Never Tell a Lie

by Hallie Ephron

  “The baby’s crowning,” Dr. Shapiro said, her voice calm and reassuring. “Push once more.” Ivy bore down again, and again, and again, each time Dr. Shapiro encouraging her to hang in there, that the next one would be the last.

  “Stop!” Dr. Shapiro said. “Wait.”

  Ivy strained to comply. The urge to push was nearly irresistible.

  “Blow, blow, blow,” David said, his arm around her.

  The room turned silent as Ivy blew, sweat dripping into her ears and down her neck.

  “That’s good, that’s good, that’s good,” Dr. Shapiro said. “Now, one last time. Push!” Her command reverberated off the walls.

  Ivy pushed with every bit of strength she had left, then gasped as the pressure released itself, as though a cork had popped. There was a long moment of dead silence. Then a thin cry.

  “It’s a girl,” David whispered in her ear. “Just like you said.” He squeezed her hand.

  Ivy strained to see the nurse tending the baby. Wiping her down. Washing her. Her little girl was rigid and red-faced, her eyes squinched shut and her mouth stretched open, tiny fists clenched and trembling. Watching, Ivy felt as if her heart would burst in her chest.

  The newborn cry wasn’t at all what Ivy had expected—rapid gusts of piglet squeals rather than full-throated yelps.

  “I was so afraid I wouldn’t make it here in time,” David said.

  “I was afraid that you wouldn’t make it here at all,” Ivy said.

  The nurse brought the baby over to them. She was swaddled in a pink blanket, her hair already drying into wispy curls.

  Ivy took the sturdy little bundle in her arms. She brushed the baby’s head with her lips. So soft. Liquidy gray eyes opened, and the baby gazed up at her like some wise old soul, and Ivy felt a surge of tenderness so intense that she could barely breathe.

  “Hey, Sprout,” she whispered. “My precious baby girl.” This little one had killer eyelashes.

  David touched the baby’s cheek gently with the back of his index finger. “She’s amazing.”

  Ivy probed the blanket and found a foot. The flesh, wrinkled at the ankle, reminded Ivy of a scrawny chicken wearing baggy, flesh-colored tights. Tiny toes were splayed—all five of them.

  A tear trickled down his cheek as David kissed the bottom of the baby’s foot.

  This was what she’d almost lost. David, their baby, their life together, all their hopes and dreams for the future.

  The room went fuzzy, and before Ivy knew what was happening, she was crying—completely out of control, heaving up great sobs as if deep inside her a dam had been breached.

  She grabbed David’s sleeve and sobbed. A nurse rushed over and took the baby. David put his arms around Ivy and held her to him, rocking her.

  “It’s over, it’s over,” he said. He held her tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ivy shuddered and burrowed into David’s chest, her tears soaking the top of his hospital scrubs.

  “You have every right to be angry with me. To be furious. I—” His voice caught. He stroked her head. Kissed her neck. “I didn’t know. And then I thought I’d never be with you again. Never see the baby.” She felt his chest heave. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  Ivy couldn’t answer. She looked up at him.

  “Ivy…” His face was twisted in agony, his eyes filled with tears.

  “So many lies,” she said.

  “I thought I was protecting—”

  “Who?”

  “You. The baby. Me.” He hung his head. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  During the night Ivy was moved to a hospital room. David went home to clean up and get some sleep.

  Early the next morning, she took a long, hot shower, letting the water beat on her aching back and sides. A magnificent red and purple bruise on her right hip and sore right shoulder were reminders of her narrow escape. A nick in her side from the knifepoint burned as she soaped it.

  Ivy changed into a soft silk nightgown, a luxurious gift Jody had brought her, and got back into bed. Then she slept—her first truly restful sleep in more than a week.

  When she woke up, sunlight was streaming into the room. David sat in the armchair and beamed at the baby he held in his arms.

  Alert and wide-eyed, the baby stared up at him, her mouth a perfect oval.

  Ivy yawned. Every muscle ached. She turned over onto her side and reached out to touch David’s arm.

  David smiled over at her. “She’s a beaut, Ivy—she really is.” He slipped his pinkie finger into the baby’s grasp. “Think it’s time we gave her a name?”

  “Something strong. Maybe starting with F for Grandma Fay?” Ivy said.

  “Fanny?” David said.

  “I kind of like that. It’s old-fashioned but sweet,” Ivy said.

  “Flora?”

  “Flora Rose?” Ivy pulled a face.

