LIES! THE NARRATIVE ARC MARCH 2023 WRITING CONTEST
My Friend Lived a Double Life but Claims She Never Lied to Me
Lies of omission are still lies
January 2014
I stared at my best friend’s microscopic handwriting as if it were an optical illusion that would morph into what I’d expected to see — an apology — if I looked hard and long enough.
“I don’t understand why you’re this angry. I never lied to you.”
Lisa’s letters from jail were difficult to read, sometimes emotionally but always visually: she conserved paper by cramming tiny lines on both sides of each thin sheet.
This letter was going to challenge me both ways. Because she’d never lied to me, Lisa thought my reaction to her arrest — messy careening through the stages of grief, especially anger and depression — was unreasonable.
I kept screwing up work and homework, not sleeping, and crying continuously. Was I overreacting?
I’d discovered Lisa was in jail three months earlier. I actually laughed when told she’d threatened someone. In my defense, it was like hearing Santa Claus was in jail for threatening the Easter Bunny.
But Santa Claus had a history of breaking and entering, invading private air space, and such. Until this, Lisa had probably never gotten worse than a parking ticket.
Her arrest blew open her secret: for eight years (the entire time she’d lived with her female partner, for whom she’d left her husband), Lisa was romantically involved with an imprisoned murderer (“Boyfriend”).
We were like sisters for decades, yet I’d been oblivious.
This hurt. I told Lisa everything, even some things I shouldn’t have. She knew all my secrets, all my quirks, all my bad decisions, all my crazy. She could read my mind, and I couldn’t lie to her.
I thought that was the kind of friendship we had. I thought it was mutual.
Still, while shocked, hurt, and disoriented, I understood Lisa’s relationships weren’t my business. We are all entitled to a certain level of privacy, even when we’re being assholes.
But cheating was the least of her offenses. Lisa was charged with conspiracy to threaten the other victim and sole witness (“Victim”) in Boyfriend’s murder case. Victim had also been shot but inconveniently failed to die.
When did Lisa’s right to privacy end and my right to know her secret begin?
Nine months earlier…
“I’m glad you were able to take a break.” Lisa clinks her wine glass against my iced tea.
I eye her wine wistfully and wish I didn’t have to study later. “Me too. Between work and school, I don’t even have time to sleep. But a girl’s gotta eat.”
“You get to have any kind of a summer?”
“Not much. Two weeks between spring and summer classes. Maybe two in August.”
“Will you be able to squeeze in our girls’ trip this year?”
Grad school at night was starting to get to me, and I still had another year. The annual getaway with our other college besties would rejuvenate me. “I hope so! But I won’t have much wiggle room.”
“Send me your dates. I’ll email Stacy and Colleen.”
“Great!”
“Oh, hey, do you know any criminal defense attorneys?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Um…”
Lisa flashes a rueful half-smile. “Nobody’s in trouble yet. We just want to get ahead of something stupid Jack got mixed up in and have someone ready in case. “
“Teenage boys are dumb.” We have three between us, so war stories are common. “What happened? Is he okay? Do you want to talk about it?”
“He’s fine, just mortified. And thanks, but no. I promised him I wouldn’t tell the world.”
“Okay. We don’t do criminal law, but I know people who know people. I’ll get back to you.”
I saw that conversation with a different lens when Lisa wrote me she had tried to find a defense attorney to reopen Boyfriend’s case. Unless new evidence surfaced or the eyewitness changed his story, none would.
I’d collected names from fellow paralegals in my law firm, emailed them to Lisa, then promptly forgotten all about it.
Had she lied to me then?
I never asked why she really wanted the referrals. I’d doubt her answer, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was my actions circumstantially connected me to her crime. Her family thought I might have been involved.
Had I known about Boyfriend, I might have handled it differently. I might not have asked coworkers. I might have called her rather using work email. I would have been more careful around her.
By hiding the big picture, she took my choices away from me.
And that wasn’t all she kept from me.
Two months earlier…
We are in a small courtroom because bail hearings don’t usually draw a crowd. I can’t stop shaking, and I want to bolt. Pressed against either side of me in the packed pew, Stacy and Colleen clench my hands as if physically holding me together.
Certain there was some ludicrous misunderstanding, we had abandoned our lives and traveled eight hours to vouch for Lisa’s impeccable character and bring her home to her kids. The prosecutor had seemed weirdly interested in our August getaway but didn’t challenge us.
Victim is now on the stand. He describes finding an empty box on his porch. It had not been mailed, which seemed odd, but he put it in the recycling.
Two days later, Boyfriend called Victim from a cell phone Lisa had smuggled into the prison:
“Did you get my package? I’m sending something else.”
Boyfriend’s old cellmate had flown in, rented a car, and hand-delivered the empty box “to send a message.”
Lisa had paid for Cellmate’s time and expenses.
I feel Victim’s shock and horror at hearing his would-be murderer’s voice so many years later. He’d probably thought himself safe, protected by a life sentence, iron bars, armed guards, and hundreds of miles. He has a new life, a job, a family. How will he ever sleep again knowing an evil sociopath, locked up for over a decade, can still get to him?
A few days later, Victim received Boyfriend’s letter enclosing an affidavit to recant his testimony.
As Victim continues speaking, Colleen gasps. Stacy’s head whips toward us, eyes wide. Ice trickles down my spine.
The letter was postmarked the day before we left with Lisa in August. The ZIP code was an hour from her office. Boyfriend called Victim a few days later:
“Sign the affidavit, or the next package won’t be empty.”
Victim is sickened that Lisa was frolicking with us while his family was being terrorized.
The judge denies bail.
Lisa never meets our eyes.
Livid, I’d called out Lisa’s secret-keeping in a recent letter. “I never lied to you” was her response. To her partner and kids, yes, but not to me.
But eight years was more than an affair affecting only her family. Eight years was a double life — a calculated, ongoing deception that touched everyone she knew.
I shared everything with Lisa, while she was concealing material information about whether I could trust her judgment.
“Concealing material information” is an accounting term for obscuring facts that might alter someone’s decision to invest in, loan money to, or do business with a company. With our money and reputation at stake, we have a right to an accurate financial picture.
Material information influences our risk assessment.
It fits personal circumstances, too. If you ask me to wait in the car while you run into the bank, whether you plan to rob it is material to my decision.
Concealing material financial information that alters someone’s business decision is illegal and punishable: it’s fraud. Concealing secrets that would influence someone’s life choices is also fraudulent.
None of us would have gone on that trip if we’d known what was happening.
We had a right to know we would be Lisa’s alibi.
The only reason Lisa could say she’d never lied to me was that I’d never posed pointed questions.
Are you having a secret affair with a prisoner? Are you helping him threaten his victim? Will this happen while I’m on vacation with you?
Would she have answered truthfully? I’ll never know, but it’s irrelevant. I trusted her implicitly, so those questions would never have occurred to me. And I trusted her because I was lacking material information.
I was not overreacting. Lisa’s right to privacy ended when she exposed me to risk. She knew what I’d do and say if she told me, so she didn’t.
Just because she never uttered falsehoods to my face doesn’t mean she never lied to me.
Material omissions are still lies.
