Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  “He was alone?” Jay asked in alarm.

  Her head whipped his way. “No, he was not alone. The fucking nanny was in the water with him, only she was edited out.”

  “Experts can detect editing.”

  “I’m sure they can,” she said slowly, as if Jay were the child here, “but when you have the judge and everyone else in your pocket, experts don’t count. Did I mention,” she added sweetly, “that every employee of his has to sign a confidentiality agreement? Did I mention that if any one of them breaks it, he or she becomes unemployable in the state? Did I mention that Carter makes that happen enough, so it’s a lesson for the rest?”

  “Well, someone’s speaking up now,” Edward said, reminding us why we were there in the first place.

  “Our cook.” Briefly, her voice softened. “She always thought Carter was a bully. She quit after I left.”

  “And you know this how?” Jay asked.

  “Facebook.”

  “So thirteen years later she’s suddenly not afraid of Brandt?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she is. But she got her citizenship, and the family she’s with are artists. They’re politically active and not on Carter’s side of the aisle, so if he goes after her, they’ll go after him right back. But she has a special-needs child who must be a special-needs adult by now. I’m sure she needs the money, and I feel bad for her, really I do.” Her eyes went to Ben, voice rising. “But if she talks with someone about this, I’m toast. If word gets back to Carter, it’s all over. I was charged with kidnapping.”

  Jay was making rewind motions with his hand. “You’re running away with this, Grace—”

  “Well, wouldn’t you?” she cried, starting to get up until I pulled her back. “Kidnapping means prison, with no hope of bail because I’d be a flight risk for sure, and what would happen to my son then, Jay? If my son isn’t locked up himself—big if right now—he would be returned to his so-called rightful guardian, who lies and cheats and steals and is about as transparent as quicksand, all of which is what that asshole would teach my son”—her glazed eyes went to Ben—“my son, who made a gross mistake and needs to pay for it in a way that teaches him right from wrong. His father would teach him that his only mistake was getting caught. Is that what you want him to learn?” she asked Ben, then Jay, “Is it?”

  Jay crouched at her side again. His voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it. “We do not want that, none of us, which is why we need to know more. I’m trying to get a picture here, so I need you to go back to the divorce. When did you find out about the photos and videos?”

  Like a balloon losing air, she sank back into the sofa. “When he told me we were getting divorced. He didn’t ask. He told. He said I’d been cheating on him, said I was a lush, said I was a lousy mother, and he showed me enough of the pictures to let me know what I was up against. So I’m standing there in shock, and he hands me an agreement to sign. I would leave the marriage with nothing more than what I’d brought into it, meaning the clothes on my back.”

  “Did you sign it?” Jay asked.

  “Hell, no. Chris was included in what I would leave behind, no visitation rights at all. Carter wanted me totally erased from their lives. I said no.”

  “What did Brandt say to that?” Jay asked.

  “That he’d see me in court. He moved out of our house and into the new one he’d bought for his girlfriend, who, p.s., was pregnant. Impregnating women is his specialty. I think it’s his way of controlling a woman, like once she’s pregnant, she’ll do whatever he asks. Only the new one would help his career. She was the daughter of a state Supreme Court justice.”

  “Did the divorce ever get to court?”

  Grace snorted.

  “You had a lawyer, didn’t you?”

  “Legal aid,” she said and, when Jay frowned, added, “I had no money. Carter cut off credit cards, bank accounts, everything.”

  “So how did you get away with Chris?”

  She folded her arms, and, for the first time, I saw an inkling of pride. “I might have been naive about how far he would go to annihilate me, but I’m not stupid. I told you I dreamed about leaving. Well, it wasn’t all fantasy. While he was piecing together damning evidence, I was putting together documentation under an alias. Part of my backup was a stash of money. I kept adding to it, and it was never huge, but it was there when I needed it.”

  I was in awe. “How did you know how to get documentation?” It was such a ballsy Grace thing to do, one I would never in my life, not even in my darkest moments, have dared.

  “Immigrants,” she said. “They were all over Santa Fe, even undocumented ones on our property, and they had always liked me. I talked with them. Most employers didn’t. So they shared. I was safe with them. For obvious reasons, they avoided the authorities.”

