She Trusted a Fake Lie Detector, So I Left Her the Truth novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Cope-More
At a family dinner Dane exposes Flynn as a liar to a laughing room, Joanna sides with him, and when Milo is hurt in a car crash Dane reads Flynn's plea as a lie. Flynn calls Joanna's mother and offers to leave for twenty thousand dollars.
At Joanna's birthday dinner, her brother Dane stood up, tapped his glass with a fork and announced a game of truth or dare.
Twelve people sat around the long dining table, all of them rich and all of them ready to laugh.
Dane is Joanna's adopted younger brother, and he calls himself a human lie detector.
A gray envelope came to the house for him every Sunday. He carried it into the study and shut the door before he did any of his readings.
I had never asked what was in it.
"Flynn," Dane said, pointing his glass at me. "Truth."
I shrugged. I would say anything to get through the night.
"Were you still a virgin when you met my sister?"
Joanna's friends leaned in.
"Yes," I said. "She was my first."
It was true. I was twenty-four when I met her, and I had waited for someone I loved.
Dane tilted his head and watched my face for a long moment.
"Left eye flickered," he said. "That's a lie, Joanna. He's had at least three women before you."
The whole table burst out laughing.
"From now on he's Cope-More," Dane said. "Because he always has something new to cope with."
A man at the far end of the table raised his glass to me. A woman wiped her eyes.
I turned to my wife. "Joanna, tell them. You know it's true."
She laughed behind her hand. Then she stopped hiding it.
"Dane has been catching liars since he was ten," she said. "He is almost never wrong. Don't sulk because he embarrassed you."
Twelve faces watched me wait for her to take it back.
She picked up her wine.
I looked at my wife for a long moment, and then I stood up.
"Dare, Cope-More," Dane called after me. "Bring my sister the good bottle."
I carried it back from the cellar and poured her glass. My hand shook, and the table laughed at that too.
Joanna thanked me and did not look up.
Upstairs, our son Milo was asleep. He was six, and he needed one house with his mother and his father in it.
So I swallowed it. I told myself I would swallow anything for that boy.
Three weeks later, on a Thursday morning, a nurse called my phone.
Milo's school car had hit the rail on the bridge. He was bleeding inside, and the surgeon wanted a twenty thousand dollar deposit before he would begin.
Joanna controlled every account we had. Mine held two hundred and twelve dollars.
I called her phone. Her assistant said she was in a meeting.
I ran out of the house in yesterday's shirt and took a cab to her office.
The lobby of VanHorne Freight was full. Joanna stood by the elevators with Dane at her elbow and a dozen staff around them.
"Milo was in a crash," I said. "He's bleeding inside. They need twenty thousand dollars before they operate. Please, Joanna."
Her face did not change.
Someone near the elevators held up a phone and began to film.
Dane walked a slow circle around me while the whole lobby watched.
"Look at his lips," he said. "Bright red. A father with a dying son has gray lips. This man is in perfect health."
"And that sweat. It's water. He splashed it on his forehead in the elevator so we'd see it."
"It's the cheapest lie I've ever caught."
I held out my phone with the nurse's number on the screen. "Call her. Call the hospital right now."
Joanna did not take it.
"Last week Dane told me you'd been staring at a watch in a shop window," she said. "If you want a watch, ask me for a watch. I won't pay for a lie."
I had never looked at a watch in my life.
"Joanna, he is six years old. He calls you Mom every morning."
"Security," she said, without raising her voice.
Two guards walked me through the revolving door. The receptionist looked down at her desk and did not look up again.
On the sidewalk, I called the hospital. The nurse said the surgeon would wait fifteen minutes and not one minute more.
I stood there with the clock running, and I understood that my wife was not going to help me.
There was one person in the world who would pay anything to see me gone.
I called Joanna's mother, Rhoda VanHorne.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Give me twenty thousand dollars," I said, "and I'll leave Joanna."
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