Just a drabble, really - I recently started watching Lie to Me and I really like it so far - even though there are some 'issues' I have with the show. I'm at 1x09 now, and I was just wondering how Foster could NOT know that Alec cheated on her - as a psychologist and all - so I just came up with this. This is set a few months into the future (and yes, I skipped ahead and I saw what happens and that Gillian finds out and stuff - but anyway). Enjoy!
Of course, Cal, with his infallible sense of human deception, knew months before me. No surprise there.
The surprise was that he did not tell me. He had respected my privacy, my sense of dignity for the sake of my questionable happiness. That is hard for him, as I know it is. He saw everything that happened and he chose to step aside and let matters run their course.
I wonder if it would have changed things. If he had told me, would I have believed him?
Deep down, I knew, too. All those days working overtime, and no increase in salary – it seemed impossible. I knew something was up. I just always refused to accept it, I hid it in a neat little compartment in my head, locked it and threw the key away – I tried to throw it away. But it kept coming back, like a wicked boomerang.
When he finally told me – when Alec finally confessed to what I'd been suspecting for months – I was not even surprised. The little box had been opened again even before he told me – by Cal's evasiveness, the little signs that nobody but I could see. He was not uncomfortable around me, exactly – but rather a bit secretive and cautious, like he knew something I was not supposed to know. He bit his lips, sometimes, and shifted his eyes away from mine – funny, how his own teachings could be used against him.
But when he found me crying in my office, he did not tell me any of this. He did not say how he'd been suspecting ever since Alec had been locked up during the Korean wedding and so desperate to get out – did not tell me how he overheard a definitely not work-related conversation – he didn't even tell me that he'd followed Alec one night – not then. He let me suffer by myself, he gave me that space I so desperately needed – and I am thankful for that.
But I wonder if I would have believed him back then, when I still held on to the perfect family image.
Maybe it started with Sophie. Maybe that is when we started growing apart – and when our bond started to break. I had been devastated – after 57 days of changing diapers and burping, I felt as if she were my own little girl, almost as if I had been the one to carry her around in my womb, so strong was the connection I felt.
But Alec had none of that. He went one with his life, spent even more time at his office – with her? – and I always simply thought he'd keep it inside this time, bottled it up till it came out one day. But it didn't come out. And I forgot.
My work guided me through those days – when I finally started to accept the possibilities, and when I actually found out. Cal guided me. Not with overly expressed emotions – no tears, no hugs – but with silent support, a hand on my shoulder, an arm across my back – and I did not need more.
Tell me what you thought!