The First Sound I Heard In Three Years Was His Lie Chapter 08
On the day of Graham’s mother’s funeral, a crowd of strangers stormed into the funeral home and caused a
scene.
They surrounded the funeral-home staff and refused to let the hearse leave for the cemetery.
“Tessa’s theft has already been proven. Who knows how many of the paintings she sold us were stolen? We
want refunds.”
“She told us you personally guaranteed the company’s debts, so you’re responsible for paying us back!”
“If we don’t get our money today, this funeral isn’t happening!”
Graham’s expression hardened.
“How did you find us?”
“Tessa told us where to come. She said you would figure out a way to repay us.”
Graham’s father stood with his shoulders hunched, then asked cautiously, “Graham, did you really personally guarantee Tessa’s company debts? Are you responsible for everything she owes?”
Graham reluctantly nodded.
He remembered the day he helped Tessa set up the company. She had told him she wanted them to share in
its success.
In the end, every dollar of profit had gone into Tessa’s pocket, while all the liability had landed on him.
He had always convinced himself that what they shared was more than friendship, even if they had never
officially become a couple.
Only now did he understand that Tessa had been using him from the beginning.
Mara-the woman who had tolerated everything he did-was the one who had truly loved him.
As Graham watched the angry customers struggle with the funeral-home staff beside his mother’s casket,
his arms fell limply to his sides.
It was as though something had torn the soul out of him. He crumpled to the floor and lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in a private room at the funeral home.
“Dad, where’s Mom? Where’s her casket?”
His father hurried to help him sit up.
“Your mother has already been buried. Take some time to recover before you go see her.”
“Did those people leave?”
“They’re gone. Don’t worry about the money. I’ll find a way.”
Before Graham could ask anything else, his father said he needed a cigarette and left the room.
That night, Graham’s father made a desperate decision.
He waited beside an intersection and stepped directly into the path of a car that blew through a red light.
Rain was pouring down, and blood spread across the pavement with the runoff.
Graham’s father died.
Graham used the insurance settlement from the fatal crash to pay off the remaining debts Tessa had left in
his name.
After losing both parents in such a short time, Graham fell apart.
He knelt before their graves as the rain pounded against him.
Throwing his head back, he screamed into the storm, pouring out everything inside him even as the rain
swallowed his voice.
“How did everything end up like this?”
“This is all Tessa’s fault! If it weren’t for her, Mara never would have left me, and my parents would still be
alive…
“Mara, where are you? What am I supposed to do now that I’m all alone?”
More than ever, Graham longed for Mara.
Whenever he had fallen apart in the past, she had stayed beside him.
Whenever something went wrong, she had helped him find a solution.
Mara had loved him so deeply, yet he had hurt her again and again for Tessa.
He had to find Mara, apologize to her in person, and beg her to forgive him.
By then, I had been living in San Diego for a full year.
After a year of treatment, my hearing had fully recovered, and my right hand was steady enough to hold a
paintbrush again.
I started posting new work to my artist account.
Some of my longtime followers left comments beneath my latest painting.
[This feels like rising from the ashes. Mara, what happened during the four years you were gone?]
[Wow. Mara’s work has so much more depth now.]
[This is why she’s the real deal. What Tessa did-stealing someone else’s work and passing it off as her own -was disgusting.]
I replied to a few comments, set my phone aside, and returned to my painting.
I had just added another brushstroke when Elliot Reeves’s voice came from behind me.
“Breaking the rules again?”
“Didn’t I tell you not to paint for more than two hours a day?”
Elliot was the doctor overseeing my rehabilitation. For the past year, he had been helping me restore function in my right hand.
He took the brush from my fingers.
“It’s time for lunch. Come on.”
“You artists get in the zone and forget the rest of the world exists.”
I smiled helplessly.
“Dr. Reeves, I’ve heard that lecture so many times I could recite it back to you.”
We had just stepped out of the studio when someone suddenly rushed toward us.
