gaze was steady. It seemed like she was telling the truth this time.
“Why didn’t you just tell me? From the beginning?”
“Because… I… I… don’t know. We got caught up in our lie. We didn’t want you to hate us.”
I knew about that one. Getting tangled in your own fibs. “But I would’ve been just as sympathetic—more so—knowing your mum had passed away.” I laid my hand gently on her shoulder. “When did she die?”
“Eight months ago. Around the same time when you came along and bought the house.”
“So what you said about your mum selling the house to pay for her treatment was another—” I searched for the right word, that didn’t sound too accusing—“embellishment of the facts.”
“Not really. It just happened a whole lot sooner. We had to sell ’cause of Mom’s shitstorm of debts that then became our debts even before she actually passed away. We had no choice,” she said, her mouth twisting with bitterness. Even with her twisty lips in this grimace, Jen’s vulnerability still shone through. She was an orphan. They all were. Whatever reservations I’d had about their behavior, my heart bled anew. Poor things.
“There was no life insurance?”
“Nope, not a cent. My mom wasn’t very together about that kind of stuff. We were backed up against a wall, without a choice. Had to sell.”
“So it was you lot who sold my husband the house, then? Not your mother?”
Jen looked down. “The agent handled the sale.”
“You were all at college and had to drop out, to pay off the medical bills?”
She rocked back and forth on her stool, shoulders rounded in defeat. “We were never at college. We’re still only nineteen.”
My heart thumped wildly with both sympathy and fury. Another lie I’d fallen for, hook, line, and sinker. I steadied her rocking or she’d go tumbling to the floor. Why hadn’t the triplets simply told me the truth from the start? Such intricately woven lies, smoother and more detailed than a Persian rug! Lies hard to keep up with, even for them. Was it Kate who’d said she and Dan studied chemistry? Jen, musicology? They’d given themselves very fancy credentials.
“So you needed a bed?” I said.
“We needed a home. And you think it gave us pleasure to stretch the truth that way? I wish she was having treatment and still alive—at least that would give us some hope—but the fact is she’s already gone.”
“I’m so sorry about your mum,” I repeated. “But I can’t deny I feel gutted that you didn’t come clean with me from the beginning. I’m your friend. I want to help. I’m extremely hurt.”
Jen looked at me through her wet lashes. “But you lied too! About Juan being alive when we first met you. And you lied to us about being pregnant. Maybe you’re hiding other stuff from us too?”
I said nothing.
“Please forgive us. Please?” She started crying again.
I exhaled a deep breath I’d unconsciously been holding in. “Any normal person would kick you straight out. You know that, don’t you, Jen?”
“I kn-know,” she stuttered through her tears. “But you’re all we ha-have. We love living with you. I’m s-sorry. Please forgive us.” The tears were real and rolled down her unblemished cheek. “You’re our family now,” she told me.
I said nothing for a beat. What was I going to do? Chuck them out of the only home they’d ever known, their mother dead? I’d been agonizing incessantly about the pros and cons of living alone, and for my own selfish reasons I’d been keeping them here. Jen was right; we were like family. Lies and all. And that’s what families do; they stand by each other through thick and thin, stick with each other even when they’re disappointed, even when someone has let them down. Families give each other second chances, and third and fourth chances, even when they’re furious with one another.
“I’ll give you one more chance,” I conceded. “But any more monkey business and that’s it. Understood?”
Jen’s back straightened. “We can stay?”
“You can still stay,” I said. “For now. But don’t push your luck.”
Jen’s lips twitched into a grateful smile. “Even after all this?”
I held her hand. It was clammy and soft. “Jen, we all make mistakes, we all tell white lies.”
“But this was—”
“You were protecting yourselves,” I broke in. God knows I knew all about that.
“Yeah,” she said, “we were.”
I thought of all Jen’s fabulously realistic phone conversations. “Talking to your mum all those times? It seemed so genuine,” I said.