Page 26 of Count My Lies

“What, dick pics?” I shake my head. “No. Very much not a myth. I can show you if you want…” I start to reach for my purse.

“No!” Violet squeals, giggling. “No, I believe you. Please don’t!”

I laugh. “Okay, I won’t. But what about before Jay? You must have had a million boyfriends in high school.”

Violet is a prom queen. A cheer captain. I can see her now, younger, in low-slung jeans and a crop top, surrounded by the other popular kids, the boys elbowing each other to get closer to her, to be the one to carry her backpack home. I was, by contrast—as Taylor Swift puts it—on the bleachers, watching girls just like Violet, wishing someone would look at me like they looked at them.

Violet’s smile dims, but doesn’t go out, not entirely. “Not really.” She shrugs. “I pretty much spent my whole life—before Jay, I mean—in love with this one boy. I went on a few dates with other guys, thinking I might get over him, but it never worked.” She lets out a little laugh, like how silly she’d been to believe that could happen.

“What was his name?” I take a sip of my coffee, settle back into my chair. There’s nothing I don’t want to know about Violet, but Iespecially love hearing about her childhood, what she was like as a teenager.

She hesitates, then says, “Danny. We were best friends growing up. We were inseparable, did everything together. Everyone thought we’d get married. So did I.” She smiles, amused at her younger self. “He had the biggest heart. And he was beautiful. A beautiful boy who grew up into a beautiful man. Messy golden curls. Gorgeous brown eyes.” She stares into the distance as if she’s remembering. “And he has this little scar, right at the tip of his eyebrow.” Violet touches the spot on her own face.

“We were sixteen when he kissed me for the first time. And when he did…” Violet trails off. I lean in, my breath hitching. She sees me, laughs. Then she sighs, her eyes softening again. “It was like I’d been waiting my entire life for that one moment.”

I can see it, feel it, like it was my heart pounding as his lips brushed against mine. The whole world splitting wide open.

“What happened?” I ask, when she doesn’t continue. I’m on the edge of my seat.

“We lost touch, after I went away to college. And then I met Jay.” She shrugs, as if that was the end of her love story. Or the beginning. I can’t quite tell. “Anyway,” she says, smiling. “My point is, no, I didn’t have a million boyfriends in high school.”

Then she glances at the clock on the wall, frowns. “Harper should be home by now. I wonder what’s taking them so long,” she says. “The school’s like ten blocks away, but it usually doesn’t take more than twenty minutes. Mockingbird Montessori. Maybe you know it.”

The smile drops from my lips. Suddenly, the kitchen walls seem to close in, the room shrinking. I feel the color drain from my face as a wave of nausea rolls through me, my limbs losing feeling.Did she say—

“Mockingbird?” I repeat weakly. My voice sounds watery, warbled, like there’s something in my mouth.

Violet turns. “You know it?”

I swallow the acid at the back of my throat. I wonder if I might throw up. How had I not known that Harper goes to Mockingbird? Of course she does; it’s the best preschool in Brooklyn, where everyone who’s anyone sends their child.

I nod, my head bobbing dumbly. “I used to nanny for one of the families who went there.” It’s the truth, but not the whole truth. Even still, I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth. It’s more than I want her to know.

“Oh, that’s funny. What family?” She cocks her head.

I force my lips into a smile, trying to look nonchalant. “Oh, they moved. To Connecticut, I think.” I purposefully don’t answer her question. “It was ages ago.”

This is, of course, a lie. I’d nannied for them as recently as eighteen months ago. Before I became her nanny, Ellie McIntyre was in my morning class at Mockingbird. It wasn’t uncommon for the teachers to babysit the kids on the weekends for extra money. We all did it. The families were well-off, and they paid decently, at least twenty-five an hour, thirty or more for two kids, which was as much as we made in our teaching positions.

Ellie’s mom is Allison. Allison McIntyre. She’s the reason why I don’t nanny anymore, why I’m not a preschool teacher, why I had to work in a place where no one bothered to check my references. She’s the one who filed the restraining order. The one who walked into the spa and acted like she feared for her life. Even though it was my life that had crumbled.

She had two kids, both with red hair, just like hers. Ellie, who wasfour when we met, and Benji, who was seven. Her husband traveled during the week, and she needed help in the afternoons, when school got out and she wasn’t done with work. At first, it was just once in a while, on days when she had off-site meetings, a Friday or Saturday night here and there, but soon it became more regular—Monday afternoons when Allison had to go into Manhattan and couldn’t get home until after seven, then Wednesdays and Thursdays. Then weekends, too, until I was there more often than not, until it was like I was part of their family. Until I wasn’t.

Ellie is probably still enrolled at Mockingbird. She’s older than Harper, so they wouldn’t be in the same class, but they might play together on the blacktop, on the playground. Violet and Allison likely have seen each other during drop-off or pickup; maybe they even say hello to each other or chat as they’re waiting for the kids to come out. The thought of this turns my stomach.

I can’t tell Violet her name because if she happened to tell Allison about me, this would all be ruined. Allison’s eyes would harden; her face would grow stony. She’d tell Violet things about me that aren’t true—at least, not wholly. Don’t think I don’t see the irony in that.

Then I remember that Violet thinks my name is Caitlin, and for once, I’m thankful I’m a liar, and not ashamed like I usually am.

“Are you okay?” Violet asks.

I make myself nod; I can’t get any words out.

Just then, the doorbell chimes. “Oh! That must be Harp,” Violet says.

As soon as Violet leaves the kitchen, I drop my head into my hands. I’m sure I was talked about after I left, by the teachers, the students, the parents. It’s a close-knit community, which is one of the reasons I loved working there so much: if a child or teacher got sick, even justwith a cold, everyone would sign a handmade get-well card; if there was a family emergency, a group of moms would send their au pairs over with ready-made meals. There were flowers on Teacher Appreciation Day and delicately iced cupcakes on birthdays. But there were whispers, too, when a student’s parents were getting divorced or when one of the dads was charged with insider trading, so I know there were whispers about me. How loud, I don’t know. I don’t know if the gossip lingered in the air, in the corners of the classrooms, in the mouths of the parents as they walked their children in and out of the school.

If I’d kept in touch with anyone, I could have asked, but I haven’t. I haven’t spoken to any of the other teachers since I left. It was a small staff, twelve of us, but only one of them reached out to me after I’d been let go. Her name was Rachel, one of the teachers in the five-year-old class who I often ate lunch with. She called, but I didn’t answer. I was too embarrassed. A few weeks later, when the loneliness seeped in, I tried to call her back, but this time, she was the one who didn’t pick up. I left a voicemail asking if she wanted to get lunch, then sent a text, but there was never any response. I tried another few teachers over the following months, but no one returned my calls. Not one parent reached out to me, either, not even the ones who had sent gift baskets at the end of the school year or the ones who hugged me tearfully when their child graduated from my class to the next. I’d become infected; no one wanted to catch it.

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