Lie Still Read Free

the life I’d resigned, as director of a small SoHo art gallery, I would throw on something black, a gold cuff, and be done with it. But even in the two short weeks we’d been in Texas, I could see that would make me look like a fat crow among a flock of colorful, glittery birds.
    “I don’t want to stand out as too … New York. My father always said, ‘Make a bad first impression and you’re digging yourself out of a grave for years, make a good first impression and people—’ ”
    “ ‘—will give you the benefit of the doubt forever.’ I’m familiar with the wisdom. And why do you think New York is an instant bad impression?”
    “We’re snotty, rude, walk too fast, use big words when little ones will do just fine. Steal their best baseball players.”
    Mike moved from the bed to the floor, kneeling with his ear pressed against my bare tummy. “Just be your quirky, sweet self,” he murmured. “Texas thanks God and the Yankees every day for stealing their overpriced baseball players. I hear they’ve incorporated it into the Lord’s Prayer.”
    My hand rested gently on his head, shaved bare to avoid the inevitable, the unexpected bonus being that it made him look even fiercer during his seven-year run as an ATF agent. Mike had led a brotherhood of men who carried recessive genes from cavemenancestors to kill and protect the way others carry genes for cancer and beauty. I’d watched these men drink beer and tease one another in my kitchen like regular guys, but they never, ever truly relaxed. I sleep beside one of them, so I know. They are different from the rest of us.
    Our mirror reflected a happy, loving union. No fear, no tension, no anger. No hint of three years of painful infertility treatments, miscarriages, weeks of utilitarian sex, and hot words that nearly ripped us in two.
    My eyes remained glued to the couple reflected there, hoping it was real. In Mike’s case, the bald look worked, like it did on men without ridged Cro-Magnon skulls, making him even more attractive than he was before.
    “Come on, give me a more detailed rundown on my hostess tonight.” It was my practice to be fully equipped before negotiating a room of strangers.
    “Three words,” I demanded. An old game we played.
    Mike shrugged. “Rich. Widow. Tragic.”
    “OK, need more than that. And your left hand needs to stop right there.”
    “I think she lost a son,” he said. “I don’t know if she cast a vote, but she attended my final interview, so she wields power here in little Clairmont. Mostly with her wallet. I was told she provided seed money for some upgrades at the new headquarters.”
    So far, my only impression of Caroline Warwick was a soft Southern drawl on the other end of the phone. Three days ago, she invited me to a gathering of the town’s female elite and seemed slightly annoyed when I told her I’d have to get back to her. Despite his casualness now, Mike had urged me to accept.
Get to know people, Emily. Help establish our new life
.
    Texas was not even a glimmer in our wineglasses on those late nights after the stick turned blue and we talked dreams with new urgency.
    So Mike was lightly dismissive when an old FBI friend of his mentioned a position leading a well-funded police shop in a high-heeled Southern town, the kind of town rising on
Fortune
magazine lists. Clairmont, Texas, per capita the wealthiest, most highly taxed city of its size in the country, home to CEOs and Dallas Cowboy football players and Texas land barons and nouveau riche wannabes who carried mountains of mortgage and credit card debt.
    But then there was a phone call from a persuasive head-hunter. And another. Mike flew down first-class for two interviews. The salary shone like a gleaming platinum carrot: $175,000 a year, plus a bonus plan tied to lowering the town’s crime statistics, which were mostly connected to rowdy teens. In Texas, that amount of money meant something. Mike feared it also meant he’d been