The Better Sister

by Alafair Burke

  Through it all, Olivia made repeated objections—hearsay, relevance, vagueness, speculation—until Nunzio finally accused her of trying to break up any rhythm he had for the cross-examination.

  “I won’t speculate on an attorney’s motives,” Judge Rivera said, “but I share his concern, Ms. Randall. You know how a trial works. It’s his turn to ask questions.”

  As Nunzio’s momentum built, so did his aggression. “Isn’t it true that you took those items to falsely stage a burglary after you killed your father so he would not send you away to military school?”

  “No, that is not true!”

  “In fact, isn’t that why you posted such hateful things about your stepmother? The woman who had always coddled you, apologized for you, made excuses for you—even after you brought a gun to school—was suddenly too busy to get your back.”

  Ethan was shaking his head, saying “No” over and over again, while Olivia objected that Nunzio was badgering the witness. Stop, I was thinking. Please, someone, just make it stop.

  Nunzio began to read from the Poppit posts. “She’s weak, you said. A hypocrite. A coward. Cares more about her picture-perfect image than actual reality. You said those things because Chloe Taylor was no longer protecting you from your father’s discipline, and so you took matters into your own hands.”

  “Your Honor, Mr. Nunzio is abusing this witness.”

  Just as the judge was overruling the objection, Ethan slammed his hands down on the railing in front of him. “You’re twisting it all around. I was just trying to get her attention. All I meant is that she was more worried about what other people thought of her than what was going on in our own house!”

  “And what was going on in your own house is that your father was finally done allowing you to set your own rules, isn’t that right?”

  “No.”

  “And when you could no longer get your way, all the time, you decided to kill him, didn’t you?”

  “No!”

  “Is that why you were carrying that gun in your backpack? Had you been planning before to shoot him?”

  Olivia, the judge, and Ethan were all speaking at once. “No foundation, Your Honor.” “Overruled.” “What? No, are you kidding?”

  “Is that why your father got rid of the gun? To protect himself from you?”

  “Jesus, no! He was beating the shit out of her, okay? And she let him do it, and that’s why I recorded him.”

  I heard someone gasp behind me as Nicky placed her hand on my knee and gave it a tight squeeze.

  “Your Honor—”

  The judge held up a hand and shot Olivia a stern look that sent her back into her chair.

  “Is that why you stabbed your father?” Nunzio demanded. “To protect your stepmother because he was abusing her?”

  Ethan leaned back in his chair and looked down at his lap. “No,” he mumbled. “I swear, I didn’t do it, but maybe I should have.”

  Olivia asked calmly for a recess, but Judge Rivera ordered her to ask her questions or waive her right to redirect. She rose as if she were completely prepared for the moment.

  “Ethan, I know the prosecutor wants to make this seem like a big dramatic discovery—”

  Nunzio wasn’t even out of his chair before Rivera admonished Olivia to avoid unnecessary commentary.

  “Very well. Just to be clear, though, when you spoke to Detective Guidry the morning after your father died, did she ask you whether there was any acrimony between your father and stepmother?”

  “No.” He was still rattled, but his voice was calm and level.

  “Did she ask whether your father was violent toward your stepmother?”

  “No.”

  “It was pretty clear that you didn’t want that known, in fact. Is that right?”

  He nodded, and then added “Yes” for the record.

  “All right. But now that it’s out there, you saw your father, Adam Macintosh, use violence against your stepmother, Chloe Taylor?” Olivia deserved an Academy Award for acting as if this was all old news to her—a mere distraction by the prosecution—but I was absolutely certain this was the first she had heard of it.

  “No, I didn’t actually see it happening. But I could hear it. They think when I’m in my room, all I do is listen to my Beats, and it’s like I’m not there. But I could tell when there was tension. I’d listen when they were fighting. I was afraid they’d get divorced, because Chloe’s basically my mom, and I didn’t know what would happen if they split up. And some of the fights were . . . bad, really bad, like I could hear thuds and stuff. And then a few times, it was clear he was hurting her.”

