He Called Every Truth a Lie novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hundredth Entry
At the anniversary dinner Tristram reads a book of Joanna's supposed lies, the chowder has shrimp in it, and she takes the book and walks out to find Tristram called the ambulance first.
At our fifth anniversary dinner, in front of forty guests, my husband gave me a book.
Tristram stood at the head of the long table with a glass in one hand and the book in the other.
It had a black leather cover and gold letters pressed into it.
The Ledger of Lies.
"Five years," he said. "And I finally found the right gift for Joanna."
A few guests laughed. They thought it was a joke.
I laughed too, because his mother was watching me.
She sat at the far end of the table in her pearls, smiling at me kindly.
Tristram opened the book and found a page.
"The night my wife told me my mother had swapped her thyroid pills for something else."
He made a small pencil tick in the margin, the same way he did when he read me an invoice at breakfast.
He turned the page.
"The week she said my brother had been spending her money on her own bank card."
Another tick.
"And the dinner party where she said our cook had put shellfish in her food."
Down the table, Toby studied the ceiling.
Nobody else made a sound.
Inez reached over and squeezed my wrist. "He only does it because he worries about you, dear. We all do."
Her hand was warm and dry.
"You've gone pale," she said. "Eat something. I had the kitchen make your soup special tonight."
Tristram lifted the book so everyone could see the cover.
"Ninety-nine entries," he said. "At one hundred, I file for divorce. My lawyer says the prenup covers the rest."
Forty people looked at their plates.
My face was burning, and I made myself speak slowly.
"How many of the ninety-nine did you check?"
"I don't have to check what I already know," Tristram said.
The waiter set a bowl of corn chowder in front of me.
It smelled sweet and a little like the sea.
I put my spoon in and took one mouthful.
My lips began to tingle before I swallowed.
I knew that taste. I had known it since I was nine years old.
I put the spoon down very gently.
"There's shrimp in this."
"Jo," Tristram said. "Don't."
"The cook promised me it was clear," Inez said. "She promised me twice."
My tongue was getting thick.
I reached down for my bag and my hands didn't work right.
Tristram saw me. He didn't move from his chair.
"You're not going to do this tonight," he said. "Not in front of my mother's friends."
I found the pen in the side pocket and pulled the cap off with my teeth.
I drove it into my thigh through my dress, and I held it there while the guests all stood up at once.
A woman near the door was already on the phone.
Tristram took the gold pen from his pocket and wrote in the book.
He didn't hurry.
"That's one hundred," he said, and he looked up at the table. "Thank you all for being witnesses."
My throat had stopped closing.
My heart was pounding from the shot, and my hands shook.
Under the shaking, I was clear for the first time in five years.
He had not been afraid for me once.
He had wanted a hundred, and he had wanted forty witnesses.
So I stood up.
I walked the length of the table, past the guests and past Inez's smile.
I picked the book out of Tristram's hand.
He let me, because he thought I couldn't do anything with it.
"You keep a record of what I say," I told him. "Now I'm keeping one of what you do."
I took my coat off the hook in the hall and went out the front door.
The ambulance was already in the driveway with its lights turning in the rain.
A paramedic jumped down from the back and took my wrist.
He was tall, with wet dark hair and a calm voice.
"Ma'am, I'm Ethan. I need you to sit. You've used an epinephrine pen?"
"Yes."
"Good. You're going to be okay."
He steered me onto the step and clipped a monitor on my finger, and then he turned the screen of his tablet so I could read it.
"I wanted to ask you something," he said. "Dispatch logged this call before you ever used the pen."
I looked at the screen.
The caller was G. Nordin.
The note under it said: Wife will fake a medical emergency. Do not take her allergy seriously.
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