Page 70 of City of Liars

The words were strange. They all blurred together, like how the Ghost People used to sound. But she could tell they meant something, from the way the older girl gasped. Her eyes went so wide, Ella could see the whites all around them, like the outside of the over-easy eggs that Cook made on Sundays.

“Mama!” the girl said, sounding shocked.

The woman’s lip curled. “You want to know what this curse means, goyim?” she said to Ella’s father. “A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.”

The woman’s words filled Ella with terror. She clung to Daddy, who held her close.

With an effort, the girl dragged the woman away, but her eyes never left Daddy’s face, even when she tripped over the cracks in the pavement and the girl had to catch her before she fell. Ella knew then that the woman hated her father, and so she hated her, too.

45

Theo

I’d done the right thing. So why did I feel so shitty?

It’d killed me to see Liv walk away from Le Pain Quotidien like I was nothing more than an acquaintance. Like we were nothing. It had bugged me the rest of that day and the next, through the meeting with Perez about investing in Stellar and checking in with Atomic to make sure everything was on track, and onward through the night, when I sat alone in my apartment, poking at my beef with broccoli as if it had done something to offend me.

I’d told her I still wanted to be friends, goddamn it. I’d shown up for the discussion with Diane, even though seeing Liv sitting across the table from me, so close but so inaccessible, her hands honest-to-fuck shaking around her coffee cup, had wrecked me. And she’d barely given me the time of day.

Maybe she hadn’t had feelings for me after all. Or maybe she had, and I’d hurt her so much, she couldn’t even look at me.

I wasn’t sure which was worse.

She’d been right, goddamn it. I had feelings for her. But the hell of it was, now I’d taken any shot at deserving her I’d had and thrown it out the window.

Before I’d shown up in her life, everything had been peachy. Now, because of me, her grandmother was upset, her parents were pissed, and who the hell knew if Krista would ever speak to her again. Then there was this damn lawsuit to deal with. Liv didn’t know it existed, and with luck, she never would. I had to fix it, even if it was the last thing I could do for her. And I thought I might know how. Gritting my teeth, I picked up the phone.

“Why, Theo,” my mother chirped, sounding suspiciously cheerful. “My long-lost son. Fancy hearing from you.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said, Mom,” I said, not bothering with small talk. “And I was wondering. Since you’ve been looking into Lily and the Carters, do you by any chance happen to have a record of the date she disappeared?”

There was a pause. “Why do you want to know?”

“I think I might know what happened to her,” I said, trying not to think of that abandoned little girl, nameless and ice-cold. “But to prove it, I need the date. I asked Grandma, but she has no idea. You, though,” I said, summoning every bit of charm I possessed, “you’re thorough. Once you’ve committed to doing something, you’ll leave no stone unturned. If anyone’s got that information about Lily, it’ll be you.”

“Well,” my mother said after a beat, “I’m glad to hear you have some positive opinions about me. And you’re right. I do know when she vanished.”

“You do? When? How?”

“I have a copy of the police report May filed.” My mother’s voice was smug. “It was in some paperwork your grandmother gave me, when you and Will put her in that home.”

“You have a copy of the report?” God, how I wished Liv was sitting next to me right this second, so I could put this call on speaker. “What does it say?”

“Not much. Big surprise there.” Papers shuffled, as if my mother was sorting through the documents she’d mentioned. “The police didn’t take her seriously. There’s a note on the report saying she was ‘hysterical’—as if a woman could be any other way, when she’d lost her child! And there’s a whole timeline of events May wrote down, too. I guess she tried to hire a PI after the police wouldn’t help, to gather evidence against the Carters. But she had no money, so the PI wouldn’t take her on.”

With each word my mother spoke, May Dressler came alive. I pictured her as I’d seen her in our few family photos: thin, her eyes too big for her pale face, and desperate, clinging to a policeman’s sleeve as the man shook her off and turned away.

“What an ass,” I muttered, meaning both the cop and the profit-focused PI.

“I told you, Theodore. We have to look out for our own.” My mother sounded sad, like it hurt her to confirm this truth. “Your brother may be an idealist, but you and I, we know the score. If we don’t protect ourselves, who will?”

I’d spent my whole life protecting myself. I’d done such a good job of it, I’d driven away the only woman I’d ever wanted to be with. “The date?” I prompted.

She gave a small, offended ‘hmmph!’ “December 21st.”

Triumph coursed through me, followed by dismay. The girl who’d died of frostbite had showed up at the orphanage on the 19th, so she couldn’t possibly be Lily. She was some unfortunate, anonymous street kid. On the one hand, this was welcome news. On the other, any chance of getting my mother to drop the suit had just taken a substantial hit.

“So, does that help? Have you solved the mystery, Theodore?”