First Place: The Lies We Tell Ourselves

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

by Christy Hartman

First Place

Tammy's breath hung in the chill of the visitor’s area. A fifteen-year veteran of bitter coffee and plastic chairs, she’d arrived early, positioning herself at a coveted table on the far wall, away from the drafty door. She observed reunions as she waited for Ethan to be escorted from his cell. A dozen small dramas unfolded under the watch of an underpaid guard tasked with keeping the room in control. A young mother wrangled a little boy desperate to launch himself at his one-hour-a-week daddy. An elderly man, his sagging shoulders carrying the weight of the room, nodded at a grey-haired inmate before sliding into an empty chair. 

Tammy stared at a pretty girl, no more than thirteen sitting alone. Red-rimmed glasses perched on her upturned nose. Annalise might have looked like this girl if she’d lived that long. She’d been fitted for her first pair of tiny plastic glasses on her fifth birthday. Ethan called them her magic goggles, promising his little sister that if she kept them on, she might see a fairy in the woods behind their cabin.  

“Mom.” A deep voice cut through the memory.

Tammy pulled her gaze from the girl to her son across from her. “Sorry, I was daydreaming.”

Ethan looked to the table that had distracted his mother. “Her name’s Sophie. Her dad came in last week. Nice guy. Bad decisions.”

“Mmm.” Tammy didn’t want to talk about the girl. 

“I have great news.” Ethan’s usually guarded face split into a wide grin. “I got my thirty-day notice.”

Tammy stared at a jagged scar over Ethan’s eye. Her world tilted. The bacon sandwich she’d eaten during the two-hour drive from her house to the penitentiary churned in her stomach. “Congratulations.”

“I almost believe you mean that.” Ethan sighed.

A commotion erupted from across the room. Sophie sobbed into her father’s chest. The guard pulled at her arm trying to separate them. Her cries turned to wails. Another guard arrived to drag her to the exit as her father was led through a different door. 

“Fifteen years in this place and now only have one month left.” Ethan continued as if the scene hadn’t happened. “I’ll have the first year of my mechanic training done by then.”

“Do they set you up with a place to stay?” Tammy asked.

“I want to live in the cabin.” It wasn’t a question, or a demand. Ethan looked at his mom.

“I’ll think about it.” Tammy pushed back her chair and stood.

“Are you going to a meeting tonight?” Ethan blurted. 

“I always do.” She lied.

“I’m sorry.” Ethan had offered these two words to her for 772 Sundays.

“I know.” She lied again.

The worn tires of her Camry kicked up dust as Tammy navigated each turn and dip of the tree-lined road.  Her cabin was nestled at the end. A four-room log home with drafty windows and dodgy plumbing; the only thing Tammy had inherited from her father, besides a genetic penchant for sarcasm, vodka, and toxic relationships. This place, a touchstone of her own childhood, and the place she tried to make a home for her babies, remained perpetually frozen in time. Moss covered the a-frame roof, hanging over the soffits in twisting tendrils of emerald and chartreuse. 

Since the accident, Tammy had often thought of selling the cabin. God knows she could’ve used the money when grief and booze kept her from buying groceries, much less holding down a steady job. Back then, the thought of going through the last bits of her lost children, or worse, having someone else wade through the mess of their lives, was more than she could bear. She pushed those rooms filled with Ethan and Annalise’s childhood into the recesses of her mind, melting them with vodka when they dared taunt her. 

Tammy wandered through the small rooms, dragging her hand along the back of her father’s velour sofa where Ethan had slept. Shaking away memories, Tammy moved into the bedroom she’d shared with Annalise. Starting with her own things would be easiest. She pulled t-shirts out of a drawer. A pink spaghetti strap tank with Hot Mama scrawled across the front was scrunched into a tight ball. She’d been wearing it when she’d flown through the hospital doors, screaming Annalise’s name. It had been soaked with snot, tears, and vomit when the doctor announced her baby girl was gone. The officer stationed outside Ethan’s door had watched her with more disgust than pity. 

She lifted the pink fabric and recoiled at the touch of cool, smooth glass under it. The bottle was a third full of amber liquid. Tammy poured the whiskey down the kitchen sink, disgusted by her attraction to the acrid smell. She put toys and stuffed animals in bags. She pulled at a green foot poking out from the couch. Alligator Teddy, Annalise’s prized possession, stuffing protruding from its belly. Tammy crushed the toy to her face, inhaling deeply, hoping for a trace of her baby girl, but finding only the scent of mildew and dust. She found and needle and thread, fat tear drops fell onto the fur as she mended the tear.

Ethan was already seated when Tammy arrived.

“Why the big grin?” She asked, hanging her coat on the back of the chair.

“I met with a mechanic shop owner today. An ex-con who takes on apprentices. Guys like me who need a jumpstart when they’re released.”

Tammy tried to arrange her features into something that would relay excitement but knew by the hurt in Ethan’s eyes that he saw the dread she felt.

“You don’t think it's a good idea?” Ethan asked.

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. Strangers don’t just help from the kindness of their hearts.” Tammy picked at her fingernails. “But I guess you need to do something.”

Ethan sighed. “I’m going to need a car living way out there,” 

“I don’t have money to buy you one.” Tammy’s voice, louder than she intended, bounced off the cement walls.

