Pretty Ugly Lies: a gripping and chilling domestic noir Read online

  A beat didn’t even pass before he replied, “I’m on my way. And don’t touch it.”

  I hung up feeling a glimmer of hope. Amelia was safe, he had written. My baby was alive. For now.

  Jay was on his way home when Detective Cox arrived. I had bribed Preston and Abby with lollipops then ordered them to play upstairs, not wanting them to distract us while we talked. They had an uncanny ability to know when something important was being discussed and always managed to talk loudly and incessantly during those conversations, much like every time I tried to talk on the phone. I was in no mental shape to be patient with them right now.

  I had set aside J’s letter, not wanting to bring it up unless absolutely necessary. I still needed to figure out how to explain it without incriminating myself, which seemed impossible given the nature of it.

  No one could understand the cost of full disclosure. My life had been built on a certain type of standard. Jay, the loving, dependable husband and provider. Jo, the nurturing homemaker and steadfast wife. Shining examples of the suburbanite dream. These roles were crucial to maintain. One slip and I’d lose my position in my marriage, in the society we’d grown accustomed to, in the world we had created for ourselves.

  It wasn’t just the threat of divorce that scared me into silence. Even if Jay did forgive me, it was the notion of becoming the neighborhood gossip that I feared. Behind the painted faces on Oleander Way were vultures. They thrived on picking apart the weak. For ten years I had maintained my position at the top, an untouchable, but an indiscretion like this coming to light would put a target on my back, Jay’s back, my kids’ backs. School rumors would fly, hushed lies would be spread. This place I called home was a den of judgment and cruelty for anyone who didn’t fit the mold. I had spent far too much energy reshaping our family identity to fit in with these neighborly imposters to lose it all now.

  Hadn’t I already lost enough?

  I simply couldn’t let my affair be known. No matter what. If Jay found out the truth, there would be no point surviving this because my life would be over anyways. He’d take the kids and leave me, and I’d be alone and desolate. But was keeping my secret worth my daughter’s life? There had to be a way to give just enough details to catch this guy without every incriminating speck of dirt coming out.

  Detective Cox stood at the island, leaning over the note reading it, latex gloves on his hands and a see-through evidence bag already prepped on the counter. He slid the letter into the bag and zipped it shut.

  “Well, this is good news. He’s here, still in Durham. And Amelia, as far as we know, is okay. Clearly he dropped it off, so I’ll ask around to see if any of your neighbors got a look at him. This is a big step, Jo.”

  He squeezed my shoulder as he spoke. My muscles had tensed so much over the past few days that they felt like rocks had tunneled under my skin.

  “Do you think you’ll find fingerprints or DNA?”

  His lips curled in an uncertain frown. “I doubt it. A pair of gloves and using water to seal the envelope is pretty basic knowledge to avoid leaving identifiers. But I’ll still have our forensics guys check it out. Our best bet is if anyone saw him or his car. That would help us a lot.”

  Silence lapped us before I spoke again. I knew what I was about to do was probably a huge mistake, but if it could lead us to Amelia, it was a necessary sacrifice. This moment felt like the beginning of the end for me, for my marriage, but if losing my marriage saved my daughter, so be it. I couldn’t hide anymore. The weight of lies was too heavy a burden.

  I had trouble finding the words, but I wanted to bring it up before Jay arrived. “I have something that may be connected to this.”

  “Okay …” His voice rose with suspicion.

  I pulled the letter from J out from under the pile of junk mail where I’d hidden it. “This came about a month ago.” I slid the letter across the counter to him. “It’s from a guy I knew over ten years ago.”

  As his eyes pored over it, line by line, I hoped he would leave it at that, no questions asked. How silly of me.

  “So you had an affair right before you got married? Is that what this is about?”

  How quickly he boiled down a ten-year omission.

  “No,” I lied a little too quickly. “This isn’t what happened.”

  “Then what happened?”

