CHAPTER ONE
"Sadie never realized just how full of shit her mom was until the day she died.
Of course she’d known her mom was a liar; her lies paid their bills. People would come from all over Red Valley to see her. They hated her—because she knew their secrets, because they needed her, because she hated them—but they still came, in beater trucks with rusted wheel wells or glossy Audis with no license plates, winding up the dirt road to knock on the Liar’s door. And after a lifetime in Red Valley, her ledger was full of every dirty thing the people in town had ever tried to hide away.
When Sadie was younger and the customers came, her mom would say, “Why don’t you go play outside for a few minutes?”
She’d go, but she peeked in through grimy windows enough times to know how it worked. The customer would tell her mom the Lie they wanted to be true, and she’d write it down in her ledger. Then they paid her, usually cash—the Liar didn’t accept checks—but sometimes in barter: groceries, Lotto tickets, tuna casserole. Honest Bob, owner of Honest Bob’s Used Automotives, must have had a real whopper he needed telling—and didn’t want to touch his savings account—because he gave her mom the keys to the Mustang he’d driven up in. She’d kept it for a few months then sold it back to him, said she didn’t like how the convertible top messed up her hair.
After her mom was satisfied with the offered payment, there was only one step left: they had to pay the Liar’s Price. This was probably what her mom didn’t want Sadie to see. She forgot that blood isn’t as scary to kids as it is to grownups.
Her mom would take out her pocketknife, clean the blade, then make the customer hold out their hand, though some people preferred she made the cut somewhere less conspicuous. In the end, she only needed a few drops, enough to smear next to the Lie written in her ledger, to seal the deal.
People got out of there real fast after that. Maybe they didn’t like the sight of their own blood. Or maybe they didn’t want someone else to come down that dusty driveway and find them there. Sadie didn’t care either way. After a while, watching the forbidden ritual became a bore, so instead she’d go off and play make-believe in the dry oak trees that surrounded the tiny blue house. She liked to climb up in the twisted branches and pretend she was invisible, pretend she could see the whole world but they couldn’t see her. She’d sit up in the trees for hours and wonder what Lies she’d tell:
Everyone at school likes Sadie.
Sadie lives in a big house with a fireplace and a pool and a garden.
Sadie doesn’t feel lonely all the time.
So Sadie always knew her mom was a liar.
But still, she never expected she’d lie to her.
“Excuse me?”
Sadie blinked hard. Memories of gnarled oak branches and blood soaking into paper scuttled away, replaced in a flash by the diner’s heavy air, greasy with French fry oil and floor cleaner. Sadie’s head swam for a moment, like she’d fallen asleep on her
feet and woke just before toppling over.
The frowning man at table six was waving irritably at her. Sadie let the afterimages fade and slipped on a cheery smile—the most important part of the waitress’ uniform—as she came out from behind the counter.
“Excuse me,” he said again. He sounded like he didn’t much care for having to repeat himself. Calloused fingers drummed on the table. He glanced down at Sadie’s nametag but didn’t even bother to use her name. “I ordered that coffee ten minutes ago, sweetheart. I’m just wondering when I should expect it to arrive.”
A coil deep in her chest tightened a little. The smile threatened to bail, but Sadie locked it back into place. Working in Red Valley, you got used to the assholes. Some entitled, some bitter, some just plain mean, but every shift had a least a couple. Sadie didn’t know if the town drew them or bred them, but she’d learned to stop expecting better from people around here. Fake smiles, thick skin. Never look them in the eye, so you don’t have to remember their stupid faces when trying to sleep at night.
“I’m sorry about that,” Sadie said, her voice a little too sweet. “I’ll go get that right now. I think we’ve got a fresh pot going.”
He said something through his frown as she walked away, but she didn’t listen. She could tell by the shape of the words that it would just make her want to pour the coffee on his lap instead of in a mug, and that wouldn’t end well for either of them. So she got the coffee and returned to his table, her smile never fading.
“Finally,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
There’s that irresistible Red Valley charm, Sadie thought, and cringed immediately. Now she sounded like her mom, and that was terrifying. The Liar could get away with casual disdain for everyone in town; Sadie, on the other hand, still worked for tips. Not that there was much hope for any this afternoon. Other than the cranky guy sucking coffee through his mustache, the diner was mostly empty, just a couple of the old-timers in the booth by the door, arguing about the drought and how the whole town was drying up under our feet like a raisin. Their tips usually came in the form of pocket-warmed pennies and dimes. The lunch rush had only been a couple hours ago, and she figured it must have been busy, but truthfully she could barely remember.
Someone in a hairnet stuck their head out the door from the kitchen and called to her. “Phone call!”
