Depth of Lies

by E. C. Diskin

  As Evelyn drove along the highway, Kat imagined Shea’s last hours in reverse, her arrival at that memorial, her ride over on the ferry, her long drive to Ohio alone. She hated driving long distances, always saying that two hours was her limit. Beyond that, she’d joked once, it was like she had narcolepsy. Ryan did most of the driving during family road trips, and she’d never volunteered to drive on any of the women’s previous getaways to Ohio. Five hours alone in the car was a long time.

  Kat let her head fall back and took another deep breath, loudly expelling the air. Maybe she was subconsciously trying to channel that yoga mantra: “Good air in, toxins and stress out.”

  “Dee was a little loco last night, huh?” Lina said.

  An understatement.

  “You missed her rapid-fire roasting while we cleaned up the dinner,” Evelyn said. “Let’s see, she made fun of Tori’s clothes . . .”

  “Well, that’s easy,” Kat joked. They all thought Tori was the only woman in the entire Chicago area aware of, and wearing, the latest New York and Paris fashions. The Midwest was at least a year or two behind the trends. She’d shown up in startling combinations for so many years, they were no longer startling.

  “I said something about liking Tori’s shirt, and Dee looked at me with a deadpan expression and said, ‘Why are you here, again?’”

  “Ouch,” Lina said. “I hope you didn’t let that get to you. Some people just get mean when they drink too much. I’m guessing I was spared because of the cancer?”

  “Probably,” Evelyn smirked. “Tori even said something about how I had obviously dealt with suddenly losing a spouse, asking how I got through it, but Dee cut me off and said, ‘Getting dumped is not the same.’”

  “Holy crap, what is wrong with that woman?” Lina asked.

  Dee wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t the same, but they all knew that Evelyn’s husband had left her, after twenty years, without a word. Weeks later, she heard from a lawyer. No explanations. No warning. In that way, it was easy to see the parallel.

  “Dee was hammered last night,” Lina said, “and there’s just no excuse for that behavior, but let’s not give it another thought. Whether a spouse walks out or drops dead on your kitchen floor in the middle of breakfast, it’s not easy.”

  The women fell silent. Evelyn and Lina had pulled those painful, heavy boxes of loss out of storage, and no one knew what to do with them.

  Kat suddenly felt lucky, despite the last several months. A husband she loved, who was alive, in good health, and missing her right now. She pulled out her phone. Miss you. Heading back to Chicago now. Talk later? She hoped he’d see it as the olive branch she intended. She was determined to plan something special upon her return, a romantic gesture to show Mack that she wanted to fix things. Maybe they could shake off the residue of arguments and hit reset.

  When they finally neared Chicago, Kat asked Evelyn to drop her at her hotel downtown.

  “Don’t do that,” Lina said. “You should stay with me this week, at least until your meetings on Thursday and Friday.” Kat considered it. “You still haven’t seen Ryan or Georgia. Just stay with me. I’d love the company. That house is too big and empty with the kids off at school.”

  “Thanks, Lina. That sounds perfect.”

  “Well, all right, then,” Evelyn said. She bypassed the exit ramp for the city and turned west on the Eisenhower Expressway.

  For most of the afternoon, Kat sat at Lina’s dining room table, laptop open, cell by her side, absorbed in e-mails and conference calls. At six o’clock, she walked up the street to Georgia’s house.

  The air was crisp under a still-pink sky. She’d been to Georgia’s several times over the years—book clubs or cocktail parties or happy hours—but they’d never done a one-on-one, and she suddenly felt nervous. Georgia was unlike Kat in obvious ways—a soft-spoken southern transplant who’d married her high school sweetheart and excelled with grace as a domestic CEO and Martha Stewart–level crafter. There was something about Georgia’s accent, her tenor, that always reminded Kat of Shelby in Steel Magnolias.

  When Georgia opened the door, Kat found a frazzled woman, nearly unrecognizable compared to the never-without-makeup mask she’d come to expect, even at yoga. Georgia looked like she hadn’t slept in days, her eyes puffy and circled in darkness.

