The explanation can be that simple, if he’ll let it be.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT to tell you about the video, which means admitting where it came from. This should be a simple matter of fact, but that doesn’t take guilt into consideration. Pointless shame I shouldn’t feel, but do, over a single, somewhat long-lasting affair. After all the opportunities you’ve had to do so, this will be the time you finally admit to knowing about Deon and me all along. You’ll redirect, because that’s what you do. You’ll blame Deon for you being where you shouldn’t have been, and our affair will serve as proof that we are attempting to get rid of you somehow. But I assure you, there are easier ways.
“You should have told me you were here. You should have told Vern.”
“I can’t believe you, Harper.” Of course, you’re making this my fault. “You told me to keep Deon out of this, and now you have him digging up evidence against me?”
“He was looking to alibi you. Your lying isn’t his fault.”
“I doubt it’s even my car.”
“I saw the footage. It’s clearly you, Bert.” Visible through the windshield and the driver side window.
“Well, then, that doesn’t prove anything.”
It doesn’t, but people have been convicted on less. For someone who’s made a career of studying police procedure, you should have known better than to lie to Vern. Rather than tell you that, I take the opportunity to prove how you might have been smarter. “There’s an envelope in the glove compartment.” Every highway pass unit comes with one. Had you taken the fifteen seconds to unfasten the device and seal it inside, your trip through the tollbooth wouldn’t have been recorded. “Why on earth didn’t you pay cash?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You didn’t do anything right, either.” I’m referring to your parental failings as much as the more immediate problem. “I’m trying to help you.”
“That’s what going to Deon was?” You raise an eyebrow, the first sign you’re aware of something between us.
“Don’t turn this around on me. First you say you haven’t talked to Matthew, then you were too busy with the signing to fight with him, and now not only did you talk around the time of his murder, but you drove hours here to do what?”
You refuse to answer.
“Don’t you realize how bad this looks?” I say. “Don’t you care?”
“Of course I care, but I can’t change this any more than I can change the past decade. I want to be able to tell you things, but Matthew’s been a sore spot our entire marriage. You complained about him constantly. About his needs and what you had to do for him. He’s dead and you’re still fucking complaining. When is it enough?”
“I never—”
“You sure as shit did, and I won’t listen to you try and tell me otherwise now because it’s convenient. You blamed Matthew for everything, particularly for you not writing, but that’s bullshit. Matthew went to school, spent time with Ansley. You could have written. You didn’t want to. Simpler to put everything on me and tell me how good of a writer you are—better than me, in fact—with nothing to back it up. You wanted a career like mine without putting in any of the work. The reality is that none of this comes easy.”
“The reality is that you’re the prime suspect in Matthew’s murder.”
I am intentionally hurtful because how dare you lecture me about productivity, especially now. Not only are you deflecting, you’re attacking me unfairly. Could I have written? Maybe, between cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking gourmet meals neither you nor Matthew appreciated. Maybe I could have written when I wasn’t balancing checkbooks or planning birthday parties or family vacations, or when I wasn’t fundraising for the private school we overpaid for or chaperoning field trips.
Writing is hard, which is why I did everything I could to allow you the focus I never had.
You’ve picked the absolute worst time to end years of grudge-harboring.
“Vern knows you’re not telling him everything.”
You wave a dismissive hand. “And if he manages to somehow pin this on me, you’ll lose everything, right?”
I don’t need a reminder that I’m hitched to your wagon. For better or worse, what happens to one of us drags the other down, but that’s not why I’m so concerned. At least, it’s not the only reason. “This isn’t a financial thing.”
You have no idea how bad things are for us in that regard. You’re borderline public defender-worthy, which isn’t to say you’ll be found guilty, but without proper representation, the odds are more stacked against you. We’re on the verge of disaster, and our survival depends on righting years’ worth of wrongs.
“What do you want from me?”
“The truth.” It’s all I’ve ever wanted—that and not to be unfairly judged as someone you couldn’t talk to. I won’t take blame for the rift between us. Not when I asked for marital counseling, when I bore the domestic workload, and when I turned the other cheek all the times you cheated instead of filing for a well-deserved divorce. “Tell me what happened that night.”
“You wouldn’t believe it. No one will.”
“Try me.”
“Ella called and asked whether or not I’d heard from Matthew.”
“And you had.”
“I told you I talked to him.”
“After I had proof.”
“I didn’t tell you while this was going on because I didn’t want you to worry.”
“About what?”
“Matthew threatened me—” You break off, collecting your thoughts or stalling. “He said he wanted me dead.” You relay this as if we didn’t already know, as though we hadn’t lived out a hundred idle threats over the years only to wonder which Matthew would act on.
“So you drove back to put yourself in harm’s way?” You’re right, I don’t believe it.
“I drove back to protect you!”
You should’ve quit while you were ahead, Bert.
Nothing you have ever done is for my protection.
“What was he so mad about?” I ask.
“It doesn’t even matter anymore. It’s all so fucking pointless.”
