Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  Our time apart hasn’t been ideal, but it has been eye-opening. A woman with any love left in her heart would have done whatever possible to free her innocent husband. I haven’t made so much as a phone call on your behalf. You aren’t a murderer, Bert, but you’re other things you’ll never be tried for or convicted of.

  Deserving of time served.

  I think I must have known deep down that when Matthew’s body was found, you would be the perfect suspect. Had I known the night he died the things I know now, I might’ve fared better in this investigation and planned my escape more carefully. The charges against you may have stuck, but I didn’t and they won’t, and I’ll take whatever verdict is delivered, gladly accepting my sentencing, because I’ve already served time. Thirteen years. What’s another twenty-to-life?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  WITH EACH PASSING MOMENT, doubt of my eventual incarceration fades. I can pay my attorney now, which means confronting the reason I have to. I can’t imagine what Hannah wants from me other than, perhaps, vengeance for Matthew. Maybe Vern is waiting at her house to arrest me, and then what would all of these preparations have been for? Maybe, under the influence of hormones, she is luring me to certain death.

  An eye for an eye.

  Some stories end that way.

  I go to her anyway, because I should. I owe her the opportunity to confront me and maybe even an apology, if I can muster one for fighting for my life.

  Hannah stands in the doorway. “I wondered if you’d come.” She doesn’t look exactly welcoming, but as though this meeting is inevitable and perhaps necessary. We will put aside our differences long enough to say what needs saying before parting on less-gracious terms, given the enormity of the unspoken thing between us: the fact that if you are innocent, Bert, I am guilty.

  I wait for Hannah to call me on it.

  I need to know that I can confess, but as with Deon, admitting fault to a potential witness will only complicate my trial and convolute the charges for which I intend to honestly plead “not guilty.”

  I didn’t plan to kill Matthew, nor was it my intention for him to be dead. I’ll tell Hannah at least this if she asks, but this isn’t what’s brought me here.

  We sit, as Marjorie and I did only a little over a week ago, when I naively believed everything was going to be fine. Marjorie’s account of events seemed the answer to our financial problems, to coming to terms with the past twelve years of speculation. I was sure we could be okay then, that this manuscript was our biggest issue. Shocking how much can change inside of ten days, or ten minutes, or ten seconds.

  “Deon passed along your message. What is it you want?” I ask, settling on the direct approach because time is no longer an afforded luxury.

  “For you to return or destroy anything my mother gave you.” Hannah shifts position, and the neck of her shirt falls off her right shoulder. Her scapula juts up like the tip of a wing, and it’s clear she’s lost weight. A box of saltines sits on the end table, and I wonder at the morning sickness she might be experiencing, the medications she might be taking that have made her suddenly clear-headed, and their effect on the baby. She sets a stack of papers on the coffee table in front of me. “All of it, and this.”

  I recognize the printout immediately as a copy of your manuscript, which you apparently had the foresight to submit before your arrest. You have a knack for happy accidents, unlike me whose life has been ruled by Murphy’s Law. If you had sent it the moment the police pulled into our driveway, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Bert’s lawyer,” Hannah says.

  The lawyer your agent sent, and of course this all makes sense. Tim isn’t any more concerned with your liberation than I am, except when it comes to this book, which has undoubtedly caused him more headache than it’s worth. “Is that why you alibied Bert?” I ask. “Because his attorney asked you to?”

  “I covered for Bert because he can’t fix what he’s done from where he is.”

  “Covered for him? Does that mean he wasn’t here that night?”

  “Of course he wasn’t here.” Her tone suggests that I should know this, and perhaps should even have taken your word for it. She doesn’t know how little your word is worth.

  “You realize by telling the police that he was you could be helping free a guilty man, right?”

  “I know even if Bert did kill Matthew, he didn’t have a choice. Matthew had a gun and Bert’s wasn’t the only life he had been threatening.”

  Hannah tells me about a fight between her and Matthew a week earlier, giving context to the photograph of him without an explanation for the dozens of times she printed it. He had been on a downward spiral, Matthew, and his intention to harm, if not kill you, had been made clear on multiple occasions and weeks earlier. Hannah tried contacting Ella, and when that failed, attempted to get Matthew to the clinic, herself, where he could be evaluated and treated. All offers of help, she says, were refused—rebutted with threats of violence—and it’s clear that the boy I killed was most assuredly not the same one from that scrambler. The day before he died, Matthew had insisted Hannah either end the book deal, or he would end her.

  “Two years he’s been off his meds,” she says, and I understand more the mindset Matthew might have been in on the night of the attack. We’d tried weaning him before, each time with near-disastrous results.

  “Had you told Bert?”

  Hannah shrugs. “More than once, but you know how he is about these things.” The problem with mental illness is how difficult it is for the afflicted to accept, not only the patients but family as well. Matthew, and you, had every reason not to want for him to be stigmatized. Had she said something to me, things might have gone differently. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Hers is the hardest apology to accept. “You couldn’t have known.” Threats from Matthew weren’t uncommon, only his acting upon them.