  I realized I was biting my lower lip so hard I had drawn blood. The metallic taste was the same as the one time Adam punched me in the face with a closed fist. When people saw the bruise on my cheek and the cut on my mouth, I told them, “Can you believe I actually walked into a wall? Adam says I need a better cover story, or the police are going to come for him.” And then everyone would laugh.

  “How could you tell he was hurting Chloe, Ethan?”

  “Because she’d literally be screaming, ‘Adam, you’re hurting me.’ But when he got mad, you couldn’t get him to stop. And that’s why I taped him. I couldn’t figure out a good way to tape him hurting her, so I decided to record him yelling at me, so he’d at least see how crazy he got when he was angry.”

  “And to be clear, did your father ever hit you?”

  “No.”

  “And does any of this have anything whatsoever to do with your father’s murder?”

  “No, because I didn’t do it.”

  “And why didn’t you tell anyone earlier about your father’s violence toward your stepmother?”

  “Because she obviously didn’t want anyone to know, or else she would have done something.”

  Just like KurtLoMein said, I was weak. A coward. A hypocrite. I was just like my mother.

  32

  “I need to talk to Ethan. There has to be a way.”

  Olivia and Nicky had managed to get me out of the courthouse when I was refusing to leave unless Judge Rivera permitted me to see Ethan. Because I was a witness in the case, I was prohibited from speaking to him until the trial was over, but I needed him to know that I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. I should have protected him better. Now I was pacing the length of Olivia’s hotel suite like a caged animal, trying to imagine the guilt and fear Ethan had to be struggling with right now.

  “Chloe! You have to listen to me.”

  “Do you want me to slap her?” Nicky said from the sofa. “I’ve always wanted to.”

  I stopped pacing and stared at her. “Seriously, Nicky? Only you would make that joke after what just happened in the courtroom.”

  “It worked, didn’t it? Olivia’s trying to explain something to you.”

  “It would be malpractice for me to let my client speak to a witness directly in the middle of a trial, especially after a moment like that one. But I know you, Chloe, okay? After six months, I think I know you. I will speak to him. I promise you. And I will let him know what you need me to tell him, short of coordinating testimony. Do you understand?”

  I nodded and took a deep breath, trying to slow the pulse that I felt throbbing against my right temple.

  “So can we talk about his testimony, please? Nicky, maybe you can wait in your room—”

  “No, it’s fine. I want her to stay.” I took a seat on the sofa next to Nicky. “I almost told you last night, when you were talking about you and Adam. It was . . . exactly what the last year had been like with us. It started out how you were saying—he grabbed my arm once when I was walking away from one of his rants. I told him that if he ever touched me out of anger again, I was done. But then it did happen again. He pushed me—hard—but I told myself in the morning that he was drunk, and I had been up in his face, yelling about something I can’t even remember now. But the line was crossed.”

  Adam’s job as a prosecutor had served more than his i
dentity as one of the good guys—it had given him a feeling of power. Once it was gone, he went searching for that sense of control under his own roof, but nothing I did kept him satisfied for long.

  “It got worse,” I said, not wanting to relive the details, “but I just kept moving the goalposts. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. And not the way other women say they can’t leave. I really couldn’t leave.”

  Nicky rolled her eyes.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You rolled your eyes.”

  Olivia interrupted. “You guys. Maybe—”

  “Don’t you see, Chloe?” Nicky stood and moved to the conference table, creating space between us. “You’re just like every other woman who didn’t leave. Mom. Me. You. Same.”

  “Bullshit. I couldn’t leave because I had no rights to Ethan. How many times have I been reminded during this trial that I’m only his stepmother? I’m the one he calls Mom. I’m the one who raised him. But I never could adopt him, which meant I couldn’t leave.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “No, that’s not what I said.”

  “But it’s what you were thinking. Jesus, Chloe, why didn’t you tell me any of this? I could’ve been there for you. We could have helped each other.”