Sadie wiped her hands on her apron and frowned. No one called her, not at work.
She went through the flapping doors into the kitchen and was greeted by hot air scented with day-old bacon. The dishwashers were laughing in a corner while they broke down oily cardboard boxes, all except Javier, who had drawn the short straw again and was sweating over the grill, hoping to find some clean metal under all that old black grease. The chefs were seeing how many times they could flip their spatulas in the air before catching them—or dropping them with a clatter. Denise, the owner and head waitress, glared at the chefs and pointed Sadie toward the phone hanging on the wall in the back.
“Sounded serious, hon,” was all she said.
“Hello?” Sadie said into the phone.
“Can you hear me? My name is Abagail, I’m a nurse down at St. Elizabeth’s, and we’ve got your mom in here…” Sadie listened to the rest without hearing it, and somehow was able to repeat enough to Denise for her to tell her to take the night off and go see her mom.
“You need a ride out there?” Denise asked. “I can send Javier.”
“No, that’s fine,” Sadie said. Her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “If I go now, I can catch the bus.”
She made it to the bus stop just before it pulled away. She took an empty spot by the front, the A/C frigid on her clammy skin. Toward the back, a couple of high school kids whispered sharply to each other while they stared at Sadie. She ignored them. An ageless woman with saggy, tanned skin sat across from her. Despite the blasting heat outside, she wore a heavy winter coat that was filthy at the cuffs and shiny on the elbows, and a massive garbage bag full of aluminum cans crinkled at her feet. Her eyes kept darting over to Sadie, but Sadie kept her gaze fixed on the window. She was used to the attention. People in Red Valley always noticed her—the daughter of the infamous Liar—but rarely spoke to her. Instead they stared and they whispered.
Luckily St. Elizabeth’s Hospital wasn’t far and was on the safe side of the River. Outside the bus, the dry dead hills around Red Valley seethed in summer heat. The few people she saw braving Main Street were flushed red and soaked in sweat. She didn’t understand why they bothered; most of the shops were boarded up and empty, cracked-glass storefronts of buildings left to rot in the sun like overripe fruit, victims of the arrival of Walmart on the edge of town. Signs for the 4th of July picnic at the park still hung crooked on telephone poles, long past the celebration. Taped to dirty windows she saw election posters in red, white, and blue: elect undersheriff dwight hassler for county sheriff. for a safer red valley. The undersheriff’s grim face and thick mustache stared back from every poster, watchful, unrelenting eyes on an empty street.
Sadie thought she could remember a time when there was some life here, but if that memory was even real, it was a long time ago. Maybe the old-timers were right: maybe the town was just drying up.
Her mom was in ICU. The room was dark except for the lights on the machines helping her to breathe. From the doorway all Sadie could see was a vaguely human shape propped up on pillows. Tubes sprouted from her nose, mouth, and arms. She nudged the door open further and the over-bright hallway light fell on her mom’s pale face.
“I’ve never seen it come on so sudden,” Nurse Abagail said with a careworn sigh. She was a broad woman with brown skin and a pink floral smock.
Her mom looked the same. After the phone call, Sadie hadn’t been sure what to expect, but she looked exactly like she had this morning, just now hooked up to life support. “Seen what?”
“The cancer,” the nurse said. When Sadie didn’t move or reply, she made a clucking sound and said, “You knew about it, right?”
Cancer. Fucking cancer. “No,” Sadie said. “She never said a
thing.”
“Oh, child,” the nurse said. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure she had her reasons.”
Reasons. Like there were any reasons that could possibly make this Lie okay. That’s why she didn’t look like a cancer patient. She’d written something in her ledger so she didn’t have to. A fresh coat of paint on a rotting house. A Lie can do lots of things, but it can’t make cancer go away.
The nurse seemed uncomfortable with Sadie’s icy silence, so went on. “She’s been a real fighter, your mom. Doing her best anyway. Been coming in for chemo for months. For a while we thought it was working, but then…”
“But then what?”
“Doctor told her a couple days ago it was back and had progressed to stage four—that’s where it spreads all over her body,” Nurse Abagail said, an apology in the way she said it. “Inoperable. Then today she comes in for a checkup, and then they found her in the chapel, passed out on the floor. Doctor did an x-ray and there’s more cancer than woman in there now.”
Sadie swallowed. The hallway fluorescent lights screamed overhead and the room began to spin. Beneath the hospital’s sharp chemical odor, Sadie could smell something sour. “How long,” she asked, “does she have?”