  My brain formulated the words as I went, and I prayed I didn’t leave any holes in my story. “I did meet a man at the bar before I got married. But we didn’t have sex. He kissed me. That was it. I don’t know why he’s making so much more out of what happened.”

  “If he only kissed you, why are you being so secretive about this? Why am I only seeing this now?”

  “I didn’t think it was related. Plus you can see how this looks—how he made it look. Please don’t tell my husband. This would be too much on top of everything else we’re going through.”

  Pursing his lips, Detective Cox gazed right through me. I could feel the skepticism drilling into me.

  “Do you remember his name, what he looked like, where the envelope was postmarked from?”

  “Only that it came from Pennsylvania. I had thrown out the envelope, so I can’t remember. Is it possible to do an inmate search to find him?”

  Detective Cox chuckled. “Do you realize how many prisons there are? And if you know nothing about him other than his name begins with a J, that’s probably half the inmate population. There’s just too many variables to narrow this down. Unless you miraculously remember his name, this won’t help us.”

  He slid the letter back toward me, then turned toward the living room.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, following him to the front door.

  “I’m going to go door to door asking neighbors if they saw anyone suspicious today. Let’s hope you have nosy neighbors.”

  Flinging open the front door, he paused mid-step and looked back at me.

  “Jo, if you’re hiding anything, you need to come clean. When we catch this guy—and we will—it will all come out anyways. Better for Jay to find out from you now than from the news later.”

  As he closed the door behind him, I was left with an unsettling feeling that maybe he was right. Which meant one thing: things were only going to get worse.

  Chapter 30

  June

  A beep beep beep gently tugged me back to earth from a peaceful place, a place I didn’t want to leave. In that place I felt carefree in my sleepy haze. In that place all was calm and quiet. In that place I had no children, no debts, no stress. In that place a sense of ease hugged me. In reality, however, my shattered bones greeted me with stabs of pain and throbbing aches … and an urgent sense of dread.

  Something horrible had happened, but I couldn’t remember what. I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten here. But the deep pulsing in my gut warned me it was bad.

  Forcing my eyelids open through the crust that sealed them shut, I found myself lying in a hospital bed with IV tubes snaking around me. Low morning sunlight broke through a sliver between thick pale pink curtains that hung over a window that took up a fourth of the room.

  A silhouette moved in the corner where the gray walls met.

  “Hey, Juney. You’re awake.” It was Mike, the only person I wanted to see and yet the one I feared most. He held the power to make me or break me, and lately he seemed to specialize in the latter.

  I reminded myself that once upon a time I had loved him deeply—personality flaws and joblessness and laziness and all. I was smitten from the moment I met him at a club where he asked me to join him on the dance floor to Blackstreet’s “No Diggity.” After enduring a broken heart from the only other person I had ever loved, I had accepted Mike’s offer, and we made musical love together that night. It was love at first song, and I was charmed by his dance moves and humor. He was the balm my shredded heart needed, though he was never quite enough. But I didn’t see that back then.

  We dove headfirst into a whirlwind romance, both of
us ignorant of who the other truly was. I interpreted his job-hopping as self-discovery; he interpreted my control-freak nature as just being super-organized. Apart we were complementary opposites; together we were madness.

  Over the years I realized he had never completed me, and perhaps I had never completed him. Only one person had made me whole, but it was a forbidden long-lost love that I buried eons ago. At least I had thought it was buried. Lately the memories clawed at me like a zombie hand reaching out of the grave.

  “How you feeling, hon?” Mike’s voice was mellow and soothing, and as he stepped closer, the red veins in his eyes told me he’d been crying. I wondered for how long.

  “Hey,” I replied, my throat coarse like I’d swallowed sand.

  “Have some water.” He lifted the straw to my lips and I sucked a small mouthful.

  “Thanks,” I said, then gulped some more. “What happened?”

  “You were in a car accident.”

  And this was when total recall slammed into me. The kids—they weren’t here. They had been in the van with me—as it dropped down the bank, rolled onto its side, slammed into the tree. No, no, no, no. I couldn’t hear what came next. But I had to know.