“Everything matters in a murder investigation.”
“Not this. It was Matthew being Matthew, and Ella said she had it handled.”
“Ella handled something?” I laugh. “Did you or did you not see Matthew the night he was killed?”
“I did not. I swear it, and when the phone calls stopped all of a sudden that night, I turned around and drove back to the loft.”
“You’re right. No one will buy that you drove over six hours for nothing.”
You hold out your hands like you warned me the story was unbelievable. “Which is why I didn’t say anything. It’s ludicrous, I know. I was alone, and there’s nothing to corroborate my actual whereabouts except some fucking toll booth camera. I figure the police are going to have to find some physical evidence of me on Matthew in order to place me at the crime scene. Since I wasn’t there, they won’t. Easier for me to prove I wasn’t involved through forensics than testimony.”
Especially now that you’re a proven liar.
“All I wanted was to sign books, and to forget life outside of that. Ella, Matthew, all of it. I don’t know why we shouldn’t be able to do that. Haven’t we earned the right to be left the hell alone?”
You have a knack for saying the worst possible thing, but you’re not any more wrong for wanting peace than I am jealous of you nearly having it. “You have to help yourself out of this,” I say.
“There’s nothing I can do. Worse comes to worst, I end up in front of a jury, where we both know I’d lose, one, because I’m unlikeable, and two, because the media loves a scandal. For better or worse, I’m famous.” You hate the word so much it’s almost amusing to hear you use it. “Even if I’m found innocent, once all of what we’ve been through is out in open court, people will believe this is at least partly my fa
ult. Maybe they’d be right.”
“Stop it. Stop talking like that. Stop taking responsibility for what you didn’t do.”
“What do you want me to say? That I don’t believe the shit Vern has on me and might yet dig up doesn’t implicate me? He’s not messing around. I know that. Even without you telling me, I know. It’s everyone else versus me, even you.”
“Even me what?”
“Imagine you’re asked to testify about what went on between Matthew and me. The fights, the hospitalizations, the psychiatrists, the medication. What do you say?”
You’re not so much asking me a legitimate question as illustrating a point.
“You either honor spousal privilege, which makes me look guilty, or you tell the truth, which might be worse.”
“And that’s why I’m scared.”
“You always go to worst-case scenario.”
You aren’t wrong, but this time my worries aren’t unfounded. Surveillance footage puts you in Matthew’s vicinity around the time of his murder. Ella is aware of direct threats against you, and for some goddamn reason you’re being blackmailed by Ansley, a fact you continue to hide but I can’t confront you with, because I simply don’t have enough information. You’ll never admit to what you don’t have to. You don’t look like a good guy, and you’re not. You’re a lying, cheating, shitty father and husband. Yet talking to you about this, I doubt I know the worst of it.
“You’re making me crazy.” You get up from your seat, finished with this conversation and with me. “I need a break.”
“You need a lawyer!”
“We’ve talked about that.” The answer is clearly still “no.”
“Bert, isn’t there anything you want to tell me?”
This is your chance to come clean about Matthew, Ansley, the money, and Marjorie. I can still help you, and I will. All you have to do is be honest.
Instead, you say, “Stop panicking. It’s what Vern wants. There isn’t and can’t be forensic evidence against me, because I didn’t see Matthew that night. The police don’t have a murder weapon, which means the case against me is circumstantial at best.”
You’re convinced, and maybe if it hadn’t been me researching your plots for all these years, you’d be more shaken. You’d see that in the absence of forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence is equally damning, if not more so. Deon knows more than he’s saying, as do you, and if either of you would trust me completely, this might be behind us already, but you don’t, and he doesn’t, and I can’t think of a single reason why either of you should.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MORE THAN DOUBT AND circumstantial evidence, what this case needs is another suspect.
I never knew Ella as a mother or wife, but I’d heard enough secondhand to have formed a lasting and unflattering opinion of her as both. You consistently claim to be the wronged party, but you, she, and Matthew play the victim so well that it’s impossible to know which of you is telling the truth.
I have a hunch none of you are, at least not entirely. Not when it counts. I mistakenly thought the funeral would be the last of this nightmare, of Ella in our lives, and sadly of Matthew, too, but our past can’t go unreconciled. Vern won’t let it, and now I can’t, either.
While I don’t revel in doing Vern’s job for him, I don’t see another way.
Ella’s home is suspect, with the hole in the wall and the broken chair I refuse to attribute to sloppy living. There has to be something here worth checking into.
Worth Vern’s time, if he’ll actually look.
Yours wouldn’t be the first case swayed by reasonable doubt, and I’m determined to prove others’ involvement, even if I have to befriend my worst enemy in order to do it. The question is how to go about doing that when, even in the wake of this shared loss, Ella and I remain as hostile as ever, maybe more so.
I turn up at her house and expect the worst: an altercation or her refusal to speak with me. If I were her, I wouldn’t let me in, particularly not with what I’m thinking, so you can imagine my surprise when she neither lashes out nor tells me to leave but instead invites me in.
