Page 50 of Count My Lies

“Mom!” Harper is yelling from her room. “Mom, I can’t find my shoes!”

I glance back at my closet. I finished packing last night—almost. I have a few more things to zip into my suitcase, but I want to wait until right before we leave.

“Coming!” I call.

I’m still in Harper’s room, helping her comb through her closet, when the doorbell rings. Sloane’s here. I check my watch.Right on time.

“Can you get that?” I yell down to Jay. A moment later I hear the door open and shut, Sloane’s voice in the foyer.

“I’m going to go say hi to Caitlin,” I say to Harper. “Keep looking for your shoes, baby, okay?”

I clomp loudly down the stairs, but Sloane barely notices me. She’s leaning against the closed front door, gazing at Jay, her cheeks flushed as he makes a joke, something about how many suitcases are piled at the foot of the staircase. Sloane’s in a pair of my jeans, a light, high-waisted pair that makes her hips look tiny, and the ivory camisole I told her was Jay’s favorite, her hair glossy, eyes bright.

This is the first time Jay’s seen her since her haircut and new clothes. By the way he’s looking at her, his eyes lingering, it’s clear he appreciates the transformation. He’s probably imagining her ass up, bent over the edge of a bed—his favorite position.

“Morning, Caitlin!” I say loudly, stopping a few steps from the bottom. Both Jay and Sloane turn toward me abruptly.

Sloane blinks at me for a minute as if she doesn’t recognize me. Then she smiles. “Morning,” she says brightly. “Can I help with anything?”

I gesture around wildly. “All of it!” I say, giving a little laugh. “But mainly, can you help me find Harper’s shoes? I’ve lookedeverywhere.”

“I just saw them…” Jay looks around, then points to a pair of Harper’s shoes near the couch. “There they are.”

I peer over the banister, shaking my head when I spot her white lace-up sneakers. “No, not those, herredshoes. The jellies. She refuses to come out of her room until she has them.”

“I’m on it,” Sloane says, dropping her bags by the rest of the luggage.

I put my hands together, pantomiming a prayer. “Thank you. I just have a few more things to pack up. And could you make sure Harper pees before we go?”

She nods and I run back up the stairs.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jay calls after me. “The car will be here in fifteen minutes. We’ll miss the ferry if we don’t leave by nine thirty.”

“Mm-hm.” I make a noise to signal I’ve heard him. As if there would be anything that would keep me from getting on that boat.

I go back into my bedroom, locking the door behind me. There are a few things I need in the closet. First, the burner phone I’ve stashed in a shoebox, a cheap Nokia that I bought a few months ago from a dusty electronics store in midtown, paid for in cash, preloaded with minutes. And second, the gun. My mother, before we stopped speaking, insisted on giving it to me as I packed for New York. Despite her outwardly liberal art-loving persona, her closeted conservative values often peeked through the cracks, their rays shining brightly. She spouted crime statistics, citing surges in burglaries and home robberies throughout the city. I’d rolled my eyes—San Francisco had some of the fastest-rising crime rates in the country—but agreed to take it. We store it in a lockbox on a high shelf in our closet, the key hidden separately, on another shelf, out of reach of Harper. The gun is registered in both Jay’s and my name.

When I’ve packed the gun, I take the phone into the bathroom and lock the door. I turn on both faucets, sit down on the closed toilet seat lid, then click on the only number I have saved.

He picks up after the first ring. His voice is deep, cooling, like a balm. It always has been.

“Hi,” I say softly. I tell him that we’re packed, almost ready to go, that I can’t wait to see him again. “Soon,” I say, then ask if he’s ready. He says that he is and I smile, even though he can’t see me.

Ten minutes later, I open my bedroom door at the same time that Sloane and Harper are coming out of the bathroom, Harper in the red jellies I buried under a pile of stuffed animals so I’d have something for Sloane to do while I packed.

“You guys ready?” I ask.

They both nod. “You?” Sloane says, her voice slightly higher than its normal pitch. She doesn’t want to ask outright, but she can’t imagine I’m planning to leave the house like this, like I just rolled out of bed. So unlike the Violet she thinks she knows.

I hadn’t been lying when, on one of our first walks together, I told her how much time I spend on my appearance. It’s been a habit for as long as I can remember. I was a gawky kid, big-eared, big-toothed, big-nosed. Eventually, I grew into my features, but during those long, painfully awkward years, my mother would stand behind me in the mirror, a curling iron in one hand, a brow brush in the other. “It’s important,” she would say as she smoothed and styled, tugging at my hair until tears pricked my eyes, “the effort you put in.” The implication—if you don’t care how you look, no one will care about you—has been reinforced a million times over in the course of my life. Now, I hope that it’s true. Already, I feel lighter.

“Yup, ready!” I say. “Let’s go!”

Sloane does a good job of hiding her surprise, smiling pleasantly. The three of us traipse down the stairs, Sloane, then Harper, then me. The front door is open, everyone’s suitcases but mine already down on the sidewalk. I keep my hand tightly gripped around my bag’s handle.

Jay is standing next to a black town car, staring at his phone. “Come on,” he calls, opening the back door. “Everyone in!” Harper and Sloane start toward the car.

“Wait!” I call and everyone turns. “Let’s take a picture! Do you mind, sir?” I ask the driver.

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