Page 46 of What the Wife Knew

Unfortunately, yes. “Hi, Mom.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Her

Present Day

Detective Sessions looked the exact opposite of cocky now. His mouth had drawn into a tight, thin line. His swagger was long gone.

He’d closed the door on Mom, trapping her inside the suffocating space, and ushered Elias and me into the windowless room next door. Detective Sessions barely waited until we sat down before launching into the jumble of thoughts in his head. “There’s no way that woman is your mother. She’s far too young. I might believe sister but not mother.”

The groan escaped before I could stop it. “Please don’t say that to her.”

The detective kept frowning. “You’re almost the same age.”

He thought she’d told the truth about her age. Adorable. He better up his game or Mom would have him running in circles. That might be interesting to watch if it didn’t mean I also had to deal with her.

No matter how good Mom looked, she was never as young as she claimed to be. She hadn’t lived an easy life but none of the strife or deceit showed on her face. She hid her underlying deviousness and murky morality behind big brown eyes and a bodytoned from years of dancing. Pretty with a bright smile and killer legs, she could pass for far younger. And she did. All the time.

The detective opened a file in front of him. He’d probably been carrying it earlier, but I’d missed it until now. “I’ve seen her driver’s license and the birth date on it makes her thirty-nine. You’re twenty-seven. You’re saying she gave birth to you when she was twelve?”

“It sounds like Momaccidentallywrote the wrong birth date down. Again.” She’d been knocking off time every birthday over the last decade. In another few years Mom would claim to be younger than I was and have the fake documents to prove it.

“You’re saying she lied when she got her license?”

I almost felt sorry for the detective for moving into Lizzy’s orbit.

“I’m betting she’ll be stunned—positively shocked—that the wrong birth date is on there.” More like stunned she got caught. “Then she’ll explain that some sort of operator or computer error must have caused the problem and she missed it.”

She loved to mess with people. She got off on being noticed and hit her stride whenever anyone praised her hotness. She reeled men in and played flirty games until they showered her with gifts and money.

She wasn’t a grifter. She was more of a serial girlfriend and sometime wife who lavished attention on the men she targeted to get what she wanted in return. Dating was nothing more to her than an acceptable way to obtain goods—meals, televisions, apartments, checks—in exchange for sex.

I judged her for many things but not that. People were too precious about sex. She recognized it as a persuasive tool and used it. She knew her talents and capitalized on them, which Iadmired. If a man had done the same thing he’d be viewed as a player. Why should Mom be held to a different standard? She insisted on being paid. What other people saw as relationships, she saw as work, and she’d been working hard for a long time.

“My mom was sixteen when she had me. She’s forty-three now, though she tries to get away with saying thirty-five. If she used a date that made her thirty-nine, that actually shows emotional growth on her part.” More likely, she’d lied about her age so often that she forgot what it actually was.

Elias held up both hands, which strangely enough stopped the whirl of conversation. “Let’s start over.”

The detective read from the file. “Her name is Elizabeth Jenkins.”

“She goes by Lizzy.”

“What about the Jenkins part?” Elias asked.

A fair question since Mom and I didn’t share the same last name. She borrowed mine, the one I had before my marriage to Richmond—Lance—years ago from a male friend. The name on my birth certificate was one she’d made up and abandoned before I was in elementary school. “Jenkins comes from husband number four.”

“She really does have more than one dead former husband?” Elias sounded fascinated by the idea.

I knew Richmond had tried to investigate my past to use it against me. Little did he know, the clueless bastard. He didn’t get far because I’d lived in a patchwork of places and spent years trying not to create a paper trail.

My mom found me anyway.

“One husband was killed as part of a botched robbery when I was ten.” That was a mom-created story and I never strayedfrom it. “Another died of a heart attack during sex with Mom. I was a teenager when that horror happened. One died after they split up. A car accident that my mom is convinced was staged by the guy’s kids from his first wife in order to get his money. The last one, Arthur Jenkins, is very much alive, or he was a few weeks ago.”

Elias nodded. “Which one is your father?”

I fought to keep my tone even. “None of them.”

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