  “Because it was no one’s fucking business, okay?!” Nicky’s eyes widened and she blew out a puff of air. Olivia was standing between us awkwardly. I was the crazy person in the room now. This was yet another reason why I didn’t want anyone to know. “Fine, I’m a hypocrite, just like Ethan said. How was it going to look that Chloe Taylor, one of the queens of the movement, was letting her husband hit her every few weeks? And in the meantime, I kept telling myself it was just a phase. I didn’t want to think he was actually a bad guy. It was easier for me to believe this was something recent. Situational. And I felt responsible, because I had made him feel emasculated. I felt so ashamed, but I told myself I was somehow retaining my dignity by . . . well, you know.”

  I saw no reason to tell Olivia about my affair with Jake.

  Olivia cleared her throat. “You obviously have a lot to talk about, but I think we should focus on Ethan for now.”

  “What if he did this to protect me?” I blurted. “Is it too late to claim self-defense or something?”

  “Well, if he did it to protect you, it would be defense of a third party, and that would only be if he stopped him from an ongoing or imminent attack. And if he tried to claim that he was defending himself, no one would believe it. Not after all this time.”

  “What about temporary insanity or emotional distress?” It felt like random words I’d read in crime novels were spilling from my mouth. “What if Ethan did go back to the house after Kevin dropped him off at the beach? Maybe they were arguing, and he was high.” It was the first time I had voiced the possibility aloud.

  “There’s something called ‘extreme emotional disturbance,’ which would make it manslaughter instead of murder. I can ask for that jury instruction all the way up until closing argument, but I’m not ready to go there yet.”

  Nicky walked back to the sofa, sat next to me, and grabbed my hand. “Remember that night Mom and Dad went to Niagara on the Lake and we had a slumber party in my room and stayed up until three in the morning?”

  That was when the big room was still hers. I was probably ten years old, and she was sixteen, just old enough to be trusted with her baby sister for a weekend. We bought frozen pizza, chips and dip, and ice cream bars and ate until our bellies hurt. Afterward, we chewed licorice and played Parcheesi and Sorry! until I finally stopped fighting sleep.

  “You wanted to kill me when I set off the smoke detector trying to make pancakes when I woke up.”

  “Do you even remember why Dad took Mom away for the weekend?”

  I shook my head.

  “It was a make-up trip. He had fallen off the wagon again. I helped her cover up the black eye with concealer before they got in the car.”

  “I was crying, thinking they were leaving because it was our fault they fought. That’s when you took me Krogering for whatever junk food we wanted.” She had used the money she had stashed in the bottom of her jewelry box, saving for her dream prom dress.

  “And while we were sitting on my bedroom floor, with your legs all crisscross-apple-sauce, you said, ‘Nicky, I wish we were orphans.’ And I said we’d be like Oliver Twist, but with all the junk food we could eat.”

  “I was ten.”

  “Yeah, but I was sixteen, and I remember thinking, yep, I’d be totally fine if Mom and Dad were . . . poof. But I didn’t really mean it. Ethan obviously had issues with Adam. So did you, right? But you didn’t kill him, and neither did Ethan. Olivia’s right. Don’t give up yet.”

  I looked into her eyes and knew she meant it. I could see the intensity of her faith in him, even in the way she was standing. She was absolutely certain that Ethan was innocent, and I was the one doubting him. Maybe it was true that biology bound her to him in an irreplicable way.

  I could see some kind of idea forming behind Olivia’s furrowed brow. “Chloe, you said before that you felt like you were holding on to your dignity by . . . you know. What were you talking about?”

  I sighed. “It’s nothing.”

  “Oh my god,” Nicky said. “Go ahead and tell her.”

  “Let me just say this,” Olivia said. “I hoped the lack of witnesses, the lack of physical evidence, the lack of a confession, would all be enough to make it obvious there’s reasonable doubt here. But we’ve had some setbacks. Remember that promise I made after the very first court appearance?”

