by Marti Green
“I think we look like him, don’t you?”
I had to agree. “Are your—our—grandparents alive?” I asked.
“Our maternal grandfather walked out on our grandmother when Mom was only one. And Mom never saw her own mother after she was thrown out. I was told recently that she’s dead.”
“And our father’s parents?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know anything about them. Not even their names.”
We finished our salads, and as we waited for the check, I said, “I don’t know anything about you. Where do you live? What do you do? Do you enjoy art?” I could have kept asking questions, but I stopped to give her a chance to speak.
“I’ve loved drawing since I could first hold a crayon in my hand.”
“Me, too.”
“I was studying at the Manhattan Institute of Art and supported myself by waitressing.”
“Was? What about now?”
“When we’re outside.”
I leaned back in my chair. “I loved drawing, too, and I thought I was very good at it. But by the time I left for college, my mother encouraged me to major in something more practical. She didn’t think I was good enough to make it into a museum, and in our family, you didn’t do something unless you could excel at it. So, I run the gallery and try to discover talent better than me.”
Mallory smiled. “I guess that’s one thing Mom gave me—confidence. She always praised my drawings, and encouraged me to follow my dream.”
The waiter came over with our check, and I grabbed it to pay for us both, but Mallory threw down two twenties. “My treat.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I just wanted to get outside and hear the rest of her story. We left the restaurant and began walking.
CHAPTER 35
Mallory didn’t say anything as we walked, so after a few minutes, I broke the silence. Although we were surrounded by people, we were invisible to them as they scurried past us. “You said you know everything about me. What, exactly?”
She turned to look at me. “I know you have five hundred thirty-eight friends and family on Facebook. I know you have more than five thousand Twitter followers and a little less on Instagram.”
“Anyone could know that.”
“I know your closest friend is Janine Wilson, and you met at college.”
“Matt must have told you that.”
“I know your best friend from first grade through high school was Heidi Preston, but you grew apart when she went to college at Stanford, although you still send each other birthday cards every year. Out of nostalgia, she asked you to be a bridesmaid at her wedding two years ago. You had to decline because you were attending an important art show in Munich.”
I didn’t understand how she knew this, and I felt myself take a step away from her.
“I know your favorite cousin is Eddie Engle, even though his sister, Justine, is closer in age to you. I know that your favorite movie is When Harry Met Sally . . . and that you’re afraid to watch horror movies. I know your favorite teacher was Mrs. Reading in the third grade, and you had a crush on Billy Ceszek in the seventh grade. I know your favorite vegetable is spinach, preferably sautéed, and your favorite ice cream flavor is black raspberry.” She stopped to take a breath. “Both are my favorites, too, by the way. And I know you put ketchup on French toast.” She smiled. “You’re on your own with that one.”
I stopped walking. Mallory took a few steps before she realized I wasn’t next to her, then backtracked to me. “I don’t understand,” I said.
“You asked me why I didn’t come into the gallery when I saw you through the window. It was because I was afraid. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. So, I ran away. It took me a week to work up the courage to go back, and when I did, the gallery was closed. It was the night you’d learned about your father’s diagnosis.”
“Three months ago.”
“Yes.” She motioned for me to start walking again, and I did. “I looked up your home address and went there. Ben let me in.”
“My husband? Ben knows about you?”
“As soon as he saw me standing in the doorway, he knew we were sisters. He asked me to wait to contact you because your father’s illness was causing you so much stress, and I agreed. In the meantime, I tracked down a longtime friend of my mother’s and learned the truth about us.”
“But three months? Ben asked you to wait this long?”
“No. After a few weeks, Ben said that he’d told you about me. He said you didn’t want to see me. You were afraid I was going to hit you up for money.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course I’d want to meet you. My God, I never dreamed I had a sister, a real blood sister.”
“Ben told me other things about you. Nasty things. Then he asked something of me.”
I looked over at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She mouthed some words, so low that I couldn’t hear them. I asked her to repeat what she’d said. She leaned into me and whispered in my ear, “Ben has arranged for someone to kill you. He asked me to step in and pretend to be you so no one would know you were missing.”
I pulled back sharply and stared at her incredulously. It was still freezing outside, but I no longer felt the cold. Instead, I felt my body flush with a heated fury and, at the same time, felt like a rope around my neck was cutting off my air. “You agreed!” I spit out. She didn’t need to answer. I could see from the expression on her face that she had. I spun around and began walking away as quickly as I could in three-inch heels.
Moments later, I felt a pull on my arm. Mallory had run after me.
“Don’t be foolish. What are you going to do? Run to the police? Ben will deny everything. He’ll probably even deny that you have a sister. ‘Must be the stress you’re under,’ he’ll tell them. And he’ll find another way to do it. At the beginning, he said he’d only do it if I agreed to step in. But I don’t believe him. He’s too invested in it. And he wants to be with his girlfriend. You have to be smart now.”
