Truthseeker

Twenty-Two

Law and Order, Lara was convinced, had an uncanny ability to zip back and forth through time: all the cases took place simultaneously, rather than one at a time as they were portrayed. There was no other explanation as to how the legal proceedings shown could take place with such apparent rapidity. Steve’s lawyer, a handsome, no-nonsense woman named Marjorie Oritz, had seen a ray of hope in Dafydd’s case because he hadn’t actually been put on trial and convicted yet. Otherwise, despite Lara’s reappearance, it could be months, even years before he might be released. Like Detective Washington, though, her mouth had drawn thin and tight at Lara’s refusal to explain her whereabouts. She had left the office with a grim, but not hopeful, promise to see what could be done, and Lara had retreated to Kelly’s apartment feeling defeated.

“You’re going to have to stick to your guns,” Kelly said helplessly. “I’m a much better liar than you are and even I can’t think of a story that would stand up to investigation. Unless you want to say you were kidnapped by the government and held at Guantánamo for the last year and a half. You could be a terrorist.”

“Armed with a needle and a box of pins?” Lara smiled, surprising herself. “I think the government would deny it, Kelly.”

“Well, that would be the point! It’s not like they’d throw open Gitmo’s doors and invite people to come take a look to prove they hadn’t been holding you. So your best bet is to either accuse the government of something outrageous or keep your mouth shut.”

“I think I’ll keep my mouth shut.” Lara tucked her feet up onto Kelly’s couch and curled her head down against the arm with a sigh. “Marjorie said with a miracle this could take days, but it was likely to take weeks. I don’t want to leave him there that long, Kel. Prison’s not good for him.”

“Prison’s not good for anybody.”

Lara muffled a short laugh in the couch arm. “No, but it’s worse for him. It’s an iron cage and it’s making him sick. So I have to find a way to make this move faster.”

“I take it you won’t be going back to Lord Matthew’s, then.”

Regret made a knot around Lara’s heart. “Not right away. Which might mean never. I don’t know. I have to—” Her stomach rumbled and she put a hand over it. “I have to eat something. I don’t think I even had lunch.”

“Thus reminding me of how you stay slim. Never fear, I anticipated this. Dickon will be here within half an hour, bearing an enormous bag of Mexican food.” Kelly caught her lower lip in her teeth. “Lara, about Dickon …”

“I’ll tell him the truth,” Lara offered quietly. “He’s not going to believe it, but he’s your fiancé, Kel, and he’s been Dafydd’s friend for a long time. He’s going to have to talk to Dafydd to believe it, he’s going to have to see Dafydd to believe it, but it’s not fair to keep him all the way out of the loop.”

“I’ve told him about you and the truth. Maybe he’ll believe you.” Kelly sounded dubious. “But thanks in advance for trying, even if he’ll think you’re insane.”

“I’m willing to be considered insane as long as he brings dinner.” Lara pulled another tiny smile, then glanced around Kelly’s cozy apartment. “Are you sure I’m not in your way here? I don’t know how long this is going to go on.”

“The wedding’s in a month. I can handle having you as a roommate that long, Lar. Then if you want the place, it’s yours. What’re you going to do, if you’re not going back to work?”

“Find Emyr’s worldbreaking weapon.” Lara spread her hands as Kelly’s eyebrows went up. “I’m going to try, anyway. Ioan thought maybe it could be used to put things right in the Barrow-lands, so if I get Dafydd freed and we go back, it might be good to have it.”

“Ioan the kidnapper? That Ioan? And you belie—” Kelly broke off and made a face at the ceiling. “Well, Kelly, it was a hypothesis on his part, and not an outright lie, so of course Lara, who senses the truth, is going to give him the benefit of the doubt.” She reversed her gaze, smiling ruefully at Lara. “Sorry. I kind of forgot who I was talking to there for a minute.”

The door swung open on her last words and Dickon said, “You’re back after a year and a half missing and she’s forgetting who you are already? Lara, you need new friends.” His joviality sounded forced, and Kelly jumped up to get plates from the kitchen as he mustered up an awkward smile for Lara. He’d lost weight since she’d seen him last, though it did little to reduce his imposing size. The worry etched between his eyebrows, though, removed any thought of caution he might have inspired. “Holy crap, I’m glad to see you, Lara. I, um. Can I, like, hug you?”

A trill of strained laughter broke from Lara’s throat. “That would be great. I’m glad to see you, too.”

