“I just don’t feel right having a celebration when he may be dying.” She’d had a bad feeling about it when she last saw him, and was afraid she might never see him again. “And besides, no one’s coming. That seems so sad. I thought it might be more fun if we do it next summer at the Cape. Our agents could come then, and it would be easier for Michael than coming all the way to Ireland.” Finn had told her he wasn’t coming for the holidays this year. He was going to Aspen with friends instead.

“Cold feet, Hope? It sounds like you changed your mind.” Finn looked hurt.

“Of course not. It just doesn’t feel like the right time,” she said quietly, staring at her plate.

“We were supposed to get married in October,” he reminded her, and they both knew why.

“That’s because we were having a baby a month later,” she said softly, looking at him.

“And we both know why that didn’t happen,” he said unkindly. He never missed an opportunity to make her feel bad about it. He had been so incredibly loving to her for the first six months, and now he seemed angry at her a lot of the time. Or maybe he was angry at himself. Nothing seemed to be going right. And he was suddenly putting a lot of pressure on her. Given the lies he had told her, she felt he had no right. But he didn’t have even the remotest suspicion that she knew he was lying. Now they were both playing the same game, and Hope hated it, and could hardly look him in the eye.

“I assume you got your period in New York,” he asked as she put their dishes in the sink for Katherine to wash later. Hope nodded in answer, and for a moment he didn’t comment, but when she turned around to look at him he was smiling. “That means you should be ovulating right about now.” When he said it, Hope almost burst into tears. She sat down at the kitchen table and put her head down on her arms.

“Why are you pressuring me about that now?” she asked in a muffled voice with her head down, and then she looked up at him in anguish. “What difference does it make?” As she asked the question, she knew that whatever he answered would be a lie. She could no longer conceive of him telling her the truth. It ruined everything. Mark was right. Finn was a pathological liar.

“What’s happening to you, Hope?” he asked gently as he sat down next to her. “Before, you wanted our baby, you couldn’t wait for us to get married.” She wanted to say that that was before she knew he was a liar.

“I just want a little time to sort it all out. I lost our last baby five months ago. And I don’t want to get married while my ex-husband may be dying.”

“Those are bullshit excuses and you know it.”

Looking at him, she knew she had to tell him the truth. Or part of it at least. “Sometimes I think you don’t level with me, Finn. I heard some publishing gossip when I was in New York. Somebody told me that your publisher is suing you, and they wouldn’t renew your contract because you didn’t deliver your last two books. What’s that all about? It was in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The only one who didn’t know about it was me. Why didn’t you tell me? And why did you tell me that you’d signed a new contract?” Her eyes were full of questions as she looked at him, but there were others than just these. This was a start. And he looked furious when she asked him.

“Do you tell me everything about your business, Hope?” he was shouting at her.

“As a matter of fact, I do. I tell you about everything that happens in my life.”

“That’s because museums want to hang you, galleries are begging to show you. Heads of state want you to shoot their portraits, and every magazine in the world wants to buy your work. What the hell is there for you to be embarrassed about? I hit a dry spell for a while, didn’t deliver two fucking books, and the next thing I know those assholes are suing me for almost three million dollars. Do you think I’m proud of that? I’m scared shitless, for chrissake, and why the hell do I have to tell you so you can feel sorry for me, or walk out on me because I’m broke?”

“Is that what you think I’d do?” she asked him, looking at him sadly. “I wouldn’t walk out on you because you’re broke. But I have a right to know what’s going on in your life, especially important stuff like that. I hate it when you lie to me. I don’t want to hear a better story, the one you can dream up. All I ever want to hear from you is the truth.”

“Why? So you can rub it in my face, about how successful you are, and how much fucking money your husband gave you? Well, good for you, but I don’t need to humiliate myself so that you can feel better at my expense.” He was speaking to her as though she were the enemy, and justifying every lie he had ever told.

