“He knows about the fraud, and my mom’s heart attack,” I offered weakly. “But Sam … he thinks that my dad is dead, too. That’s, um, what everyone thinks.”
“You’ve been telling everybody your dad is dead?” Millie asked, her expression a mixture of disappointed and dumbfounded. “All this time?”
“I needed distance from the whole situation,” I said, and God, did I sound defensive. “You saw me. I was a mess.”
And I was, for a long time. Of course I did eventually pull out of my depression. Enough so that I made my way to college and law school, made friends, got married. All of that a long time ago. And yet I’d let Millie keep on running interference for me like I was still a seventeen-year-old girl so grief-stricken I couldn’t get out of bed. But that was eighteen years ago. I hadn’t spoken to my dad for eighteen years. And I could live with that, but what about my mother? How sad she would be that I’d never gone to Greece myself in all these years, that I’d never set foot again in a Greek church.
He’d sent a few letters over the years. Not the desperate pleas you might expect, though, no begging for forgiveness, no proclamations of love. Because that wasn’t my dad. He didn’t feel any of those things. His few letters had been matter-of-fact updates—mechanical, obligatory. Like he was trying to keep me in play in case he needed me later. Millie had also told me over the years when he’d asked about me. Was I doing well in school? What kind of money was I making? Never really about me. And he never once asked Millie why I hadn’t visited myself. She’d made that very clear to me, always. She’d never wanted me to feel guilty.
“But distance is different than complete amnesia, Lizzie,” Millie went on. “And you’re married to Sam.”
“I know.” My heart was hammering.
Millie stared at me then, for such a terribly long time. My whole body felt hot, shame blazing through me. I was ashamed of what my father had done, yes. But even more of my inability to face it. Instead I’d shoved it deep down, where it was now buried beneath all those other things I’d tried to will out of existence—Sam’s persistent drinking, our debt, my derailed career, my nonexistent baby.
“Well,” Millie continued. “You can keep on pretending he’s gone, I guess. That’s your choice. But it might feel different without a go-between.”
“Have you seen him recently?” I asked.
“Few months ago. I still try to go once a year. And he still calls occasionally, once every six months. In between, I can get enough information from my contacts at Elmira. Your dad’s the same old, three-quarters asshole, one-quarter charming son of a bitch,” she said. “Listen, I’m not defending him or what he did. Hell, he wasn’t the best guy to begin with. But eventually he is going to get out, could be as soon as three or four years from now. Then what? It’s a free country. He could come see you.”
“It’s been better for me this way.”
“Has it, though?” Millie asked, and the concern in her eyes made my own eyes burn.
I looked away when the tears finally came, trying to will my voice strong. “You and I both know what he did that night wasn’t some accident. He stabbed that guy, Millie. My dad killed someone, and yeah, he was upset about my mother, but you know what I think? I think my dad was more angry that guy took his money. He wanted revenge.”
Millie held up her hands as if in surrender. “Maybe so. Listen, I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not trying to talk you into forgiveness. I’m here because I loved your mother and she loved you. All she ever cared about was you feeling safe and happy. I want you to be happy.” She handed me a pack of tissues from her bag; I was crying hard now. “And for what it’s worth, you don’t seem so great. I do not think pretending your dad is dead has been helping you. Not one fucking bit.”
Lizzie
JULY 11, SATURDAY
I stopped back at work on my way home, intent on starting to set things right. One by one, that’s how I’d deal with all the problems I’d been trying to ignore. First up: my financial disclosure form. Without that, Zach had nothing on me and I could be done with him and his case. Two birds, one stone. I was hoping to find Paul at the office on a Saturday. He often was, along with many other, more junior Young & Crane lawyers. Confessing to Paul my misrepresentations on the financial disclosure was a risk. I’d need to test the waters first, talk vaguely and in hypotheticals and bring up the financial disclosure tangentially somehow. Maybe I could be allowed the one misstep, especially after Paul had exposed to me his Wendy Wallace Achilles’ heel.
Young & Crane was quieter than I’d expected. Paul’s office was dark, but Gloria was there outside his office, typing away, looking disgruntled about something—though surely not the overtime. Gloria loved overtime. I checked my watch: 7:27 p.m.
“Is Paul coming back?” I asked.
She shook her head and pursed her lips judgmentally, but kept typing. “Unlikely, don’t you think?” She shot me a loaded look.
Why couldn’t Paul’s secretary just come back? Everything with Gloria was so exhausting.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep the impatience from my voice.
Gloria stopped typing. This time when she looked up, a sly smile spread across her face.
“He didn’t even tell you? Interesting.” Her voice was smug. “Wendy Wallace. They’re having drinks. Or something,” she said coyly. “Isn’t she on that case of yours? Pretty ironic—Paul, of all people, thinking he’s got the right to run around being the morality police.”
I hoped the sense of betrayal didn’t register on my face. But Paul having drinks with Wendy Wallace? After I’d told him how nasty she’d been when I went to see her? Of course it was a betrayal, even if it was probably one I should have seen coming.
“Oh right, I forgot,” I said to Gloria. “If you could just let him know I stopped by.”