Dickon crossed the room in two steps and put the sack of food on the coffee table before hauling Lara off the couch into a bear hug. “Man, I knew David couldn’t have hurt you, but holy crap am I glad to see you in one piece.” He put her back down on her feet, expression so tight it looked headache-inducing. “Look, I know I’m supposed to give you time to settle in, Kelly made me promise not to come after you or harass you but what the hell happened, Lara? Where have you been?”

Kelly wailed “Dickon!” from the kitchen. He looked faintly abashed, but not enough for the curiosity in his eyes to fade.

“It’s okay,” Lara said, loudly enough for Kelly to hear, then smiled lopsidedly at Dickon. “Dinner first, and then I’ll explain everything, okay? I’m famished, and it smells fantastic.”

Dickon nodded jerkily. “Yeah, of course, okay. Kelly said you’d forget to eat.”

“She knows me very well.” Lara took the armchair Kelly had abandoned as Kelly came out of the kitchen armed with plates and silverware. Moments later a picnic dinner was spread across the coffee table, all three of them ladening their plates.

“Eat fast,” Dickon suggested. “I got sopapillas but they get tough as they cool.”

“We can soften them up again with honey and ice cream. Except I think I only have chocolate.” Kelly frowned toward the kitchen and Lara made a dismissive noise around her first bite of tamale.

“I’m too hungry to eat slowly anyway. I’m sure I can get to the sopapillas before they’re cold.” For a few minutes they were silent, eating quickly, and Lara finally gave a sigh of contentment as she took a couple of still-warm pastries. “Okay, Dickon. Tell me six things about yourself, and make two of them lies.”

He blinked at her, then took an overly large swallow of soda. “Um. Okay. My name is Dickon Edward Collins, I’m thirty-two, um, I drive a Harley, my mom was born in Scotland, I went to film school in Manchester, that’s where I met David, and I’m nuts about your best friend. How many was that?”

“Seven. And you don’t drive a Harley and your mother wasn’t born in Scotland.” Lara grinned as he straightened and looked suspiciously between her and Kelly.

“Kel could have told you either of those things. And you’ve been in my Bronco, so you knew I didn’t drive a Harley.”

“But I didn’t! And you do have a Yamaha,” Kelly pointed out. “Which I never told her.”

“Try me again,” Lara said. “I know Kelly’s told you about my truthseeking ability. Try something Kelly doesn’t know or wouldn’t have any reason to tell me.”

“I broke both my legs jumping out of a tree when I was seven.”

Mistruth jangled across Lara’s nerves, the same uncomfortable wrongness Dafydd’s Americanized name had produced, though much less intense. “Part of that isn’t true.”

Curiosity turned up the corner of Dickon’s mouth. “I broke both my legs.”

“True.”

“I broke both my legs jumping out of a tree.”

“True. But you weren’t seven.”

He laughed. “I was six. My brother was supposed to catch me. I think he got in more trouble than I did, but I paid for it. I spent the whole summer sweating in a cast. Oh my God, it itched. Okay, how about this: I met the Dalai Lama once.”

Kelly’s jaw dropped. “You did?” Her gaze snapped to Lara, whose eyebrows went up.

“He did.”

Kelly smacked Dickon’s shoulder. “How come you never told me that?”

“It never came up in conversation! I mean, you want to talk about name dropping to impress a girl? I don’t think so. It was at a peace conference in New York a while ago. I was part of a film crew. He was just like people say he is. Serene, happy, compassionate. He was amazing. That was pretty cool. Okay,” he said to Lara. “I still think Kelly could have told you most of that, or you could even have found out about me meeting the Dalai Lama online, but I don’t know why you’d look. So okay, we’ll say I believe you always know when people are telling the truth, and that you don’t lie because it bugs you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Kelly said sardonically, voicing what Lara would never have said aloud. She laughed, though, and said to Kelly, “This must be why I don’t tell people about the truthseeking.”

Kelly sniffed. “Some of us are clever enough to notice it on our own.”

“Some of you have known Lara for years,” Dickon said. “This is only the fourth time I’ve met her.”

“And you hardly believe me, which I understand. It does mean you’re almost certainly not going to believe where I’ve been, but I think you should be told anyway.”

“I’m all ears.”

Lara felt a pained expression cross her face, and Kelly picked up the laughter Lara’d given in to a moment earlier. “You can’t say things like that around Lara, Dickon. Now she’s imagining you as a great big pair of Dumbo ears.”

“More like hundreds of little pairs of ears, like butterflies, but close enough,” Lara admitted. “Dickon, do you remember asking if Dafydd had asked me to run away with him?”