  “Am I too early?”

  “No, no. Come in!” Georgia said in that soft southern lilt, pulling her in for a hug while the chaos of shrieking children poured from the home. She smiled, patting her haphazardly tied-up hair. “Just don’t look at me. I’m a wreck.” She was barefoot, wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt partially covered by a dirty apron—a far cry from the woman who, even at the grocery, looked perfectly groomed. Georgia had one in college and two in high school but had startled the neighborhood with a surprise pregnancy at forty-two.

  Her eight-year-old, Tess, ran past them with two friends into the front yard, like caged animals that had spotted an open gate. Despite the season, each child was dressed in a Halloween costume. It made Kat momentarily nostalgic for those moments—the silliness, the laughter of children that disappeared far too quickly—but Georgia’s exhaustion was clear when she embraced Kat a little too long, as if holding on helped hold her up. Kat finally broke free, and Georgia yelled for the kids to get back inside.

  The kitchen table, mostly covered with crafts, offered two wineglasses and a plate of cheese and crackers at one end. Even in chaos, Georgia was the eternal southern hostess.

  “Please, sit. I’m dying to sit,” Georgia said.

  Kat shared a few stories of the weekend at the lake, and Georgia embarked on what seemed a well-rehearsed excuse for missing it. She wasn’t a great liar. She looked at her glass while explaining how her husband’s work crisis had prevented her from joining them. When Kat shared what she’d learned about Shea being on the island for Blake’s memorial service, Georgia turned pale and took a deep breath, moving her focus to the windows. She then drank most of the wine in her glass.

  “What is it?” Kat asked.

  Georgia turned to Kat and smiled. “Huh? Oh, nothin’, hon,” she said before turning her attention to an imaginary hangnail that she began to gnaw on.

  “Listen,” Kat continued, “Lina told me that you went out to look for Shea back in November after she left the bar with Blake.”

  “True. Why?” Georgia poured more wine for them both, took another sip, and peered past the kitchen into the family room, where the girls were now playing.

  “She said that you two returned together and both seemed upset. She thought Shea looked like she’d been crying.”

  “No, that’s not true,” Georgia said. Her voice actually cracked, as if she were truly the worst liar on the planet.

  “It’s not like it matters now,” Kat said. “She’s gone, and Blake is gone. I just want to know what was going on with her. Please, just tell me what happened in November. It doesn’t make much sense that she’d go to his memorial unless there was more to it.”

  Georgia took another sip, put down the glass, and took a deep breath before rising from the table and walking to the doorway. “Tess,” she said to her daughter, “could you and your friends head down to the basement, please? It’s just a little loud up here.” Georgia returned to her seat, and the women silently looked at each other while the sounds of laughter and footfalls faded slowly down the stairs.

  “I did go out looking for her,” Georgia began. “She’d been incredibly flirtatious, to put it mildly, and they were both drunk. It seemed like a bad choice.”

  “And did you find them outside?”

  Georgia took a cracker, breaking it into pieces. “I looked around out front and didn’t see her. I started walking through the park. I didn’t see her . . . but then,” she said, her focus firmly on the broken crackers, “she was running toward me. I was sitting on a bench.” She finally looked up, took a deep breath, and ate a cracker.

  “What happened?”

  “Shea collapsed,
crying. She said that he took her down to the docks to his boat. It was pitch-dark, she was alone, and she suddenly realized she was in over her head. She said she’d kissed him but had literally lost her balance when she closed her eyes. She’d wanted the harmless flirtation but never intended to sleep with him. I guess he didn’t like being turned down.”

  Having just walked through that park, with the mass of small boats parked along piers that would have been entirely cloaked in darkness after sunset, Kat could almost see the fear on Shea’s face as she listened to Georgia’s story.

