A Mother's Lie Read online

  “I thought that was what families did.”

  “Families do all kinds of things.”

  “Yeah, well, my experience is kind of limited there.”

  The rebuke stung, but it was an old pain, and Beth told herself she barely noticed anymore.

  Dana’s phone buzzed, and she flipped it over. “Chelsea’s downstairs.”

  Which meant all discussion was officially closed. The pair of them began the last stage of their morning routine—getting plates in the dishwasher, finding Dana’s backpack and the final history paper that she’d almost forgotten, Beth’s briefcase, and the extra folder out of her study that she might just need for this morning’s demo session.

  Beth tried not to feel relieved that there was no more time to talk. Family was a perfect storm for them. Beth had secrets, Doug had issues, and Dana had anger.

  And Beth didn’t know what to do about any of it. She never had.

  “Phone?”

  Dana opened one side of her school uniform vest to show what looked like the blank, black lining.

  Every year when Dana got her new school uniforms, Beth took it to a particular tailor, a Ukrainian immigrant who made a quiet specialty of creating pockets for people who did not want security guards, or anybody else, to know just what they might be carrying.

  “Mad money?”

  Dana flipped open the other side.

  “Text time?”

  “Four thirty, on the dot,” Dana recited. “Today and every day.”

  “Love you, Dangerface.”

  “Love you, Mom. Bye.”

  Dana kissed her on the forehead to avoid smudging her meeting-day makeup and charged out the door.

  For years, Beth had walked Dana down to the lobby and waited with her until the car came. Like a lot of the parents at Pullman Preparatory Academy, Beth hired a car service to handle Dana’s transportation to and from school. At least, like the parents who didn’t have their own drivers.

  Now, in a concession to Dana’s simmering need for independence and after about a week of screaming fights, Beth waited upstairs. But she still watched, and she was not the only one.

  The landline rang. Beth scooped it up off the hook. “Beth Fraser.”

  “Kendi at the desk, Ms. Fraser. Dana and Chelsea are in the car. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, thank you, Kendi. Not today.” She said good-bye and hung up. She checked out the window and saw the black Metro car pull out of the drive and into the street.

  Time to get a move on. Beth grabbed her briefcase, her tote bag, her keys. She checked her phone to see that her car service was on the way. She also checked her makeup in the mirror by the door. A demonstration day always meant dressing to her personal heights—suit, stockings, and sky-high heels.

  What are you looking for, Beth? She smoothed down the front of her gray Chanel jacket. What’s got you on edge?

  Because she was too anxious for a normal morning. Even Doug’s phone call was perfectly normal—frustrating as all hell, but normal. Probably it was today’s presentation from AllHome Healthtech. She had been trying for two weeks to impress on her boss that this particular start-up was a waste of time. Rafael wanted to let it play out, though, and he was more than just her employer. He was the one friend she’d kept from her ragged teenage years in Nowhere, Indiana. He’d pulled her out of her grandmother’s trailer and presented her with the chance at a career. If Rafi wanted to waste a morning with this demonstration, they’d waste a morning. Maybe he knew something she didn’t.

  Her cell phone rang—an unidentified number with a San Francisco area code. Beth stuffed the phone into her red briefcase. Let it go to voice mail. If it was important, they’d leave a message. She was running late, and between Doug, Rafael, and her own restlessness, she had more than enough on her mental plate.

  In the side pocket of her briefcase, her phone rang, and rang again, and stopped.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I hate to say I told you so, Rafi…” Beth settled onto the black leather sofa in his office and kicked her shoes off under the glass-topped coffee table. “But…”

  “But you told me so. Yes, yes, yes. Mea culpa.” Rafael Gutierrez opened his full-size fridge and pulled out two bottles of Pellegrino sparkling water. His office was a cool, black-and-white room with a window wall that looked over Wabash Avenue toward the Sears Tower. The skyscraper had actually been renamed the Willis Tower, but nobody bothered to remember that.

