The Five Year Lie

The novel returns to the present. Arial Cafferty reluctantly agrees to bring watermelon to her son Buzz’s preschool class graduation while she drops him off. He looks so much like his dead father that Ariel’s heart hurts.

Ariel has a trust fund and an easy office manager’s job at Chime Co., her family’s doorbell camera tech company. The company was founded by her father, Edward, and his brother Ray. Since her father died, Uncle Ray has run Chime Co. Ariel would rather spend time at her glass-blowing studio, but she comes in to work just as Ray is starting a meeting. As Ariel pretends to take notes, her phone gets a text from Drew Miller, Buzz’s father, asking her to meet him in an hour. Ariel is rattled; Drew, the only man she ever loved, died five years ago.

The novel flashes back five years. Distracted by Ariel, Drew can’t focus on his work as a programmer at Chime Co. He wants to talk to her but feels bad trying to get information out of the boss’s daughter despite seeing that she doesn’t fear her father or care about the company. Zain, a fellow programmer, tells him that Ariel draws and is a glass blower. Ariel’s father, Edward, walks in and asks Ariel about being ready for clients. She has forgotten something. After the clients leave, Edward harshly criticizes Ariel in front of employees, as he frequently does. This time, he calls her a gendered slur because of her appearance. Drew waits for everyone to leave so that he can talk to Ariel. He consoles her about her father and then offers to take her to dinner despite knowing it’s a bad idea.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel stares at the text message and remembers the traumatic time in her life when her father and Drew both died within months of each other—Drew after a mysterious disappearance. She wonders who sent the text, leaves the meeting, and tries to call his number. There is no answer or voicemail. She goes to the text’s designated meeting place and waits. There, she thinks about Drew, an Army veteran who loved dogs that she fell for almost immediately. They were together for three months before he disappeared. She tries texting him one last time, but there is no answer.

Three days after Drew disappeared five years earlier, Ariel got an email saying that he would never forget her. It destroyed her emotionally. Then, she found out she was pregnant. Meanwhile, her mother wasn’t handling her grief at Edward’s death well, letting her brother-in-law Ray handle things. Ray has been supportive of both Ariel and her mother since.

Ariel gives up waiting for the text message meeting and goes to her glass studio, where she helps her friend Larri with a project. Larri is upset: The security doorbell camera showed Larri’s girlfriend Tara’s old drug dealer turning up at their house despite Tara declaring that she’s in recovery and sober.

Ariel spends the rest of the night absently taking care of Buzz and going over the text she received. The message is ominous and uncharacteristic of Drew: It reads, “There’s trouble. I need to see you. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going” (32). The next day, she looks up Drew in the company directory, but he’s been deleted. She asks Zain, a programmer whose desk is close by, if he remembers Drew. Zain does; he points out that another employee who left around the same time as Drew, Bryan Zarkey, is still in the system. Zain guesses that Ariel wants to find Drew in the system because of Buzz; Ariel is horrified that he’s guessed Buzz’s parentage. She shows Zain Drew’s obituary, and he is genuinely upset. Ariel realizes that multiple people in the room have enough tech skills to help her figure out why she’s getting texts from a dead man.

Ariel spends most afternoons in the glass studio while Buzz stays with her mother. That day, Ray is also with them doing an exploding science experiment. When Ariel comes home, Ray tells her that he has asked her mother to marry him and makes a joke about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, in which the queen marries the brother of the dead king. Ariel congratulates her mother; Ray will treat her much better than the abusive Edward. Ray tells them about getting a text from a bagel place even though he hadn’t ordered anything; on the radio, he heard about thousands of people getting five-year-old texts because a cell tower that had gone out of service suddenly delivered backed-up messages. Ariel realizes that five years ago, Drew tried to send her an urgent message.

As Ariel puts Buzz to bed, she wonders when he’s going to start asking about his father. Buzz’s name is a tribute to Drew, who had a tattoo of Buzz Lightyear from the movie Toy Story on his shoulder—an inside joke he shared with an army buddy named Woody from a small town in Michigan.

Zain knocks. He found something that he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about in the office. He pulls out a digital storage device from the company and plugs it into his personal computer that’s never been connected to the internet. On it, they see Drew’s HR file, including his Social Security number. Ariel pulls up the text from Drew to show Zain and sees a text from Larri: The door camera footage showing Tara’s drug dealer is also one of the old ones mistakenly sent by the cell tower. Zain has a friend who can use Drew’s number to find more information, and Ariel agrees to hire him. Zain points out that the photo in Drew’s obituary is the same as the one in his HR file, asking how the North Carolina newspaper that posted the obituary would have access to the HR photo.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew thinks about the two brothers who started the company: Ray, an engineer who invented the camera system, and Edward with his business skills. It has been hard for Drew to adjust to sitting so much and civilian life. He talks to a young programmer in the coffee room about how Chime Co. both sells directly to consumers and also works with the police, who claim that its products are making neighborhoods safer: Police departments can sign a contract with Chime Co. Thus, instead of having to obtain warrants for private citizens’ footage, the police can simply request access from users through an app.

