The Perfect Lie (The Perfect Stranger #3) - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,5

bit about myself and I tell her about being a preschool teacher. I don't want to come out and say that I'm a speech therapist, but I work with kids and I know them well and I want to use that in my life. The best lies are those that are closest to the truth, right?

“So, what brings you here?”

“I'm just passing through. I had a falling out with my boyfriend and I decided to take some time for myself.”

“It's okay for you to take off from work?”

“Yes, I've had a lot of vacation days saved up.”

“Lucky you,” she says with a nod.

It doesn’t seem like she is prying. Still, I'm on edge and every single question feels like an interrogation.

“Where are you from?”

I'm about to say Pennsylvania, but then I stop myself. No, I need to be from somewhere local, something that would be more plausible for a local trip.

“Arizona. Flagstaff.”

I remember seeing that town on the map and its unusual name, but I don't know the first thing about it.

“Oh, really? I'm from Flagstaff!” Lisa says. “What part?”

Blood drains away from my face.

My hands go numb.

This day has been too long already and now she's about two seconds away from catching me in a lie.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Bowden, I’d love to talk to you more, but I've had quite a stressful day and I'm not in the best shape right now. Is there any way that you could show me the cabin?”

This is my last-ditch effort to change the topic.

Luckily, it works.

“Of course! You've had a long drive. We'll have plenty of time to talk in the upcoming days.”

I don't have to wonder what that means for long.

She grabs the keys and instead of giving me directions to the cabin, she leads me to the back door and walks me across the backyard to the house next door.

It's a two level, A-frame house, which looks to be about the same size as hers. There are two bedrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. There's one bathroom and it’s downstairs.

She shows me inside and the first thing that I see is the enormous two-story window looking past her house and onto the lake.

“The view is much better from the top,” she says.

After showing me around the kitchen, which is modest and seems to be straight out of the 60s, she turns around and asks, “What do you think?”

“It's very nice,” I say.

That's true.

The house is nice and the weekly rent is quite affordable. The only problem is that I had no idea that it was right behind her house and so close to the lake. I was hoping for more privacy, some cabin surrounded by pines all by itself in the national forest.

“You have quite the location here,” I say. “Are the neighbors nice?”

What I really want to ask is are the neighbors nosy, but I bite my tongue.

“Yes, I guess, what I've seen of them.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, I have been living here since the early 60s. We got our house and then we bought this one as a rental right behind us. It’s been quite a nice little life. I used to be a teacher myself. Elementary school, right here in town, but then all of these wealthy people out of Los Angeles moved in, bought tracts of land, and started building their mansions. As you can see, we are completely surrounded by them.”

I look out the window and nod my head.

“So, you don't like your neighbors?” I ask.

“Well, it would be nice to have neighbors. I hardly ever see them. Most of them are never here. These places are just second homes, somewhere to park their money and spend the occasional three-day weekend. Sometimes their kids come up with a group of their friends to go skiing.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I say to her. Secretly, I let out a sigh of relief.

This is good. Even though I'm surrounded by houses, at least they are empty. Maybe this will work.

4

Tyler

The pain from the bullet piercing my shoulder is temporary, but the pain from seeing my friend do that to me will haunt me forever.

Of course, I know what Mac is capable of, but at the same time I thought that I would be an exception.

How stupid is that?

As I lay there on that desert floor, I looked up at the bright blue sky and thought that that would be the last time that I would open my eyes. The bullet had lodged itself deep inside. If