Truth Be Told Page 13

  “Well, I’m angry at her, too. For what she did to my mother, and for what she’s doing with that podcast, making me all confused about what happened to Dad.”

  Ellen looked up sharply. “What do you mean, making you confused?”

  I shook my head, refusing to elaborate. “She’s manipulating the story, telling half-truths.”

  “Speaking of,” Ellen said, sipping her wine carefully. “What did you tell the boyfriend?”

  “Nice segue,” I said sardonically. “I did just what you suggested. I told him that your mother had died.”

  Ellen made a face. “I was just talking, hon. I hadn’t really thought it through. Someday you and Caleb will want to get married—”

  “Maybe. Not everyone needs a piece of paper to legitimize their relationship.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes. “Allow me to rephrase: if, in the future, you and your Kiwi honey decide that the aforementioned ‘piece of paper’ is useful in achieving legal immigration status, you two might want to get married. And what then? Are you going to keep my mother from him forever? That will break her heart.”

  I dropped my head on the bar, my forehead bouncing against the liquor-slicked wood. “Ellen, I don’t know. I’m doing my best, all right?”

  “Sit up. I’m just trying to help.”

  I righted myself with a sigh. “I need to tell Caleb the truth. I know that. But I’ve made such a mess of everything. He’ll never forgive me.”

  “He will,” Ellen said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. “He loves you.”

  “He loves the lie I told him about myself.”

  “He loves you,” she insisted. “Remember when Peter and I visited you two in New Zealand? The way he looked at you, Josie . . . that man is smitten.”

  I grimaced. “Let’s see for how much longer.”

  “You and your negativity. On the way to pick you up the other day, I listened to this podcast—not that podcast, obviously, an inspirational one, and—” Ellen cut herself off to glance down at her phone buzzing its way across the scratched bar. Peter’s face filled the screen, and she frowned, waiting the call out without answering. “I told him I was going to be with you and not to bother me. He must’ve forgotten. Where was I? Right—”

  Her phone interrupted us with a sharp buzz, heralding the arrival of a text message. Together, we glanced down to see Peter beckoning Ellen back to the hotel for some undefined parenting emergency with more exclamation marks than I would have thought suitable for a man of his station.

  “What kind of parenting emergency can Peter possibly need you for? You’re basically the same age as his daughters. Do they really obey you?”

  “Whether or not they obey me is irrelevant. They respect my opinion. I’m much cooler than Peter. Anyway, I’m sure it has something to do with Isabelle and that boyfriend of hers. That loser has been a constant source of distress.” Ellen slid off her barstool and looked at me expectantly. “I am sorry, though. Come on, we can try again later tonight. I’ll buy.”

  I shook my head and wrapped my hands around my drink. “I’m not ready to go home yet. I might just stay here for a little while longer.”

  Ellen pulled a face. “Don’t be that woman drinking alone in a bar, Josie. That’s just sad.”

  “I won’t stay long,” I promised. “I’ll just finish this drink, and then I’ll walk home. It’ll be good for me.”

  Ellen hesitated but her phone buzzed again, and she frowned and kissed me goodbye. I was left sitting alone at the bar, something I hadn’t done in years. It used to be a standard part of any given evening, back when I was in my early twenties and still wandering. Sipping liquid courage, I would flirt with the bartender, half hoping someone would approach me, half terrified someone would.

  Someone always did. I would occasionally attract other single female travelers, desperate for an ally, but mostly I got young men, usually fellow Americans who had mistaken my dark hair for something more exotic than Illinoisan. They would strike up a conversation, usually Where are you from, the traveler’s version of What’s your sign, and if I liked him or if his midwestern twang made me feel nostalgic, I might follow him back to his hostel to meet his friends or listen to a CD of his mediocre garage band. In time, these guys began to seem interchangeable, and there was a comforting familiarity to my interactions with them.