  Rafael was a square-built man. His family had come to the States from Mexico and Ecuador, and he’d grown up on an edge even sharper than the one Beth knew. A black unibrow made an emphatic line above his brown eyes. He wore his black hair a little long and combed straight back so that it waved around his ears and against his neck. This helped de-emphasize a tattoo that had seemed like a good idea in another place and time.

  “You have to admit AllHome is a good idea.” Rafi handed Beth a water bottle like a peace offering and dropped onto one of the square leather chairs. “A specialized, virtual home-health-care assistant. It’s got legs.”

  “For somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

  Beth’s gaze flicked to the vintage chrome wall clock with its sweeping red second hand. Fifteen minutes until Dana’s check-in text was due. Beth pulled her phone out and laid it facedown on the chair arm.

  “When we took on TrakChange, we had to hold their hand every step of the way, and they paid off big,” Rafi said.

  “TrakChange overran costs by four and a half million and we came thiiiis close to a partner revolt.” Beth pinched her fingers together. “Do we want to go through that again for this bunch?”

  “We could coach them through—”

  Beth’s phone buzzed right then, cutting him off. She checked the screen, frowned, and put the phone back down. Rafi lifted his eyebrows at her.

  “Somebody with a San Francisco area code’s been calling all day. I thought it might be the BlitzCom people, but they’re not leaving messages.”

  “So, pick up or block the number.”

  “Yes, Mr. Gutierrez. Right away, Mr. Gutierrez.”

  Rafael tossed his bottle cap at her. Beth lifted her bottle to block it. The cap pinged off its side and dropped onto the couch.

  Beth sipped her water and glanced at the clock again. 4:28. Dana was due to text her at four thirty. That was their standing agreement. Four thirty, every day. No exceptions.

  It was eleven years since the day at Bloomingdale’s where the worst possible thing had almost happened. After that, Beth had wanted to lock all the doors of her life and never let the outside world near her daughter again. She’d wanted to kill the man, because of who he was and who he might have been.

  She’d almost done it too, although that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how very right it felt.

  Since then, things had gotten better. The move to Chicago had helped. So had the fact that she’d worked out a series of necessary steps, defined them, and organized them. The daily contact was one step. It gave Dana some freedom and allowed Beth to keep breathing.

  Beth pulled her mind back to the problem in front of her. “Rafi, the AllHome guys are trying to break into health care, and they haven’t even started to think through the legal concerns or a real system of care for people at their lowest and most vulnerable.”

  Rafi eyed her over the rim of his bottle. “But you know who has?”

  “HomeAssist,” she answered immediately. “I’ve met their developers, and I’ve been watching their proof of concept advance for a couple of months now. I think they’ve got the scope and vision to actually pull this off.”

  Beth checked the clock again. 4:29. She laid her hand on her phone so she’d feel the buzz.

  “And it just so happens that HomeAssist has a woman-led development team,” Beth told him. “And their CEO is Megan Reese, who just got named one of the twenty-five Best and Brightest by ChicagoLand Entrepreneur magazine. They’d be perfect for the Excels
ior Fund.”

  Excelsior was still in the planning stage, and the plans were mostly Beth’s. It was a venture capital fund specifically for women from outside the traditional tech sector who wanted to get into the tech sector. Their motto: The real talent’s still out there.

  Rafi blew out a sigh. “How long have you had this waiting in the wings?”

  “Since I got a look at the nonplans of that little huddle of Stanford tech bros who could barely get their own laptops working.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Rafi, Excelsior will pay off, and HomeAssist is a perfect vehicle. It’s ambitious, it’s sexy, and it’s timely. There is an appetite for diversity and for VC to show it’s got a heart as well as a wallet.”

  Rafi paused, but then he nodded. “Two meetings,” he said. “And two phone calls to gauge initial interest and show I’m behind the idea. After that, we’ll see what bubbles up.” He raised his bottle and drank another swallow.

  “Done.” Beth raised her own bottle in answer.

  The phone buzzed. Beth snatched it up. Face ID made the screen light up and displayed the message: Dana had taken a meta-selfie of herself in the front hall mirror. In the background, her best friend, Chelsea, hoisted two cups of bubble tea. The caption read:

  4:30 oclock & all swells @home w Chelsea.