I wandered back to my office to collect some files to work on at home, feeling wounded. Not that I was one to judge Paul. All I did was curate the truth—about my marriage, my family, myself. But what I’d said to Millie was the actual truth: it wasn’t like I’d set out to lie.
I’d arrived by bus at Cornell’s manicured campus for the start of freshman year upright, but barely. By then, I’d had precisely enough therapy to keep moving, but not really to heal, not in any meaningful sense. Standing in my empty dorm room, with no parents to deliver me or to help set up my room or to cry at the door when they said goodbye, I felt myself backsliding with alarming speed. Like there was a giant black hole of desperation about to suck me away. And then my roommate appeared, so blond and sunny with these big innocent eyes and two warm parents. And just like that a new version of my story—two dead parents, no one in jail—popped out fully formed to rescue me. From that moment on, that became my truth.
And it had been so much more palatable than the actual facts: that my dad had finally found that regular who’d stolen from him and destroyed his business and—in my dad’s view—killed my mother by bringing on her heart attack. They’d argued in the man’s apartment, which the prosecution proved my dad had broken into, though he insisted he’d done so only to find evidence of the fraud. There was a struggle, and the man ended up with a kitchen knife in his stomach. All of it an accident, my dad claimed. But the jury hadn’t believed it—he was convicted of felony murder, sentenced to twenty-five years to life. That was what happened when you killed someone while committing a burglary. And how upset had my dad really been in the aftermath? I was the only one who knew he’d come home that night and eaten dinner like nothing had happened, wolfing down his food with remarkable zeal. I was also the only one who knew he’d asked me to lie and give him an alibi. A request I’d politely declined.
And so my mom was dead and my dad was gone—like I’d told my Cornell roommate and then Victoria and Heather at Penn, and then Zach and, finally, Sam. He was just “gone” upstate at the Elmira Correctional Facility. Right before law school, I’d even legally taken my mother’s maiden name—I figured
law firms might be judgmental. They were; I was right about that. So was the US attorney’s office, but I had made it through the background check anyway, after a few scary follow-up questions. What I had been wrong about was my ability to will the truth away.
It had been right there with me the entire time.
Waiting for the elevator, I bristled when I spotted Gloria again, this time at the far end of the reception area, talking with a woman standing at the polished lobby desk. Talking at the woman, more likely. I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly.
“Oh, there she is now,” Gloria called out in my direction, just as I was about to step onto the elevator. Shit. “Um, hello, Lizzie, Maude is here!”
When I turned, there was Amanda’s friend Maude headed my way. She looked distressed, and I absolutely did not want to be dealing with her. From the instantly apologetic expression on her face, my aversion must have been readily apparent.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this, especially on a Saturday. But I did leave a couple messages for you. The prosecutor came by my house … And there’s something I need to tell you. I don’t think it can wait.”
Awesome.
“Sure, no problem,” I lied. “Why don’t you come back for a minute, and we can talk?”
We started toward my office.
“You know, I didn’t even look at your contact information until today. I didn’t realize you worked here, too, of all places …” Maude motioned over her shoulder, gesturing to Gloria. I couldn’t imagine how the two knew each other, and honestly I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get Maude in and out as fast as possible. “I wasn’t even sure the office would be open. But I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”
“Yes, with the endless hours we all work here,” I said, aiming for lighthearted but landing closer to caustic, “we are easy to find.”
I flipped on the lights in my office and put down my bag. Maude swayed slightly as she sat.
“Whoa, are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh, um, yes. It’s probably just low blood sugar,” she offered weakly. “I’m diabetic. I’ll be fine, but do you have some juice maybe?”
“Yes, sure. Of course,” I said, hustling out to the nearby snack station.
When I returned, I handed Maude a small bottle of orange juice. Luckily, she had already regained some of her color. The last thing I wanted was her passing out in my office.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a large swallow.
“Do you want me to call somebody?” Ideally, somebody to take you home so we don’t have to talk anymore. I’d already decided not to mention Amanda’s delusions until I figured out what I was going to do about them. But I was tempted to ask Maude, now that she was here. Maybe she’d noticed something.
“No, no, I’m fine,” she said.
“So you said the prosecutor came by?” I prompted. “Did you get a name?”
“It was that same Wendy Wallace,” Maude said. “She is … very intimidating.”
This wasn’t the worst news for Zach. A personal visit from Wendy meant that she was at least a little worried about her case.
“What exactly did she say?”
“Well, I told her that Zach was with me …,” Maude said, and now she definitely didn’t sound like she was telling the truth. “Anyway, she said that if I testified to that at trial, she would personally see to it that I spent a year in jail.”
“She means if you’re lying,” I said, trying to be diplomatic.
“I guess, yes,” Maude said, though this didn’t seem like much comfort to her. “But she also said something about our party, that it could make Sebe and me accessories to murder. She mentioned us getting sued civilly, too, by Amanda’s family for wrongful death.”
