Free The False Friend by Myla Goldberg Page A

some dolls and toy cars. You told them as best you could, Celie, and you weren’t lying. I could always tell when you were lying because you lifted your chin and looked down your nose like you were daring me to contradict you. You weren’t like that during the interview. At one point they asked you something you didn’t know and you started crying because you had thought that as long as you could answer their questions, they would be able to find the man who took her.”
    Celia waited for her mother’s words to catch on some mental corner and lift an obscuring page.
    “You don’t remember any of this?” her mother asked.
    Celia shook her head. “I only remember what I’ve told you. All that I know is that I lied.”
    Noreen closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “You made it all up. The man, the car, the whole thing,” she said, her fingers distorting the shape of her face. Celia could see capillaries through the pale skin of her mother’s closed lids, thin traceries of red abutting the blue veins of her hands. “You lied to your friends, and then to me, and then to the police.”
    Celia nodded. She realized it wasn’t sleep that made her parents look older. It was not being able to see their eyes. Eyeswere the one thing that didn’t gray, sag, or wrinkle; they distracted from the effects of time and gravity. With the eyes hidden, the deteriorating landscape was fully revealed.
    “I’m sure part of why I can’t bring myself to accept what you’re telling me is that I’m your mother and I love you, but that’s not the main reason.” Noreen offered up a tired smile. “I was there, Celie. I’d like to think I know my own daughter.”
    For a moment Celia just stared, pinned by her mother’s gaze. For a moment, nothing irrevocable happened. What she thought to say next seemed perfectly logical. A way to buttress her point of view.
    “You didn’t know your own son,” Celia said, and then immediately wished she had not.
    She could have added something more. There was time. Celia took scant comfort when hindsight came up equally empty in the days and weeks that followed. No number of mental repetitions produced a string of syllables with the ability to annul the power of those six words.
    Silence should not have taken over. There should have been a sound to accompany the sight of her mother’s face at the moment Celia beheld the extent of the injury she had inflicted, something combining the shock of a puncture wound with the permanence of breaking glass.
    “I’m sorry,” Celia whispered.
    Noreen shook her head.
    “I’m sorry,” Celia repeated. “It was unfair of me. It has nothing to do with—”
    “I’m sure this sounds silly to you,” Noreen said quietly, “but I had this idea about myself. We all do, or maybe for you,Celie, it’s different. But for me … I saw what was happening to Jem, but I didn’t want to be one of those mothers who made accusations.” Her body sagged under its weight. “To accuse your child is to rob him of so much!”
    Celia touched the edge of her mother’s desk. “I didn’t mean to bring this back.”
    “Oh you didn’t, dear,” Noreen said. “It never goes away. It’s been long enough that I can forget for a while, but it’s like a slipped disc or a torn knee. It never quite heals. What happened with Djuna is the same. Maybe you’ll convince people to believe what you want them to believe, but that won’t change anything for you, not in any large or helpful way.”
    “Mommy,” Celia said.
    Noreen blinked. “I’m so glad we had this talk. It’s a shame you have to go, but I’m sure you have so much to do, and—”
    “I’m sorry,” Celia said.
    “Why, whatever for,” her mother said in a way that sounded like good-bye.

CHAPTER
6
    C elia’s fastest route home would have been a series of straightaways followed by right-hand turns, three stair steps that would have brought her through the town center. Instead she traced a wide curve