Drew tries not to stare at Ariel. They are seeing each other, but they ignore each other at work to keep the relationship secret. She drops a Post-it note on his desk that has a place and time to meet. He knows he shouldn’t keep seeing her but also knows that he will go.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel’s uncle Ray kindly asks her if she’s okay; she seems forgetful and preoccupied at work. She and Zain meet at the deli, where he tells her that his friend found that Drew’s Social Security number was actually issued to a man who would now be over 70. Ariel is shocked to learn that Drew lied about his identity. Zain wants to know why, suggesting that they look into who is buried in North Carolina.

Ariel goes back to the office, where she feels odd being praised by her uncle for her work; Ray treats her so differently from her father. She calls the North Carolina newspaper that published the obituary, but they can’t give out information.

Later, her mother comes over with margaritas, excited to plan her wedding to Ray. The gesture is a surprise: Ariel’s mother doesn’t usually drink alcohol or attempt to bond with her. Their relationship has been one of survival because of Ariel’s father, something Ariel is angry about. As they discuss the venue and dresses, Ariel can’t help but imagine planning a wedding with Drew. She is gutted that the one man she wanted to spend her life with didn’t even tell her his real name.

Zain looks tired, and Ariel wonders why he is helping her. She verifies that Drew really was in the military, as his scars and vulnerability about his injuries confirm. The only other detail Ariel knows is that Drew was in foster care. She only has one photo of him, as he didn’t want photos posted on social media, which she now realizes was a red flag.

The novel flashes back five years. A senior programmer with the username “Brainz” watches the Cafferty brothers argue, noting that the ostensible topic changes but that their fights are always about power. He notices that the new programmer, Drew Miller, is eavesdropping and sees how much effort Drew and Ariel put into avoiding each other, which means they are together. Brainz follows Drew into the break room but ignores Drew asking why the Cafferty brothers fight so much. Brainz gets a message from “TheBoss” asking Brainz to go fishing.

The narrative returns to the present. At Becky’s Diner, Zain reveals that Drew logged in as many different people at his company computer. Ariel struggles to reconcile the man she thought she knew with the spy whom Zain suspects Drew may have been. Drew looked into police department cameras, private footage, and the Private Request System where citizens get requests to share their home video with law enforcement. Ariel agrees to steal another tape of computer activity from Ray’s desk.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew volunteers for duty on the warrant desk and learns that people easily grant requests to police departments through the app. Only when they say no do departments get warrants for the footage. The desk is busy since they get multiple requests an hour. The man at the desk shows Drew how to access and turn over the correct video to the police. Drew has to show his ID and face to the camera, which he doesn’t like. He gets a warrant request and sends the video after checking the information, noting how easy it is to do.

Ariel arrives with beer and food. They talk about her father’s knee surgery and about how Drew was injured from an IED and shrapnel. Later, they meet up at her glass-blowing studio, where she helps him blow a small cup. He admires her work, and they kiss. At his apartment, he is nervous about showing her his prosthesis and missing leg, but she reacts with acceptance and desire in a way that he doesn’t expect. They have sex.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel steals the tape that Zain specified. Later, Larri shares that Tara is still mad at her for making assumptions about the outdated information from the door camera. Ariel tells her about the one she got from Drew but refuses to talk more about him.

Ariel walks to the street where Drew lived, calls his former landlord, and explains that Drew died. The landlord still has a box of Drew’s things. At home, Ariel opens the box and finds Drew’s military uniform. There are also some books and a photo of Drew in front of a house—the only foster placement that felt like home. There are toiletries that smell like him, coins, and the shot glass he made with her in the studio. Knowing that he left that behind breaks her heart.

Zain is mystified that Drew would leave his razor and everyday toiletries and wonders if he was running from someone. Ariel asks about LiveMatch—software that Zain found out about in his research. Zain doesn’t know; the software is not on the network anymore, but there is evidence that Drew was looking for some sort of AI program that could find faces on videos.

Ariel, Buzz, and her mother go to brunch at a potential wedding venue. Her mother looks tired. They agree that the venue is perfect and go for a walk on the beach. Surprisingly, Ariel’s mother says that she doesn’t regret having married Edward because she got Ariel and Buzz. When Ariel criticizes Edward for dying by suicide, her mother questions whether this is really what happened to him.