Page 28 of The Five Year Lie

“What?” I take another sip. The margarita is superb. But that’s not a surprise. My mother doesn’t do anything half-assed. She probably studied seventeen recipes before making this one.

“You always just do your thing and you don’t care what anyone thinks,” she says, setting her glass down on my coffee table. “You have a lot of backbone and you never, ever blink. I have always admired that about you.”

Whoa.I shove a chip into my mouth and chew, because I am afraid of what I’ll say to her. My mother’s lack of a backbone when it came to my father made my childhood treacherous. Mom isn’t the only one who ever went to therapy. My college psychologist explained to me that taking my bedroom door off the hinges and smashing my phone with a cast-iron pan were abusive behaviors, and that my mother could have protected me from that.

You’re angry at her and mistrustful of others for a reason, she said.

Not that now is the right moment to say so. “Thank you,” I say instead. “So how do you want this wedding to look?”

“I want a brief ceremony, followed immediately by amazing food,” she says. “But maybe it’s a daytime event. Live music, but no dancing.”

It sounds to me like she already has a plan. But I’ll play along. “What are you going to wear?”

She takes a chip delicately between two fingers and frowns. “That will be tricky. It has to nod at tradition without looking like I’m trying too hard to be a young woman. Maybe a dress in a champagne color.”

“Or white but casual,” I suggest. “A pantsuit?”

“Maybe,” she says. “It will depend on the venue, and the time of day.”

“I’ll google some spots,” I say gamely. I pull out my phone and look upwedding venues Portland Maine. My screen fills with a million results.

There’s an entire industry for this. Of course there is. I start scrolling through the results—scene after scene of seaside altars, beautiful flowers, elegant table settings.

It’s all very lovely, but it leaves me cold. I know with a bone-deep certainty that a wedding is something I will never plan for myself. Since Drew blew in and out of my life, I’ve never had the urge to put myself out there again.

Besides—single moms aren’t exactly what thirtyish-year-old guys are looking for. And that’s fine. I don’t want a guy. I only wantedoneguy. And he didn’t want me back.

He didn’t even tell me his real name.

9

The next morning, I pour myself into my office chair and take a deep gulp of coffee. My head is throbbing.

“You okay?” Zain asks without looking away from his screen.

“I will be. My mother got me drunk.”

His hands freeze on the keyboard. “You told her about...?”

“No,” I say firmly. “It’s still in the vault. And that won’t change.”

He actually turns to look at me. “Did you google any seventy-year-old Andrew Millers yet?”

A tremor shimmies through my chest. “No. Did you?”

“No, but I spent half the night combing through the rest of that tape I showed you.”

“Is that why you look exhausted?” There are purple smudges beneath his eyes.

“It’s nothing coffee can’t fix.” He turns back to his work.

I watch his fingers fly over the keyboard again. “Why are you helping me with this? What’s in it for you?”

“Nothing. But it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in years.” He stops typing. “Sorry. Was that a shitty thing to say? It’s happening to you, not me. But it’s still interesting. I don’t get why he needed to lie. He was smart. He was confident. He didn’t say really awkward things all day long, like some people.”

He flinches after he says that last thing, and for the hundredth time I try to decide whether Zain is honestly creepy, or if he’s just awkward and I’m a heartless asshole with trust issues.

Meanwhile, Drew’s motivations are the ones I’m supposed to be litigating. “Maybe he wasn’t qualified for his job,” I suggest. “People lie on résumés all the time, right? Colleges they didn’t really go to. Jobs they didn’t really hold.”