  “I should have suspected. I had seen him through enough bad times to have known this one was different. I really believe he thought he was protecting me.”

  “And the baby?” I ask.

  “Unintentional.” Hannah rubs her nearly flat abdomen, a habit I ascribe to women farther along in their pregnancy. She tells me that, for as angry with and even fearful of Matthew as she was, she loved him for better or worse. How could she not, after what they’d been through? Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it’s a relief to hear that he didn’t know she was pregnant when he threatened her. She muses that if she had suspected and taken a home test, maybe things would have ended differently. Matthew might have put being a father first and might still be alive.

  I doubt that anything is that simple. “How far along are you?” I will never meet this child. Everything I imagined will never come to fruition, but if I didn’t ask, I would wonder.

  “Nine weeks,” Hannah says. “Due February 28th.”

  “And what will you do?” I don’t mean whether or not she’ll carry to term, which seems a certainty, but if she’ll be able to raise a son or daughter who might well resemble Matthew after all she has been through.

  “What I had planned to all along.” Hannah admits to having approached you two years ago, out of financial necessity when Claire fell ill. She tells me how adamantly Matthew fought her coming forward, but she wasn’t worried about the fallout. She insists she knew what might happen, accepted the risk, and had an exit strategy. “Anyone can do anything for a little while. I promised to be the face of this book for as long as I could, and when that was finished, I would start over. I know the people Claire knew, and as easily as I became Ansley Davis I could become someone else.”

  I would point out the obvious flaws in that plan—that after vanishing once there was no way Hannah wouldn’t be suspected a second time—but she seems convinced this could work. It is her alternate universe, her happy ending, and I won’t take it from her on top of everything else. Until now, I viewed Hannah as a victim: Marjorie’s, yo
urs, and probably Matthew’s, too. Your book would do to her what Revealing Jacob did to him, but Hannah knows this. She accepts and has planned for it. Clearly, I hadn’t given her due credit.

  “And you told Matthew this?”

  “I did, and, before things got as bad between us as they did, I asked him to come with me. I told him he could be anyone he wanted. Out from under all this shit he’s been fighting his entire life, and away from Bert and Ella.”

  From me, I think, but I don’t say it. The Matthew I knew would have leapt at the chance. “Why on earth would he say no?”

  Hannah shrugs. “Because mine wasn’t the only battle he was fighting.”

  Indeed, hers might have only been a convenient excuse.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “YOUR PLAN MIGHT STILL work,” I say. There’s no harm in offering false hope at this point. I wouldn’t have thought Marjorie’s scheme would have panned out, either, so who am I to judge? “You have been working with Bert for the past two years, and maybe this book won’t be the disaster Matthew predicted.”

  “Now that my mother’s involved, it already is. I was willing to come forward, to tell a version of my disappearance story, but never at my father’s expense.”

  My father.

  Peter.

  The man Hannah describes is the man I would have said Peter Harman was before he killed Gregory Phillip King. A man destroyed by the loss of his daughter, desperate for her safe return. Someone duped, as we had all been. A proud father who, like me, had taken another’s child as his own, only with none of the negative attachments that came with Matthew. If we’re all somehow Marjorie’s victims, Peter paid a steeper price than any.

  Hannah admits to remembering more than she ever told you, to overhearing her parents fighting and even witnessing violence, but on Marjorie’s part not Peter’s. Hannah assures me women can be abusive, which regarding anyone other than Marjorie might seem harder to believe. Hannah confirms her mother’s affair, and while infidelity can wreak havoc on a marriage, the outcome here was so much worse.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.

  “I did, but I was eight. Traumatized, apparently,” she says with a dramatic flourish, as if the idea itself was ridiculous. “My mother convinced Claire of this so-called abuse to the point that she didn’t even question her until after my father was arrested, when the rumors went public.” When Gregory Phillip King’s statements to the police might have been made available under the Freedom of Information Act.

  I have to assume I am not the only one to have investigated this, or the first to do so. “So-called?”

  Hannah casts Marjorie’s documented injuries in a new and damning light, claiming they were self-inflicted. The burn marks were all within Marjorie’s reach. The “choke evidence” showed no telltale finger mark bruises, rather they seemed to be left by a ligature or a belt. The bruises often took on the shape of the items that caused them, many of which were things Hannah claims to have seen her mother with in secret. In the absence of memories of physical conflict, she is convinced that her mother’s injuries, like everything else, were part of a far-fetched-but-lucrative escape plan.

  “After my father’s conviction,” she says, “Claire tried to reunite my mother and me. Turns out she had left the state. No phone number. No forwarding address. Nothing. She bounced from this job to that, one place to another, one man to the next. Claire eventually found her, and by the time she did, had figured out Marjorie not only didn’t want to be a wife, she didn’t want to be a mother, either.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  IF THE MEASURE OF GOOD parenting is intention, I am not nearly the worst among us. No decision I ever made was made with malice. Unlike Marjorie, who acted nothing but selfish, manipulating and lying to everyone, even poor Claire, whom I don’t blame for believing her. The woman is convincing. Had it not been for the mounting inconsistencies, I, too, might have remained fooled, and for what? Money? To save face? To evade prosecution? I have to believe all three.

