The Five Year Lie

The novel flashes back five years. Brainz goes to the empty third-floor closet of Chime Co. and checks the status of Drew’s terminal. Drew has logged in as six different people. Brainz wants to expose him and figure out what Drew is doing. Brainz notices Drew looking at police warrants for Lowden, Maine, as well as LiveMatch software. Brainz gets a photo from security camera footage of Drew and uploads it to LiveMatch. This doesn’t reveal anything, but Brainz thinks it can’t be a coincidence that Drew is interested in Lowden.

The narrative returns to the present. Larri drives Ariel to Lowden to see where Drew’s foster father lived and died. On the way, she shares that Tara’s old drug dealer has threatened Tara. Ariel finds the house and knocks. A young woman answers and directs her across the street to Mr. Ossman, a neighbor who was close to Ernie. Mr. Ossman invites them in for tea.

Mr. Ossman tells them that Ernie was a wonderful man who raised many boys and one girl named Amina. The trouble started when Ernie filed a complaint of harassment against the police because one of his foster sons, Omar, was a target for an officer named Ward. Ward then began harassing Amina, which made Omar furious. Assuming that Ward was using cameras to find Amina, Ernie got cameras of his own from another foster son named Jay Marker. Jay was Ernie’s success story; he joined the Army and was fighting in Syria when Ward began going after Amina. Jay’s cameras didn’t help, and the harassment didn’t stop. Two months later, Amina died by suicide. In the aftermath, Ernie learned that Ward was blackmailing her with footage of her having sex with a boy—footage that Ward got from Ernie’s own cameras. Ernie gathered information from others who’d had odd camera experiences with the police, but he died while telling a reporter his story.

Larri is furious that Ward got away with it, but Ossman says that Ward died less than a year later in a boating accident. Jay handled Ernie’s estate and helped Omar get a job. Ossman directs them to Ernie’s grave. They thank him and go. Ariel is overwhelmed, wondering just who Drew, or Jay Marker, really was.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew/Jay holds Ariel in bed but knows that their relationship is temporary. He can tell that they are both holding parts of themselves back even though they have an intense connection. He can’t keep up his fake identity long; settling Ernie’s estate means reporting Ernie’s death, which will make the Social Security number that Jay has been using no longer work. Jay misses Ernie and wants to expose the company and the corrupt police officer responsible for his death. He gets up, puts on his prosthesis, and quietly tries to log on to Ariel’s computer. He’s relieved when he can’t figure out the password: She is the one bright part of his life.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel and Buzz watch the Pixar animated movie Toy Story. She is torn: She is relieved that Drew/Jay had a good reason for being at Chime Co. but also feeling used. She remembers experiencing the optimism people have that makes them get married. She cuddles her son and thinks that Jay missed the best part—Buzz.

Ariel tells Zain about Amina and the police. Zain is pleased that Drew wasn’t a corporate spy, though Ariel reminds him that Drew’s revenge mission failed—Ward retired with full benefits. When they meet later at a park where Buzz is playing, Zain reports that searching for Jay Marker turned up nothing on the internet except a high school football roster. Zain also asked Ray about LiveMatch. Ray thought that the software was one of Edward’s ways of saving money and claimed that it disappeared since his death. Zain speculates that LiveMatch uses AI for face recognition, which is not illegal but is controversial and dubiously moral. For one thing, recordings can fall into the wrong hands, like Ward’s. Zain points out that maybe Drew didn’t fail: LiveMatch and Drew disappeared, and Ariel’s father died, all at about the same time.

This gives Ariel pause, so Zain offers her a cookie to make her feel better. Zain asks if she and Buzz want to go watch a sword fight at a Renaissance fair on Sunday. They will need costumes.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew/Jay attends a company Fourth of July picnic at the Cafferties’ estate. After kissing Ariel in the bathroom, he accidentally sees Ray and Ariel’s mother (who is still married to Edward at this point) kissing in a side room. Jay hides until Ray finds him; Jay manages to deflect attention by removing his prosthetic leg and talking about needing a respite from the pain. When Ray leaves, Drew notices that Edward hasn’t put a password on his home computer. He finds something called the Lowden Beta Program and takes photos of what he sees on the screen.