  “The kids—?” I asked, choking on a sob. I was afraid to finish the question. A breath caught in my throat.

  “They’re all okay,” Mike said quickly.

  I exhaled relief … and guilt. “I’m so sorry!” I began babbling, covering my face with my hands in shame. I couldn’t face Mike with the remorse of what I’d done. How could he ever forgive that I’d almost killed the kids?

  “Hey, babe, it’s okay. They’re okay,” he soothed, rubbing circles on my shoulder as I shook with forceful sobs. “Everyone’s fine. It was an accident, sweetie. The roads were slick. Don’t blame yourself.”

  But that wasn’t the truth. I knew the truth, and it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t know how to put it into words.

  “But it is my fault.”

  “Juney, stop. I know life has been rough. With Austin’s autism, and four kids and working, and me not pulling my weight—it’s too much for you to carry. I haven’t supported you, but I promise to do better from now on.”

  I touched his cheek with my hand, rubbing the scruff that I’d always found so attractive about him.

  “Honey, I don’t know how to say this …” I began. How could I tell him what I was thinking about before the accident? He’d throw me in the nuthouse for sure. Which was where I deserved to be.

  Mike placed his finger on my lips. “Shhh. Babe, you’re exhausted. That’s all that happened. You were tired and the roads were wet. You can’t fault yourself for that. But we’re all okay, and that’s what matters.”

  “You don’t understand,” I muttered between snuffles. I looked up at him, the face of the man I adored, into the caring, gentle eyes of the one person I knew accepted me. What I was about to say would change that look forever into one of fear and revulsion.

  “Mike, it wasn’t an accident.” I couldn’t meet his eyes, not with this nasty secret. I gazed down at my fingers as I fidgeted with the corner of my sheet. His disgust at the monster I’d become wasn’t something I could handle. “I did it on purpose. I tried to kill us all.”

  Chapter 31

  Shayla

  A gun shook in Arion’s tiny hands, the barrel quivering at my chest when I opened his bedroom door hours later. Amid Avenger posters and Spider-Man bedding, my ten-year-old son stood there holding a deadly weapon, a contrast to the childish action figures and Legos scattered in the background.

  After telling Trent to come home and calling the only place Arion would have escaped to, I located him at Drew’s house, the one friend he had. I’d let him process the disturbing scene he’d witnessed in his own way before coming home. I had heard Arion slip in through the back door, heard his footsteps rumble up the stairs, and I had wanted to give him time, but too much had already passed.

  Watching his finger wrap around the trigger, I had expected an angry little boy, but not a murderous one.

  “Oh my God! Arion, what the hell are you doing?” I took a step over the threshold, but my son stopped me with a single word.

  “Don’t!”

  His arms locked and his legs shifted into a firm stance. A firing stance.

  “Sweetie, that is very dangerous. Please put it down.”

  “I know it’s dangerous. I’m not stupid. That’s why I have it.”

  “Honey,” I drew the word out slowly, “where did you get that?”

  “Drew.”

  I vaguely remembered his best friend Drew, who lived down the street, bragging to Arion about going to the shooting range with his parents pre-divorce, but I was certain this wasn’t what he meant.

  “I stole it out of his mom’s bedroom.”

  “Arion, you’re scaring me. Please put it down before someone gets hurt … or killed.”

  “That’s the whole point—that’s why I took it, Mom! To hurt you!” His chubby cheeks reddened and his eyes watered. He wiped at a trickle of snot with his sleeve and clenched his jaw.

  “Is this because of what you think you saw?”

  “I know what I saw. Don’t try lying to me. You’re leaving Dad for another man.”

  “It’s not like that.” I wanted to explain, but not like this. Not with a gun pointed at me by my traumatized son.

  “I’m not stupid, Mom. I’m stopping you before you hurt Dad and ruin our family. You’re gonna tear us apart, like what happened to Drew’s family. I can’t let you do that. I’d rather be dead. I’d rather you be dead.”