  I was thinking that as zany as she was, she could be remarkably resourceful, when Ben said, “So you and Chris left it all behind.”

  Grace smiled then. It was the first wide honest-to-goodness Grace smile that had come from her in days. “Not all of it. Carter wasn’t the only one who gathered evidence, only mine was legit.”

  She stopped talking. Her smile faded as we watched, replaced by a look of pure … evil was the word that came to my mind, only I couldn’t find fault. What I saw had to do with backbone and intent, with revenge, with justice.

  “We’re waiting, Grace,” Jay prompted, as only the lawyer could.

  “I couldn’t prove that he hit me,” she said. “There were no hospital records, and selfies wouldn’t prove anything. He could talk his way around abuse. Not consumer fraud, though. He regularly turned back odometer readings and sold used cars as having significantly less mileage than in fact they did.”

  “Spinning?” Ben asked in surprise.

  “Yup.”

  “That’s a heavy charge,” Jay cautioned. “Can you back it up?”

  “I have papers.”

  “What kind of papers?” Ben asked, coming back from the window.

  Staying him with a hand, Jay asked Grace, “Originals or copies?”

  “Originals,” she replied. “Records of used car sales, done in pairs, one legit, one doctored, same VIN.”

  Edward was looking as stunned as the rest of us. “Why would he do that? Why would he allow proof like that to exist?”

  “Stupidity?” Grace asked. “Ass-hood? He showed them to me right after we were married, like he wanted me to know how smart my husband was. It was really just one guy, the head of the service department. He’d go in after hours to do his thing. Turned out, he had a gambling habit. Carter helped him in exchange.”

  “Carter told you this?” Jay asked.

  “Oh yeah. Proudly. Like he was a good guy to be helping one of his men. Like that made what he was doing okay. Like I wouldn’t even realize that any of it was illegal.” She smiled her evil smile. “That was his first mistake.”

  “How did you get the papers?”

  “He had a home office where he kept his private files. They were locked up, but he took the key from its hiding place while I was standing right there. Like I wouldn’t dare do anything about it.” She huffed. “That was his second mistake.”

  “How many more mistakes?” Edward asked. He seemed less tense now. Physical proof was a bargaining tool, and while Grace was still in big trouble, apparently so was her ex.

  “Well, let’s see,” Grace was answering Edward, “his third was leaving me home alone so much. His fourth was not having a surveillance camera in that office. His fifth was turning odometers back on so many cars for so many years that my taking a handful of records would never be noticed.” She paused only to look expectantly, demandingly, from Jay to Ben. “Okay. That’s my story. What happens next?”

  “We see those papers,” said Ben.

  “I see them,” Jay corrected. “At least with me, there’s lawyer-client privilege.”

  “I said I wouldn’t write her story, but I have to corroborate it first,” Ben argued. “O
nce I’ve seen those papers, I can bargain behind the scenes.”

  “Bargain? You can also spill all if you’re subpoenaed. I’m her lawyer. I’m protected.”

  “I know people in Washington, where the congressman works.”

  “Washington doesn’t matter,” Jay huffed. “The crime happened in New Mexico, and I know lawyers there.”

  “All of whom are in Brandt’s pocket.”

  “Not the U.S. Attorney for the state. I went to law school with him. We were Moot Court partners. We get together whenever I’m west or he’s east.”

  Ben frowned. “I called this meeting. Don’t I have a say about what happens next?”

  Jay said, “Sorry, pal, but no.”

  “Screw this,” Grace said, rising so suddenly that I sat back in surprise. “What are you two doing? You led me on about needing to act quickly, so I spill my guts, and now you stand here duking it out to see who takes me to the prom? I am not the prize here. My freedom is, because if I’m not free, that bastard takes my son. I want both of us safe. Can’t you two coordinate, or something?”

  * * *

  They coordinated. Jay would take custody of the incriminating evidence against Carter Brandt and meet with the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico. At the same time, Ben would use his contacts to sniff around Washington on the theory that if the congressman had used the threat of blackmail in business, he might do the same in politics, or, alternately, if he had cheated on his first wife, he might be cheating on his second.

