The Liar's Playbook: A Memoir of Family and Crime

She didn’t make the long drive from London, Ontario, to Bailieboro lightly these days. Usually, her trunk was crammed with boxes full of basement crap I didn’t want. But this time, she had only a small cooler and the binder. My gaze dropped to its spine. Behind the scratched plastic protector was a name I hadn’t seen in years: Jean Claude Garofoli. My father.

“It’s garbage,” Mom said sharply. “If you don’t want it, burn it.”

The air in the room shifted—suddenly colder. What could be in those pages that my mother wanted reduced to ash?

Before I could respond, she pivoted toward the kitchen, her voice switching to something too casual. “What do you have to drink?”

I picked up the binder. It was heavier than I’d expected. Clutching it to my chest, I followed her into the kitchen, my footsteps hesitant on the cool tiles. “What is it?” I asked. “Where did it come from?”

She kept her back to me, a wall of floral-print cotton. “The basement,” she snapped. “It’s been rotting there for thirty years.” With a flick of her wrist, she waved away the decades like a speck of dust. “At least I’m rid of it now. Do you have any Perrier?”

I froze, the binder leaden in my hands, as she yanked open the fridge. Glass bottles clinked as she rooted around.

“Mom, did you hear me? What is it?”

She paused, her hand lingering on the fridge door. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, without looking at me, she said flatly, “Your father’s prison manuscript.”

Her words were a sucker punch—which was fitting because, in our family, I was the sucker.

Mom twisted the cap off her sparkling water with an aggressive crack. “It’s probably full of lies,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I couldn’t bear to read it.”

I stood rooted, the weight of the binder dragging at my arms. Thirty years of carefully constructed healing threatened to unravel in an instant. The past I thought I’d buried was rising fast, unstoppable. My father had died in 2013, but in that moment, it felt like he’d just left the room. His presence thickened the air—oppressive, impossible to ignore. Behind my eyes, a slideshow began to play: police cars in our driveway, Brad’s empty bedroom, my father’s face through prison glass, a cold gun pressed to my warm skin. All the jagged pieces of our family history I’d tried so hard to forget.

What truths or lies waited in those pages? And was I strong enough to face them?

I sat at the kitchen island, holding the binder tightly.

My mother had spent decades sharpening her bitterness into a weapon. She was married to Dad for thirty-five years and griped about him for another twenty-plus after the divorce. At eighty-one, she had allowed her mistrust to harden into a fortress of thorns. Any mention of a man—a colleague, a neighbor—would stiffen her spine and turn her voice cold.

“Men,” she’d proclaim, her voice sharp with conviction, “are the architects of all our wars.”

Her wars were far more personal.

She devoured crime dramas, her lips curling in satisfaction whenever justice struck down a cheating man. If a fictional husband found himself in handcuffs—or with a knife lodged in his throat by a scorned wife—she’d smile as if the universe had finally been set right.

I opened the binder. A musty scent wafted up, heavy with the dust of forgotten things. The first page was blank except for a dedication:

To Bradley,

May you find peace. There is none here.

Love, Dad

Brad. My dear, sweet brother, my protector, my confidant, my partner in crime. Brad, a pebble of a name that rippled through every part of who I’d become.

A memory flashed: Brad and I picking the lock on our grandmother’s safe, stealing silver dollars to buy Kit Kats and Oh Henry! bars at Turner’s Corner Store. His mischievous smile, once bright as sunshine, had now faded forever.

My throat tightened, and tears rose before I could stop them. I grabbed the Kleenex box, which was decorated with kittens whose painted-on joy felt mocking. I yanked out tissues one after the other, until the box was empty and the last one drifted to the floor.

I looked at the binder again. It seemed heavier now.

I stumbled into the mudroom, my vision blurred by tears. Yanking open the drawer in our floor-to-ceiling built-ins, the one stuffed with hats and mitts, I shoved the binder deep beneath layers of scarves and fleece. The sound ricocheted off the yellow walls as I slammed the drawer shut. Leaning against the door frame, I let out a shaky breath. The knot in my neck began to loosen, but my mind buzzed.

“Come here, honey,” Mom called softly from the kitchen.

I shuffled back to find her standing at the microwave. She punched in a few seconds and waited as the plate spun inside. The sweet, familiar scent of banana bread filled the air as she removed it, steam now curling from the loaf’s golden crust.

“Here,” she said, putting the warm plate into my hands. “I made it this morning before I left.”

I took a bite, and the flavors exploded on my tongue: sweet banana, warm cinnamon, the crunch of walnuts. It tasted like comfort. Like the mother I’d always longed for.

For a fleeting moment, I saw her clearly—the woman who could soften instead of bristle, who could offer warmth instead of walls. But the moment passed, and the distance between us reassembled, brick by silent brick.

Months went by before I touched the binder again. November’s biting cold sent me to the mudroom for a scarf and mitts one day. When my fingers brushed against the binder’s spine, curiosity flickered to life.

What was I so afraid of?

I carried it to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of steaming mint tea, and curled into a chair by the living room window. The lake outside was still, its calmness grounding me.

There was no turning back. Whatever lay inside was already part of me, waiting to be unearthed. I took a deep breath and opened the binder.

I would dub it “The Liar’s Playbook.”
My dad’s manuscript on my sunroom table The Garofoli family in Venezuela, 1975