Page 23 of Married With Lies

“What are you doing?” she demands after three seconds.

“Just give me a minute.”

She has nothing security locked, which is irritating, but right now it makes my task easier. Her screen wallpaper is the face of a grinning cartoon dog. After installing an app, I locate the information I need and send it to myself.

Then I hold her phone out and she snatches it from my hand. She examines it for possible damage as I get to work.

Sadie’s phone dings with an incoming message. “What’s this? Did you do this?”

“Call it an engagement gift.”

“It’s ten grand in bitcoin. What is bitcoin exactly?”

“That would take a while to explain. But the money is real. And it’s just a drop in the bucket. Think of how many animals you can save with unlimited resources at your disposal.”

Sadie’s face twists into a grimace. “No fair.”

“Sleep on it.” I put the car in drive and start rolling back to the road. “You can keep the ten grand either way.”

She keeps staring at me while I drive the few miles back to the Wingate estate. “How long would this whole arrangement need to last?”

I truly don’t have an answer for that. Long enough to get my brother’s future secure and keep Richie at arm’s length while I figure it all out. “Maybe a year.”

“Hmmph,” she says and I can’t tell it’s a positive sound or a negative one.

“One more thing,” I say.

She turns and gazes at me with a high degree of wariness.

“If we go through with this, you’ll need to be faithful. That means no flings, not even ones you think I’ll never find out about. I won’t be seen as a fool. You can lie to other people all you want. But you cannot lie to me.”

Over at the Wingate house, other guests are starting to stream out of the party. I ignore all the agitated hand waving from the valets and glide to a halt in the middle of the massive circular driveway. Sadie already has her hand on the door handle.

“My cell number has been added to your phone,” I say. “So I’ll just wait to hear from you tomorrow.”

She scoffs with a roll of her eyes. “You sound so sure of yourself.”

“With good reason.”

Sadie jumps out and scampers toward the front door as people stagger around, shivering and halfway drunk.

I keep my eyes on her until she disappears.

I wonder how long it will take for her to realize she’s still wearing my jacket.

6

SADIE

Fantasies about my mother don’t take up as much headspace as they used to when I was a kid, but sometimes they still hit me out nowhere.

Like when I wake up on Christmas morning after fretting through the night in my childhood bedroom. The morning light grows brighter as I watch, unwilling to exit the warmth of this bed and face the complicated day. I wonder if we’d be having Christmas together if she hadn’t died so long ago.

I’ve been told my parents’ marriage wasn’t a happy one. Knowing my father, this isn’t hard to believe. It’s doubtful they would have stayed together. But her fate was sealed following a cocktail luncheon with a friend. She climbed into the passenger seat of the car being driven by that friend. Shortly after, the car careened into a light pole. The friend was badly injured but lived. My mother died on impact.

She wasn’t really a hands on type of parent. She had her social clubs and mostly left me in the care of hired help. But she also arranged to have a petting zoo at my birthday party because she knew how much I loved animals. She hugged me sometimes. She thought enough about my future to arrange for a trust fund that would end up being my ticket to freedom.

If she’d lived she probably would have taken me with her once her marriage to my father disintegrated. I would have grown up elsewhere, perhaps nowhere near here. I might not have even been aware of my brother’s friend, the boy next door.

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