  But there was nothing comforting about sitting alone at the bar in Elm Park. At least half of the other patrons were looking at me—some openly staring, some sneaking what they thought were stealthy glances over mugs of beer. I could almost hear them whispering to each other. That’s Josie Buhrman. You remember, her father was murdered and her mother was crazy? And her sister? That hell-raiser? And there’s that podcast, you know the one. Just look at her. What did she do, cut that hair with a hacksaw? What a mess. Guess it runs in the family.

  My cheeks flaming with embarrassment, I ducked my head and glared into my drink. I hated that my short hair allowed those vultures a clear view of my reddening neck. I had lowered my head nearly down onto the bar when I felt the uneasy sensation of all eyes lifting off me at once. I braved glancing up to see what had captured their collective interest.

  Adam.

  Last Call’s dim lighting softened and blurred the lines of his face, and for a second he looked eighteen again. My heart instinctually and traitorously clutched, but then the neon light of a beer sign reflected off his wedding band and brought me back to reality. He glanced around the bar, and our eyes locked. The spot on my left hip, where I had drunkenly had his name poorly tattooed by a Flemish-speaking tattoo “artist” in the back room of a bar in Brussels—and later covered with an elaborate floral design by a more reputable, actual artist in Athens—burned. Reflexively, I placed my hand on my hip, as though Adam could see through the clothing and the expensive cover-up job and read his name on my body. He didn’t deserve to know I had once been so heartsick over him. I was no longer that girl, and he was no longer the boy I had once loved.

  • • •

  I met Adam Ives on my first day at Elm Park High School. I had been both immensely excited and blindingly terrified about transferring to public school. Nearly everything I knew about public school I had learned from television; Ellen had filled in the gaps with her own dogma. Aunt A had chastised Ellen for putting “conformist ideas about beauty and classist notions of popularity” into our heads, but the damage (as it was) had already been done. I knew other students were people to fear, and to impress, even though I didn’t understand why or how they would humiliate me.

  “Break a leg.” Ellen smiled, depositing me in the doorway of my first class.

  “Wait,” I hissed, clutching her as she turned to leave. “What do I do now? Just go in and find a seat? Do I need to tell the teacher I’m here?”

  “Just sit in one of the empty seats. Try to avoid the ones in the front row or the very back. And,” she added, surveying the classroom with her sharp hazel eyes, “don’t sit next to that guy in the blue shirt.”

  “Why not?”

  Ellen shrugged. “Because he’s a douche bag. Just avoid him, okay?”

  “What’s a douche bag?”

  Ellen stifled a giggle. “And keep your mouth shut.”

  As I nodded my agreement, Adam brushed past us on his way into the same classroom.

  “Hey, Ives,” Ellen said, grabbing him by the arm. “This is my cousin Josie. She’s new here. Look after her, all right?”

  Adam’s caramel-colored eyes sparkled as he smiled at me, and a liquid warmth oozed through my body. Later, I would attribute the sensation to love at first sight; later still, I would dismiss it as hormones. Adam embodied the same easy confidence as Ellen, a self-possession that I coveted. As he steered me into a seat beside him, he reviewed my schedule and discovered we had three classes together; he then proceeded to walk me to each of these classes, as well as my others.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I told him. “This school isn’t that big. I can find
my own way.”

  “Come on,” he said with a mock groan. “Can’t you just let a guy be chivalrous?”

  “That’s an eighteen-point word,” I said, impressed.

  Adam’s cheeks flushed endearingly. “I play a lot of Scrabble. My dad says it will help me on the SAT.”

  “I was homeschooled,” I told him. “Sometimes, Scrabble was our vocabulary lesson.”

  That afternoon, after the final bell had rung, I was putting my books in my locker and trying to remember where Ellen had said to meet when Adam sauntered up. He leaned against the locker beside mine and grinned, all nonchalance and shiny white teeth.

  “Looks like you survived your first day.”

  “I did.” I smiled. “And you know what? I think I’m getting the hang of this school thing.”

  “Awesome. So, listen, Josie, some of us are going to the movies on Friday. Think you might want to come? Should be cool.”

