The Liar Next Door by Nicola Marsh

Sixty-Five

Celeste

As expected, the girls are angels and fall asleep as I soon as I hit the highway. I love driving at night: the lack of traffic, the lights, the chill in the air. I lower the window slightly and inhale, filling my lungs with the crispness of freedom.

Have I ever felt this free?

I’ve always been controlled by other people. Told what to do and who to be, even when I was a child. Because my mom had me in her teens and my dad married her out of necessity, once I hit puberty they feared I’d end up making the same mistake so they were watchful and suspicious all the time. They rarely let me out of the house except to go to school and I always felt like a prisoner.

The fire that killed them and devoured our home was unfortunate but necessary.

I’d been sixteen at the time and put into a foster home; I thought things would be better, but I was placed with an equally controlling monster I could never call mother. I’d run away, been found, and placed in another two homes before I turned eighteen and escaped. I should’ve felt free then, but my lack of finances imprisoned me into a life I didn’t like in another way. I drifted from job to job, menial stuff mostly, at the mercy of cruel bosses who looked down on me because of my lack of a college education. When I finally saved enough money to put myself through community college, doing an accountancy course was the smartest thing I ever did.

I met Roland at twenty-five, at a deli counter of all places. He’d been ordering olives, salami and Parmesan, I’d been buying a takeout pasta salad for one. He commented that was one of his favorites, we shared a smile, and from that moment I knew he was the one. Reveling in my freedom to make my own choices, I chose him, and for the first time in my life I’d been truly happy. I loved him so much I gave him my virginity, my heart, my devotion.

Then he dumped me.

I’d seen it coming. He didn’t know I’d snuck into Francesca Mayfair’s eighteenth birthday party. I’d feigned a migraine because I didn’t want to go to a party filled with rich kids intent on drinking their body weight in alcohol. But when I’d looked out the upper story window from his godparents’ house next door and seen him talking to some girl in a secluded part of the garden, I’d had no option.

I’d slipped into the party along the fence line, staying in the shadows, listening, watching. I’d thought Roland adored me, that he’d never do anything to hurt me. I’d talk about the future and he’d listen intently, nodding in all the right places. He’d take me to banking conferences and I saw the pride on his face when I conversed with his colleagues as an equal, my love of numbers matching theirs.

But the night of that stupid party changed everything.

I saw him chatting with her and didn’t think much of it until later, when he came in to check on me. I knew in an instant he’d changed. His eyes had been shining and he’d smiled more in the fifteen minutes discussing the party than he had in the previous month. I never would’ve picked my stable boyfriend to be smitten with a woman so quickly but that’s exactly what happened and it terrified me.

I insisted we leave the next day, expecting him to follow. Instead, he called my bluff. For the next twenty-four hours after I got home, I alternated between wanting to slash his suits or throw his clothes on the lawn. I did neither, taking my frustration out at the local gym in a kick-boxing marathon that left me three pounds lighter.

When he walked through the door the next day, I was beyond relieved. He wouldn’t have come home so soon if anything had happened with that girl. He would’ve stuck around. But then he started talking about how he hadn’t been happy for a while, how our relationship had become stagnant, how he wanted to be on his own to do some thinking. BS clichés, all of it, because I knew in my gut that she had caused this.

That stupid, young, naive upstart with her big blue eyes and glossy blonde hair, who’d taken one look at my man and wanted him for herself.

I wanted to hurt Roland but I couldn’t. I loved him too much.

So I watched from a distance as he brought her home. As she moved in with him. As they strolled every evening after he finished work, holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, grinning like idiots.

I couldn’t hurt Roland but when I heard he asked her to marry him, I toyed with her. I keyed the car he bought for her. I left a gutted squirrel on her doorstep. I smeared dog crap over her shoes by the front door. Yet she stayed and the day I saw them come back from City Hall and he carried her over the threshold of the house that should’ve been mine, I realized I’d lost.

She’d won the grand prize, Roland, and I got nothing.

I wanted to move away, to make a fresh start, but my obsession with the only man I’d ever loved was too great. I kept my distance from them but I watched. For years. Until my opportunity came.

She left.

And my Roland had a broken heart only an old friend could mend, and I finally had a chance to win back the love of my life.

I orchestrated a few chance meetings—at the supermarket mostly—pretending I didn’t know about the separation until he told me. I had sympathy down to a fine art by the time I asked him out for coffee and while it gutted me to sit there and listen to him drone on about how much he missed her I knew being patient would earn me a second chance.

It came a year later when his divorce papers were signed, sealed and delivered. That night, Roland lost himself in me. Our friendship slipped back into relationship territory and rather than shove me away again as I half expected, he continued to date me. But I never moved in and I got the feeling he considered me as a friend with benefits. It was enough. Until it wasn’t.

So I did what I had to do.

I got pregnant.

Surely a baby would bind us and I’d get the wedding ring I’d coveted for years?

But marriage had changed Roland. She’d changed him. And while he said he’d support me and would be as involved in our child’s life as I wanted, he didn’t make our relationship official let alone propose. I got the feeling he was still pining for her, even though he’d told me she’d remarried. She’d moved on, why couldn’t he?

When I asked how he knew about her marriage, he got evasive. Worse, he looked guilty, like he’d seen her. I pried but got nothing out of him. Until not that long ago, when I’d pushed and he’d exploded, spilling the god-awful truth.

It should’ve destroyed me.

Instead, the truth set me free.