Once A Liar. A.F. Brady

       THEN

      It wasn’t a year from the day we met before we were married. Juliette and I flew down to the Turks and Caicos, just the two of us, knowing exactly what we were planning on doing but telling no one. She had hidden her engagement ring from public view before we got on the plane, but as we looked out over the turquoise water, she slipped it on her finger. We rented a house on the beach and spent a few days relaxing in the sun, completely wrapped up in one another.

      I wanted to keep Juliette happy. I was already elated that she’d agreed to elope and I wasn’t forced to attend a wedding where I would inevitably have to discuss my upbringing, and why my family wasn’t in attendance. We lay on a daybed on our porch overlooking the sea, and as if she could read my mind, Juliette started in on a conversation about family.

      “Do you think we should call my parents?” She looked up at me while I stroked her hair. “If your parents were alive, I’m sure they would want to be here, don’t you think?”

      I was jolted with conflict—I had sold my story to Juliette. The story about my art dealer father, my philanthropist mother and their tragic and untimely deaths. I had told the story so many times since leaving Vermont that it had become true to me. It was only with Juliette that I felt like I was lying, and it gnawed at me. We were about to get married, and if I was planning on spending the rest of my life with her, I felt compelled to tell her the truth.

      “Yes, I do think they would want to be here. But...” I paused, concerned that she would be hurt and upset that I had lied, but sure that if such a time existed that would be perfect for a confession, it was right then. “But we’ve gone our separate ways, and I can’t turn back now.” I started my revelation.

      “Your separate ways?” she asked, confused but not yet suspicious. “You mean after the car accident?” She turned uneasy.

      I sighed deeply, slowly responding, “There was never a car accident. As far as I know, my parents are probably still alive.”

      “What?” She quickly sat up and turned to face me, pulling off her sunglasses. “You told me they died in that accident when you were still living in Europe. What do you mean they’re alive?”

      “I know.” I hung my head, embarrassed and apprehensive. “I know what I told you. It’s the same thing I tell everyone. But it’s not really what happened.”

      “What really happened, Peter?” The anger was rising in her voice.

      “Nothing happened, darling.” I tried to hold her, but she leaned just out of reach. “We just went our separate ways.” I couldn’t fully bring myself to tell the truth. I felt terrified of being exposed, bringing my humiliating past to the surface and letting her know that I didn’t belong among her venerated peers.

      She didn’t say a word, but her wide eyes and furrowed brow told me to keep talking.

      “I didn’t grow up in Europe,” I confessed. “My father wasn’t an art dealer.” I threw my sunglasses on the daybed beside me and rubbed the ache out of my eyes. “I hate where I came from, and I never want to go back there. I started making up stories a long time ago, and I never told anyone the truth after I left.”

      She softened slightly, a look of sympathy rising in her eyes. “Where did you grow up?”

      My stomach burned with adrenaline. “Vermont. In Burlington. My father took off, and my mother gave up custody when I was an infant. I was raised by my uncle and his wife.” I felt light-headed as I continued, completely unaccustomed to saying these words aloud. “They were dead inside. No drive, no passion. They floated through life and I couldn’t stand it.” I couldn’t look at Juliette as I admitted the truth. I had buried the truth so deeply, bringing it back up made me feel like I was violently heaving. “I was a burden to them. They barely scraped by raising their own four kids—they certainly didn’t want to have to worry about me.”

      “I don’t understand. You grew up in the States? Your parents are alive?”

      “It’s hard to explain.” I shook my head, frustrated. “My mother... I didn’t know her. She came by once in a while, but she didn’t take responsibility for me. She dumped me with my uncle Tommy and his wife. They were dead, Juliette. I don’t know how to make it clear to you. They were nothing at all, just bodies with no souls, no vitality, no life inside them. They didn’t raise me or teach me or discipline me. I just existed alongside them. They gave me nothing. Not a chance, not an expectation, not a modicum of concern. Nothing.”

      She examined my face, looking at me hard, as if she were trying to find a sign I was telling her the truth. “Are they still in Vermont?” she asked, the anger in her voice waning.

      “I guess so. I don’t know. I left before college, and I haven’t spoken to them since.”

      “And you never had any contact with them? They never tried to find you?”

      “No. As far as I know, they were just as happy to be rid of me as I was to be rid of them. My cousins, Tommy’s kids, they always reminded me I wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t belong. I didn’t look like them, I didn’t act like them. I was smart, I wanted to succeed in life. When my eldest cousin, just two years older than me, finished high school, I took off that summer. I was seventeen years old, I had worked after school to earn some money, and when I could afford to get out of there, I got a one-way ticket to Chicago and never looked back.”

      “Jesus.” She gently scooted up beside me and laid her hand on my lap. “No wonder you left.”

      “Yes.” I sat up at attention, surprised she could understand me. “Yes, I had to get out. I needed life, I needed to be loved and respected and seen. I needed to be up in lights, on top of the world...” Just as suddenly as I felt understood, it flipped, and I felt like I was right back in Vermont. I felt vulnerable and desperate for the first time since leaving Burlington, and I hated it.

      Juliette looked at me for what felt like years before speaking again. “It all makes sense,” she said. “No wonder you went looking for my father. He’s the opposite of what you grew up with.”

      “Yes.” I glanced away, afraid of being exposed, of letting anyone see that I did in fact have vulnerabilities. “I will never allow that to happen to me. I will never be nothing the way they were. I can only accept the best, be the most successful, amass the highest achievements possible. Otherwise, I just won’t be a part of it. I learned to hate it, Juliette.”

      “And it’s no wonder my father went looking for you.” She stared out toward the sea in front of us. The breeze blew her hair out of her face, and I could see a pained expression. “He wanted a son, an heir. Someone like-minded, who he could mold into his successor. Someone exactly like you, who thinks he’s the be-all and end-all. I feel like you two have been searching for each other.”

      “I was jealous when you told me he was your father,” I admitted. “I had always looked up to him in that way, and I wanted my father to be like him. All drive and ambition, never satisfied, all hunger for the best.”

      She