Page 44 of Her Dark Lies

“But—”

He cuts me off with a kiss.

“Trust me. It will all be okay. Do you want to wander around the house while I talk to my parents?”

“I could come with you?”

He smiles, but I can already see the answer is no. And to be honest, I’m relieved. I need some headspace. I need to process.

“Never mind. I’ll just...go back to the room. I’m exhausted. Tomorrow is a new day. Everyone will be here, we can get back to normal. Right?”

“That’s right, darling. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Do you know how to get back upstairs?”

“I do.”

I trust Jack with my heart, with my life, and with my art. I need to trust him all the way, to give him every piece of me. I need to be alone. I need to arrange my thoughts.

A break-in. Cameras. Strangers. Cover-ups.

A little voice that has been screaming in the back of my mind since we sat down with Karmen is finally barging in, wanting to know why, exactly, the Comptons made me sign so many forms saying I won’t reveal anything I know about them, under risk of being prosecuted?

What else might the family be so intent on hiding?

And what was the predator who put cameras in my house trying to learn?

25

The Dying of the Light

Jack always was naive.

From the moment we met, I knew how easily he could be led. Of course, I underestimated him in the end, but while I knew him, he was as malleable as a child.

For the longest time, outside of my habit of spying on strangers through virtual peepholes, he was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. In the moments I wasn’t trying to get him to fall in love with me, when I could step aside and observe him, I thought that he was a good match for me in so many ways. Smart. Elegant. Moneyed. Cultured. We had fun. Spoke the same business language. But soon enough, I was bored. So, I pushed him. Accused him of keeping secrets.

When his real personality emerged, showing him as a devious, sly man who lied about everything, pathologically so, I admit, I found him twice as attractive. We had more in common than I thought. For a while, things got better between us. I liked walking the draglines of the spiderweb he wove for me, knowing if I made only one misstep, I’d be consumed.

Our short life together was intense. There were explosive fights. There were frenzied makeups. No apologies, ever, from either of us, just physical collisions and exquisite release.

I will say this, fucking him was like driving a really good car a hundred miles an hour. Once you got going, you wanted to go faster and faster, give yourself over to the experience, ignoring the speedometer, the very real threat of death a specter over your head. There was an edge of fear involved to bedding him; he was volatile, and unpredictable. And I liked taking chances.

And then, for reasons I had yet to ascertain, he proposed. I accepted. It was...anticlimactic.

Without the grand pursuit to love and be loved, it was boring.Hewas boring. Ourlifewas boring. The fights felt prosaic. The sex, too. He spoke about wanting children. How maybe we could start trying now, before the wedding, since we both wanted a family of our own so badly.

I have no idea what made him think I wanted a family. I wanted a fucking race car and miles of open road, not a loud, messy, disgusting passel of leeches sucking at me and dragging me down.

He had no idea it was never, ever going to happen.

Therein lies the power of the female prerogative. We can hold off motherhood through any number of means, physical, chemical, or otherwise. So, I smiled and cooed at the thought of imminent stretch marks and cribs and nurseries and chapped nipples and said of course, darling, we should start trying immediately, how about right now? And I took down his fly.

Like I said, naive.

Then I died, and he pretended to mourn, and he went on living his life, and the family went on being the unethical creeps they are, and then he met Claire.

Of course, I had to add her to my repertoire.

Watching him with Claire was like watching my own life replayed without me at its center. Hearing the same words, the same sack of lies, the same pressures applied—we’re engaged now, let’s forgo the birth control, I can’t wait to make babies with you—enraged me. I’d made sure nothing like that was going to come about for me. I’d had my tubes tied before I met Jackson. But for her... How to stop her from getting pregnant kept me up at night. Lace her daily pots of tea with contraceptive pills, or Plan B? Bump into her in a crowd and inject her with Depo-Provera?