Chris Pavone

“Kate was never going to understand the extent to which men were stupid.”

“Kate had always known that she herself was a strong woman. But it never occured to her that there were strong women everywhere, living mundane lives that didnt include carrying weapons amid desperate men on the fringes of third-world wars, but instead calmly taking injured children to hospitals, far from home. Far from their mothers, and fathers and siblings, from school chums and old collegues. In a place where they had no one to rely on except them-selves, for everything.”

“You can’t have the money.” Kate says. The dark red wine has already spread through the cloth, tendrils reaching out through the fibers from the pool. That same pattern, again. “But if you move fast, you can have your freedom.”

“But there’s this giant deception at the foundation of their relationship, their happiness. This impure motive. There was that small mistake that the woman made, uttering the wrong number. And then the man reconstructed an entire intrigue, a big thick plot— a seduction and affair and relationship and marriage proposal, a whole life— around her error and his notice of it. Taking advantage of her lie.But does that make their relationship less real? Does that make it impossible that they genuinely love each other?”

“She knows that one of the most dangerous, self-destructive indulgences is to go around proving how smart you are. It’s the type of thing that gets people shot.”

“Dexter was too legit,” Julia continued. “His life was too verifiable, too aboveboard. He was nobody’s spy, nobody’s mole, nobody’s rat. He was who he is. And he didn’t know that you weren’t.”

“She glances at each of her three companions, at the protective veneers they’re all wearing, trying to mask the different lies they’ve told one another. The lies they’re all continuing to try to maintain. Hoping these lies will carry them through the rest of their full and satisfying lives, despite the truths they’ve chosen not to tell the most important people in their worlds.”

“It would make a lot more sense if she had imagined this whole thing, her whole life. Now would just be now, attached to some other, more straightforward past.”

“We all see ourselves as the center of everything.”

“But Kate was wide awake, chased by the same demon that haunted her regularly, especially when she was trying to forget it.”

“Maybe he was wondering if they could make it, such liars, together. A marriage based on so many things that were not true. A life lived so falsely, for so long.Kate didn’t know that Dexter hadn’t admitted all his lies. Just as she hadn’t revealed every one of her secrets.”

“It hadn't taken very long to come clean, after so many years of so many lies. It was surprising how undifferent she felt, now that everything— nearly everything— was out in the open.”

“She didn’t want to give the murder-pornography frame by frame. Didn’t want to recite her route across Manhattan, the length of the knife blade and the number of times she pulled the trigger, the color of the blood-splattered wallpaper in the hotel room, the man falling to the floor, the baby crying in the next room, the woman emerging and dropping the bottle, its nipple popping off and the milk spilling onto the carpet, the woman pleading “Por favor,” her hands up, shaking her head, asking— begging— for her life to be spared, her big black eyes wide, deep sinkholes of dark terror, while Kate trained the Glock on her, a seemingly eternal internal debate, while the baby sounded like he was the same age as Jake, late infancy, and this poor woman the same age as Kate, a different version of herself, an unlucky woman who didn’t deserve to die.”

“She hoped that a day would come when she wouldn’t be suspicious of everyone who walked by.”

“I was young, and I was damaged, and I couldn’t imagine being not young, and not damaged.”

“She fought the urge to look away, to hide her own eyes. Struggled against the long-ingrained habit of disguising her own lies, now that she was finally telling the truth.”

“For the first time in memory, the silence between them wasn’t filled with layers upon layers of lies.”

“It didn’t need to be light to be day.”

“I thought you make your living as a thief.""No," he said. "That’s what I do for fun.”

“Because when people are transferring millions of dollars, they don’t simply hit the Send button on their computer.”

“Kate was beginning to put distance between her sense of betrayal, her anger, and Dexter’s behavior. She was beginning to take his side. Or at least beginning to be able to see things from it.”

“She knew what he was thinking: if she was asking questions like these, she was trying to understand. Trying to forgive him. He was right.”

“Back before her life had begun to unravel. Or before she knew it was unraveling.”

“I don’t want you to explain. I want you to convince me I’m wrong. Or admit I’m right.”

“Would they have a life together anymore, after tonight? Or was this it? The end?”

“Now that it was finally here, she wasn’t surprised to find herself still reluctant to start it. Reluctant to end the part of her life when this conversation hadn’t happened yet. Reluctant to find out what her life would look like after it.”

“You know what this means?"Everyone does, but nobody answers.”

“Another of her husband’s silent lies.”

“The two men maintain firm eye contact. A poker game, both of them bluffing. Or pretending to.”

“So tell me how you think this ends.”

“A waiter visited to find out if everything was okay. A preposterous question.”

“As they’d agreed the night before on their cold balcony, scripting out this dialog, there would be three large lies in this conversation. This was the first.”

“Circumstantial evidence may not be enough to convict. But it’s almost always enough to reveal the truth. Isn’t it?”

“Each of those photos proves a different thing. All those things add up to the truth.”

“People will think we're having an affair," Kate said. She took a seat next to Bill on the cold slats of treated wood."That would be better than the truth.”

“It was becoming difficult to separate her own decisions from those made by others, for her, on behalf of themselves.”

“This had been part of her training, part of her career, part of herself: whatever was going on, live like a normal person. Do normal things, see normal people. Don't give anyone a reason to question you, investigate you. Don't give them any meaningful answers to prying questions that might be asked after you've disappeared. Don't create any suspicion that you were not who you claimed to be.”

“There was a guy with extra millions in the bank. And he spent all his free time, all his energy, spending his money. His cars, his houses, his vacations. Just like the rich bankers here in Luxembourg, whose business was making money and whose passion was spending it.”

“After all, she herself had done the very worst thing imaginable. And she was a good person. Wasn’t she?”

“A liar doesn't want to think that other people are liars, because then the other people should suspect her of lying too, because she is, and she'll get caught.”

“But when Kate returned home he was gone. Back to the video camera that had recorded her. Back to his unexplainable office. Back to his secret phone, his unfamiliar contacts, his fifty million stolen euros. Back to his other life.”

“She stared at this first bit of positive proof, the entrance to the rabbit hole from which she might never reemerge.”

“She loved him so much. Even when she hated him.”

“That was not her husband; she knew him, and that was not him. But of course she didn’t really know him.”

“This is the expat life: you never know when someone you see every day is going to disappear forever, instantly transmogrifying into a phantom. Before long you won’t be able to remember her last name, the color of her eyes, the grades that her children were in. You can’t imagine not seeing her tomorrow. You can’t imagine you yourself being one of those people, someone who one day just vanishes. But you are.”

“Whatever her husband had done, it couldn't be as bad as what she herself had done.”

“They are permanent tourists, in Paris. Their life is a certain type of dream come true.”

“He laughed again, red-faced and moist-looking, at another unfunny comment. He was either drunk or an idiot. Possibly both.”

“But quitting didn't change what she'd already done. The piece of her past that she'd never be able to outrun.”

“What she did know, unfortunately, was that she had to reconsider everything she'd ever willed herself to believe about her husband.”