  Georgia offered a cracker and cheese. Kat took it, and Georgia took another for herself before continuing. “Shea said he’d become aggressive and angry when she tried to pull back. It had become a fight, and she hit him over the head and ran. She left him at the boat. She was horrified that she’d gotten herself into such a situation.”

  “She hit him over the head? With what?”

  Georgia thought for second, chewing her food. She took another sip. “She didn’t say. I said we should go to the police and report the attack, but Shea wouldn’t have it. It was her word against his. She said she’d brought it on herself, and she begged me not to tell anyone. Not even Tori or the others. She wanted to go home.”

  “And so you went back to the bar and everyone left?”

  “Yes.” She began wiping at the table, scooping up the crumbs from their crackers, carefully dropping them back onto the tray.

  “And did you ever ask her if she thought he was okay?”

  Georgia looked out the window.

  “Please, Georgia, just level with me. They’re both dead. It doesn’t matter. I just need to know.”

  Georgia finished the remaining wine in her glass. “Shea brought me the article Tori showed her a couple of weeks ago. She was terrified that . . . that she’d been responsible.”

  “By hitting him on the head? Did she tell you any more about it specifically?”

  Georgia shook her head. “She’d searched online for any details of how he died or when he’d last been seen, but she couldn’t find anything. And when she found out about the memorial, she wanted to go. She said his friends would know if he ever returned to the bar that night. And if he had, she’d know it wasn’t her fault. She said she couldn’t live with the idea that he might have fallen into the water, or passed out on the boat and somehow it became unmoored. She said she hadn’t slept in days.”

  “Why wouldn’t you tell Ryan all this? Don’t you think it would help him to know why she went there?”

  Georgia picked up the tray of cheese and crackers and walked to the sink, ready to be rid of the mess. “It’s not like the truth would help the situation,” she said before dropping the tray on the counter and turning back to Kat. “How would it help to know that Shea went to the island because some strange man she’d hooked up with was dead and she felt responsible? And what if that man’s family found out? What if they decided Shea was responsible? If they decided to go after Shea’s estate for wrongful death or something? How could any of this get any better by telling Ryan?”

  Kat didn’t respond. It was difficult to imagine how the dominoes could fall with so many unknowns.

  Georgia came over and poured more wine into her own glass. “I mean, if that happened,” Georgia continued, “I could be forced to testify about what she told me. How could I live with that?” Georgia lifted her glass with a trembling hand as she took a sip.

  Kat stood and took Georgia’s wineglass, set it on the table, and took Georgia’s hands in hers, wordlessly guiding them both back to sitting. “Stop. It’s okay. It was an accident. No one knows what happened to him, and no one ever will. Shea hit him in self-defense, and frankly, we’ll never know if she even hit him very hard. We saw Blake’s friends on the island. There’s no investigation. It’s over. All of it.”

  Georgia’s eyes welled with tears as if there had been some relief in sharing the secret.

  “Come on,” Kat said, pulling her in for a hug. They both took cleansing breaths during the embrace. Kat was not the only one gasping for air these days.

  Kat poured herself a bit more wine, and they both sipped in silence.

  “Were you planning to go with her?” Kat asked.

  “No!” Georgia stood from the table, like it was the most outrageous question, went to the sink, turned on the water, and began rinsing dishes. “I didn’t go. I was here. Ask anyone.”

  “Okay. I only ask because she told Blake’s friends at the memorial that she was with someone, and she told the innkeeper she was expecting a friend. I was just curious.”

  Georgia finished rinsing the plate, turned the water off, and dried her hands before returning to the table. Something was weighing on her, and it was obvious she had no idea how to respond to Kat’s questions.

  Kat put her hand on Georgia’s. “No one blames you for anything. No one is even inquiring about any of this. I’m just trying to get my head around it all. I want to understand what Shea was going through, what she might have been thinking about.”

  Georgia dabbed her eyes as they filled with tears. She shook her head and focused on the table, unable to look at Kat. “She wanted me to go with her. We talked about it. But I thought it was a mistake. I thought she was looking for trouble, and I begged her not to go. I said that I wouldn’t go, hoping that would convince her to drop it. I . . .” She couldn’t speak or catch all the tears before they trickled down her now flushed cheeks.