The nurse put a hand on her arm but she barely felt it. “That’s why we called you, dear. We thought you’d want to be here when…” She trailed off again. Machines beeped and exhaled. A toilet nearby let out a muted flush. Down the hall, a gurney with a squeaky wheel creeped along. “And she still looks so healthy. What a shame. I’ll be just outside. Let me know if you need anything,” the nurse said before leaving to oversee someone else’s tragedy in some other room.
Sadie had known her mom was the Liar of Red Valley all her life, but it wasn’t until she was fourteen that she understood the Liar’s Price. A little old widowed woman—Mrs. Bradford, with owl-eyed glasses and colorless hair dyed pink—had come to their house. Her son drove her, but he waited outside with the car. For the first time, Sadie’s mom hadn’t asked Sadie to leave, so she sat on the couch, legs hanging over the arm, bare feet dangling.
“I bet you never thought you’d see me here,” Mrs. Bradford said in a creaky voice.
Sadie’s mom motioned her to a chair and then sat across from her. “No, Mrs. Bradford,” she said, “I did not. I didn’t think you thought very highly of my services.”
“I don’t,” the old woman said tartly, drawing her gaudy purse up in front of her like a shield. “It’s the Devil’s work, and that’s the truth of it. Pastor Steve just gave a fine sermon on Sunday about the wickedness that goes on in this town, especially on the other side of the River. In fact, I brought you a copy of it.” She rummaged in her purse and produced a white CD in a plastic sleeve. Sadie’s mom took it, although they didn’t even own a CD player.
“So,” her mom said, “what can I do for you, then?”
Mrs. Bradford’s face crumpled, wrinkles upon wrinkles. Her mouth opened and closed a few times without saying a word.
With great force of will, she finally said, “I miss my Jack.”
Sadie’s mom leaned forward in her chair. “Would you like me to bring him back for you?”
Mrs. Bradford nodded.
Her mom produced her ledger, a simple blue notebook with a worn ribbon bookmark. She always had it with her, no matter what. She opened the book and pressed the pages flat.
“You know he won’t really be back, right?” her mom said as she raised her pen.
“Yes, yes. But he’ll seem like he is, won’t he?”
“Yes,” her mom said. “But you’ll know he isn’t.”
“He’ll be there when I get home?”
Sadie’s mom nodded.
Mrs. Bradford dabbed a tear from a watery eye with an embroidered handkerchief. “I think I’ll be willing to forget.”
Her mom didn’t start writing. She tapped the paper with the end of the pen instead. “And you’re willing to pay the price?”
Mrs. Bradford scowled. Sadie only saw it out of the corner of her eye, but that was enough to make her uncomfortable. She was used to people hating her mom, but this was an intensity she hadn’t seen before. The old woman pulled an envelope full of cash out of her purse and tossed it on the table between them. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’d never expect charity from you.”
Sadie’s mom didn’t reach for the money. She didn’t even look at it. “That’s not the price I meant, Mrs. Bradford.”
“Oh,” the old woman said. “Yes, well.” The anger drained from her seamed face, though there was still a tightness in her lips as she pressed them together. “I know I don’t have a lot of time left before the Lord calls me home, but… but whatever I have left, I’d rather not spend it alone.”
“Okay,” Sadie’s mom said as she wrote into the ledger. “I’m going to need some of your blood.”
When Mrs. Bradford was gone, Sadie twisted around in her perch on the couch to face her mom, who was counting the cash in the envelope. “What did you mean, about the price?” she asked.
Her mom tucked the envelope away. “Life, Sadie.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The Lies these people want me to tell for them,” her mom said, “come at a price. Time off of their lives.”
Sadie sat up straight. “You steal days off their lives?”
“Hours, days, years,” her mom said casually. “The bigger the Lie, the higher the price. So when Mrs. Bradford’s idiot son came by last month and asked me to Lie about his receding hairline, that probably cost him six months. I’d guess Mrs. Bradford’s Lie cost her a year. Hard to know.” She pointed a finger at her daughter. “But I’m not stealing anything. I don’t get to keep that time. It just gets burned up.”
“That’s harsh.”
“I don’t make the rules. The King does.”
Sadie thought about that for a long time. Mrs. Bradford didn’t seem like she had much life left, yet she had just given away some of it because she was tired of being alone. That certainly seemed better than dying sooner so people didn’t think you were
going bald.
“At least she used it bringing her husband back,” Sadie said. “That’s romantic.”
Her mom snorted a laugh. “That old bitch hated her husband. Jack was her dog.”
Sadie saw an obituary for Mrs. Bradford about a year later. She’d shown it to her mom, but her mom had just shrugged.
