The Lies They Told

Chapter One

"It's coming together beautifully in here."

A soft voice cooed through my sparsely furnished bedroom, abruptly jolting me out of my reverie. My gaze scanned the collection of moving boxes stacked on top of each other before settling on my mother's reflection in the vanity.

My lips twitched in response at the sight. "You could say that, I suppose. Thank you."

Her face was a light shade of red, her makeup visibly blotchy. Mom was dressed in a black form-fitting dress that ended a few inches below the knee, making her petite frame appear thinner than usual. The freshly polished pearls draped loosely around her neck seemed to wash out her deepened skin complexion.

Those pearls were sentimental, a family heirloom worn only on special occasions.

Occasions like this one.

"Are you okay?" I inquired, sympathetically watching as she walked up behind me, placing mature hands on top of my shoulders before giving them a light reassuring squeeze.

Her smile was tight-lipped and hasty. "Of course." She lied through faded lipstick.

Instead of pressing her, I sat quietly waiting for her to speak, which she did after a few beats of silence.

"It was terrible, Hazel." She spoke as if she'd been holding her breath all day. "Those poor people had to bury their daughter today, and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for them." She shook her head, as if in disbelief. "She was so young, too. She had the rest of her life ahead of her. It's heartbreaking to even consider something like that."

We hadn't even been in Fairmount a month, and as expected, no one really knew my mother and I.

The nosy neighbors had been strangely respectful of our privacy, which I appreciated, but after a few sips of my mother's afternoon Chardonnay and a seven-minute conversation she'd had with the clerk at our local produce store - word spread quickly about my mother's new divorce.

My parents had been married for over twenty years when they suddenly separated. They always seemed content, or at least happy, with each other and the life we all shared. My entire life, we lived in the same city, and I grew up in a loving home where I had everything I needed. My father brought the discipline as an Air Force man, and my mother brought the gentleness, always coming to my defense when she felt he was being too harsh on me.

But I never imagined she'd pack up her up belongings and me and leave her husband and all of our friends and family behind to relocate to another state. My father would not have allowed her to do so a few years ago, but his responsibilities at work pushed him so hard that his will in his personal life weakened over time. He wasn't as stern or as hard. But he loved my mother, knew she'd been by his side since their childhood and never left, even when she had to do things alone or show up more for me when he couldn't.

So he let her go.

I saw the sympathy flash in the clerks eyes as I pulled mom from the store with me, annoyed that she'd managed to overshare so much on my hunt for frozen foods. I hadn't wanted a reminder of our circumstances reflected on strangers' faces as we walked down the street in the evening or shuffled outside to get our morning mail, but in the first few days of June, an older woman, Nancy Ledger, strolled up to our front door step carrying a batch of homemade sugar cookies and a basket full of another specific appliances.

And, as much as I was irritated that more people were peering into our perineal affairs, I didn't mind Nancy because mom finally made a friend and soon found herself purchasing fancy bottles of wine and putting together charcuterie boards and spending most of her evenings at the Ledger's residence.