“First of all, you can’t be accessories to murder because you threw a party that the victim attended before she died. And Amanda doesn’t really have any family, so a civil lawsuit would not only be unsustainable but highly unlikely. Wendy Wallace is bluffing. As to the perjury, you haven’t even testified yet,” I said. Though I’d sure as hell still use Maude’s alibi if I couldn’t extract myself from the case—provided I could get away with it—even if I had some unconfirmed doubts about its veracity. Because that’s who I was now, thanks to Zach: someone willing to maybe suborn perjury as long as I didn’t know for sure that’s what I was doing. “You have nothing to worry about at the moment.”
“Right,” she said, though she didn’t look very relieved. When Maude pressed her lips together, her mouth quivered. “I’m here, really, because of Sebe.”
Sebe? If Amanda had indeed been upstairs with somebody, as Wendy Wallace had suggested at the hearing, could it have been Sebe? He was certainly attractive, and he and Maude presumably participated in this swapping. It was their party. I reached forward and squeezed the edge of my desk.
“What do you mean?”
Maude looked for a moment like she might cry, then grimaced and closed her eyes. Holy shit. Had Sebe killed Amanda? Was that possible?
“Sebe convinced me that I needed to come down here and tell you the truth,” she began finally. I gripped my desk tighter. “I wasn’t with Zach the night of the party.”
“Oh.” It was all I could muster. Maude was snatching back one of the only things I had stashed in my paltry defensive arsenal: Zach’s alibi.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding genuinely distressed. “I was—I was trying to help …. I realize that sounds ridiculous. But I just felt so responsible, with the party and everything. To be honest, I’ve been having some serious problems with my daughter, too, so I haven’t exactly been thinking clearly. Zach didn’t kill Amanda, though. I’m sure of it. And when you came to me, all I could think about was poor Case. Amanda loved him so much. What will happen to him if Zach is in jail? Especially if there is no extended family?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Oh, that sweet child.” Maude pressed her trembling fingers to her lips, then shook her head as her eyes filled with tears. Finally she swallowed and tried to compose herself. “I’m sorry if I’ve made your job harder. And I’ll never forgive myself if I’ve made things worse for Case.”
“Listen,” I said, taking pity on her. I had no doubt that she was genuinely worried about Case, and it made me feel like a bad person that I hadn’t been thinking more about him. My anger at Zach had all but erased Case’s existence. “Don’t worry. Your alibi isn’t even part of any official record. Withdrawing it now will have no impact on the outcome. But I am glad you told me. It could have complicated things later.”
She nodded, looking down. Finally, she stood. “And please, with Case … if Zach—if he needs someone to help with him. We will. We will do anything for Case that we can.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. She looked for a moment like she might say something more, before smiling unsteadily and turning for the door.
I took home everything I had on Zach’s case—his public defender files, the defense package, the preliminary filings, the research I had on Xavier Lynch, Amanda’s diary, the documents related to Zach’s loitering warrant, the file Millie had given me. I was determined to find a needle in that haystack. One I could stab Zach with, or one I could use to poke a hole in Wendy Wallace’s case against him. I was fine with either. This just needed to end.
It was past nine when I got home. The apartment was empty; I tried not to consider where Sam might be and simply be glad that he was gone. I was digging myself out, yes, but I could only deal with one problem at a time, and getting away from Zach was still the most pressing.
I spread everything I had on Zach’s case across our living room floor, hoping some new story might effortlessly emerge. But the disjointed pieces just lay there. There would be additional evidence to work with eventually, once the prosecution turned over its own material. But I could not do Zach’s bidding for one moment more.
I picked up Amanda’s journal and flipped through
it again, trying to see what to make of it now that I knew that Amanda’s dad and Carolyn were both dead. The descriptions of the calls and hang-ups, of the moments she believed she was being followed, were extremely detailed. They also seemed to fit a pattern. The calls were almost always during the day; the times that Amanda believed she was being followed, at night. Week after week. Often on a Wednesday or Thursday night. Detailed or not, they could have been a part of Amanda’s delusion, but it did seem odd that something completely imagined would fit such a realistic pattern.
Then I spotted the card from Blooms on the Slope. Also, there were the anonymous flowers. Those had not been a figment of Amanda’s troubled imagination. Somebody had sent them. Not her stalker, necessarily—she was a beautiful woman, she could have had any number of “secret admirers”—but it could have been.
Could Zach have been pretending to stalk Amanda as a cover? Had it all been a setup so that he could kill her and get away with it? I’d invented an insurance policy when I went to talk to Xavier, but Amanda’s death triggering some huge financial payout was something to consider, especially given that Zach needed money to save his company. I regretted not showing Matthew at the flower shop a photo of Zach. He’d said that the man was a “circle.” Zach had sort of a round face, I supposed. Doughy, actually.
Like Millie had suggested, maybe Zach had even paid someone to kill Amanda for him, and the fingerprint on the stairs belonged to that person. The thought of Zach hiring someone so incompetent sparked the tiniest bit of satisfaction.
I picked up the envelope containing Zach’s warrant records from the loitering incident. I slid the papers out, reading through them more closely this time. It was very easy now to picture Zach being so belligerent with the cops that spring night all those years ago. “April 16, 2007,” it said on the papers. Wait, that date rang a bell. Then it came to me: April 16, 2007, was the night Sam and I met.
A Good Marriage Page 31
