The Lies That Save Us (The Broken Heart Series) by JL Redington

microphone.
    At light went on in her head as she remembered the note on the batteries.  Listen to me.   She quickly went back to the beginning of the recording and started over.  She paid attention to each word but wondered after a while what she was listening to.  It sounded like ramblings, like maybe he was trying to figure out what he wanted to say, or who he was talking to.  She gasped and backed up the recording to replay the last few words.  They can’t fly.   She played the sentence over and over listening carefully to the whole sentence, but it wasn’t the whole sentence she was listening for.  It was the three little words they can’t fly and how they fit into the sentence or didn’t. 
    “Yeah, I told him flying pigs would land on him before I would agree to that, but we both know ‘they can’t fly’.”
    She quickly stopped the recording and searched the nightstand for a pad and pen.  She found one and scribbled the whole phrase and sentence onto the paper.  She returned to the recording and listened to more of the recording that made absolutely no sense.  But soon she heard another very familiar phrase.  ‘ A moon of cheese?  Oh, please’.
    She listened to the whole sentence.
    “He turned around and laughed out loud.  A moon of cheese?  Oh, please.”
    The sentence itself and even the sentences before it made no sense, but she knew the phrases, she knew them well.
    She listened a little longer to more nonsense and then another familiar phrase came up.
    ‘You’re the fairest of them all.’  Alexa knew the word ‘fairest’ was actually meant fair, as in being fair in her treatment of others.  She remembered these.
    She jumped up and ran to Cayman ’s room.  He wasn’t there.  She ran to the living room with the recorder in her hand remembering he was going to read.  She found him sitting in an easy chair reading the complete works of Sherlock Holmes.  He smiled up at her and then stood up when he saw the look on her face.
    “What is it?  What’s wrong.” 
    “I…I don’t know, maybe…maybe nothing.  I found this recording and I was listening…”  She could feel the tension in her body rise and the room started to spin.
    “Hey, Alexa!  Hold on!” Cayman grabbed her as she started to sink to the floor.  He led her around to the couch and gently lowered her to the seat. 
    “Just breathe, Alexa.  Just breathe, slow down and breathe.  I’m not going anywhere, there’s no hurry.  Breathe.”  The soothing tone of his voice helped her relax as he sat down, facing her on the couch.  “Better?”
    She nodded. Taking a deep breath she started at the beginning.
    “Cayman, I think I’ve found something, but I don’t know what.  When I was a little girl, sometimes my dad would have people pick me up after school because he was either out of town or in a meeting.  I really never knew who was going to pick me up, a neighbor, a family friend, Gina, our housekeeper.  I never knew.  But they always had a security phrase they would use.  As soon as the phrase was used it was changed, never used again.  There were some that were my favorites and I still remember them.  “
    “One was ‘They can’t fly’ .  Another was ‘A moon of cheese?  Oh please.’  And then still another one was ‘You’re the fairest of them all’ but it meant fair as in playing fair and part of using that phrase meant the person picking me up had to explain that detail.”
    “Okay,” he said patiently.
    “Well, I found this recorder and I was listening to it…okay, first, before I could even listen to it, I went to the fridge for batteries and found this note.”  She handed the note to him.
    “I wondered what it meant, but went back to the bedroom and put the batteries in.  I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying, you know, I was just enjoying actually hearing his voice.  Then I remembered the note. So I went back over it and started actually listening to the