White Lies Read Online Free Page B

one was of her as a child: blue eyes bugging out of her heart-shaped face, blonde hair tied back in pigtails. She stared at the photo with the rusty, aged feeling you got when you reminisced. Her life seemed to flash before her eyes, her ups and downs, her moments of joy and sorrow, and out of the jumble of images emerged one long-forgotten memory, a show-and-tell session back in elementary school. A boy in her class named Greg—Greg something, something Greek—had shown a Japanese anime magazine his father had brought back from a business trip to Tokyo. Katrina’s classmates had all seemed to think the girls in the comic-book pictures bore a striking resemblance to her, and for the rest of the year everybody teased her by calling her “Japrina.” She remembered only pretending to be insulted, becauseshe secretly enjoyed being compared to the beautiful anime girls with their bright eyes and colorful hair. She told Shawn the story on one of their first dates, and he surprised her over dinner a few days later with a Sailor Moon doll. Later that same evening, tipsy from a bottle of wine, they both agreed that some twenty-odd years down the road the likeness was still apparent.
    She had thrown the doll out with the rest of his gifts to her.
    Therapy that time, not cruelty.
    The remaining pictures were of her close friends. Martha McGee, a happy Mrs. Cleaver with two young boys. Pamela Doherty, a New York City publishing manager who was currently on maternity leave and whose baby shower Katrina would be attending in the near future. And her best friend, Bianca Silverstein, a marketing executive for a big Seattle-based advertising company. Bianca was single but had a nine-year-old girl from a previous marriage to her high school sweetheart. Katrina felt that nesting urge once more, stronger than ever.
    The last picture, larger than the rest and in a heavy silver frame, was of her parents, their arms around one another, happy, loving, the whole nine yards. Like Shawn, they had left her much too early. Unlike Shawn, they had not died peacefully but in an explosion of metal and glass. It happened two weeks before Christmas in 2002. Katrina had been working on her teacher certification degree at the University of Washington. She had been summoned from the lecture hall to the dean’s office, where the dean had explained that her parents had been driving along State Route 99 just outside of Everett that morning when they’d hit a Shiras moose. The collision killed them instantly. Katrina had never before or again experienced such a ruthless emotion as the one that had clubbed her that morning, not even when Shawn died, because she’d at least had time to prepare for his sad fate. The dean wouldn’t go into any more detail, but she later learned her parents’ sedan took out the adult bull’s legs, hurtling the seven-and-a-half-foot tall beast straight through the windshield. The impact crushed her mother’s rib cage and vital organs, as well as broke her neck and back. A tine from the velvet antlers piercedher father’s chest, going straight through his heart and pinning him to the seat.
    Katrina switched off the memory, banishing it for now, something she had become very good at over the years. She tried to bring up some pleasant ones of her parents, but she couldn’t focus on any for longer than a few seconds before they wavered and broke up, like mirages. Unfortunately, they seemed to be getting more and more vague and insubstantial with the passing of time. She feared one day they may disappear forever. It wasn’t fair, she’d always thought, at how the bad ones remained vivid while the good ones faded away.
    Bandit, ever attuned to her rollicking emotions, padded over from where he’d been lying next to the fireplace. He flopped down beside her. She scratched his head, grateful for his company.
    The shrill ring of the telephone made her jump.
    For a moment Katrina