  “I forgot. Rule Four-dot-One-dot-Three.” He kissed the baby’s tiny fist. “Sorry, only one beautiful flower to a customer.”

  Ivy rubbed the stone in the palm of her grandmother’s amulet, which was back where it belonged, hanging around her neck.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Flora is a very nice name.” The voice came from the doorway. Ivy looked up to see Mrs. Bindel, sitting there in a wheelchair with Detective Blanchard behind her. “I once had a friend named Flora.”

  “Mrs. Bindel!” Ivy said. She pushed the button to raise the head of her hospital bed. “You’re up and around.”

  “Around anyway. Up remains to be seen,” Mrs. Bindel said. “May we come in? Just for a moment.”

  “Sure,” Ivy said.

  Blanchard pushed Mrs. Bindel over the threshold and into the room.

  “I didn’t want to wait,” Mrs. Bindel said. “I needed to apologize to you now. Al came this morning and set me straight, and I made him bring me straight over.”

  Al? Detective Blanchard actually blushed.

  “I thought you were the one who conked me in the head,” Mrs. Bindel said. “But it wasn’t you. It was that other woman, the one who disappeared. Only I gather she’s been hiding. Causing such a fuss. Horrid woman.” She looked at Detective Blanchard, her eyebrows raised.

  “Right,” he said. “Melinda White was crossing through Mrs. Bindel’s backyard on her way back to your house from her mother’s when Mrs. Bindel caught her by surprise. She was afraid Mrs. Bindel would realize that she wasn’t you. Says she just wanted to knock Mrs. Bindel out.”

  “She told you that?” Ivy asked.

  Blanchard nodded. “She’s being charged with assault, burglary, kidnapping—”

  “Murder?” Ivy asked.

  “Her mother?” Blanchard said. “No. She died of natural causes. Cancer. Melinda didn’t bury her so she could keep receiving Social Security and pension checks. So there will be fraud charges, too. And identity theft. Her sister, Ruth, is married and lives in Toronto. Hasn’t been in contact with Melinda or their mother for years. Melinda rented a Florida apartment in Ruth’s name and hired someone to forward her mother’s mail to the house on Belcher Street.”

  “To Elaine Gallagher?” Ivy asked.

  Blanchard’s brow creased. “How do you…?” Ivy could almost see the cylinders in his brain tumbling into place. She gave him an innocent look—she had no intention of offering up the fact that she’d broken in to the house and discovered Mrs. White’s body.

  “Elaine Gallagher died five years ago,” Blanchard said. “Right here, in fact, at Neponset Hospital. Melinda was working here then. She must have used information in the poor woman’s hospital records to set up phony bank and credit-card accounts. Applied for a new driver’s license and posed for the photo. Then she put through paperwork to make it look as if Elaine Gallagher had bought the Belcher Street house. She’d taken a job with a real estate agency by then. We’d just about gotten it all figured out when…I’m sorry we were almost too late.”

  “She had keys,” Ivy said. “Even after I had new locks installed.” I
vy remembered the hardware store clerk’s confusion when she came to have her own copy made—Melinda, with her wig and pregnant belly, had probably been in earlier to have a copy made from the spare set Ivy had left hanging by the back door.

  “Yes, it looks as if she could get in and out whenever,” Blanchard said. “And she’d watched you and your husband, knew your habits.”

  “She wanted our baby,” Ivy said.

  “I know. Now.” The abashed look he gave her was probably the closest she was going to get to an apology.

  Mrs. Bindel rolled herself closer to David’s chair. “Oh,” she said as she peered at the baby, now fast asleep in David’s arms. “Isn’t she cunning?” With her knuckle Mrs. Bindel caught a tear that had formed at the corner of her eye. “That house of yours, what it really needs is young people.

  “But do me a favor. No more yard sales.”

  “When Melinda came to the yard sale, did you recognize her?” Ivy asked David after Detective Blanchard and Mrs. Bindel left.

  David got up and set the baby gently into the hospital bassinet. He came over and sat on the bed next to Ivy. “I didn’t. Not at first.”

  Unanswered questions tainted the air between them. Ivy remembered Mr. Vlaskovic’s words: Secrets can be toxic. The truth is rarely as dreadful or as terrifying as what one imagines.

  “Melinda told me that you raped her,” Ivy said.

  Anger flared in David’s eyes. “You believe her?”

  “Should I?”

  “I didn’t. I told her that, and she went nuts. We were up in the attic. She threw the glass swan, and after that it was almost as if she went into a trance. She remembered what happened at Kezey’s, right down to the smallest detail. Listening to her was painful, and she seemed so sure of herself. It really shook me when she said I took her into the closet and did…what she said I did.”

