Matters of the Heart (24 page)

“The sad thing is that until now no one’s ever been as nice to me. He’s the sweetest person on the planet, except for once or twice when he got mad. But generally, he’s a kind, loving, lovable guy.” And she had believed every word he said.

“And a pathological liar, from the sound of it. If you corner him, even accidentally, he may not be so nice.” Hope nodded. She was well aware of it herself, and he had been vicious to her about the miscarriage, which for some reason he took personally, as though she had lost the baby on purpose to hurt him. She wondered if that was what he thought, although it was beginning to occur to her that her having his child would give him a far more powerful claim on her. It was hard to know his motivations anymore, or where the truth lay. “I want you to do something for me, Hope. The law firm we use at the agency has a Dublin office.” He smiled then. “Every writer who wants to stop paying income tax moves to Ireland, so about a dozen years ago, the firm opened an office there.

“I checked with them this morning. The man running the Dublin office now worked with us for several years in New York, and he’s a good solid man, and an excellent attorney. I got his phone number this morning, and his cell phone, and they’re going to contact him and give him your name. He may even have done some work for you while he was here. He’s American and his name is Robert Bartlett. If you have any kind of problem, I want you to call this guy. And you can always call me. But I’m a lot farther away. He could drive down from Dublin anytime you want to see him.” As soon as he said it, Hope shook her head.

“Finn would have a fit, and he’d be suspicious. He’s jealous of everyone, and if this guy is under a hundred, Finn would go insane.” Mark wasn’t reassured by what she was saying, but handed her his numbers anyway from the notepad on his desk.

“I think he’s somewhere in his forties, if it matters. In other words, he’s not a kid, nor some doddering old guy. He’s a nice, sensible, grown-up, savvy, respectable guy. And you never know, you may need his help one day.” Hope nodded, hoping that she wouldn’t, and tucked his numbers into the inside pocket in her purse.

It hadn’t been a happy meeting and Mark was sad to see her leave, particularly in these conditions. She was in the middle of a messy situation, with a man who was a loose cannon, dishonest at best, and she had some difficult decisions to make. He didn’t sound dangerous to Mark, from everything Hope had said, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant for her dealing with it. He hated knowing she was so far away.

“I’ll be okay,” she reassured him, and then thought of something before she left. “Be careful if you call me. I’m going to leave this file in a locked drawer in my apartment. I don’t want Finn to find it. And please don’t refer to it if you call.”

“Of course not,” he said, looking equally unhappy.

Hope cried all the way back to her apartment in the taxi. Her heart was breaking over Finn’s many lies. She felt sorry for the awful childhood he had endured. But his lying was so extreme. She had no idea what she was going to do.

Chapter 16

H
ope spoke to Mark again before she left. The investigators had no further information for the moment, and she had finished all her assignments in New York. She’d been checking on Paul by phone daily at the hospital in Boston. He was about the same, and he was asleep every time she called. She had spoken to his doctor, and he was concerned but not panicked over Paul’s health. Paul was weak, but the situation was what it was. He was sliding slowly downhill. And they promised to call her in Ireland if there was any drastic change in his condition. The doctor knew that if there was, she would come back immediately. He had known them both when they were married, and he had always been sorry about the terrible turns of fate that had befallen them, first with Paul’s illness, his forced retirement, their daughter’s death, and Paul’s decision to divorce.

Hope called Finn before leaving New York, to tell him she was coming and he was ecstatic. It made her sad to hear how happy he was. After the lies she had just discovered, she felt as though the bottom was falling out of their world. She hoped that they could get it on track again, and put it behind them. She wanted to find a way to reassure him that he didn’t need to lie about his childhood, or his life, or even problems with his publisher. None of those things would make her think less of him, but lying did. And it unnerved her. She no longer knew what to believe or trust. She wanted to condemn the action, not the man. She still believed that he was a good man. But he still hadn’t told her about his current disaster with his contract. It was hard to believe he hadn’t said a word about it to her, and that he had taken her out to dinner to celebrate a contract he hadn’t signed. She wasn’t even angry at him. She was desperately sad. She loved him, and didn’t want him to be afraid to tell her the truth.