The narrative returns to the present. Tara and Larri outfit Ariel for the Renaissance faire. While she, Buzz, and Zain watch the knights fight, Buzz vacillates between worry and fascination. Zain takes them to a knife vendor, Bryan Zarkey, who used to work for Chime Co. His sister is also there; she is the one who makes the knives. Bryan recognizes Ariel but says that he knows nothing about LiveMatch, which was Edward’s project. Later, when Ariel is with Buzz on a pony ride, she sees Bryan and Zain in a tense conversation.

Later, after Zain takes a sleeping Buzz home and offers Ariel a beer from his car’s ice chest, Ariel asks Zain what Bryan said. Bryan was nervous and told Zain to stop asking questions and quit Chime Co. Zain admits that he isn’t helping Ariel to hit on her: Zain had a crush on Drew/Jay, which is why he is pursuing his fate so adamantly. Ariel is surprised.

When Zain leaves, Ariel’s mother asks her to come over. Officer Barski, who initially investigated Edward’s death, is in the kitchen. Ariel’s mother also got one of the old texts, a notification of someone arriving at their door the morning Edward died. Ariel looks at the camera footage and recognizes Jay, but she pretends not to.

Later, Ariel confirms to Zain that the man in her mother’s camera footage is Drew/Jay. The police believe that Jay was bringing Edward drugs, but Ariel and Zain assume that he was actually confronting Edward about company malfeasance. This revelation may have prompted Edward’s suicide. Zain wants Ariel to steal another recording on the backup files to find out.

The next morning, Uncle Ray’s office is a mess as he moves. Ariel tries to find the backup recordings, but they’ve all gone missing. Zain is suspicious and decides to look for another copy in another location that night. Ariel’s mother invites her and Buzz to dinner with Ray.

Ariel gets a call from a cemetery office manager who is unable to locate an Andrew Miller buried in the site listed in his North Carolina obituary. She gives Ariel advice on whom to call next. Ariel has the wild thought that Jay may not be dead. Zain suggests that Jay may be hiding—and not from Ariel.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew/Jay and Ariel picnic in a park and listen to classical music. He worries that he’s broken all his own rules by falling in love with her. They kiss and leave to have sex at his apartment.

Jay has evidence that Chime Co. has been testing surveillance software called LiveMatch in Lowden, allowing law enforcement to track citizens based on facial recognition. Some police officers have been using it in morally dubious ways. Jay wants to report it, but he first needs to find out how they get footage from Chime Co. and the warrants involved. This means looking through hundreds of pieces of data. While Ariel sleeps, he logs on and finally finds the warrant he’s looking for.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel calls in sick and spends time contacting other cemeteries in North Carolina, none of which have an Andrew Miller or Jay Marker. She overhears Ray and her mother arguing about the new police report that Ariel’s mother has filed. Ariel realizes that they are disagreeing in a healthy way, like one person concerned about another. It’s nothing like the abusive fighting she heard between her mother and Edward.

Zain appears with the third recording. They make a list of things they know for sure about Jay. Ariel realizes that wills are public records; they can look up Jay’s foster father Ernie’s will. They learn that Jay’s name is Jacob L. Marker and that he signed Ernie’s paperwork after he disappeared but before the obituary appeared. They deduce that the lawyer whom Jay hired would have needed a forwarding address for Jay, so Ariel could write Jay a letter. Zain watches the third recording while Ariel writes to Jay, worried that it will only lead to more emotional hurt.

The novel flashes back five years. Brainz meets off-duty police officer Chuck Ward, and they pretend to go fishing. Not only is Ward helping test LiveMatch, but he is also providing drugs for Brainz to deal. Ward is retiring, which makes Brainz furious. He shows Ward a photo, and Ward recognizes Jay Marker. Brainz now knows who Drew/Jay is. Brainz considers killing Ward for retiring, as Brainz needs the money coming in from Ward to make LiveMatch thrive.

The narrative returns to the present. Zain finds the warrant that Drew was after: It authorizes the Lowden Police Department to get video from Ernie Miller’s home in 2016 for the probable cause of drug sales by Omar Isak. The footage shows a teenage couple having sex. Buzz wakes up and sees Drew’s face on Ariel’s screen. He says that Uncle Ray was looking at the same photo.