“I’m not trying to feel better,” she said miserably. “I just want an honest relationship with you. I need to know that I can believe what you say.” She almost said something about what she now knew about his childhood, but she wanted to know the rest of the story from the investigator first. Confronting him on any of his lies was going to rock the boat violently, or maybe even sink it. She wasn’t ready to face that yet. But it was hard to know what she did now, and not say it.

“What difference does it make? And I didn’t lie to you about the lawsuit, I just didn’t tell you about it.”

“You told me you signed a new contract, and you didn’t. You told me you wrote a hundred pages while I was in New York, and you wrote ten or twelve. Don’t lie to me, Finn. I hate it. I love you just the way you are, even if you never sign a new contract and never write another page. But don’t tell me things that aren’t true. It makes me worry about what other lies you’re telling me.” She was being as honest with him as she could, without totally blowing him out of the water and telling him about the investigator’s report. She didn’t want to go there yet.

“Like what?” he challenged her, with his face right up against hers.

“I don’t know. You tell me. You seem to be pretty creative about it.” He had lied about his son too, and the house which he didn’t own and had claimed he did.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All it means is that I want to know that the man I’m marrying is an honest man.”

“I am,” he said belligerently. “Are you calling me a liar?” He was goading her to do it and she was trying very hard not to. It would only make things worse.

“I don’t know what or who you are sometimes. Just don’t lie to me, Finn. That’s all I’m saying. I want to trust you. I don’t want to wonder if you’re telling me the truth.”

“Maybe the truth is none of your fucking business,” he said, and stormed out of the kitchen, and a minute later, she heard the front door slam, and saw him run down the front steps, get in his car, and drive away. They were not off to a good start, to say the least, but it had to be said. She could no longer pretend that she believed everything he said, because she didn’t. But she found herself thinking of Mark’s words too, as she walked around the garden to get some air. It wasn’t a good idea to corner Finn in his lies. It would only create situations like the one they’d just been in, and all she wanted was for him to tell the truth, so she could believe him again and they could go on with their life. She hadn’t given up hope of that yet, even if Mark Webber had after he read the report. Hope still believed they could turn it around, and she wanted Finn to help her do it. She couldn’t do it alone.

She walked up the front steps with a heavy heart, as Finn drove up to the house again, and when he got out of the car, he looked apologetic. He came to walk beside her, and turned her around to look at him.

“I’m sorry, Hope. I was an asshole. I just get ashamed sometimes that I don’t do things better than I do. I want everything to come out right, and sometimes it doesn’t, so I pretend that everything’s fine. I want it to be fine so fucking much, that I guess I lie about it.” She was touched that he’d admit it, and it gave her hope that the situation could be fixed. And she felt terrible about his childhood and youth, although he didn’t know it. She smiled up at him, and he put his arms around her and kissed her. She was even more moved to see that there were tears in his eyes when he did. He had humbled himself to her, and admitted his mistake. She was praying that it meant he wouldn’t do it again. All she wanted was the truth.

“I love you, Finn,” she said as they walked into the house hand in hand. “You don’t ever have to make things better than they are for me. I love you just the way you are, even when things aren’t great. What are you going to do about the lawsuit?”

“Finish the books, if I can. I’ve had a hell of a time with this last one. I’ve been stuck for months. And my agent is trying to stall them. They just gave me another three months, but I’m screwed without a new contract. I’ve run out of money. I don’t have a fucking dime. Thank God you bought the house. If I were still renting here on my own, I’d be out on my ass. And my great-great-grandfather’s house would be in someone else’s hands.” He had just told another lie, but it was one she would live with for now. If he wanted to tell stories to dress up his childhood, she could let him do that, to save face. He was too ashamed about his real childhood to tell her the truth about it. Compared to her storybook happy childhood in New Hampshire, his had been a nightmare. She just didn’t want him lying anymore about his present life. And she was sorry to hear how broke he was, although it didn’t surprise her. She had suspected as much when he hadn’t paid his token rent. She knew he would have paid that if he could. It seemed like all the lies he told were out of shame.

“Well, at least you don’t need to worry about the money,” she said gently. “I can carry the expenses here.” She already was.