Society of Lies: A Novel

In the early hours, a “primal” scream wakes Maya. She reaches for Nate, but Nate isn’t there. She meets Kai in the main house, and they take Ambien. Maya notices a missing knife. On her way back to the pool house, she investigates a noise. She sees a young woman in the moonlight, and she thinks the person is Lila. She then sees DuPont dragging Lila’s body through the snow.

Maya wakes up in the pool house. Margaret is there. She claims Maya had a nightmare, but Maya isn’t sure. When Nate returns, Maya asks why he wasn’t in bed during the middle of the night. Nate claims he woke up early and went for a run. Maya thinks he’s lying.

Maya tries to figure out what happened last night when Daisy tells her someone stabbed DuPont. Margaret comforts Maya but expresses no grief over DuPont’s death. Maya notices all the knives are present. Margaret says detectives will arrive, and Maya worries Nate killed DuPont.

During a rainstorm, Naomi speaks to Fiona Williams about Lila’s death, and she agrees to help. Afterwards, Naomi suspects someone is following her, but no one is there when she turns around.

Detectives Gary and Simmons arrive in Greenwich and question Maya about the previous night. Maya says Nate was with her, and she lets them take her shoes. She sees the detectives speak to Nate, and she hopes Nate doesn’t expose her lie. Dani wants to use the iPad in Nate’s suitcase, but Nate has changed the code to the suitcase lock. In the main zipper, Maya notices a blood stain on Nate’s running shirt.

Liam warns Naomi that people are coming for her. He wants to speak to her in person, but Naomi tells him to stay away. She’s already going to spend a few days at Ben’s uncle’s place in New York City. On the train there, she thinks she sees DuPont, but the man is a stranger who looks at Naomi like she’s “crazy.”

The detectives speak to Maya again. They have found her phone at DuPont’s house and her footprints at the murder scene. Maya says DuPont took her phone. As for the footprints, she took Ambien and alcohol, so she was out of it and didn’t witness anything. Gary then says they have footage of Nate leaving the estate last night in his car.

Maya calls Daisy and wonders if Nate killed DuPont. Nate appears and tells Maya she didn’t have to lie for him. He admits he went for a drive. He changed the lock because he lost the old one. When she mentions the bloody shirt, he laughs.

Ben’s uncle lives in a loft in the West Village. Ben wishes he could stay, but he has to go to Singapore because his father had a second stroke. Though Naomi is upset that Marta isn’t replying, Ben makes her feel secure. She wakes up in the middle of the night, and he cuddles her to sleep.

Alone, Maya drives to a bar with an American flag near the door and a pickup truck out front. She tells the woman bartender about her fight with Nate, and she accidentally shows her a photo of DuPont and Sara. Seeing Sara’s picture, Maya is suddenly convinced that Sara killed Naomi.

As Maya is drunk, Cecily picks her up and drives her to her condo on the Upper East Side. She offers Maya water. Maya drinks it and falls asleep. When she wakes up, she sees fog and trees. Daisy texts her: Cecily and DuPont have a romantic history, and Cecily helped him kill Lila and Naomi. Maya realizes Cecily drugged her and that Naomi’s phone pinged off a tower uptown because Naomi was with Cecily.

At a deli uptown, Naomi runs into Cecily, who invites Naomi back to her home, where Naomi receives an email from Marta with the cabin footage. Naomi shares the footage with Cecily, and they see DuPont holding a shovel and moving Lila’s body. Cecily promises to take Naomi to the police tomorrow. She says Naomi is “safe now” and gives her water. The water gives Naomi a headache, and she goes to Cecily’s bathroom where she realizes Cecily keeps Temazepam, powerful sleeping pills.

Cecily takes Maya to the Greystone cabin. She haphazardly ties Maya up and tells her she loved Naomi. However, Naomi and Amy could have put DuPont in prison, ruined Hunt’s investment fund, bankrupted Sterling and Greystone, and toppled their lives. Cecily drugged Naomi with ketamine, but she didn’t mean to kill her. When Naomi stopped breathing, Cecily called DuPont. Their relationship kept Cecily “sane,” she says. She married Hunt because of her mother’s influence. He was an unfaithful, cruel husband.

Maya manages to kick over an iron poker. When Cecily reaches for it, Maya hits Cecily’s knee with her foot. Cecily grabs her knee, and Maya holds the poker over her. Maya smells gasoline and oil. Cecily wants to make it look like Maya burned down the cabin out of “rage.” Cecily escapes, and Maya gets out by breaking a window. Bloody and limping in the middle of the street, a grey van stops for her. Someone hits her over the head.

Maya wakes up and sees Marta and Cecily digging a grave. Cecily aims a gun at Maya, and Maya pleads for Marta to help her. Marta hits Cecily on the head with a shovel, killing Cecily.

Back in Brooklyn, Maya watches a news anchor announce Cecily’s death. They claim she was also suspected of killing DuPont. Her DNA was at the murder scene. Maya doesn’t think Cecily killed him. They were romantic partners, and that’s why her DNA was present, she thinks.

Daisy and Marta visit Maya. Marta says she wanted to help Naomi, but DuPont said he’d deport Marta’s family. Daisy shows Maya the video from the cabin in which Maya sees Cecily and DuPont handling Lila’s body.

Maya’s family and Daisy’s family spend a weekend in the Hamptons, where Maya scatters Naomi’s ashes in the ocean. Daisy has sent the cabin video to the Times reporter Austin Levy, and it has gone viral. The Times also published Amy’s article. Theodore Hunt has been arrested for financial crimes, and Greystone people and institutions have “started dropping.”

Maya thinks DuPont manipulated Cecily. Yet she knows that Cecily, 10 years later, could’ve made different choices. Maya realizes Margaret killed DuPont. Maya thinks about how silence gives people impunity. She feels relief, but she wonders if she added to the cycle of violence begun by DuPont.