I slid the phone into my pocket.
The pump clicked off behind me.
I was about to smile and wish him well when I saw his eyes flick past me, over my shoulder, toward the entrance of the parking lot.
Whatever he saw or feared he might see made his jaw tighten.
I saw his eyes flick past me, over my shoulder
He took a small step closer.
Close enough that I could smell the cold night on his hoodie.
“Ma’am,” he said, so low I almost missed it. “Please don’t get in your car yet. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Something in his voice pulled the air out of my lungs.
“What is it?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
He glanced once more across the lot.
Then he leaned in and whispered something impossible.
“Your husband is paying me to watch you.”
I laughed.
It came out sharp and startled.
The kind of laugh you make when someone tells a joke that isn’t funny.
He leaned in and whispered something impossible.
“You’ve got the wrong person, sweetheart.”
The boy didn’t move.
He just kept those tired eyes on mine.
“My husband is a doctor,” I said. “He would never do something like that.”
“I know. He told me you’d say that.”
A chill went down my spine.
“He would never do something like that.”
“What’s your name?”
“Marcus.”
“Okay, Marcus. Why are you telling me this?”
He glanced at the entrance again, then down at his hands.
“Because I can’t do it anymore.”
I stared at him… Being a nurse had helped me get really good at reading people.
And I didn’t think Marcus was lying.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Start from the beginning.”
“There’s a church over on Fremont Street. They do meals on Wednesdays. Your husband came in about two months ago and asked to speak to me.”
“David? At a church outreach?”
“He said he was a doctor. He said his wife was sick. Something with her memory. That she was wandering around town forgetting things, and he was scared she’d get hurt.”
“He said his wife was sick.”
My hand found the side of the car.
“Go on.”
“He said he couldn’t put a tracker on your phone because you’d notice. He needed someone regular. Someone who could just… see you around. Text him when you stopped somewhere. Where you went. Who you talked to.”
“How much?”
“He needed someone regular.”
Marcus flinched.
“Three hundred a week.”
“For how long?”
“Almost two months, ma’am.”
Two months of grocery runs and coffee stops and picking up dry cleaning.
And somewhere in the background this boy had been watching me like a ghost I never turned around fast enough to catch.
“For how long?”
“What did he ask you?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. “Specifically. What questions?”
“Where’d she go, was she okay, does she ever drive out toward the lake. But then it changed.”
“Changed how?”
“He started asking if you stopped anywhere after work. If you met any men. If you bought alcohol. If you seemed confused.”
“Confused.”
“But then it changed.”
“Yes, ma’am. That word a lot.”
I stared at a smear of oil on the concrete.
My father used to say the worst lies were the ones people told themselves first, because those were the ones they could sell without blinking.
But surely I would’ve realized if I had developed a neurological illness… wouldn’t I?
Had I been “wandering around town, forgetting things,” as Marcus put it?
The worst lies were the ones people told themselves first,
“Marcus, have you ever seen me confused?”