I stared at Mallory with a venom I didn’t know I could feel. I tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t let go. “I hate you. You’re not my sister. You’re a monster. A monster.” Finally, I wrenched myself free, but I couldn’t run anymore. I sank down to the ground, leaned against the building, and dropped my head into my hands. My whole body felt numb. Mallory crouched down next to me.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “What I agreed to was horrid. But I thought you had rejected me, without even meeting me once. Ben had convinced me that you were horrid. That you were cruel and demanding and spoiled. That you humiliated him at every opportunity. That you treated your friends the same way. If we did this together, I would get half of your money.”
“So, you were doing it for the money. Is that supposed to make me excuse you?”
“We were identical twins. You were given up for adoption and lived a life of luxury. I was kept and had nothing.”
“There’s no amount of money that would make me agree to kill someone.”
Mallory’s face twisted into an ugly smirk. “Spoken by someone who never went without. Whose every need was met. Who never went hungry and was always loved. Yes, if that’s how I’d grown up, I would find it very easy to say the same thing.”
I wanted to lie down in the street and disappear. Just an hour ago, I’d been ecstatic to discover I had a sister. Not just a sister, but my identical twin. Now, that euphoria had been replaced with a sense of loss so profound that it was unbearable. I’d come to terms with the fact that I’d soon lose my father. Now, not only had I been betrayed by the woman who shared my genes, but my own husband wanted me dead.
I wasn’t naive. I knew my marriage wouldn’t last much beyond my father’s funeral. But despite the anger I’d felt toward Ben these past few months, despite the fantasies I’d entertained from time to time of physically harming him, it still seemed unreal to me that Ben would actually hire someone to murder me. Yet, why would Mallory lie about this? “What made you
change your mind?”
“Your lips are turning blue,” Mallory said. She looked around. “There’s a Starbucks across the street. Do you want to go inside and get warm?”
I nodded, and she stood, then held out a hand to help me up. We crossed the road, got on line, and ordered two Caffè Mistos, then grabbed a table in the corner.
After we were settled, Mallory leaned in to me and, speaking softly, said, “Ben had convinced me that you were a beastly person. And I tried not to feel so angry, but I couldn’t stop. Angry that you didn’t want to meet me. Angry that you had so much and I had so little. Angry that my mother never had time for me and your parents doted on you. But when I began studying you, so that I could fool people, I realized Ben was lying. The things you posted on Facebook, on Twitter, the things your friends posted about you—I could tell you weren’t the cold, demanding witch he portrayed. You seemed warm and caring.”
“You were following me for months. It took this long for you to realize Ben was lying?”
She cast her eyes downward and slowly shook her head. “It took me this long to realize that family was more important than money.”
I didn’t know what to think. I felt disgust for this woman sitting across from me. I didn’t think I’d ever forgive her for conspiring with Ben. And yet, and yet . . . she was my blood.
I took another sip of my coffee. “We have to go to the police.”
“I know.”
“They may charge you with conspiracy to commit murder.”
“Yes, they might.” The people at the table closest to us stood up to leave, and Mallory waited until they’d gone. “I’ve thought a lot about what to do.” She took her wallet from her purse, leafed through some cards until she found what she wanted, then pulled it out. “I know a policeman, well, sort of know him. I think we should call him, then go together to see him.”
I nodded. I didn’t care which policeman we went to, as long as he put a stop to this.
Thirty minutes later, we were sitting in an interrogation room in the Tenth Precinct of Manhattan, with Detective Kevin Saldinger. Mallory had met him in one of her art classes and thought he might be less likely to arrest her on the spot. The room smelled like a mixture of sweat and Pine-Sol. We had entered the white brick building on West Twentieth Street and been ushered right inside, after Mallory gave the desk officer her name.
“Thanks for seeing us so quickly,” Mallory said.
“You made it sound urgent.”
“It is.”
Mallory told him everything she’d told me. It was almost as painful hearing it the second time as it had been the first. When she finished, Detective Saldinger scratched his head. “Here’s the problem I see. I have you”—he pointed to Mallory—“confessing to a crime, with nothing concrete to tie it to your”—he pointed to me—“husband.”
“How would I benefit from killing my sister? Ben would inherit everything, not me.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you have some sort of vendetta against her. Maybe, for some reason, you hate her husband and want to set him up for this.”
“You can’t just do nothing,” I said. “I believe Mallory, and assuming she’s telling the truth, I’m afraid to go home. I’m afraid of what Ben might do.”
Mallory cut in. “Ben won’t hurt you while your father is alive. He’s afraid Rick will realize that I’m not you.”
“I didn’t say we wouldn’t do anything,” Saldinger said. “It’s just . . . we’re going to need more. Let’s say Mallory is telling the truth. Your husband doesn’t know she’s turned, and so he’s going along with a plan. That plan is to wait until after your father dies.”
I didn’t feel comforted. It had been difficult enough going home each evening to a man I knew was cheating on me. How could I carry off pretending I didn’t know he wanted to kill me? Mallory must have seen the worry in my eyes, because she reached over and took my hand.
“I know you’re strong enough to keep going, because I’m strong enough to keep playing along. And we’re the same, you and me.”