  Marjorie returned to New York upon hearing about your book, which Hannah admits to foolishly telling her about. Her intention hadn’t been to clue Marjorie in to an opportunity, but to warn her that she was about to go public with their story. Not only did she know Marjorie was a liar, but the whole world would know, too. Hannah hoped an investigation would be launched and that her mother would finally be held accountable for exiling her eight-year-old daughter out of self-interest.

  But that’s not the story you’ve written.

  You’ve crafted Peter into a monster and given Marjorie a platform from which to evoke sympathy and understanding.

  Threats sometimes backfire.

  Everything Marjorie has done since her arrival has been to discredit Hannah, to render her unreliable—not only now, with the possibility of your tell-all book—but also historically, in the event Marjorie ever stands trial. Having her committed was smart, if not wildly opportunistic, and Hannah, with her probably hormone-induced irrationality, played in to her mother’s hand. Between the video Marjorie took at the funeral and the photographs inside Hannah’s home, anyone might assume a problem. With Hannah sequestered, Marjorie had been able to work the book angle, creating a victim narrative I can’t believe I fell for except that I had become blinded; unable to see beyond the opportunity to use her tragedy for personal gain.

  This is Revealing Jacob all over again. Two parents destroying their children for selfish reasons. Under different conditions, you and Marjorie might be perfectly suited for one another. You’re exploitative, the both of you. Heartless and self-centered, and you come out of every situation the wronged party. I imagine the two of you on a talk show panel together one day, arguing over which of you had it worst.

  I assure you that when the public hears Hannah’s side—and they will, because of all of us, she is the principled one—no one will defend either of you. Hannah won’t let her father’s reputation be slandered posthumously, nor will she let her mother off the hook. Hannah has learned a thing or two from Claire about seizing the upper hand.

  As it turns out, Vern wasn’t entirely off-base with his blackmail theory. Marjorie’s lawsuit against the prison is what helped Claire locate and confront her after she went into hiding. Matthew and Hannah had reconnected via the Internet, and Hannah wanted more than anything to join him in attending Briarwood. Claire couldn’t have afforded tuition without a portion of Marjorie’s settlement money, so she did what any industrious person would do. She delivered an ultimatum for Marjorie to pay up or risk her exposure, not only to the authorities but to Peter, who, as far as Hannah knows, died believing she was missing.

  I advise Hannah that the term is “extortion.” Knowing what I do now, I can’t imagine ever believing Marjorie willingly paid for Hannah’s upkeep, which brings us again to money, and isn’t that what so much of this has been about?

  Hannah deserves to get away, to start fresh with her child somewhere where no one can hurt or exploit her ever again. I can help her do that, and I should, because while it’s easy to blame her for your eventual jail release, I’m kidding myself to believe my arrest wasn’t eventual. Two people had access to our house: you and I, and only one of us was there.

  While this isn’t my first time paying someone off for their cooperation, it is the first time I don’t ask for anything in return. Twenty thousand dollars, the balance of the Key Bank account, less my legal retainer, is a fraction of what Hannah might have made otherwise, but this book deal, like everything else in our lives, has become ruinous. This is likely the last payment Hannah will ever see from you. Given what she was willing to endure, how much she’s lost because of us already, and the child growing inside her, I only wish it was more.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  WAITING IN MY ATTORNEY’S office, moments from my surrender, I consider final preparations before the cuffs close. Unlike you, I have the advantage of tying up loose ends. I fire up my laptop, and after securing an Internet connection,
attach a copy of The Perfect Suspect to an e-mail to Deon, which I set to deliver after I’m in police custody. I know better than to send it now, because when he reads what you have done, what Marjorie did, who Hannah is, and how I had only tried to defend myself, he’ll want to talk me out of confessing. He’ll want to shield me from prosecution. He’s protective by nature. Loving and honest, and the last thing I need is for him to try and change my mind.

  Resolute as I am in this moment, it wouldn’t take much.

  When I’m certain the e-mail has scheduled, I format the computer’s hard drive, deleting any and all information, I hope, to the point that it is no longer retrievable. I put my flash drive in my purse for safe keeping, imagining some far future date when it will be returned to me as part of my release—an outdated reminder of these last hours of freedom, when I’ve done the best I can to make amends. I verify the bank check remains zipped away for safe keeping and hate that after a lifetime of dependence, even this comes indirectly from you.

  A secretary calls out, “Mrs. Stone,” and I almost don’t answer.

  “Yes.” I gather my things.

  “Karen will see you now.”

  I’m led into a sterile boardroom, and seated across from a smartly dressed blond in an expensive navy-blue suit. Karen Carr rises to shake my hand then offers me a look at her retainer agreement, which I sign without reading it. She sits across from me with a yellow legal pad in front of her, prepared, if not eager, to hear my side of things, and tells me to start from the beginning. After what we’ve been through, I’m not sure where, exactly, that is.

  “As in, when Bert and I were first married?” I ask.