Familiar Lies Read Online Free Page A

to pee in a bad way.
    He stepped away from the table and took a step toward the hallway leading to the bathroom before stopping. The hallway led past Josh’s room and Max suddenly found himself hesitant to make the trip.
    You’re being silly , the voice in his head told him. Just go.
    But he didn’t want to. Something kept him rooted to the spot.
    Get moving , the voice prompted.
    Max got moving. He walked into the hallway and stood outside Josh’s door, staring at the handle for a few moments before reaching down and grasping it. It was cold to the touch. His heart galloped in his chest as all the spit dried up in his mouth. The urge to pee had gone away, replaced with the cold anticipation of what he’d find when he opened that door.
    Max’s mind wandered and he could almost see himself opening the door to find Josh sitting there on the end of his perfectly made bed, headphones on, listening to some kind of hard rock. Max would smile and wave and Josh would return it while the muted music escaped from the headphones.
    Max twisted the knob and pushed the door open.
    He stood at the threshold and glanced inside the room to find the bed empty, just as he knew it would be. The foot of the bed was a little creased from where Max had been sitting earlier when he read the letter. He couldn’t help but feel that he’d violated something sacred by sitting there.
    Or maybe he felt he’d violated Josh’s privacy by reading the letter in the first place. It hadn’t been meant for Max, it had been meant for whoever Julie was. Max considered what Vanessa had said about people choosing what side of themselves they showed to others. He wondered what side she showed to her husband and son. Surely not the cougar milf who took advantage of a seventeen year old boy.
    But Max couldn’t help but shake the notion that maybe Vanessa was the one who’d been taken advantage of.
    He glanced at the closet door and the breath caught in his throat. He blinked hard, trying to rid his eyes of the fatigue and force them to work properly.
    The closet door stood slightly ajar.
    Surely it had been closed when he left the room earlier. Max hadn’t touched it, had he? He racked his brain, trying to remember opening the closet and couldn’t remember doing so a single time since Josh had passed.
    Maybe the door came open on its own , he thought. That had to be it. Houses come alive at night; they inhale, they exhale. They yawn and stretch.
    Surely that had to be the explanation.
    Max stepped into his son’s room and walked to the closet. He touched the handle and had the wild idea to open it. His mind seemed to come a little unhinged and he could imagine his son’s body in there, his neck snapped from the fall, his arms and legs broken, bones protruding from compound fractures, his face smashed and deformed. The type of injuries that require a closed casket.
    Max saw his son’s face in his mind—terrible and clear—just as it had been on the day he’d been forced to identify his body. He hadn’t thought of that day in a long time, effectively blocking it out until this moment. Now it came back like a ghost from his past, there for a reckoning long overdue.
    Max pushed the closet door closed. It clicked loudly in the quiet room as it shut. He turned back toward the bed, expecting to see his son there.
    Of course the bed sat there painfully empty.
    You’re tired , Max told himself. You just need some sleep. This will seem like a silly dream in the morning.
    He told himself that, but nonetheless he slept with the light on that night.

Chapter Eight

    The following day Max took the rest of the week off last minute, calling in from home to let his boss know. Ken Tomlin wasn’t a bad guy to work for and sounded more disappointed than mad at the news. “We’ll make do,” he told Max before hanging up. Ken didn’t deserve the kind of half-ass job Max had been doing for the past year, but things were what they were, for lack of a better, more