The Lies We Told (32 page)

Maya
One Year Later

F
ROM THE NURSERY
,
WHERE
I’
VE COME TO RETRIEVE
J
ACK’S
stuffed elephant, Lucky, I can see our backyard. The green, leafy wall of trees surrounds the grassy ellipse, where we’ve set the picnic table with paper plates and plastic cups. Lawn chairs dot the yard, and there’s baby gear everywhere. Simmee invited three of her friends and their toddlers over to celebrate Jack’s first birthday with us, and I smile as I watch one of them shoo Chauncey away from her diaper bag. Chauncey gives up and saunters over to the grill, where Rebecca is in charge of the burgers and hot dogs. I see her say something to the dog. I imagine she’s telling him he doesn’t stand a chance at getting a tidbit tossed his way, but I know Chauncey’s big brown eyes will get to her sooner or later.

Adam is bent over slightly, holding Jack’s hands as the little boy walks along the edge of the yard, exploring the garden. Jack tips his head back to look up at him, and Adam lets go of one of his hands to point at a daylily. Jack will be walking by himself
in a week or two, I predict. He’s the sort of baby people can’t help but coo over. His skin is the color of my cream-laced morning coffee and his eyes are a pale amber, but it’s his smile that captivates strangers on the street. There’s a bit of the devil in that smile, and as tough as this year has been for all of us, I think Simmee has some tougher years ahead of her with her rambunctious little son.

Simmee’s kneeling next to one of her friends, playing with the friend’s baby, but she has her eye on Jack. She’s an overprotective mother, but who can blame her? She’s in a program with other teen moms, including the three here at Jack’s party, learning how to be a good parent. She’s way ahead of most of those girls in the parenting department, but she still has plenty to learn about living in the twenty-first century. She’s a quick study, though. Adam bought her a computer to help with her schoolwork as she studies for her GED, and she figured out Facebook faster than Adam, Rebecca and me put together. She started with her little circle of friends from the teen moms group, and yesterday she told me she has over one hundred, which would scare me if I weren’t so proud of her. Adam gave her the “be careful on the Internet” lecture, and I know she was listening, because she said she doesn’t want her real name out there. Period. I think she still has nightmares about Tully, but I don’t. Tully is locked up forever.

No one lives at Last Run Shelter now, at least not that anyone knows of. Larry finally persuaded Lady Alice to move in with him and his family. I don’t know how he did it; I only know that I’m glad he did. We’ve visited her twice at Larry’s. Lady Alice, Larry, his wife, Emma Lorraine, and their two teenage sons are Jack’s family, and they accept Simmee and the baby to varying degrees. Lady Alice, of course, dotes on her grandson.

I hear Rebecca call to Simmee and her friends, and the girls
begin to stand, gathering up their kids as they head toward the grill. I guess the burgers are done. I reach into Jack’s crib for Lucky and head for the stairs.

Shortly after my return from Last Run Shelter, Rebecca and I shared the truth about the night of our parents’ murders with each other, twenty years too late to save ourselves from the guilt of our separate secrets. I’d been afraid she would blame me if she knew the role I’d played, and she’d been afraid I’d blame her for the same reason.

“We were
both
to blame,” she said, when we’d each revealed the truth.

I’d shaken my head, remembering Simmee’s words to me when I’d told her the story. “Neither of us was to blame,” I said. “We weren’t the ones who pulled the trigger.”

Last week, Rebecca and Adam told me they’re expecting a baby in May. I know they were nervous about telling me, just as they were nervous in February, when they told me how close they’d become while I was missing, and just as they were nervous in April, when they told me they were getting married. By the time they’d told me about their relationship, Adam and I had been separated for two months, a parting that had been as amicable as that sort of thing can be. Simmee had worried that she was the cause of our breakup, but I assured her it would have happened whether she’d been living with us or not. Adam and I wanted different things. It was both that simple and that complex. I’m glad for him and Rebecca, and now that I’ve started the process to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia on my own, I think they finally believe me. For the first time since my parents died, I feel as though I’m part of a real family.

So, for a short time, there had been a triangle between the three of us, of which I’d been completely unaware. My sister, my husband and me. Now the triangle has become a circle, and
a circle can encompass so much more. It can hold not only the three of us, but a young woman and her baby, as well, and it will expand to take in whatever children will follow, and whatever men might wander into our midst. Whatever friends.

Every family has a story, and I love that those stories are etched in sand rather than granite. That way we can change them. We can bury the lies and embrace the truth.

And we can move forward.

As usual, I owe the biggest thank-you to my significant other, John Pagliuca. I don’t think John’s ever said, “Can we talk about it later?” when I’ve needed to think out loud about my story. Thank you, John, for all you do to help me write.

While researching
The Lies We Told,
I stumbled across an article by emergency room physician, Hemant Vankawala, in which he described his experiences working with evacuees in the New Orleans airport after Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Vankawala became my gracious expert on medical relief work, and I don’t know how I would have written about the fictional DIDA organization without him. Other medical advisors were Marti Porter, R.N., and paramedic Cass Topinka. Thank you all for being so generous with your time and information, as well as for the work you do.

For helping me learn about my setting, thank you Glen Pierce, Sterling Bryson, Tori Jones, Kim Hennes, Dave and Elizabeth Samuels, Bland Simpson, Dixie Browning and Brooks Preik of Two Sisters’ Bookery in Wilmington, NC.

