She shakes her head, trying to deny it, but her mouth opens, and she lacks the will to defend herself. She knows it’s true. My mother orchestrated a very long, elaborate scheme to make sure my father paid for his sins, that he never forgot them.
“Take a long hard look at me, mother!” It’s my own chest I’m beating now. “I am all the family you have. Those are your words! I only use your words. Do you remember that rule? Because I sure as hell do.”
I push past my mother and that pathetic look on her face, past Kam and her superficial version of me, past my father and the genuine hurt, the genuine ache in his eyes that says I love you, I forgive you, as I barrel out the door.
I’ve become a master at reading expressions, the eyes in particular. It’s where the truth lives. Only the lips truly know how to lie.
Caleb meets me in his driveway, and I jump into the passenger’s seat.
We head down the mountain to my glory, to my doom. I’m not sure which will prevail.
I never know what my lying lips will say next.
My father’s face comes back to me, and the truth foams in the back of my throat like vomit.
My mother didn’t give me any words this time.
I might just be speechless.
Caleb
Isawa car in the driveway. A Bentley. I knew something was afoot because Chuck is out of town this week. Kennedy crawled out of bed around three, and I haven’t slept a wink ever since. There were so many ways I could have gone about it last night, and I chose to fuck things up, literally. In my defense, I have never been so thrown off base. Not even Solomon, in all his inglorious splendor, shocked me to the bone like Kennedy’s non-admission did. She didn’t even try to plead her innocence. There wasn’t an ounce of confusion on her face when I told her Keith passed with flying colors. There was something foreboding lingering in the air between us long before we ever got to that point, though. I’m hoping Kennedy hasn’t soured on the idea of there being an us. I rather like the way she tastes, the way she feels when she’s wrapped around my body, the way she challenges me, but, then, I’ve always liked that about her.
Of course, I could never have foreseen the ways she would challenge me, the manner in which she would stretch that innocent ideal.
“Who was at the house?” I ask, trying to play it off casually as we head down the mountain.
“My father.” It comes from her catatonic. “My sister.”
I swallow hard. She mentioned they haven’t spoken in years, and I saw with my own eyes how she stormed out of the house. I heard the shouting long before she flew out the door. Hell, if she didn’t come out, I was about to go in.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She keeps her gaze set ahead. She’s staring through the road into some sad part of her psyche that she rarely visits. I should know, I’ve been to that same place quite a bit lately.
I had my own family shake up call this morning. My phone buzzed at six a.m. on the button. It was a text from Abel. Solomon’s trial is nearing the end. I’m familiar with the process. It’s pretty much a downhill slide from here. Each side gives their closing arguments. The jury can sentence my brother to a horrible existence in just a matter of days.
Acid bites through my stomach. It’s as if a trapdoor opened up, and Kennedy and I both fell through. Somehow this innocent labyrinth of lies has caught up to us, each in its own way.
We get to the office and take the long elevator ride up. Kennedy is somber, her face flooding with grief, with frown lines, bags under her eyes an inch in diameter. She made provisions to dress well, her makeup is flawless, but her spirit is still back on that mountain. Today is a shit day to have a polygraph. Her father knew it was happening. Why throw her off her game? Is he that vindictive that he wants his own daughter to fall on the sword?
The doors to the elevator glide open, and I block the exit, pulling Kennedy close to me until her eyes are forced to look into mine.
“You don’t have to do this.” I wipe the lone tear from her cheek with my thumb. Kennedy is stone-faced, angry. She’s in no shape to spit forth information in the name of the truth. Not that I wanted her taking it in the first place, not that for a minute I thought she wouldn’t be telling the truth.
“I can, and I will.” Kennedy glides past me, past Zoey, and takes a seat in my office.
I bypass the elderly John Harwood, interpreter of the mysterious “computerized” polygraph and try not to show my disdain.Thisman, thisgrandfatherwho is in the latent years of his life is what’s going to cause the undoing of the woman I love? It feels like one horrible demise after another has come over us both.
It doesn’t take long for him to set up his equipment, the square box that looks like some discarded record player, something more dated than that, a phonograph with the horn of plenty curling out the back. This archaic action has no place in a very modern world. This is old school barbarism coming into play in my twenty-first century office with its framed Jackson Pollock print in bold hues of mustards and reds, its otherwise monochromatic stainless appeal that screams we are in the future, and John Harwood should pack up his equipment and head for the nearest steam engine to transport him back to the 1900’s.
A dull grin comes and goes as Kennedy willfully allows herself to be bomb-strapped to his mortal devices. Here I’ve never wanted to save a client more, and, yet, Kennedy is about to voluntarily skip through a minefield. It’s like watching her set fire to the building and sitting herself in the middle of the flames.
One by one he asks her questions, and, one by one, Kennedy offers a slow, methodical response. Her eyes are set straight ahead at the wood overlaid plaque that bears my law degree. Kennedy focuses in on that as if she were speaking to it directly, as if it held the power to speak back. Mr. Harwood is unflinching, all business as he checks off the list of minutiae. When it’s over, he offers her a grandfatherly nod, unhooks her with a few simple tugs and is out of our life in minutes.
“It’s done.” She leans back, her gaze still trained on the plaque. “We’ll know soon enough how I did.” She gives the shutter-like blink of a doll. “And then what?”
“If you’re innocent we flip the ball back in their court.”