  Beth put the phone down and took a very long swallow of sparkling water. Rafi drained his own bottle and pitched it into the recycle bin. “Okay, I need to get going. I’ve got a dinner tonight and Angela’s on her tenth text. Where are we with BlitzCom? We ready for them?”

  “I think so, but this one is really Zoe’s baby.”

  “Is she ready?”

  “She’s completely ready. Tell Angie I said hi.” Beth retrieved her shoes. He waved in acknowledgment, and Beth headed for her own office down the hall.

  As soon as she had her door closed, she pumped her fist hard.

  Yes!

  She pulled her phone back out and hit Zoe’s number.

  “Zoe? Good news. Rafi’s ready to move with Excelsior and HomeAssist.” She yanked the phone away from her ear as Zoe let out a triumphant yelp. “Are you still in your office? Meet me down in the bar for a strategy session and celebratory cheese fries.”

  Zoe promised to be down in ten. Beth hung up and texted Dana.

  Good news at work. Will be a little late. Save me some dinner.

  Getting Rafi on board with the Excelsior Fund was an enormous success, however it happened. Beth liked her position as Lumination’s BS detector. But at the same time, she itched to find out what she could do with some money of her own.

  It meant putting herself in a position where she could be more publicly visible. Which was risky. Her past was still out there. As of last month, in fact, her past was sitting in a relatively nice extended-stay hotel in Perrysborough, Iowa, a little piece of nowhere near the Minnesota border. According to the last surveillance report, her past was eating a lot of pizza and ordering movies and using the ATM at the Good Neighbor’s Party Store. Which meant they were doing something for money. The hotel was a cut above their usual (at least their usual recently), and the food delivery was better than peanut butter and white bread from the quickie mart. Plus, they’d been coming and going a lot.

  Probably they were still hustling drinks in the bar and cheating at pool and cards. Maybe they’d found an in at the local casino where they could get to the suckers who had just won big, or lost big. But she had no direct evidence on that. Surveillance got expensive after a while.

  Her past was waiting—whether they knew it or not—for her to finally decide what to do about them.

  Well, they can wait a little longer. Today belongs to me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You know, my mom won’t mind if you stay the night,” Dana Fraser said to her best friend, Chelsea Hamilton, as they pushed out of her building’s revolving door. They stood under the concrete awning to keep out of the sun. It was stupid hot. Even the breeze that funneled down the street stung her skin. “We can have a pajama party, and you can be my cupcake taster. Not like I’m doing anything else.”

  Dad had promised to take Dana with the rest of his family out to Warren Dunes to celebrate the end of the school year. Except, of course, now he had backed out. She’d pretty much expected it. But she’d just kinda hoped maybe this time he’d actually follow through. He’d been talking about it for a couple of weeks, which was an eternity in Dad-time. She’d even looked up a bunch of campfire cooking recipes just in case.

  “Sorry,” said Chelsea. “I really can’t. My dad got home this morning, and that means Mom wants us all sitting around the supper table pretending we want to talk to each other. And, by the way, your dad sucks.”

  “He really sucks,” admitted Dana. She looked at her phone. The app showed that the Lyft was two minutes away.

  The snotty kids at Pullman Prep called Dana Fraser a freak, mostly because of her different-colored eyes. To those same snots, Chelsea Hamilton was a chunk and a freak. She was tall, round bodied, and round breasted. She streaked her hair white and blue and wore Hello Kitty stockings and Doc Martens with her school uniform. They sent her home for it one time, but her mom got up in the administration’s face and they backed down.

  Never mind that Mrs. Hamilton couldn’t look at Chelsea without sarcasm pouring out of every vintage-chic pore—no bunch of schoolteachers and underpaid administrators got to criticize her daughter.

  “At least with Dad home, Cody can’t have band practice at our place,” Chelsea said. “He’ll be out the door as soon as Mom lets him be excused. Gott sei Dank für kleine Gefälligkeiten,” she added. Dana remembered it meant something like “Thank God for small things.”

