All the Lies We Tell Read online

  Later.

  Darkness. Mouth tasted like shit. Head pounding, he swam up from desperate dreams but couldn’t seem to wake. He was in the attic, his cheek pressed to the thin mattress of the army cot. A bucket by his head, though he still couldn’t seem to puke.

  He heard them. Soft murmurs. The shuffle of blankets, a zipper, the creak of a mattress. He knew what was going on, but he couldn’t see anything. Still too drunk to react.

  Later.

  Ilya woke to the stab of morning light spearing him through the attic window. Niko snored in the sagging double bed, alone. When Ilya sat up to look around, everything came slamming back to him, everything that happened, and his stomach revolted. He retched into the trash can for what seemed like years and then fell back onto the cot with a groan.

  His brother pressed a glass of clear, chilly water into Ilya’s hand. “Drink this.”

  He did. Puked again. It hurt less this time, but the taste lingered long after. He tried to wash it away, but it wouldn’t go.

  He looked up. “She’s gone, man. She’s really . . . gone.”

  “I know.” Niko sat next to him. Shoulder to shoulder, his warmth welcome in the attic’s chill. “I know.”

  Ilya cried, ashamed not of his tears but because if he’d let himself feel more earlier, he might not have felt this now. Niko put an arm around him. Only for a minute or so before he squeezed, hard, and sat back to let his brother grieve. He handed Ilya a box of tissues and waited patiently for him to finish.

  They never spoke of it again.

  Downstairs, the house was quiet and empty and trashed. All those people who came over to eat food, and none of them had bothered to help clean up. The smell of leftover pasta and sauce lingered in the kitchen, and his stomach crawled up his throat again as he leaned over the sink, heaving.

  “You want some crackers?” The rustle of a package turned him. Theresa held a sleeve of saltines. Her glasses glinted in the light from the windows. “They’re good for a sick stomach.”

  The thought of even nibbling a dry cracker had him doubling over again, hands braced on the sink, while he dry-heaved. An endless minute or two passed before he could control himself. Sweating, Ilya turned on the faucet to splash his face with cool water.

  “Here.” Theresa took his wrist between her small hands and pressed a spot on the underside of his wrist. “Feel this? Squeeze it. You’ll feel better.”

  He didn’t believe it would work, but after another few minutes sitting at the table with her squeezing his wrists, the churning in his stomach got knocked back a bit. He didn’t feel better, though. That would have been an impossible task.

  “Where’d you learn that?” He asked her.

  Theresa withdrew her hands and pushed her glasses up on her nose. Her hair was a wild tangle; her smile, hesitant and solemn. “My dad used to get pretty hungover.”

  She’d revealed something to him that he didn’t know before; knowing it didn’t make him like Barry any better than he ever had. Right now, though, Ilya couldn’t find it within himself to sympathize with her or even muster the effort to fake it.

  Theresa shrugged and looked away. “I’m sorry about Jennilynn. I know you and her—”

  “Me and her weren’t anything,” Ilya cut in. “I mean, she lived across the street. That’s it. Me and her were nothing. That’s how she wanted it, so that’s how it was.”

  “Sure. Of course. Sorry.”

  His stomach turned again. “Can you do that thing to my wrists again?”

  “Sure,” Theresa said quietly and took them both in her hands, her fingers finding the right spots to squeeze.

  The pressure eased his nausea. They didn’t speak. Ilya closed his eyes and breathed, letting her touch relieve him.

  The sound of footsteps in the hallway pulled Theresa away from him. She got up before Ilya could say anything, and disappeared into the dining room, leaving him at the table. His mother, bleary eyed, hair a mess, padded through the kitchen without saying a word to him and went out the sliding glass door with her cigarettes. Ilya watched the plume of smoke drift by the glass; then he stood.

  If he was lucky, when he got upstairs to his bed, he would sleep. And, buried beneath his blankets, he did, but only after he pressed his fingers against his opposite wrist on the spot where Theresa had touched him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ilya hadn’t been in to the office all morning or afternoon but stopped by quickly on his way home to make sure the final details for the dive trip were in place. Allie was still at her computer, typing away, doing whatever she did all day to keep Go Deep running. She didn’t look up when he knocked lightly on the door frame.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come back here,” she said.

  Ilya stepped through the door to stand in front of her desk. “I wanted to be sure everything was set, since I’m leaving in a couple days.”

  “Oh!” She turned, looking surprised. “It’s you.”

  “Yeah, last time I checked.” He made a show of looking down at himself, then gave her a curious look. “Who’d you think it would be?”

  “UPS delivery,” Allie answered smoothly.

  Ilya eyed the pastry bag on her desk. “You went to the Donut Shack?”

  “Grab one. And some coffee. I need to talk to you.” She got up before he could answer to make him a mug of coffee.

  He opened the bag to look inside, snagging a chocolate frosted with sprinkles. The doughnuts might have been a bribe; the coffee was definitely one. “That sounds bad. What are you going to get on my case about this time?”

  She glanced up at him while the coffeemaker hissed and spat. “Why do you always have to do that?”

  “Do what?” Ilya shoved the doughnut in his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

  “Make everything somehow my fault.” She handed him a mug of steaming coffee and took her place behind the desk again. “Like I’m some kind of harpy, incapable of being satisfied.”

  His lip curled a little at her tone. “What’s up? Something with the trip? Look, Allie, you know that you can’t run the trips, and someone has to stay here to handle business. We can’t just close up for two weeks, and we can’t afford to cover your costs to go along.”

  “It’s not about the trip, Ilya.” Alicia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s something else. I wish you’d sit so we can talk about it.”

  He already knew what it was she meant to bring up. The plain white envelope on the desk told him. Theresa had said she’d talked with Allie about an offer from that real estate development corporation. Days ago. Maybe weeks at this point. She’d been holding out on him.

  He didn’t sit. “Just hit me with it.”

  “It’s about the quarry. And the shop.” She pushed the envelope toward him.

  “Yeah. Theresa said something to me about it already.” He took grim satisfaction in the way he seemed to have surprised her. “You didn’t know that, huh? You thought you were going to sit on this and not talk to me about it?”

  “Of course I was going to talk to you about it. I’m talking to you right now.”

  Ah, there it was. The press of her lips together. The cross of her arms. Allie was getting pissed off at him now. In a few minutes, she’d turn cold and angry, but she’d leave him the hell alone. She’d punish him with the silent treatment, and if he was lucky, it would last until he got back from sunny Jamaica, when maybe he’d be better equipped to deal with all the bullshit that had been happening. Because right now, Ilya thought as he took a long, deliberate sip of coffee, he had emptied his pockets of any and all fucks he might have had to give.

  “You waited long enough,” he said. “Theresa told me she’d presented you with an offer, like two weeks ago.”

  Allie visibly took a breath before she spoke. “The two weeks you didn’t come in to work, you mean? The two weeks I handled everything here by myself? Not that it was that much different than any other time, I guess, since I handle most everything here by mys