“Yeaaaah …”

“He actually asked me to go home with him, and I did.” Lara set her untouched sopapillas aside, gathering herself for Dickon’s disbelief. “And as far as I’m concerned, only a day passed. Rachel and Sharon moved last Saturday, in my calendar. I met you and Dafydd a week ago.”

“You went to Wales and think you came back again in a day? What the hell happened, were you in a coma?”

“No.” Lara shrugged, vividly aware there was no way she could couch the truth to make it palatable. “Dafydd’s not Welsh. He’s from a place called Annwn, and to us it’s a fairyland. He took me there, and was thrown back here without me. I had to make my own way back, which we think is why I got thrown out of time.”

Dickon stared at her a long time, expression so smooth it seemed like a falsehood in and of itself. Finally he said, “Kelly, can I talk to you?” and got up, leaving Kelly to look helplessly between him and Lara as he headed for the apartment door. Lara nodded, wincing at the idea she was giving Kelly permission to follow him. But it released Kelly from her place on the couch, and a few seconds later the door closed behind them. Tense, sharp voices came through, though the words were indistinguishable. After less than a minute Lara got up to clear the coffee table and clean the kitchen, glad of any kind of physical activity that would let her escape the semi-audible conversation.

Kelly banged back in several minutes later, took a look at the sopapillas Lara had reheated, and got a plateful for herself. She doused them liberally with chocolate ice cream and honey and stuffed most of one into her mouth before saying, “He’s gone home. He thinks you belong in a mental hospital.”

An out-of-place bloom of cheer rushed through Lara. “I suppose at least that tells us exactly how people would react if I told the truth. That’s something.”

“No, I mean it, Lara, he actually literally thinks you need mental help. He’s sure something so traumatic has happened to you tha—”

“I believe you, Kelly.” The good humor remained intact, a sense of the absurd so profound it couldn’t be shaken. “As long as he’s not calling the paramedics it’s fine. And if he does, I’ll be obliging and check myself in to whatever mental hospital they want me to.”

Kelly choked on a bite of pastry. “Why would you do that?”

“Because if you voluntarily enter a mental health institute you can voluntarily exit, and they can’t stop you,” Lara said cheerfully. “Kelly, he was always going to think I was crazy, and we both knew it. I’ll find a hotel or stay with my mom if he’s worried I might be dangerous to you.”

“I don’t think that occurred to him.” Kelly slumped against the counter. “I don’t know, Lar. I thought he might just …”

“Accept it?” Lara shook her head, oddly relaxed. She’d spent a lifetime trying to avoid situations like this one, but in finally facing it, it was less distressing than she’d imagined. Maybe it was the confidence that had burgeoned while she was in the Barrow-lands, or it might simply have been a sign of maturity, both in herself and her gift. “You said yourself if you didn’t know me you wouldn’t believe it. I’m not even sure you do believe me, exactly. You just don’t quite disbelieve me.”

Kelly looked guilty. “Your mom believes you.”

“My mom had to deal with me being hysterical over the Tooth Fairy, Kel. From where she stands, if I come home believing a story about fairyland, it’s not possible I’m lying. We’re just going to have to get Dafydd out of jail so he can show Dickon the truth.”

“Do you think that’ll help?”

Lara caught her breath, searching for a true answer, and finally shook her head. “I really don’t know. Dickon’s worried, right? Not angry? So maybe if we can prove I’m not lying it’ll assuage his worry. Is he worried about you, Kelly? I mean, you believe me. Enough to be participating in what he must see as a farce, anyway.”

“He thinks I shouldn’t be encouraging your delusions. Me! Do I seem like an encouraging-delusions sort of person?” Kelly eyed Lara. “Don’t answer that.”

“You seem very straightforward, Kel. That’s part of why I’m able to be friends with you. What did you tell him?”

“That I didn’t think you were deluded, obviously. I don’t know, maybe I should have lied. Maybe I should’ve said I thought it was better to let you stay in your bizarre little comfort zone for a while. That maybe when you got used to being home you’d be able to shake it off and deal with what really happened. And I can’t believe I’m telling a truthseeker I think I should have lied.”

“Believe it, because you are. What’s more unlikely is I think you’re probably right.” Lara turned a hand up as Kelly blinked at her incredulously. “I don’t want him to be upset with you, Kelly. Maybe you should call him tomorrow and say you think he’s probably right, you’re just so used to me telling the truth you couldn’t wrap your mind around me lying.”

“And when David turns out to be an elf and you were in fairyland?”

“Then you can refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’”

“Lara Jansen, I do believe you’ve lost your mind.”

“See?” Lara, grinning, turned her attention back to the cooling sopapillas. “You and Dickon are on the same page.”