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The door opens, and the officer walks back in.
“Your lawyer’s back. You taking the DAT? Or are you still planning to kill him?” He tips his head at Graham.
“Can I talk to Mr. Kimball, please?” I give him a small smile. They’ve all been very nice to me, considering the ruckus I caused when they brought me in.
“Sure thing.” He turns to Graham. “Time’s up. You can wait upstairs.”
Graham stares at me. His eyes are bloodshot, and he looks so tired. “Do you want me to wait?”
“No, I’ll come to you when I’m done.”
He nods slowly and stands up. He wipes his palms down the front of his suit pants and squares his shoulders and walks out.
Truth And Lies
Graham
One Week Earlier
Los Angeles, CA
“Are you sure about this, Graham? I mean … this will be career suicide,” Amber asks me for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“Yes and stop stalling. No one’s going to run in here and stop me. I’ve had enough. And I don’t care about my career when not doing this means I can’t be the man I need to be for Apollo.”
“Why don’t you talk to her?” she asks in frustration.
“I will. I’m going to take her away when I get back. And I’ll tell her before it airs next Sunday.”
“Before you record the interview, Graham. You won’t be able to pull it back once you’re done. You’ve already signed the waiver. They’ll air it whether you change your mind or not.”
“I know that,” I say, trying hard to hold on to my composure. This is all a such a fucking nightmare. “That’s why I have to do the interview first,” I admit and then drop my forehead into my hands.
“Graham, maybe you should—”
“If I didn’t have to, I’d never tell her,” I confess. I keep my eyes on the table. I’m too ashamed, too full of dread and fear to meet Amber’s eyes. “She’s going to leave me.”
“Graham, she—” Amber tries to interject, but I don’t want to hear her say something she can’t possibly know. I have to prepare myself for the consequences of what I’m doing.
“But, then at least I know I’d done everything I could to earn the love she’s given me. I can’t hide anything about this from her. I don’t want her to hear it from anyone but me. Nanette is in the city. She’s already caused one rift between us. I’m not going to let her hold this over my head. To threaten Apollo. So, this is it. And I’m going to tell her. After I finish this interview.”
Amber nods solemnly, gives me a grim smile before she turns back to her computer and starts typing.
I spent the week in Los Angeles tracking down a couple of the people who worked at Talisman when I was there. Nanette was running a lot more than just her escort service; she had some sort of scam going where she’d been defrauding people online. She had hundreds of online dating profiles. And she had a team of people who spent all day at their computers pretending to form attachments to men and women they met on those sites. They would spend weeks, sometimes months making their mark think they were in love. They’d have some sort of crisis—a medical emergency, a car accident, a sick relative. Their internet partners would send them money. When they had milked their mark dry, they’d close the dating site account and disappear.
Armed with this knowledge, I was about to go on Sixty Minutes and tell my story and expose Nanette. Then I was going to take Apollo away and tell her the truth. Even if it meant she wouldn’t forgive me, I could finally stop ly
ing to her. That was the thing I was most ashamed of. I’m not proud of what I did, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my mother. But, I can’t live with this lie between us anymore. Apollo deserves better. And so do I.
“You ready?” Amber’s voice drifts into my ear. I was lucky she was in town for the week. The reporter is coming to Amber’s studio for the interview, and he’s here. Dean is going to fucking kill me. But I need to cut this cancer out of my life—my way. Without considering whether it will help or hurt my career.
She shows the reporter in. We get settled, and as we agree, I begin the interview with a prepared statement.
“My name is Graham Davis. Many of you know me from my television show Losing to Win. Today, I’m speaking to you as my mother’s son and as a man who wants to be worthy of the woman he loves.” I clear my throat and continue. “At the start of my senior year at UCLA, my mother became very ill. She worked as the maid at my high school. As you can imagine, a maid, even at a private high school in Beverly Hills, didn’t have a great salary to begin with. But, with me working, as well, we were fine. Until she was diagnosed with late stage acute leukemia. The only hope she had was a treatment her insurance company refused to pay for because they said it to was too experimental. We appealed and were denied. After her diagnosis, my mother went back to work because she couldn’t afford not to. I was in college, on a partial scholarship. I worked—sometimes two jobs—to pay the rest of my tuition.
“The treatment that she needed to stay alive was only out of reach because we didn’t have the money. So, I dropped out of school. The university gave me a refund on my tuition which was enough to pay for half of the first month’s treatment. I looked for more work. I was offered a job that would allow me to pay for the treatment and go back to school. It was described as providing companionship. But it was prostitution. Sex for money. Initially, I turned it down.
“And then, my mother got pneumonia. She called me to her bedside and told me that she was prepared to die. That she was ready. She was the only family I had left, and I wasn’t ready. I sat there knowing that I couldn’t live with myself if my mother died because of my pride and fanciful notion of being with the girl I loved. Those sorts of dreams aren’t for people who are desperate. Life doesn’t care what we want. It binds our hearts without our consent. It gives without limit and then steals our joy without warning. It takes from us what it requires and expects a thank you in return. It gives us a shell that blinds everyone who sees it to the will of the heart that beats within it. So, yeah, I had other dreams. But they had to wait because I had the chance to save the woman who had given me life and who I loved more than anyone. Even if it meant never having what I wanted.
