stretched her arms and yawned. “I overslept. Been so jittery lately.” She leaned down and patted Beanie’s head. “Hey, sweetie.” Then she said to me, “Did he go out already?”
“Good morning, Jen. Yes, he’s done all his business. Just checking out hospitals in Zurich. You can show me which one your mum’s staying at. Kate and Dan told me about your flying phobia, by the way.”
“Sometimes I dream I’m flying, just me, you know, not in an airplane. And it’s fine. I’m happy and free. But stick me in a plane and I freak out.”
“Why didn’t you explain this to me when you rejected my offer the other day? I would’ve understood better.”
“I guess I felt dumb.”
I poured her some juice and handed her the glass. “But surely if it means visiting your mum? Maybe for the last—” I stopped myself. “What kind of cancer does she have?” I couldn’t resist testing her.
“It’s spread everywhere now. Started as breast cancer, then went into the lymph nodes and then the lung.” Jen slumped down on the kitchen stool and plunked her elbows on the breakfast bar.
“I’m so sorry, that’s awful,” I said, my memory swearing they had told me it was lung cancer from the start.
I asked Jen the name of the clinic in Zurich, to see if I recognized it. I did. It was the five-star hotel one. Guilt tumbled in my solar plexus anew; Jen had been telling the truth, after all. Or not? I was like a yoyo, back and forth between suspicion and self-remorse. Didn’t know what to believe, how to feel.
“Is it true about Kate’s blood clots?” I asked.
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
Jen shrugged. “You should ask her.”
“I did. It just seems strange to me that two out of three of you are not taking me up on my offer of a lifetime. I hate to say this, but if your mum—bless her—doesn’t make it, you may really, really regret this.”
“What did Kate say?”
“Oh, some story about how she, basically, in so many words, can only fly business or first class because of a list of complicated medical problems.”
Jen adjusted her nighty, floaty and diaphanous. “I need to tell you something,” she said, her head cupped in her hands, elbows still planted on the table.
Then silence.
“Please, you can tell me anything. Anything at all, I won’t judge, I promise, but I do want the truth.”
She lifted her wide green eyes and, batting her lashes, said, “We’ve been lying to you all along.”
Twenty-Five
I observed Jen, the palms of her hands covering her entire face. I wondered what was going through her head. Regret? A sort of amused satisfaction for having caught me out with whatever latest fib they’d whipped up? Did they even care for me one whit? Or was all this just a game to them? Something to amuse themselves? And what, I asked myself, was the lie? Perhaps there were several. Were the triplets even who they said they were?
Wow, I’d been blind. So keen for their company, so eager for that feeling of family nucleus and not living all alone, that I hadn’t verified anything. Hadn’t got them to show me their ID cards, or passports. I couldn’t even be sure about their age!
“What have you been lying to me about?” I asked her, my tone frosty.
She looked up at me again, her dark lashes wet with emotion. “Please don’t hate us.”
“Hating you is something that would be extremely hard for me. You’d have to do something really, really bad. What’s the lie?”
Jen weighed up her options; I could see the little cogs ticking. Probably making up a new lie to cover the first. Whatever the first was.
“Tell me, Jen, I won’t bite.”
“They’ll be mad at me.”
“I knew something was amiss, anyway. It was just a matter of time before I wised up.”
“Our mom?”
“She’s not in Zurich?” I guessed.
Jen raked her hand through her waterfall of hair. “She is in Zurich. But not in the way you think.”
“She doesn’t have cancer and isn’t at a clinic?” I guessed again.
Jen bit her lip and blinked, forcing plump tears to spill from her evergreen eyes. “Our mom is… she’s dead already.”
Was this a new lie? The truth? How was I meant to react? “Jen, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“She’s buried there, in a cemetery.”
I was taking no chances this time, regardless of how sad this might be. “What’s the name of the cemetery?”
“Fluntern Cemetery, it’s where James Joyce is buried too.” She didn’t miss a beat. Her