“I know. There’s also a program that will help me get a loan.” Ethan held her gaze. “Other than the cabin, I won’t need anything from you.”

“I just don’t want you making a mistake and ending up back in here.”

As she shrugged on her worn pea-coat, Tammy waited for the blade of Ethan’s weekly apology to reopen the Annalise-shaped wound between them.

“You know–I’ve forgiven myself.” Ethan said. “And I’m trying to forgive you.”

Tammy inhaled a sharp breath. “I wasn’t driving the car.”

“You should’ve been.” Ethan closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “I was sixteen.”

“I’m not doing this, Ethan. There’s no point.” Tammy took a step back from the table, but his hand closed around her wrist. She looked to the guard, but he was preoccupied with a young couple arguing across the room.

“I’ve never asked you where you were that night. Why you didn’t pick her up yourself. I didn’t want to know.”

She wrenched her arm away. “Talking about it won’t bring her back.” 

“I will be sorry for the rest of my life, but I’m done making you feel better by giving apologies you’ll never accept,” he said.

Tammy walked away from him without a word.

The cabin was ready. She had scrubbed every surface until it shone. The cobwebs had been swept away and bright new curtains hung in the windows. Tammy was putting away lunch meat and milk when something caught her eye. A manilla envelope had been pushed to the back of the top of the fridge. She reached inside, Ethan’s wallet tumbled out, his teenage face smiled from his driver’s license. Her fingers closed around thin plastic. A shattered pair of small red glasses. She ran her thumb over a broken lens. A drop of blood bloomed on her thumb. 

She clung to these mementos of the children she’d lost that night and sobbed on the Pine-Sol-scented floor of the cabin.

Tammy pulled off the highway an hour from the prison and followed the winding path to the Woodside Cemetery parking lot. Clutching Alligator Teddy, she walked through the damp grass to Annalise’s small headstone. 

Annalise Michelle Beeson 1985-1990 Our littlest angel, Taken too soon.

“Your brother’s coming home today, sweet girl. I wish we were going back to the cabin together. We’d dance to rock music, and I’d make grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.” Tammy sat cross-legged on the grass, her back against the stone. “He blames me for what happened.”

The truth, locked in that dark place, suddenly burst open and the words tumbled out. “It was a bad day. Your school threatened to call CPS if I was late for pickup again.”  Memory of that afternoon roiled inside her. She lay her head on the grass. 

Tammy inhaled gulps of cold air, trying to stave off the rising bile. “I was at O’Reilly’s with friends, I was only supposed to have one drink.” The whisper floated on the breeze. “I screwed up.”

She watched the morning clouds rolling across the sky. Annalise had loved laying on their porch, pointing out dolphins, and lions, and flowers in the fluffy clouds.

“I called Ethan and told him to get you. It was only a couple miles.” Tammy felt the weight of confession crushing her chest. “Deep down I knew he’d been drinking every afternoon. I let him go anyway.”

She curled into herself, the smell of damp earth conjuring memories of the day Annalise was buried. Tammy had stood numb, listening to a stranger pray over the tiny casket. The judgement of Annalise’s teachers and friend’s parents burning holes into her. 

Tammy pulled herself to a kneeling position and placed Alligator Teddy against the wet stone. “Being your momma was the best thing about me,” she whispered to the breeze.“

Ethan thrust his arm out the open car window, waving it up and down in the icy air. Tammy looked at her son, a thirty-three-year-old man who’d entered prison as a boy. His eyes, rimmed with the lines of age and grief, still had the gold flecks she’d admired on the tiny baby she’d brought home at fifteen, terrified of the strange new world they found themselves in. They had both cried through that first year, Ethan from colic and her from the heartbreak of a first love who decided that being a dad wasn't for him. 

“Do you remember when we lived with grandpa?” Tammy asked, eyes focused on the double yellow highway lines.

“I was three when he died. I was too young to remember anything.”

“He loved sitcoms. It was the only real time we spent together after mom died,” Tammy said. “I was fascinated by those TV mothers because I had so few memories of my own.”

“Why are you thinking about that now?” Ethan asked.

“When you came along, I tried to talk like them, be like them. But their toddlers didn’t bite or throw food at the wall. They didn’t have to buy groceries with food stamps on the way home from high school.” Tammy sped up to pass a motorhome. 

“Those shows aren’t real life.” Ethan turned to her. “You did your best.”

“I’m not sure I did.” Tammy answered. “But what teenager does?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the hum of tires filling the empty space.

“There’s a 2 pm meeting. Can I go before you drop me off?”            

“Sure.” Tammy turned up the heat. “I’ll come in too.” 

Ethan twisted the radio dial, scanning the stations, stopping as Guns N’ Roses filled the car. Tammy was transported back to her dad’s living room, twirling around the coffee table, serenading the tiny boy in her arms. 

Whoa, oh, oh, sweet child o’ mine

“Annalise would’ve loved this song,” Ethan said.

Blinking away tears, Tammy placed a trembling hand on Ethan’s and whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Winning pieces are published as received.

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Fiction Potluck

July 2025

First Place Winner:

Christy Hartman

Christy Hartman pens short fiction from her home on Vancouver Island Canada. She writes about the chasm between love and loss and picking out the morsels of magic in life’s quiet moments. Christy is a two-time New York City Midnight winner and has been published by Sky Island Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine and others.

www.christyhartmanwriter.com