For coming up with the name
Last Run Shelter,
thank you
faithful reader and blog commenter, Margo Petrus. Gina Wys helped me understand what life is like after a hurricane. Dave Samuels taught me all I needed to know about helicopters. And Vivian I. Vanove gave me the inside skinny on the Wilmington airport.

For their various contributions, thank you Nellie Mae Batson, Gabe Bowne, Lynnette Jahr, Julie Kibler, Mary Kilchenstein, Ann Longrie, Melinda Smith, Betty Sullivan, Kathy Williamson, and Julia Burney-Witherspoon and her organization, www.cops-n-kids.org.

For brainstorming help and all-around support and friendship, I’m grateful to the six other members of the “Weymouth Seven”: Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff and Brenda Witchger.

For their invaluable feedback and for always being there for me, my editor Susan Swinwood and my agent Susan Ginsburg.

And finally, thank you Denise Gibbs, who helped in too many ways to count. You rock!

1. What do you think originally attracted Maya and Adam to each other? When the book opens, Maya hopes that the baby she’s expecting will change her marriage for the better. Do you think she really believes that? Do you think Adam feels the same way?
   
2. How do you feel about Maya keeping her abortion a secret from Adam? Is there room for secrets in a marriage? Where do you draw the line?
   
3. Why do you think Maya was slow to reveal her marital problems to Rebecca?
   
4. If Rebecca had never been in the picture, do you think Maya and Adam’s marriage could have worked out? Why or why not?
   
5. What role did Maya and Rebecca’s relationships with their parents play in their adult lives?
   
6. Discuss Rebecca’s love/hate feelings toward Maya. What were the roots of Rebecca’s resentment? What hints did you
   have into the true nature of Rebecca’s feelings for Maya? How do you think she felt when she learned Maya was alive? Which emotion was stronger?
   
7. Relationships between sisters—indeed, between siblings—are often complex. Could you relate to the relationship between Maya and Rebecca?
   
8. Maya is described at one point as having been a happy-go-lucky child who changed dramatically after the murder of her parents. Do you think it’s possible for one event to have such a strong influence on the rest of someone’s life?
   
9. Rebecca is drawn as an athlete, while Maya is the brain in the family. Yet Rebecca was first to enter medical school. What do you think prompted her to become a doctor? Rebecca begins to question her motivation for joining DIDA, wondering if it was altruism, a need for excitement, or something else. What do you think was her motivation?
   
10. At one point in the story, Rebecca thinks that Maya is a better person than she is despite Rebecca’s work with DIDA. Why do you think she feels that way and what sort of impact does that belief have on her?
    
11. One of the strongest themes in the book is that of self-forgiveness. What does each sister have to forgive herself for in order to move on? Do you think either of them is able to do that successfully?
    
12. A yearning for a child is another central theme in the story. Adam, the last in his family line, longs for a biological child.
    Maya longs for any child to nurture. And Rebecca, who never wanted a child to begin with, suddenly finds herself experiencing a baby hunger of her own.
    
    • i) Can you understand Adam’s longing for a biological child and the extent he’s willing to go to have one? Do you think he’s being fair to Maya in his quest?
      
    • ii) Discuss Maya’s decision to end her fight for a biologi cal child. What is the push/pull that went into that decision? How did her time at Last Run Shelter help her make that decision?
      
    • iii) Rebecca’s baby hunger is perhaps most striking, since her true feelings seemed to creep up on her. She is a classic example of having made a decision about something important when she was younger and not acknowledging the change in herself over the years until it suddenly hits her in the face. Can you relate to that? How and why do people hide their true yearnings from themselves?
      
13. Few things are as horrific as not knowing what has become of someone you love. Rebecca wonders if Maya is dead or alive, if her death came quickly, if she’s wandering in the woods alone. What impact does this not knowing have on her? Does it change the core of who she is and if so, in what way?
    
14. Families can get comfortable with the status quo, with each person carrying out the role they have played since they were young. When one person changes, it can throw the entire family into turmoil and the family may subconsciously try to keep that person from changing. This is sometimes true, for example, in families in which one
    parent is an alcoholic. It’s the devil the family knows, and members of the family may subconsciously sabotage the alcoholic’s recovery. How does this concept come into play with Rebecca and Maya? Do you think Rebecca wanted Maya to succeed in her DIDA work at the airport? What did Rebecca have to gain by Maya remaining fearful? Does this also hold true for Maya? If Rebecca changes, how might that change impact Maya?
    
15. Were you hoping Maya and Adam would end up back together? Discuss any tension you felt as you read about Rebecca and Adam’s growing closeness. In chapter 41, Rebecca and Adam come close to making love. Would your feelings about either or both of them have changed if they’d given in to that desire?
    
16. Simmee came to represent certain things for Maya. Maya talks about Simmee as sister, daughter and friend. Describe the evolution of their relationship from Maya’s perspective.
    
17. Why do you think neither Tully nor Lady Alice told Larry that Maya needed to leave Last Run Shelter? Did they have the same motivation or were they each operating from a different need to keep her there? What do you believe were Tully’s true feelings for Simmee?
    
18. The sisters ultimately reverse their roles, in sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic ways, with Rebecca becoming weaker and Maya becoming stronger. Where do you see this happening? What is the cause of this change in each of them and what impact does it have on them?
    
19. The word “lies” in the title is used both literally and figuratively. Discuss all the lies referred to in the title.
    
20. In the opening of the book, Maya says that every family has a story. The author implies that not only does every family have a story, but each individual in that family does as well. How does this fit for you and your family? Do you think a person can ever truly change his or her family story?