I felt the tears well up. I wanted my father to protect me, to keep me safe, but I couldn’t tell him what I’d learned. His condition was too fragile. I needed to bear this knowledge alone. I squeezed my hands together, willing myself to hold back from crying. “What should I do?”
“For now, it’s what Mallory should do. You need to string Ben along, pretend that nothing’s changed. New York’s a one-party consent state, so you can tape your conversations with him. Try to get him to talk about the plan. Do you know if he’s already found someone to kill your sister?”
Mallory shook her head.
“That’s key information. Try to get him to talk about it. If we get anything that corroborates your story, I’ll apply for a warrant.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” Mallory asked. “Will I be arrested?”
“From what you’ve told me, you’ve violated New York Penal Law Section 105.15—conspiracy to commit an A Felony. You’ve planned a murder with another person, and you’ve taken overt acts toward that end. Studying your sister in order to become her is part of the plan. You can get up to twenty-five years for that.”
The color drained from Mallory’s face, and I could see her hands start to shake.
“However,” the detective continued, “it helps that you’ve come forward this early, before a murder took place. If you work with us, help us get not only Ben but the guy he’s paid to do this, I suspect the DA would be willing to consider probation. But you’re going to end up with a record. That’s just a fact.”
I was glad. I wanted Mallory to pay something for what she’d agreed to do to me. “What should I do now?” I asked Saldinger.
He turned to me. “Just try to remain calm and act normally.”
Easy for him to say, I thought as we left the police station.
CHAPTER 36
I wandered back to the gallery in a fog. I didn’t know how I would return home tonight and not react to Ben. I didn’t know how I’d keep from my father all I’d learned today. He’d always been able to tell when something was bothering me. For once, I hoped that his illness would dull his observation skills.
Sandy handed me a list of phone calls I’d missed while I was out, and I began to return them, forcing myself to speak with a welcoming lilt to my voice. When finished, I returned to the tax records, losing myself in the dull minutiae of the numbers. Just before 6:00 p.m., I finally finished. With my elbows on my desk, I dropped my head into my hands and wondered how I would get through the next few weeks. I wondered how my husband had come to hate me so much.
I was nineteen when I met Ben. I’d been studying in the library when he’d sat down opposite me. For forty minutes, he didn’t say a word to me as he worked on his laptop. I kept eyeing him over the textbook I was reading, catching glimpses of his green eyes. His brown hair flopped over his forehead and stopped an inch past his ears, and I thought he looked like Adonis. Finally, after what seemed like an interminable wait, he said, “Want to get out of here and grab a drink?” No “Hello, what’s your name?” No “What are you studying?” Just right to the point. I think I started to fall in love with him before we’d even left the library.
We went to a popular campus hangout, and we each showed our doctored IDs to order drinks—a beer for him and a Cosmopolitan for me. Three drinks later, I ended up back in the bedroom of his off-campus apartment, and we made love for the first time. After that, I never dated anyone else. It was always Ben. I never even looked at another man. Not until Ezra, and I wasn’t sure if that hadn’t started partly as payback for Ben’s affair.
As graduation loomed, I thought I couldn’t live without Ben. He wanted to go off to law school and wait until he was established in a law firm to get married. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. I was ready for my life to start and unwilling to postpone it. “Why don’t we get married now, and I’ll follow you to law school?” I’d suggested.
“I can’t afford t
o get married now,” he’d answered. “I’m taking out student loans as it is to pay for school.”
“I’ll get a job and support you,” I’d countered.
“I’ll be studying day and night, and you’ll resent working at a scut job and never seeing me,” he’d replied.
And then, finally, I’d said it: “If you go to law school, then it means I’m less important to you than a job. I’m breaking up with you.” He’d relented, after I’d sweetened the offer with a job at Dad’s firm. Nine months after graduation, we were married at the Pierre Hotel at the south end of Central Park, with four hundred guests in attendance.
Ben had seemed happy. I knew that part of him thought about what his life would have been like if he’d gone to law school, but I know that he started out enjoying his work, and especially his six-figure beginning salary. Ben hadn’t grown up with money. When we married, he was thrown into a world of expensive cars and clothes and any toys that grown men wanted. Of traveling wherever his whim took him. I know he liked those things. Why did it change? How did our relationship become so toxic that he wanted to kill me? If he’d fallen out of love, why didn’t he just ask for a divorce?
I knew the answer. I’d introduced him to the world of wealth, and he didn’t want to give it up. Dad had insisted on the prenuptial agreement, and I’d gone along just to please my father, even though I’d thought we’d never divorce. Now, the marriage was shattered beyond repair. I just had to make sure I survived the wreckage.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” Dad said. “Something bothering you?”
I broke out of my trance. I should have been thinking about Ben, about how to deal with living in the same house with him, but instead, I kept thinking about Mallory Holcolm. “No, nothing. Just thinking about the gallery’s taxes. I was working on that all day today.”
Somehow, it felt more shocking to me that I had a sister, a twin sister, than that my husband wanted me dead. I’d known our marriage was in trouble for almost a year. I’d known he’d been addicted to money much longer than that. So, as disturbing as his plan was, it wasn’t a shock.