“It’s about goddamn time you came home,” he said, grinning broadly, and she noticed that he sounded more than a little drunk. He told her the weather was terrible, and that he had been depressed ever since she left. She wondered if losing his publisher had started him on some kind of downward spin.

“Yeah, me too,” she said in a soft voice. It hadn’t been a great trip. She hadn’t even enjoyed her work this time. She had spent the whole three weeks deeply upset about him. And on the plane, she agonized over what to do about the investigator’s report. You couldn’t unring a bell. But along with the sound of fear in her head, there was love. And she didn’t want to humiliate him by confronting him with the report.

He looked tired when he met her at the airport, and she noticed that he had dark circles under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept. She wasn’t even happy to see the house this time. It was freezing cold, and he had forgotten to turn up the heat. And when she went upstairs, she noticed in his office that there weren’t more than a dozen pages on his desk to add to his book. He had told her he had written a hundred pages in her absence, and now that she was home she could see that that was a lie too.

“What have you been doing while I was gone?” she asked as he watched her unpack her suitcase. She hung her clothes up and tried not to sound upset when she talked to him. She tried to keep her tone easy and light, but she didn’t fool him. He could see that something was wrong the minute she got off the plane.

“What’s wrong, Hope?” he asked her quietly, pulling her onto the bed and into his arms.

“Nothing. I’ve been upset because Paul is so sick.” He didn’t look happy to hear it, but she didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t feel prepared or ready to tell him that she now knew that everything he’d told her about his childhood was a lie, and that the ancestral home she’d bought for him really belonged to someone else, and not his family at all. She kept thinking of the tattered photograph of the four little boys in cowboy hats, and she felt desperately sorry for him. He wasn’t even an only child as he had said. It was hard to know who he really was, and what it all meant.

“Maybe Paul will get better again,” he said, trying to be pleasant, as he slipped a hand under her sweater and fondled her breast. She wondered as he did it if maybe that was all there was. A lot of lies and fantastic sex.

She didn’t want to make love to him, but she didn’t tell him. She felt as though her world were falling apart, but she tried to pretend to him that nothing had changed. It was so unsettling to know that he had made up so many stories, about his parents, his early life, their house in Southampton, the things he’d done at school, the people he had met. She suspected that he wanted so badly to be accepted and like everyone else. And it probably wounded him to admit that they had been poor, or worse. And trying not to think about any of it, and the things his brother had said about him, she let him slowly peel off her clothes, and in spite of everything that she was thinking, she felt herself become rapidly aroused. If nothing else, he had a magic touch. But even though she loved him, that wasn’t enough. She had to be able to trust him as well.

He couldn’t get enough of her that night, after three weeks without her. Like a man who had been dying of hunger and thirst, he wanted to make love to her again and again. And afterward, when he finally fell asleep, she rolled over to her side of the bed and cried.

The next morning, over breakfast, he asked her casually when they were getting married. They had been talking about New Year’s Eve before she left. He had thought it would be fun to celebrate their anniversary on that night every year. But when he asked about it now, she was vague. With everything she had just learned about him, she needed time to think about it. And she was still waiting to hear the rest. She realized that she didn’t want to confront Finn now until she knew it all. Maybe the rest of the story would be different, and closer to the truth as she knew it, from Finn.

“What’s that about?” he asked her, suddenly looking anxious. “Did you fall in love with someone else in New York?” It was obvious to him that she didn’t want to discuss it, and was no longer willing to make plans and set the date.

“Of course not,” she answered his question. “I just feel strange getting married when Paul is so sick.” It was the only excuse she could think of, and he didn’t like it. It made no sense to him.

“What does that have to do with anything? He’s been sick for years.” Finn looked annoyed.

“He’s gotten a lot worse,” she said glumly, shoving the remains of a scrambled egg around her plate.