  I nodded. She had promised to tell us when she thought we were losing.

  “Okay, we’re at that moment. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I felt my throat tighten and my eyes begin to water. I heard Nicky suck in her breath.

  “Reasonable doubt alone may not be enough at this point. It would help if we could give the jury an alternative explanation, another story to believe. To be honest, if you didn’t have a rock-solid alibi, I’d be arguing that you had at least as strong of a motive to kill Adam as Ethan.”

  “That’s just great,” I said dryly.

  “Ethan did a good job explaining how he found those things in his bedroom in the city. I think the jury will follow along once I get to closing. But we still have the problem of broken glass being in the wrong places, and the security system being disarmed before the murder. If it wasn’t Ethan—and we don’t think it’s Ethan, right?”

  “Of course not,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere.

  “Okay, so then the most sensible explanation is that Adam had gone to bed and then got up and disarmed the alarm for an unexpected visitor, perhaps someone he knew—or maybe not? There was a fight. It escalated. Then afterward, the person staged the scene. But who’s the person?”

  I finally saw the path she was trying to lead me to. “His name’s Jake Summer.”

  “At Adam’s law firm,” she said, recognizing the name. “The one quoted in the article you gave me about Gentry’s problems.”

  I nodded.

  “How long had you been seeing him?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to place the beginning of our affair. Standing closer than we needed to when he helped me squeeze more limes for margaritas at our Memorial Day croquet party. Brushing against him in the law firm suite at the Yankee game. Then an invitation to “grab lunch” when he happened to take a staycation at his house while I was taking a week-long writer’s retreat alone.

  “Right after Labor Day last year.”

  “So about eight months before Adam was killed?”

  “Yes, but Jake didn’t—”

  Nicky didn’t need me to finish the thought to disagree. “That’s not what matters, Chloe. She’s not going to have him arrested or anything. She just needs to give the jury something to chew on. It’s confusion, chaos, distraction. If they don’t know at the end of the day who did it, they ha
ve to acquit. And you just heard her. She kept her promise. We’re going to lose Ethan forever if we don’t do something.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it chaos,” Olivia said, “but, like I said, it’s about creating doubt.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, hoping that some brilliant solution would fall from the sky. Instead I saw Olivia, upside down, standing over me behind the sofa.

  “I’ll be honest, Chloe. I’ve tried more than two hundred felony cases, including thirteen homicides. Right now, I think Ethan will be convicted if we don’t raise an alternative theory. I can go with EED, but that still means manslaughter. He’d get at least three years, but it would probably be more like ten. Or I can call Nunzio and start talking about a plea deal. Or we can talk more about Jake Summer. Those are the options. No other doors I can see.”

  I wiped my face with my hands. I didn’t have a choice. “Is it too late to let Nicky take the fall?”

  Nicky pressed her palms against her heart. “Hey, I’ve been ready and willing this whole time.”

  “Not gonna fly,” Olivia said, adding a wink in Nicky’s direction. “So let’s talk about Jake.”

  I told her everything I knew about the man I had hoped would be the rest of my future, if I ever got there.

  We were halfway home to East Hampton when he called my cell. I looked at Nicky and steeled myself before I answered.

  “Hey.”

  “I’ve been sitting by the phone, not knowing whether I should call.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Chloe, I read the trial coverage. Is that true? What Ethan said?”

  “I have to testify again. The lawyer told me not to talk to anyone about it. I’m sorry. That’s why I didn’t call.”

  “Are you home? Can I at least see you, so I know you’re okay?”

  “You’re in the city.”

  “Well, I’m about to not be in the city. Olivia Randall called me. I assumed you knew.”

  I swallowed, hating that I was doing this to him. I had never lied to him. All this time, even when Adam was alive, I had never once been dishonest with Jake. “She asked me for names of people who’d seen how loving Ethan and Adam could be together. You spent so much time with us—”