Page 34 of City of Liars

The door slammed, leaving her on the other side. Above her, no window creaked open to reveal her sweet daughter’s face. No one answered her call.

Alone and weeping, May stood on the street, in the city of water and wind. It was a hungry city, built to devour lost souls and dreamers, lifting up the lucky few. An island of darkness and secrets, glittering skyscrapers and the words of a thousand tongues.

The city waited; it wanted.

Gulping, Manhattan opened its throat and swallowed May Dressler whole.

19

Liv

“Holy crap,” Tessa said, leaning back in her chair. “You did what?”

Tonight was margarita night at my house, a tradition we’d instituted the week I’d found out Gray was cheating on me again and kicked him to the curb. Despite my protestations that I was handling everything just fine, Tessa had left the twins with her husband and come over with the Emergency Rescue Cooler: a red Coleman filled with a thermos of margaritas, a pint of dark chocolate gelato, and a Tupperware full of her grandma’s pork posole with queso fresco.

Over the eighteen months since I’d dumped Gray, we’d made this a habit. We had a ritual: we drank, ate, and shared our woes. Usually, these were predictable, like her frustration with the university, which always managed to screw up the disbursement of her funding, or my aggravation with Gray’s shenanigans. Tonight was different. It was our first-ever Wednesday margarita night, for starters. And also, these circumstances were anything but ordinary.

I’d begged her to come over after Chloe went to bed, desperate for a sounding board about the latest developments in the Carter/Dressler saga. When I finished, Tessa stared at me, her dark eyes wide and stunned. “Wow,” she said. “When you dust off the cobwebs to your pleasure palace, you go all the way, huh?”

My face heated. “Nice, Tess. I knew I should never have told you about having sex with him on that piano.”

“Not to mention this coffee table.” Her nose wrinkled as she glanced at the object in question, currently playing host to the pitcher of margaritas, chips and salsa, and the remains of the fruit-and-cheese platter I’d thrown together. “I’ve got to say, I feel a little dirty right now.” She made a show of brushing off her hands, as if ridding them of imaginary germs.

“Tessa!” Balling up a napkin, I tossed it at her. “Do you think I made a horrible mistake by asking my grandma about the test? Or by buying that ticket to New York?”

Tessa gave me an empathetic smile and brushed her silky fall of black hair away from her eyes. “No. But like we talked about before, I understand why you’re afraid.”

Sliding back against the couch cushions, I tucked my feet underneath me and turned my face toward the fire. It had begun to storm, rain streaking the windows, distorting the darkening world outside. I felt safe, protected. And yet, I knew this was only an illusion.

“What if this blows up my family? Maybe I’m not doing this for the right reasons. Maybe it’s that curiosity of mine, needing to dig until I find the truth. Or”—I swallowed hard—“maybe I’m more concerned with bringing closure to Theo and his family than looking after my own.”

“Come on, Liv,” Tessa said, swallowing a mouthful of salsa. “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I? Gray’s always going on about how I put my clients first. I’m not saying he’s right,” I said, holding up a hand, “but—maybe there’s a grain of…something…at the heart of it. I know I have the need to fix things, to help. Maybe I’m going too far.”

I paused, and Tessa watched me patiently. Not for the first time, I thought what an excellent therapist she would have made. “But,” I said, and told her about what my grandmother had said about my search for my biological parents. “I can’t help but wonder if Grandma Ella would feel the same way if she took the test, and, by some fluke, we found out she really was a Dressler. She wouldn’t be losing us. She’d be gaining them, too. And they’d be gaining her.”

Tessa was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant, “I think your grandmother’s right about your family getting bigger, not smaller. But Liv, things are rarely just what they seem. I know I told you to be careful about kicking the hornet’s nest, before. But I’ve been thinking. When it comes to this situation, I wonder if your parents’ attitude stems from more than just their desire to leave well enough alone.”

I raised my eyebrows and she continued, “I’d bet it’s also based in their privilege and their sense of identity. I mean, think about it. If Theo’s right, then your dad doesn’t come from the blueblood stock he takes for granted. How’s he going to reconcile that with the guy he’s always thought he was?”

She smiled at me, but it was rueful. “I’ve told you how, growing up, I never fit in anywhere. To my mom’s family, I wasn’t Mexican enough. My dad’s family thought I wasn’t sufficiently Chinese. At school, no one knew what box to put me in. And then after college, when I met Victor, both sides of my family were pissed off because I married a Jewish guy. Things were bad enough in California, but when he got that professorship and we moved to the South—now, no one knows what to make of me.”

She gave a pained shrug. “I’ve never belonged anywhere. I’m sure that’s why I’m always the head of every damn thing I get involved with, so I can shape it into a place where I’ll fit in. And when I met you”—she graced me with a small but genuine smile—“I think I sensed you were going through your own version of the same struggle. You’re smart and successful on the outside, like I am. But on the inside, you’re the daughter of a troubled teenager who gave up her baby, and wound up in a family where you never really fit in.”

Her words struck me hard. I thought, as I always did, of the two lines of information I’d been able to dig up about my mother: Bess Gallagher, Irish Catholic. Deceased in Westchester County, age thirty-two, of an opiate overdose. Why had she let me go? Had she been forced to, or had she decided she wanted to give me a better life than the one she could provide?

“If your bio mom had kept you, your life would’ve looked completely different,” Tessa said, her voice soft. “Yeah, you were raised by the Carter-Brentwoods, but you’ve always felt like an interloper, right? Like me, you’ve never felt like you belonged.”

I took a fortifying gulp of my margarita, then a deep breath. This was the blessing and the curse of having a best friend who knew you inside out: sometimes she made you confront things you’d rather not deal with head-on.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “I guess I still worry that one day I’ll say or do something that’s too much, and they’ll boot me out of their family the same way they brought me into it.”

Their family. Ouch. I winced at my choice of words, but pressed onward. “I’ve never quite managed to live up to their expectations.” Like tying the knot with Gray rather than one of the many investment bankers my mother had offered up for consumption, refusing to join the Junior League, or becoming a therapist rather than simply marrying into money. “It worries me that maybe this will be the straw that breaks the back of a very overburdened camel.”

“Or,” Tessa said, far more gently than usual, “maybe deep down, you hope that you’ll find out that Ella and Lily really were switched. Because then, your dad will come from poor, immigrant origins, just like you. And you’ll finally fit in. You’ll belong together, after all.”

Silence fell over the room as Tessa’s words sank in, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the rattle of the windows in their frames. I drew a deep breath to steady myself, and inhaled the scent of burning wood and petrichor; it had been a warm day, and when I’d gotten home from work, I’d opened all the windows, letting the fresh air in. Though I thought I’d shut all of them after dinner, I must have missed one.