  Chelsea took German because she’d heard that the universities there offered free tuition, even to foreign students. Four more years, she’d said, and I can tell them all to take their fucked-up lives and their trust fund and their codependent shitheadery and shove it up whatever orifice they got left, cuz I am outta there!

  A red Subaru with the Lyft sticker in the window pulled up the driveway. While Chelsea climbed in, Dana checked the photo of the driver on her phone against the face of the guy behind the wheel, just to be sure. Chelsea gave her the thumbs-up and flipped a wave of blue-and-white hair back over her shoulder.

  Dana watched her pull away and shrugged off the loneliness that draped across her. It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough to do. Her internship at the Vine and Horn started next week, and she needed to get ready for that. Plus, Kimi and Keesha were having their end-of-year party tomorrow, and they’d told her to come over anytime if Dad cancelled (again). That was going to be way better than trying to keep the mosquitoes out of her nose or listening to her half siblings arguing about…something.

  Who needs it, or them? I should be more like Chelsea and just peace out permanently.

  “Dana Fraser?” said a woman.

  Dana’s head whipped around.

  “It is Dana Fraser?” the woman said. “I got that right, right?”

  She was bone thin with frizzy brown hair bundled into a messy bun. Her splotchy skin was tanned deep leathery brown, and the shadow line from the awning cut right down the middle of her face. Her clothes—a long-sleeved T-shirt and faded designer jeans—hung off her stick-figure body. There was a sweat stain on her chest.

  Stranger danger! Dana’s eyes darted this way and that, but she didn’t know what she was looking for. Escape. Accomplices. Aliens, maybe? But the city went on like normal. Inside the lobby, Kendi, their doorman, leaned against the counter and turned over a tabloid page.

  “No. No. I’m not going to hurt you. I just…ah, shit.” The woman didn’t move even an inch closer, but Dana still took another step back.

  “I’m sorry.” The woman’s hands dropped to her sides. “This was stupid. I never should have…of course you’re scared. Jesus.” The wind blew a hank of hair across her mouth, and she shoved it away. “Why wouldn’t you be? I…look. I’ve got some
thing for you.”

  The woman reached into her back pocket. Dana’s whole body jerked. “I won’t come any closer! I swear. Look. I just…look.” The woman held up what looked like a crumpled square of folded paper. “I’ll just leave it here.”

  Slowly, so Dana could follow every move, she laid the paper on the rim of one of the flower-filled planters that framed the door. “You can pick it up after I’m gone. Or not. Whatever. Either way, I’ll be at the Starbucks on the corner tomorrow. Four o’clock.” She pointed. “Nice public place.” She backed up a step. “You know, you look just like your mother. You tell her I didn’t scare you,” the woman added suddenly, urgently. “You tell her that. Okay? I never touched you or threatened you, not once. Please. Be sure she knows that.”

  The woman was still backing away. Four o’clock, she mouthed and pointed up the street. Starbucks. She waved, smiled, and turned at the corner, and she was gone.

  Dana’s hands started shaking.

  It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re okay, she told herself, even though she wasn’t sure why she should even have to. It wasn’t like anything dangerous had happened. Not this time.

  But she knew my name. She knows I live here. She was looking for me.

  A fresh gust of hot summer wind caught the paper square and tumbled it into the planter.

  Dana yanked the paper out of the dirt. It was thick, slick, and slightly sticky.

  The crazy lady had left her a photograph.

  Dana glanced over her shoulder. Kendi was talking to a pale, speckled lady with a snow-white bob. A black man in a gray suit with a messenger bag slung across his chest pushed out from the revolving door. A white woman in running tights with a little white dog under her arm pushed in.

  All normal. No one behind her. No one looking to come grab her hand and pull her away.

  Dana gritted her teeth and carefully unfolded the photo.

  It was an old Polaroid, its colors faded and muddy. Ragged white lines crisscrossed the image from all the times it had been refolded.