  Not trusting myself to speak without squealing, I nodded.

  “Or,” he added with a teasing laugh, “we could stay in and play Scrabble.”

  I burst out laughing. “Tempting. But let’s go to the movies.”

  Later, on the car ride home, I said, “I think Adam Ives asked me out on a date.”

  Ellen shrugged. “You could do worse.”

  “That sounds fun, Josie,” Aunt A said, flashing me a smile in the rearview mirror.

  I looked to Lanie for her reaction, but she was glaring out the window, her mouth set in a determined scowl.

  • • •

  “Hey,” Adam said, dropping onto the barstool Ellen had vacated.

  The casualness of his greeting infuriated me, and I snapped, “Are you kidding me? Just ‘hey’? Like nothing has changed?”

  Adam closed his eyes and shook his head. “Josie, everything has changed.”

  “No kidding.”

  Adam sighed and flagged down the bartender. “Can I get a Diet Coke? No, wait, on second thought, can I get the IPA on tap?”

  “Drinking in the middle of the day? Looks like my sister is a bad influence on you.”

  Adam opened his mouth to say something and then appeared to think better of it. He shrugged and said, “At least I’m not drinking alone in the middle of the day.”

  “Touché. But I didn’t start alone. Ellen got called away by her husband. What’s your excuse?”

  “Strangely enough, also Ellen,” Adam said with a small chuckle. “I had lunch down the street with a client, and saw Ellen on the way back to my car. I wasn’t in the mood for one of your cousin’s famous lectures, so I ducked in here to hide.”

  “Fate,” I said drily.

  “I don’t believe in fate,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

  “Me neither.”

  We both had, though, once. We had taken the similarities in our schedules as an omen, we had marveled at the way our hands seemed to fit perfectly together, and we had proclaimed each other soul mates. In the aftermath of my father’s death and my mother’s complete breakdown, I had so desperately wanted to believe in something, some grand design, that I had clung to Adam as proof that the universe was something other than cruel and random. That, of course, had been a mistake.

  “How you holding up, Josie? Honestly?”

  “Well, I’m drinking in the middle of the day.”

  “We’ve established that.” He tipped his beer in my direction. “But at least you’re not doing it alone anymore.”

  “Your wife threw a casserole dish at my head,” I added, my voice catching on the word wife.

  Adam looked startled. “What? When?”

  “About thirty minutes ago.”

  “What happened?”

  I looked into Adam’s expectant face, at its familiar lines, the way he always tugged his right eyebrow up higher than the other when he was concerned, and reminded myself that he was no longer my confidant. I couldn’t tell him about the questions the podcast had raised for me.

  “Sister stuff.” I shrugged.

  He sighed into his beer. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged again. “Little-known fact, but you’re not personally responsible when your spouse assaults someone.”

  “No, I mean I’m really sorry,” he said, his voice cracking.

  I looked down into my drink to avoid his eyes. I had heard this all before. My old email account contained a trove of rambling, overwrought emails from Adam, a combined hundreds of pages of apologies and excuses. I used to spend hours reading and rereading them, nearly enjoying the sick feeling they elicited, like pushing on a bruise. But it had been years since I had opened them, and I wasn’t interested in falling down that particular hole again, in allowing Adam to pick open old wounds.

  “I don’t know what happened, but I can only guess it had something to do with me, and I’m sorry,” Adam continued, closing a hand over mine. “I never meant to come between you two.”

  The heat of his skin on mine generated a confusing combination of revulsion and excitement, and I yanked my hand away, tucking it safely between my thigh and the barstool. “It wasn’t about you, Adam.”

  He frowned, his disbelief obvious. “It wasn’t?”

  “Nope,” I said, forcing a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “Not today, at least. Today it was the podcast.”

  “That thing,” Adam groaned, rubbing his face. “I should’ve known. Ever since it started, Lanie’s been acting really out of character.”