“You knew he would.”

“I just don’t feel right having a celebration when he may be dying.” She’d had a bad feeling about it when she last saw him, and was afraid she might never see him again. “And besides, no one’s coming. That seems so sad. I thought it might be more fun if we do it next summer at the Cape. Our agents could come then, and it would be easier for Michael than coming all the way to Ireland.” Finn had told her he wasn’t coming for the holidays this year. He was going to Aspen with friends instead.

“Cold feet, Hope? It sounds like you changed your mind.” Finn looked hurt.

“Of course not. It just doesn’t feel like the right time,” she said quietly, staring at her plate.

“We were supposed to get married in October,” he reminded her, and they both knew why.

“That’s because we were having a baby a month later,” she said softly, looking at him.

“And we both know why that didn’t happen,” he said unkindly. He never missed an opportunity to make her feel bad about it. He had been so incredibly loving to her for the first six months, and now he seemed angry at her a lot of the time. Or maybe he was angry at himself. Nothing seemed to be going right. And he was suddenly putting a lot of pressure on her. Given the lies he had told her, she felt he had no right. But he didn’t have even the remotest suspicion that she knew he was lying. Now they were both playing the same game, and Hope hated it, and could hardly look him in the eye.

“I assume you got your period in New York,” he asked as she put their dishes in the sink for Katherine to wash later. Hope nodded in answer, and for a moment he didn’t comment, but when she turned around to look at him he was smiling. “That means you should be ovulating right about now.” When he said it, Hope almost burst into tears. She sat down at the kitchen table and put her head down on her arms.

“Why are you pressuring me about that now?” she asked in a muffled voice with her head down, and then she looked up at him in anguish. “What difference does it make?” As she asked the question, she knew that whatever he answered would be a lie. She could no longer conceive of him telling her the truth. It ruined everything. Mark was right. Finn was a pathological liar.

“What’s happening to you, Hope?” he asked gently as he sat down next to her. “Before, you wanted our baby, you couldn’t wait for us to get married.” She wanted to say that that was before she knew he was a liar.

“I just want a little time to sort it all out. I lost our last baby five months ago. And I don’t want to get married while my ex-husband may be dying.”

“Those are bullshit excuses and you know it.”

Looking at him, she knew she had to tell him the truth. Or part of it at least. “Sometimes I think you don’t level with me, Finn. I heard some publishing gossip when I was in New York. Somebody told me that your publisher is suing you, and they wouldn’t renew your contract because you didn’t deliver your last two books. What’s that all about? It was in
The Wall Street Journal
and
The New York Times
. The only one who didn’t know about it was me. Why didn’t you tell me? And why did you tell me that you’d signed a new contract?” Her eyes were full of questions as she looked at him, but there were others than just these. This was a start. And he looked furious when she asked him.

“Do you tell me everything about your business, Hope?” he was shouting at her.

“As a matter of fact, I do. I tell you about everything that happens in my life.”

“That’s because museums want to hang you, galleries are begging to show you. Heads of state want you to shoot their portraits, and every magazine in the world wants to buy your work. What the hell is there for you to be embarrassed about? I hit a dry spell for a while, didn’t deliver two fucking books, and the next thing I know those assholes are suing me for almost three million dollars. Do you think I’m proud of that? I’m scared shitless, for chrissake, and why the hell do I have to tell you so you can feel sorry for me, or walk out on me because I’m broke?”

“Is that what you think I’d do?” she asked him, looking at him sadly. “I wouldn’t walk out on you because you’re broke. But I have a right to know what’s going on in your life, especially important stuff like that. I hate it when you lie to me. I don’t want to hear a better story, the one you can dream up. All I ever want to hear from you is the truth.”

“Why? So you can rub it in my face, about how successful you are, and how much fucking money your husband gave you? Well, good for you, but I don’t need to humiliate myself so that you can feel better at my expense.” He was speaking to her as though she were the enemy, and justifying every lie he had ever told.