The Invasion of the Tearling

The call broke off.

“Your tag tells a better story than you do, Mrs. Mayhew. Last night, you traveled up to Boston, to Conley Terminal, and you were there most of the night.” The neat little man in front of Lily smiled again, and Lily noticed that he had a real mouthful of teeth, white and square and neat, too neat to be anything but implants. “There are only two ways for this to play out. You can tell me what you know, in which case I will be tempted—though I promise nothing—to paint you as Lily Mayhew, the sympathetic battered wife. It’s a terrible crime, to kill your husband, but there are ways around that, even when your husband was Greg Mayhew, Defense Department liaison and all-around Good Citizen. I’m not God, so you’ll likely serve a couple of years, but they will be soft years, and when you get out, your husband’s money, your beautiful house in New Canaan, your three cars, all of it will be waiting for you. You can start a new life.”

His words made Lily think of Cath Alcott, who had gotten into her car one night with her three children and simply vanished. She wondered if Cath had had any money. It changed everything, money. It was the difference between vanishing without a trace and simply dying in some dark place with no one to know or care. Lily thought of the group of people she had seen hunched around the bonfire beside Highway 84 … and then the man’s voice jerked her back.

“If you say nothing, we go to work on you, and you tell anyway. Don’t even kid yourself that you’ll be able to stay silent. There’s never been a member of your little group that I couldn’t break. But if you waste my precious time and delay my investigation, I guarantee that you’ll be Lily Mayhew, the cheating whore who shot her husband, and after I’m done with you, you’ll die by the needle.”

Lily held silent during this speech, though his words made her stomach twist into thick, ropy knots. She was no good with pain, never had been. She feared the dentist, even a cleaning. It was all she could do to drag herself into Manhattan once a year to allow Dr. Anna to poke the horribly uncomfortable speculum between her legs. But the thought of Dr. Anna steadied Lily as well, reminded her that William Tear wasn’t the only one who could be hurt if she opened her mouth.

“I’ll give you thirty minutes to think it over,” the accountant told her, rising from the table. “In the meantime, I’m sure you’re hungry and thirsty.”

Lily nodded miserably. She was thirsty, so much so that she could feel each individual tooth throbbing in its own dry socket. He left the room and she bent to lay her head on the table, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes. She searched for the better world, but there was nothing now; she could not call it up in her imagination as she had so many times before. The better world was gone, and without it she wouldn’t last long.

Am I really this weak? She thought that the answer might be yes. There had always been something flimsy inside her. Greg must have sensed it; in fact, Lily saw now, Greg might have understood her better than anyone else ever had. All of Lily’s bravery only kicked in when there was little risk involved. When the chips were down, she folded. She thought of being alone in their enormous house, of having all of that space to herself, to do as she pleased, without Greg’s shadow lurking around every corner. It would be an amazing thing.

Bullshit, Maddy whispered. They’re never going to let you go. And even if they did, you think they’d let a single woman keep all of that money, do as she pleases? In New Canaan? In any city?

Lily smiled gently. Maddy was right, it was a pipe dream. The little accountant had looked straight through Lily and seen what she wanted more than anything—freedom, the ability to live her own life—and then dangled it in front of her like a cheap toy. Lily Mayhew, née Freeman, had been weak all of her life, but she had never been dumb.

“I won’t break,” she whispered silently into her crossed arms, into the wetness of tears. “Please, just this once, let me not break.”

The door opened with a hollow clang, and a hulking man with a soldier’s buzz cut came in, carrying a tray. Lily sat up eagerly, hating herself, but she was too hungry and thirsty to stage a hunger strike. She guzzled the water, then attacked the meat, a cold lump of unidentifiable off-white gristle that didn’t seem to taste like anything at all. The food only made her more hungry, and then it was done. She pushed the tray to one side, staring at the grey cement walls around her. The accountant had told her to think it over, but now she could think of nothing but all of them: Tear, Dorian, Jonathan. Where were they now?