As she sat now by her mother’s bedside, Sadie thought about Mrs. Bradford, and about her son’s thinning hair, and about every other person in Red Valley who’d driven up to see the Liar and put their blood in her book. What Lies could be worth it? Sadie remembered thinking about what Lies she’d tell if she could, about having more friends and living in a big house. But once she understood the Liar’s Price, those dreams withered and blew away. Life was short enough already.
And yet her mom had paid the Liar’s Price just to hide her cancer. The doctors had given her the diagnosis, and rather than come home and break the bad news to her daughter, she wrote down another Lie in her book and sealed it with her own blood. She’d given up hours—days? weeks?—together, and for what? To look pretty for one more day? So she didn’t have to see her hair falling out because of the chemo? Or so she didn’t have to have a hard conversation about death?
They’d fought that morning. They fought most mornings, about stupid shit: taking the garbage down their long driveway to the cans by the road, an unwashed coffee pot that had started to grow mold, or musty clothes scattered on the bathroom floor. Ever since Sadie had graduated from high school, their little house had felt even smaller and her mom less forgiving. You don’t like it, there’s the door was the unspoken threat under every argument.
A lot of her classmates had gone on to the state university in Paso Verde, the next town south, but Sadie’s grades had doomed her to a life waiting tables at the diner, seeing the same faces every day, a little bit older and more worn out each time. She’d been miserable at first, but as the interchangeable weeks became interchangeable years, she’d gotten used to it, numb to it, like blistered skin finally growing a callus. She still hated Red Valley sometimes, with its lifeless streets and dead-end jobs, but mostly she couldn’t bother to care. Red Valley had more than its share of strangeness: weird, unexplainable shit that might be the coolest thing you ever saw or the last, but the real power in this town was its ability to make sure nothing ever really changed.
Sadie watched her mom’s raspy breaths. She did still look healthy, but there were signs, if you looked closely. There were new wrinkles deep around her eyes. Her fingers—usually bright with some awful polish Sadie secretly coveted—were colorless save for dried blood around broken nails. Her lips were cracked.
“You let me yell at you about the fucking cornflakes,” Sadie whispered to the quiet room. She wanted to scream; she wanted to cry. Her heart was a dead weight in her chest and her whole world narrowed to a sliver of fluorescent light falling on a face she barely recognized.
CHAPTER TWO
Her mom died around dinnertime. Sadie was holding her hand when it happened. She wouldn’t have even noticed if the machines hadn’t started putting up a racket; the change in her mom—from a person to a body—was subtle. Nurses came in, but they didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. They put up a bit of a fight, but Sadie knew it was mostly a performance, one last bit of dignity afforded to that poor woman and her stone-faced daughter.. Someone wrote the time down on a chart, someone else squeezed Sadie’s arm, and Nurse Abagail turned off the machines. The room fell quiet. Even the old A/C unit shuddered and went still.
Sadie just made it to the toilet down the hall before she threw up. Her whole body jittered like she’d grabbed an electric fence and held on tight. The bathroom’s tile floor was cold on her legs and her face felt like it was on fire. She sat there for a long time, afraid to even move, because once she did, she’d have to get up, and go back out into that hallway, and then outside into that heat that never let up, and then… where?
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
Nurse Abagail found her there and gently helped her to her feet. She kept talking the whole time in a soft, careful voice, like you would to a wild animal you didn’t want to spook, saying how sorry she was, and how someone would call her about arrangements for the body, and how they’d pack up her mom’s things and drop them by her house, and how Sadie ought to go home and get some rest, and how she could cry if she needed to. But Sadie didn’t cry and didn’t speak. Just stood in silence on numb legs that didn’t know where to walk.
Someone was standing outside her mom’s room talking to the nurses there. Sadie stared blankly at him until he noticed her. She recognized him then: Pastor Steve, the youth pastor from the First Church of the Risen Christ down on Walnut Avenue. Sadie had been to their meetings a few times over the years—her only friend in the world, Graciela, had wanted to check it out—but had never felt much during their singing or preaching. Graciela hadn’t cared much for the sermons either, but she had liked the hot young pastor, with his trendy haircut and tattooed forearms. He was a little older now, but still cute, if anyone could be cute under whitewashed lights in an ICU.
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly when he got closer. He had on faded jeans and a rumpled button-down shirt and had a well-worn bible tucked under one arm. “I was here doing my care visits, and the nurses just told me what happened. I’m just so sorry.”
“Yeah,” Sadie said.
“I’ve already called the church to activate the prayer chain,” he said. “People all over town will be praying for you and your family.”
Family. Her mom was all she had. Now she had nobody.
When she didn’t reply, Pastor Steve went on in his smooth, ...
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