  Drew’s parents’ divorce had left a hole in Arion’s social life when he suddenly became friendless every other week during the time Drew lived with his father across town. I hadn’t realized how much the change impacted my son until now.

  “Honey, no one is going anywhere. I’m going to talk to Daddy tonight and fix things. We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this together. I promise, sweetie.”

  “No more lies! You can’t promise that. No one can. Drew’s parents told him they’d fix things, and look at them. They hate each other, are always fighting. I hear it every time I’m there.”

  “We’re not the same as Drew’s parents. It’s not fair to compare us to them.”

  “Tell me what’s fair, Mom. Is it fair that I have no friends at school? That I’m constantly made fun of? And now I don’t even have a family anymore. That was the one good thing I had, and you’re ripping it away from us.”

  “Arion …” I tried to soothe, but he only grew louder.

  “You’re so selfish. I hate you!”

  His rage blocked my assurances. I couldn’t get through to him. His heart was unreachable.

  “Please, give me a chance to make things right.”

  “You can’t fix this! Don’t you see that? Dad will be crushed. I hate what you’ve done to us. We’ll never be okay, Mom. I’ll never be okay. Drew’s gone half the time, I have no one, nothing I’m good at, and … and … there’s no point to living.”

  Tears rolled down his face, dripping to the carpet below. His arms shook violently, then with a split-second glance at me, he turned the gun on himself, bent his finger, and a deafening shot echoed along with my blood-curdling scream as I reached him too late.

  Chapter 32

  Jo

  I sensed it was coming. Another letter. Another clue. But this time I would be ready for him.

  After asking every neighbor up and down Oleander Way if they had seen anyone suspicious, or noticed an unfamiliar car, Detective Cox returned to my doorstep empty-handed. No one had noticed anything, which put us back at square one, no closer to finding Amelia’s kidnapper than the day before.

  “But we have information now,” the detective tried to encourage me before he left. “We know he’s got an agenda, we know Amelia is alive, and we know he’s still here in town. He’s going to reach out again. We just need to be prepared for it.”

  That’s when Jay had gon
e out to Best Buy to shop for security cameras to place around the exterior of the house. The best that money could buy, I instructed him. If this bastard was coming back, which the detective seemed assured of, we’d catch him on camera in the highest digital clarity they sold.

  I glanced out the window for the umpteenth time while a pot of water boiled for that evening’s spaghetti dinner. I had settled on jarred marinara because the kids preferred it to my homemade sauce anyways, and I felt too wired to peel tomatoes all afternoon. Funny how children enjoyed the blandness of an assembly-line recipe over the painstakingly combined flavors of my culinary flair. Normally it would have irritated me, but today it simplified my life a little as I emptied the jar into a pan to simmer.

  A semblance of normal had returned little by little with each passing day. It wasn’t any easier to drag myself out of bed each morning as my hope dimmed with the rising sun. But I had no other choice but to adjust or mope in my bedroom, and Jay had made it clear that moping was taken off the table. So I forced myself along, doing my best to busy my hands with cooking or cleaning or making rounds posting more flyers.

  Shayla had even gotten creative with the search by sponsoring an ad on social media with a picture of Amelia and a bold Have you seen me? heading. Along with the police’s original Amber Alert, her cherubic face was spreading like wildfire after a drought. Eventually someone would see her, I kept telling myself. Her abductor would slip up, and the world would be watching.

  It had been my fourth trip to the window in the past thirty minutes, when something drew my attention. A car across the street from my house. A black sedan. Possibly an Oldsmobile, though I didn’t have a good enough angle to know for sure. Old and beat up, with tinted windows in the back. The car had been there for too long, at least twenty minutes.

  The driver was definitely a man and appeared to be middle-aged, like Abby had described. Wearing sunglasses, I couldn’t get a good look at his face, but as I watched him sit there, unmoving, his eyes scanning the street for several more minutes, I sensed something was off about him.