  “Hey, this isn’t your fault.”

  “But if I had gone with her . . .”

  “Stop.” Kat pulled her into another embrace. Georgia had obviously been holding it all in for more than a week now. “It’s not your fault.”

  After a long hug at the door, Kat left and walked back to Lina’s, grateful to have gotten some answers. She had known Shea’s friends would be heartbroken over Shea’s death, but it had never occurred to her that any of the others would feel the same guilt that she did. Kat’s torment over Shea’s call was just like Georgia’s. They were both feeling the weight of knowing things might have gone differently, if only . . .

  Hearing what really happened in November, what pulled Shea back to the island, explained a lot—certainly Georgia’s hesitation in returning to the island, and her reticence in sharing the truth. But Kat was left with new nagging questions: Could Shea have accidentally killed that man—or at least contributed to his death? And what if someone knew what happened between them? Maybe someone at the memorial saw Shea and sought revenge. The fog was lifting around why Shea had returned, but now there was something even more troubling, a possible motive to harm her. What if that man at the bar was connected to Blake?

  Like a child telling herself ghost stories, Kat’s adult, rational brain continued to insist that Shea had been alone in her room, with no sign of foul play. She could have simply been upset by the memorial. Perhaps she blamed herself, and the alcohol and pills were evidence of a woman desperately trying to wash away the stranglehold of guilt.

  CHAPTER 13

  April 10

  BACK AT LINA’S, KAT PHONED Mack. It had been almost three days since they’d had a conversation, but she was determined to have a good talk and put the argument of Friday night behind them.

  “Hi,” she said when he picked up the call.

  “Hey, babe,” he said. And that was all it took. She heard his tone and knew that things were okay.

  “Sorry I haven’t been able to reach you until now,” she said.

  “It’s okay. I know you’re having fun.”

  It was a tiny dig, like a needle prick. “I wouldn’t say it’s fun. I am here because Shea’s dead.”

  He didn’t respond, and she immediately regretted her words. She’d sounded defensive. The residue of Friday’s argument was still there.

  “I wish you were here,” she said.

  “Me, too. How was Catawba?”

  Kat shared what she’d learned about Shea’s death, why Shea had gone to the island, as well as he
r nagging need to learn more.

  “It sounds like you’re looking for an explanation, but . . . it sounds obvious.”

  Now it was her turn to stay quiet. It wasn’t obvious.

  “You know why she went. You know why she might have been upset. You just don’t like the idea that someone you idolized for almost twenty years could be a drunk or a drug addict.”

  He’d found a way to put them both down in one fell swoop. “One, I didn’t idolize her; two, she was not a drunk or an addict; and three, we have no idea what she was thinking that night.”

  There was a long pause. “Listen, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive. Can we just talk about something else for a moment? How’s your room?”

  Sometimes her hotel put her up in the swankiest suites; other times, just the basics. She was supposed to have a sense of all options. “Actually, I’m at Lina’s. She offered, and I thought that would be nicer, at least until my meeting on Thursday.”

  There was a beat of silence before Mack said he had to go and quickly disconnected.

  Kat stared at her cell. What was that? What did she do now? Here she was trying to understand Shea, and she couldn’t even understand Mack. She knew he’d been annoyed that she would be in Chicago all week, but what did it matter whether she was downtown or at Lina’s?

  Kat had made a career of managing people without being terribly good at confrontation. But she tossed all night, arguing with Mack in her mind, going through all the things she’d wanted to say but hadn’t. What came out morphed into the real problem. Mack should have come with her. Both Shea and Ryan had been his friends, too. Kat was heartbroken, and Mack had returned to Chicago three times for work since they’d left in January. Why wouldn’t he come with her on this trip? He should be with me, she thought. They should be mourning Shea together, offering support to Ryan together, talking through all of this together. They used to do that.