Page 68 of Count My Lies

His footsteps are heavy on the stairs. I hear the front door open and the bang of the screen, then the car starting, the squeal of tires as he peels out.

Then there is quiet again. He’s gone. There’s only the sound of my breathing and the ticking of the clock on the wall, the steady rhythm like a metronome. I walk back into the bathroom, punch in the code to the safe for the last time.

I take out two things, the gun and the divorce papers, the ones my lawyer drafted before we left.

My trust, since it was set up before we were married, is not considered marital property; if we divorce, Jay is not entitled to it. I’d likely owe him alimony from the income I earn from it, but the trust itself would remain in my name. The only way the money would be his is if something happens to me; he’s the primary beneficiary on our life insurance policy—as long as we are married at the time of my death. If we divorce, however, it all goes to Harper. It’s very much in Jay’s best interest that we remain together. It will be clear to anyone: these divorce papers would make him very, very mad.

I imagine the surprise that will register when he learns about them; perhaps it will mirror my own when I learned that our marriage, like my mother and father’s, had been a sham from the start.

I was heartbroken when we moved to New York, grieving the loss of my parents. I had been the one to sever ties, yes, but it hurt, a deep, throbbing ache in my bones. I felt like an orphan.

I told myself that it didn’t matter because I had Jay. He’d fallen in love with me before he’d known about the money. He cared about me for me. And when I finally told him the amount, after he proposed, three years after we’d started dating, he kissed me and said it didn’t change anything. That he wanted to be self-made, earn his own money. He might need an initial investment, but after that, he’d be on his way.

He’d sounded so earnest. I believed him. Even as he flitted from job to job, always quitting after a few months, hopping from one new venture to the next. I was happy to support him, happy to seed his start-ups, to write checks with strings of zeros; I thought he was brilliant.

And then I found out he’d known about the money all along. He’d been on the phone with his sister one night, shortly after we’d moved into the brownstone, a few whiskeys in. Their dad had had a health scare; they weren’t sure if he was going to make it through the night. I was upstairs with Harper, he in the living room, but his voice carried and I heard his side of the conversation clearly. His sister must have said something about their father’s will because Jay snorted. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, “Violet’s mom only got a vacation shack when her grandmother died. And that was after they petitioned a judge.”

I’d stiffened.What?How did he know they’d petitioned a judge? I hadn’t known that, so how did he?

Sheepishly, later, he admitted that he’d heard my parents discussing the division of my grandmother’s assets at the funeral, in hushed, angry tones. “All of it?” my dad had said. “To Violet?” Then, “The house isn’t worth a tenth of that.” And, “Yes, we’ll contest it, see if it holds up in court.” It had, of course.

I sat down on our bed, my legs buckling. Jay had known about the money since the beginning. He swore it made no difference, kneltdown and looked me in the eyes. But it made a difference to me. How could it not? How could I not question everything?

New York was supposed to be our fresh start. Jay’s big break. I wanted it so desperately to be. For us, for him. And we were already here, my family already lost. So I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. The chance for him to prove himself, finally. “This is it,” he said, “you’ll see.” With him still kneeling in front of me, I nodded. “Okay, I believe you,” I said, for the ten thousandth time, about the ten thousandth thing.

This won’t be a surprise to anyone: it wasn’t the business opportunity he promised it was. It quickly became clear that “online gaming start-up” was a euphemism for a slapdash gambling site; he’d joined a group of midlevel investors who thought they’d cash in on the recent online frenzy, though none of them had any expertise in the field whatsoever. The hours Jay was holed up in his office were hours spent in virtual poker rooms—for market research, as he put it. The truth: like always, he was giving into whatever impulse struck his fancy. Today, gambling; yesterday, a line of coke in the bathroom, sex with a stranger at a party. Jay only thought about himself, did what felt good, looked good. After three months in New York, he came to me for another check; nothing had changed.

He, like my parents, would never be able to separate his love for me from his love for my money. It was a crushing realization, to say the least. I hope, when this is all over, he is similarly crushed, his heart smashed to smithereens under the weight.

I place the divorce papers on the dresser and take the gun back into the bathroom. Then I wait.

A minute or two passes, then the front door opens and closes again. I hold my breath.

“Violet?” I hear Sloane call out.

I cock the gun, let out the air in my lungs.

Sloane’s footsteps are on the stairs, then in the hall. I clear my throat. “In here,” I call out. My voice echoes off the bathroom’s tiled walls. It’s reedy, thin. The jugular vein in my neck throbs.

I hear her open the bedroom door, then the knob to the bathroom door turns. My back is to her. I’m facing the vanity counter, my head hung.

“Violet?” Sloane says again, almost a whisper this time. “Are you okay?”

I open my eyes and look up. I see Sloane’s face in the mirror behind me. The face that now looks so much like my own. Our eyes meet. For a moment, neither of us moves, both staring at the other’s reflection. I breathe out steadily. Then I turn to face her.

“No, I’m not,” I say. “Okay, I mean.” My heart is a drum in my chest. “I haven’t been okay for a long time.”

Sloane’s brow crinkles with concern, her face softening. “I’m sorry,” she says tenderly. “Is there anything I can—”

Then she stops, her eyes landing on my right hand, dangling by my side. She sees the gun. Her jaw goes slack, color draining from her face.

When she looks from the gun to me, her eyes are wide, pupils so big and black they look like inkwells. I stare back at her. It’s like looking into a carnival fun-house mirror. A warped, almost-true version of myself.

I see her swallow. “Is this about Jay?” she asks, her voice wobbly, tiny.

I nod.

Sloane’s eyes flutter closed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It just happened. I never meant to hurt you!”

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