Monday's Lie by Jamie Mason

Author:Jamie Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books

18

I didn’t tell my brother about my confrontation with Brian Menary, much less the almost pleasant chat that it had turned into, even though the next-to-the-last secret I’d kept from Simon (as well as from my husband) had blown up in my face rather spectacularly. I hadn’t revealed the adventure of hurricane Angela either, or my worries over Paul, and I felt alone and adrift without Simon’s company in the drama. And still the list of things I didn’t want to tell him grew.

There was no spiteful little spark in knowing something that Simon didn’t. That wasn’t what kept me from telling him about Special Agent Menary. I didn’t want him to know we were being monitored. I didn’t know how he’d take it, as dedicated as he was to the idea that our mother had been a mere translator. And I didn’t want to wind him up about Paul.

As I’d walked away from the table in the food court, my mind was full of only the steady sound of my heels clacking on the hard rubber tiles and the small, radiant wonder as to whether Brian was watching me leave.

When there was room for more thought in my head, I lined up what I should have been feeling alongside what I actually did feel about the day. I resented the Internet auditing less than I would have expected. I think I’d felt more rattled the first time Amazon had gone sentient, when it had needled me by e-mail, flaunting that it had figured out by our purchases that we were doing a bit of remodeling. I started getting notifications of deals on garage-door openers and lighting fixtures and all sundry necessary bits that fit eerily well with the next phase of our project.

On some level I had always expected it from Mother’s circle. She had warned me in more than one way that they might someday come calling. They meaning Paul, but surely Paul’s associates were an extension of the net. There are no secrets with these people, but don’t worry, there isn’t any imagination left in them either. Paul knows stuff because he likes to know stuff, but that’s all the prize he gets for it—the knowing. He’s nosy as hell. Your secrets aren’t safe but they aren’t exactly in danger either, if you take my meaning.

I didn’t want to tell Simon because it would, inevitably, kick off the talk again, the nonconversation we’d had a thousand times about what my mother had or had not done for a living. I didn’t need to have that conversation again. Ever. I was right about it. I’d always been right about it. But I felt no joy at all in possessing the trump. I could shut him down for good with the tale of my afternoon at the mall, but I couldn’t imagine Simon’s face when I did it, which was strange. I could always forecast his reactions to things in advance.

Simon lived in my head as much as he lived twenty minutes from my house.

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