Page 14 of The Five Year Lie

Just in time, I notice that Uncle Ray is striding down our row. I tab guiltily away from the employee directory on my screen and look up at him with a plastic smile. “Morning.”

“Morning. Teeth okay?” He puts a hand on my shoulder.

“No cavities.”

“Well done.” He winks, his eyes the same shade of brown as mine, and my father’s before me. We also share the same brown hair, although Ray’s is graying at the temples, just like my father’s had.

But the resemblance stops there. Where my father was rigid and terse, Ray is upbeat and chipper. My father looked the part of the CEO in immaculately pressed clothes. Whereas Ray’s shirt will be untucked by lunchtime.

More crucially, Ray has an air of kindness that my father never had a single day in his life.

Now Ray’s watch lets out a loud beep, and he squints at it. “Ooh. Hester says I have a call in ten minutes. Later, guys.”

As I exhale, I notice that Zain is doing a perfect interpretation of Programmer Working Diligently. His long fingers fly over the keyboard. And I just watch him for a moment, hoping he won’t betray my secrets.

Zain is a strange bird. I’ve heard that he’s highly skilled, and highly paid. But he has one of the least interesting jobs in the whole room—cybersecurity.

Most of the code monkeys my uncle hires would rather work on feature development, or video optimization. Those are the sexy jobs.

But somebody has to do the boring work. And that’s Zain, apparently.

My job fits the same niche, too. Dull but necessary. Five years later, I’m working the exact same job as I was when I met Drew.

I wonder what he’d say about that.

I wonder if he cared about me enough to even have an opinion.

Someone in this room has an opinion about me, though. Someone wanted to startle me. I swivel my chair slowly around and scan the collection of programmers and support staff who are trickling into the building for another workday.

There’s a lot of nerd power in this room. If anyone could hack my texts with a message from a dead man, he probably works here at Chime Co.

But who?

5

On most weekday afternoons, my mother picks Buzz up from preschool so that I can have a hot date with molten glass. Tuesday, I put in three hours of studio time before grabbing some takeout for dinner on my way to pick up my boy.

As I open the kitchen door of my mother’s house, I hear Buzz squeal with delight. My heart lifts as I walk through the mudroom and into the kitchen.

He’s standing on a chair in front of the sink, my uncle Ray next to him.

“Give it a little more vinegar, Buzzy,” Ray says. “It will erupt again.”

“Vinegar is stinky,” Buzz complains. But then he pours some more of it onto what must be a “volcano” they’ve built in the sink. And Buzz lets out another whoop of joy.

They both look happy, but the kitchen counter is trashed. There’s baking soda spilled on the counter, and some kind of food coloring, too.

I take in the scene for a long moment, and it’s like traveling to an alternate universe. My father would never have tolerated this kind of chaos in his house. From the time I was small, I knew that leaving a buttery knife on the countertop would result in a stony rebuke.

But Ray is completely unconcerned by the mess.

“Mama!” Buzz says, turning around to find me lurking in the doorway. “Look!”

I circle the kitchen island to stand behind him. There’s a sludgy red mess in the sink, still fizzing. “Fun, Buzzy. How many times did you make the volcano blow?”

“Pretty sure we lost count,” Ray says with a chuckle. He’s wearing a faded T-shirt readingHACKATHON 2018, which now has food coloring splotched across the chest.

“Did you get noodles?” Buzz asks, eyeing the bag of Chinese food in my hand.