possibility that the prosecution might be holding onto evidence that they did not present at trial.”

  “That’s going to be impossible to prove without some evidence.”

  “Of course,” he says and I can practically see him shaking his head.

  We talk some more about the case. He mentions various details like the blood spatter.

  It's clear that someone had come into that house and killed both Sarah and Greg.

  Earlier, I had thought that maybe Greg did it and then staged his own suicide, but why?

  “Greg had stolen a lot of money from Tyler, practically all of his clients from the hedge fund. The prosecution used that as the reason for the motive, but Tyler was the one who made all the contacts and was the main brains behind the investment strategies,” Mallory says. “He could've easily convinced all of them to come back to him.”

  “So, you don't think that he had a motive?” I ask.

  “Yes, he did have a motive. Greg was his partner and he was sleeping with his wife. Most men who commit those crimes don't need another reason beyond that to kill their spouses and their spouse’s boyfriends.”

  “So, what makes you think that he didn't?” I ask.

  “You know, this line of questioning sounds a lot like you’re not really that sure about his guilt or innocence.”

  “No, I am. It's just all very murky and definitely looks bad.”

  “Why don't you tell me this, Courtney?” Mallory says.

  My body tenses up and I swallow hard.

  “What is it about the case that makes you so interested in it? I mean, a lot of people like to listen to true crime stories, but few of them reach out and actually get involved.”

  “I don't know,” I say quickly. “I guess I'm just a true crime junkie.”

  “What other podcasts do you listen to or television series do you watch?”

  I freeze up.

  I don't know how to answer him. The truth is that I'm not all that interested in crime. I don't know anyone who's ever been in jail or prison, besides Tyler, and the contact I have with criminals, again, besides Tyler, begins and ends with the occasional thriller that I rent from Amazon.