  David gave Ivy a calm, steady look. “Not that it would surprise me if something like that had happened. A dozen guys and a girl. Seventeen years old. Smashed. Alone down there.”

  “She told me she got pregnant and then miscarried,” Ivy said. “Stealing our baby was going to make up for the one she lost.”

  “I didn’t rape her.” David gave Ivy an anguished look. “Don’t you think that if I’d done that, I’d remember?”

  “I want to believe you,” Ivy said. “She told me that she felt a chain hanging from your neck when you were with her.”

  “See? Have you ever seen me wearing anything like a chain around my neck? That wasn’t me. That was…” David’s mouth hung open as the implication sank in.

  “Theo,” Ivy said, remembering the Greek cross that hung from a chain on the rearview mirror in Theo’s car. “Theo says you passed out. He says nothing happened. Nothing at all.”

  “He would.” David held her gaze. “Theo told me he’s dropping out of the senate race. He says it’s because once Melinda starts telling the police her version of what happened at Kezey’s, it’ll be a mess for everyone who was there. It won’t matter what really happened. And besides, after all these years there’s no way that anyone can prove it one way or another.”

  He took her hand. “Ivy, if I did what she said I did, would you ever be able to forgive me?”

  “I…”

  “Could you?” David asked. “Because whatever happened, I was part of it. Even if I didn’t rape her, I was there. I did nothing to protect her. I could have. The guys listened to me. And at school afterward, I just went along when the rumors started going around. And after a while I just forgot about it. It was as if it had never happened.”

  Ivy gazed into the haggard face of the man who’d been her best friend and lover for half her life. She remembered the first moment when he’d entered her consciousness, his concerned face hovering over her on the track field. She remembered exchanging marriage vows on a hillside on Peaks Island in Casco Bay up in Maine. The first time she and David had stepped over the threshold of the house as homeowners and she’d run from room to room feeling delight mixed with abject terror at what they’d gotten themselves into, then returning to hug David and feeling once again grounded. She’d never for an instant doubted his essential goodness as a human being.

  She had no doubt that Theo was lying, minimizing what had happened. She had no trouble believing that he’d have taken advantage of Melinda. She even had serious doubts about whether Melinda had been pregnant—had she seen a doctor? And how could she have known that the baby she lost was David’s?

  But Ivy couldn’t stop herself from hearing Melinda’s words: He told me I was something else. He said I was special.

  That didn’t sound like Theo.

  What if David had gotten drunk at seventeen and had sex with a needy girl who had a crush on him, a girl who’d have done anything to get David to notice her?

  Ivy couldn’t turn back the clock and be a fly on the wall. She couldn’t crawl inside Melinda’s head and untangle wishes and nightmare from reality. Even Melinda had come close to admitting that she didn’t know for sure exactly what had happened.

  All Ivy could do was cling to uncertainty and to what she knew in her heart about the man she loved. It was what she had.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am indebted to many people who helped me with this book. For help getting the details right, thank you, Scott Johnson, Lee Lofland, Trooper Edward Stanley, Lieutenant Detective Charles F. Paris, Sergeant Prosecutor Brian P. Cherry, Doug Lyle, M.D., and the Honorable Judge Kenneth Freeman. Thanks to fellow writers Lorraine Bodger, Lora Brody, Jan Brogan, Donald Davidoff, Susan W. Hubbard, Roberta Isleib, Floyd Kemske, Jonathan Ostrowsky, Naomi Rand, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Barbara Shapiro, Sarah Smith, and Jerry Touger. Thanks to the smart and indefatigable Gail Hochman. And special thanks to Katherine Nintzel, Carolyn Marino, Wendy Lee, and the other excellent folks at HarperCollins.

  About the Author

  HALLIE EPHRON is an award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She is the author of 1001 Books for Every Mood and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony award. She lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Books by Hallie Ephron

  Fiction

  "Night Night, Sleep Tight"

  Photoplay

  There Was an Old Woman

  Never Tell a Lie

  Come and Find Me

  Nonfiction

  The Bibliophile's Devotional

  1001 Books for Every Mood

  Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel

  Credits

  Jacket design by James L. Iacobelli

  Jacket photograph by Jonathan Browning/Millennium Images, U.K.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NEVER TELL A LIE. Copyright © 2009 by Hallie Ephron Touger. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061984594

  Version 02072014

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