Free The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango Page A

marten trap. Her slim shoes stood beside it. In the visitors’ bathroom it was dark; the door stood ajar. There were no lights on in the kitchen. Henry followed the smell of cigarette along the wood-paneled corridor to his studio. She came toward him soundlessly out of the dark.
    “What’s happened, Henry?”
    “She’s gone. Martha’s gone.”
    “What do you mean, gone? Just like that?”
    “Why did you come here?”
    “Martha and I had arranged to swap cars again. She asked me to. Hasn’t she come back?”
    Betty wanted to walk past him out of the dark corridor. He held her back.
    “What are you doing in my studio?”
    “You’re hurting me! I was looking for Martha. She’s bound to come back soon. Don’t worry.”
    Henry noticed that she was no longer holding the cigarette.
    “What did you talk about?”
    “What do you think? About you , of course. We must have talked for a whole hour about you. She idolizes you. Then I told her where we always meet.”
    Henry tightened his grip.
    “Why? Why did you do that?”
    Betty squirmed in his grasp. “She wanted to go to you. That’s why she went to the cliffs.”
    He studied her face. “How could she find her way?”
    “Oh, come on, that’s why we swapped cars. Because she doesn’t have GPS. She’d never in her life have found it otherwise, as you know. Don’t say you didn’t go?”
    “Give me a cigarette.”
    “You did go, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, I did. Give me a cigarette.”
    Betty took one from the packet and gave Henry a light. His hands were trembling so badly that Betty had to hold them tight. Her gaze fell on the wooden box at the foot of the stairs, but she didn’t ask.
    No doubt about it, Martha was dead. She’d been sitting in the car when he’d pushed it over the cliffs. He’d destroyed his life and killed the only person who’d ever loved him for his own sake. Martha was gone and with her the full life, the good life. The pictures came back to him. Henry saw her screaming soundlessly as she hit the windshield, saw her trying to open the door and the horribly cold water entering her lungs. He saw Martha die.
    As he was driving Betty home, Henry felt the beginnings of a numbness on the right side of his face. It spread from his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.
    “Did you tell her about the baby?”
    “No, she doesn’t know anything.”
    “Don’t lie to me, Betty!”
    “Why should I lie?”
    “Have you called anyone, talked to anyone?”
    “Why are you asking? Won’t she ever come back?”
    Betty sat strangely stiff beside him, her fingers with their painted nails clasped tightly together. She didn’t smoke, she didn’t look at him, and she didn’t ask any more questions, at least not audibly. Henry stared at the road ahead. In his mind’s eye he was already back home, killing the dog and emptying a canister of gasoline all over the house. He’d start with that damn drilling rig, then the books. The flames wouldn’t take long. Then the wooden staircase. The fire would spread upstairs quickly, the damn marten in the roof would burn too. That’s what comes of creeping into strangers’ houses.
    “Don’t talk to anyone about it, do you hear? Not anyone.”
    Then she got out. She could feel Henry’s gaze as she walked the fifty paces to her apartment.
    The rain had eased off, and all the windows, except Martha’s, were dark when Henry got back. Although he knew he wouldn’t find her, Henry searched the whole house for his wife. With an excruciating certainty that was already a phantom pain, he flung open doors, called out her name, and shined a flashlight behind bookcases and into cupboards and corners, as if it were a silly game of hide-and-seek. Of course she didn’t respond to his calls, because she was lying at the bottom of the sea, but the thought was simply unbearable, so he called out another dozen times.
    In his studio he found Betty’s burned-out cigarette. The blinds were down; she couldn’t have seen