There aren’t words for how uncomfortable this is.
I head into the living room that a week ago could have easily been a crime scene but is now carefully cleaned. Professionally cleaned, it seems, as I spot an invoice from a carpet-cleaning company on the nearby end table. I look for blood, for a speck of anything that might have been missed, and find even the baseboards freshly washed. The hole in the wall is flawlessly patched and painted, and for a second, I wonder if Ella’s let me in to prove the damage I saw is long gone or perhaps was never here—that I imagined it.
I don’t know why I thought she might leave it that way forever.
That she would make this easy when she’s made everything else so hard.
“You can take a seat,” she says.
I don’t want to, but I can’t stand, and nothing about this seems right, so I sit. I cross and uncross my legs. Fold and unfold my arms. The dining room table is covered in photos of Matthew, arranged in chronological order. There are twelve missing years, during which the only pictures Ella has are school photos I’ve sent to her. A recent picture of Matthew wearing a sweater and tie sits among dozens I have never seen, photographs like the one in your office, which offer only fleeting glimpses into his life rather than genuine insight.
To anyone else, he might appear happy.
I know better.
Ella slides a family portrait of you, her, and Matthew across the table, and it feels like she’s asking for an explanation. I won’t defend myself for ruining a family only happy in pictures. I didn’t even know about her or Matthew when we met. I could tell her this, but why would she believe me? And why should she? You leaving them isn’t my fault, but I may well have been the reason you never went back.
“You weren’t his first mistress,” she says, and I cringe not only because I had never considered myself as such but because that’s not the story you gave me thirteen years of marriage later, “and probably not his last, either.”
I don’t mean to be so transparent, but her words echo those I said to Ansley only days ago. She wants to hurt me, and I can’t blame her.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
To have my face rubbed in things. To be made fun of because had I asked for the truth before marrying you she would be saying “I told you so” right about now.
Ella leans back in her chair, arrogant like Vern when he thinks he knows something. Perhaps I’m not fooling anyone.
“You’re here,” she says, “because you saw inside when you brought me that check. Maybe because Bert didn’t tell you what happened that night, and probably other nights, too.”
“And you, what, let me in to gloat?”
To assert your position as first wife and the original injured party?
This isn’t the most auspicious start to bridge-building, but neither of us has gone to name calling or hair pulling, so that’s something.
“I let you in to set the record straight, to make sure that after stealing my son and my husband, you don’t try and pin Matthew’s murder on me, too. I loved him, but I couldn’t be the mother he needed. Bert made sure of that, and if he pays for what he did, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.”
Ella confirms my suspicion that the initial meeting between you and Vern was tainted with speculation, old grudges, and a need for retribution. Hopefully Vern can spot the difference between normal couples separating and whatever the hell happened between you two. You didn’t have a divorce. You endured a natural disaster, and it’s not over by a long shot.
“Bert told me he talked to Matthew the night he died,” I say.
“Fought with, more like, over that girl.” Ella could mean Ansley, but her tone isn’t piteous, it’s exhausted, as if this is something she is tired of talking about.
“That girl?”
“Hannah,” Ella says with a shake of her head.
; I don’t blame her. If I never hear that name again it’ll be too soon. “What about her?”
Ella shrugs. “I don’t know, but Matthew lost it, which is why I called Deon for help.”
For a second I’m sure I’ve misheard then it clicks. Ella hasn’t let me in because she wants to talk but because she’s afraid Deon already has.
It seems you aren’t the only liar.
Ella turns her face into the light, and I catch sight of a fading-but-prominent bruise I can’t believe I missed until now. She lifts her bangs away from her hairline. “I knew better than to try and restrain Matthew. I should’ve let Deon handle it.”
It was easy to underestimate the potential of Matthew’s rage, the explosive component of his bipolar personality. Though he was neither technically bipolar nor schizophrenic, he had the features of both. He was sometimes manic and sometimes depressive. With as many differential diagnoses as Matthew had over the years, it’s impossible to nail down which were accurate.
You blame these violent reactions on the divorce—you always have. It’s easier, I guess, to believe the lie, rather than accept that you imparted some critical genetic flaw.
“At the time, all I could think about was getting the gun back,” Ella says.
I’m shocked, not only that she is mentioning the weapon, but that she’s admitting to a firearm coming from her. I think of how many times I’ve baited Ella over the years with no idea she might be armed. The struggle to disarm Matthew explains the mess, and I have to wonder if the hole in the drywall wasn’t from a fist but from Ella’s head.
“I didn’t kill my son. I tried to stop him, as I’m sure Deon’s said. He’s why you’re really here, right? He told you about the gun, and now you want to go to the police because Vern won’t stop harassing you. Am I getting warm?” Red hot, though I won’t give her the satisfaction of saying so. “If you try and turn this around on me, you’re only going to hurt Deon. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think you want that.”
Where We Went Wrong Page 11
