Page 3 of Justified Lies

After the kids were tucked in for the evening, Lianna lay belly down on her fluffy white bedding. Sauvignon Blanc in hand, legs bent at the knee, she giggled like a teenager into her phone. The weekly FaceTime group consisted of Lianna, plus her three best friends Maisy, Isabela, and Sammie. The four women met while in law school and had remained as thick as thieves since. The weekly chat was their middle-aged version of ladies’ night. Sammie was just bringing the group up to speed on her most recent date.

“He was cute and normal. Well, normal for a lawyer, but so boring. And the real kicker—he thinks I’m into him. I should have cut him off when he was twenty minutes into his spiel on why estate planning should be done in your thirties.” she said with a sigh.

“Maybe he was nervous. Give him another chance,” offered Lianna.

“Another chance? To what, develop a personality?” Sammie huffed. “Do you guys ever just want to slap yourself?”

Stifling a laugh, Lianna said, “If it makes you feel any better, I’m crushing on a man who would like to slapme, so there’s that.”

“Just tell him how you feel. Or ask him out or, I don’t know, just jump on top of him and have your way.” Isabela said.

Lianna did laugh this time. “I haven’t practiced law in a while, but I’m pretty sure that’s still assault.”

Maisy jumped in. “I know a pretty good lawyer who can plead temporary insanity for you.”

“I must be insane,” Lianna said, “but not the temporary kind.

Lianna laughed for about the hundredth time since starting the call, which is exactly why she needed these ladies.In the initial months after becoming involuntarily single again, she’d felt empty and not for the reasons she thought she would.

Lianna and Scott had gotten engaged during her last year of law school. As an intelligent woman, Lianna realized that she was too young to settle down. But it wasn’t every day you hit the fiancé lottery, and she had hit it with Scott Bennett.

While her fiancé had a trust fund so big it would make the Hiltons jealous, money wasn’t what had appealed to Lianna. She was marrying into a family, a large, respected, and successful family. Growing up the only child of two parents who viewed their careers first and her second, the family part was what got her heart racing.

The fact that she was offered a coveted position in the Bennett family corporation running their community relations department sealed the deal. Scott had convinced her to defer taking the Bar exam indefinitely.

They had been married for almost five years. Only her closest friends knew that Lianna’s relationship was not in a healthy place before Scott passed. After his death, she still felt cheated, lied to, and angry. It seemed wrong to harbor those feelings for someone who could no longer defend themselves.

She was furious with no one to take it out on. Losing Scott made her feel despicable, because while she would do absolutely anything to give her children their father back, she didn’t want her husband back. Those dueling thoughts almost sent her over the edge.

The man she married was long gone, and she had operated as a single parent in many ways before the car crash that took him from Earth. Scott and Lianna wouldn’t have made it had he survived. Although she would never truly know, she was a widower not a divorcee. How she longed for it to be the other way around.

Sometimes, in her worst moments, she felt blame that she ended up benefitting from a failed marriage. She got the kids, the house, a stake in the family business, and a huge insurance payout. In those same moments, she fully understood why Darren despised her. She had harbored enormous guilt, but slowly, with the help of the three women on the phone, she started to find herself again. Not as a mother or a widower, but as a woman.

The guilt was being replaced with hope and the loneliness with longing. Lianna sometimes questioned her decision to go to law school, considering she was a single mom working part-time at a job that had been gifted. However, if the only thing she gained out of those three years were these three ladies, then it was worth it.

“Li, are you?” Izzy brought Lianna’s head out of the clouds and back to the conversation.

“I’m sorry, am I what?”

“Are you still getting those disturbing calls?”

Lianna had called Isabela in the middle of the night after the fifth straight 2:00 AM phone call. It was always the same—deep breathing, then the line would go dead. It made her feel silly because while it sounded juvenile, being on the receiving end of those calls was unnerving.

“Yes. They stopped for a few nights, but then started again last night. I guessed they missed my voice.”

“Weird.” Isabela said.

“I would say teenagers, but that takes commitment calling at the same time every night,” Sammie said. “Why don’t you just block the number?”

“They spoofedmycell number.” Lianna pushed on, “I’ve already reported it to my cell phone company. Essentially there is nothing they can do about it except report it to the Anti-Fraud Center, which probably has a list of complaints a mile long.”

Sammie’s brows pinched together. “If they call again you may want to think about filing that report.”

“It just feels like a waste of time. Especially when there is a woman missing. Imagine how pathetic I’ll sound saying I’m getting creepy phone calls. They did give me the option of changing my cell number, but that’s just another headache I don’t have time for.”

“That’s frustrating. I guess that’s the point,” Isabela said.

“I guess,” Lianna sighed.

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