  A small pinprick of hurt stabbed my heart to see how easily Adam transitioned from apologizing to me to worrying about my sister. I shook my head to clear the disloyal thoughts, and overcompensated by being purposefully glib. “Seemed like the same old sister to me, throwing things and everything.”

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen her, Josie. She’s really pulled herself together. She’s still . . . well, she’s still Lanie, if you know what I mean, but you would have been proud of her.” He shook his head. “But then that podcast started, and it was suddenly like she regressed ten years. She stopped sleeping, stopped eating, started acting really weird. A few days ago, she forgot to pick our daughter up from school. She wasn’t answering the phone, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. When she finally showed up, she had hay in her hair and no explanation.”

  I flinched. That behavior sounded like our mother, and no matter how mad I might be with Lanie, I didn’t like to think of her going down that road. I finished my drink and waited for the whiskey to harden me. The bartender set a new one in front of me; I nodded in thanks and lifted it to my lips.

  “And one day,” Adam continued, “she didn’t get out of bed at all, and then she spent the entire next day baking cupcakes. The entire day, Josie. We had cupcakes coming out of our ears. I thought maybe there was some sort of party at the elementary school, but there wasn’t. She just felt like baking cupcakes. Said something about using your mom’s recipe.”

  The image of Lanie surrounded by cupcakes made me strangely queasy. A memory of our mother tickled at the back of my mind, but I refused to acknowledge it. There had been too much reminiscing today already.

  I downed my drink and stood up.

  “I should go.”

  Adam’s forehead creased in disappointment, and his mouth formed the first syllable of my name before falling silent. He nodded.

  “I should probably go, too.” He reached for his wallet. “Let me get your drinks.”

  I mumbled my thanks and hurried out before Adam could offer me a ride. Squinting into the late-afternoon sun, I began walking home. I inhaled the crisp air greedily, hoping it would clear my head. I wanted to forget about death, and my sister, and the podcast for just a moment.

  Suddenly I heard the sharp click of heels coming up behind me.

  “Josie!”

  I froze.

  It was Poppy Parnell.

  Discussion thread on www.reddit.com/r/reconsideredpodcast, posted September 24, 2015

  Chuck’s daughters and their tangled love life (self.reconsidered
podcast)

  submitted 8 hours ago by elmparkuser1

  I went to high school with the Buhrman twins. I was two years behind them in school (I graduated in 2007) so I didn’t know them personally, but I certainly knew ~of~ them. Josie (aka the “good twin”) dated this guy—I don’t know if I can post his name, anyone know if that’s kosher?—all through high school, but guess who’s married to him now? LANIE (aka the “bad twin”). I don’t know if it means anything within the context of the case, but it either shows that something was screwy with that family or that Lanie is not to be trusted.

  byenow 7 points 8 hours ago

  of course they are all messed up, the mom joined a cult ffs

  jennyfromtheblock 18 points 7 hours ago

  Or maybe the mom joined a cult and the kids are messed up because of that super-messed up thing that happened to them (i.e., that time Warren Cave killed their dad)?

  dancedancedance 5 points 7 hours ago

  I don’t know, wouldn’t you be all fucked up if your dad got murdered?

  straightouttaptown 1 point 5 hours ago

  wut

  gingerftw 11 points 5 hours ago

  Lanie Buhrman is not to be trusted, and her marriage to Adam is just further proof of that. Source: Elm Park born and bred

  miranda_309 1 point 1 hour ago

  Are we allowed to use his real name? Can we get a mod in here for a ruling?

  armchairdetective38 9 points 5 hours ago

  This subreddit is for people to discuss the case, not spread gossip. This isn’t some local board. Take it somewhere else.

  chapter 11

  Josie, wait a minute.”

  The audacity of Poppy’s assumption that we were on a first-name basis appalled me. She might spend her time researching my family, but she knew nothing about me. Training my eyes on the sidewalk in front of me, I powered forward, moving as briskly as I could without running, refusing to wait even a single second for her.

  But Poppy Parnell was faster than I would have assumed, given her slight stature and bulky shoulder bag, and she caught up with me quickly.