  The goal was to keep things quiet while working out a private agreement with Brandt’s lawyers that would protect Grace and Chris.

  It was a good plan. Jay plus Ben equaled contacts in enough high places to negotiate a deal—and it would have worked, had they only been one day ahead.

  25

  With barely a knock on the outer door, Kevin burst into our meeting. His face was ruddy, eyes frantic, voice shrill. “They’re on their way here. You have to leave, all of you, now.”

  Apparently, Jimmy had been called to the police station for a Sunday emergency and had slipped him word. The Feds were back in town along with the media led by Carter Brandt on his high horse, and they were gunning for Grace.

  Jay barely had time to instruct her on what to say, or more accurately what not to say, when Federal marshals arrived with a warrant for her arrest. Looking at me in panic, she mouthed her son’s name, before being cuffed and led out. Jay was on their heels.

  Thinking only to get Chris and hide, I had started for the door when Edward blocked the way. “You can’t go. I will.”

  “I will,” Ben said, looking straight at me as he took his jacket from the coat tree. “If Carter Brandt is in town, he’ll be at Grace’s house right now filming his reunion with his son. He’ll have his personal press buddies with him.”

  As warnings went, it might have been innocent, but whether Ben knew the truth about me was not the issue just then. Chris was. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he might feel if a stranger claiming to be his father showed up at the house without Grace. And telling him that he wasn’t Chris Emory at all? And that his mother was locked up?

  Grace’s panic became mine. “He’ll take him away, we’ll never see him again, everything she fought so hard for will be lost—and Chris doesn’t even know Carter.”

  “He knows me—” Ben said.

  “Hates you.”

  “Resents me,” he corrected as he punched at his phone. “I was the one his mother would have been with if she’d been free, and since he didn’t understand why she wasn’t free, he blamed me.”

  “You were the one who kept coming back,” I said, thinking of Grace’s photos. “He thought you might be his father.”

  “Nah.” He was typing again. “He just needed a target for all those blanks in his life.”

  “He does know me,” Edward announced as he pulled on a leather jacket—and I felt a second’s distraction. I knew that jacket. I had given it to him during our last year together. Not only was the leather like butter, but its pecan brown was a perfect foil for his dark hair. “I’m neutral,” he said in a determined voice. “I’m going.”

  But that jacket had tapped into my other panic. “No. Grace is my friend, this is my mess.” I had already complicated his life more than was fair, and my gut knew this was only the start. Slotted between the pages of Grace’s story was the fact that exposure for her meant exposure for me. If she confessed to kidnapping her son, I was guilty of aiding a felon.

  “Maggie, you know you can’t—”

  “Like it’ll make a difference now?”

  “Yeah, it will.”

  “The damage is already done, Edward. Don’t you see?”

  I’m not sure whether Ben got the subtext of our argument, what with his eye on his phone, but before Edward could answer, he made a frustrated sound. “Too late. Brandt is at the house.”

  The defeat in his voice was small consolation. Carter Brandt being anywhere near her son was the last thing Grace had wanted. Apparently, though, I couldn’t have gotten to Chris in time even if I had rushed out when Jay had.

  But where to go now? What to do? How to help? I drew a blank.

  * * *

  My sense of helplessness was even greater an hour later as live coverage of Congressman Carter Brandt’s press conference filled the large-screen TV. The archetypal everyman in his rolled-sleeve shirt and jeans, he stood before folk art in the lobby of the Town Hall and spoke of his joy at being finally reunited with his son after these painfully long years apart. His eyes were moist, his voice cracked. Chris wasn’t standing with him, but was “safe at last,” the congressman said repeatedly, which meant he had been stashed where none of us could reach him.

  “Sanctimonious fucker,” muttered my brother, who sprawled in a nearby armchair.

  My mother and I had the sofa. She was stretched out to ease her hip, but we didn’t touch. I was curled too tightly into myself at the opposite end, trying to fill the hollowness inside.

  The fact that she didn’t comment on Liam’s choice of words said something about her focus on Grace. She glanced up at Edward, who stood at the sofa’s back. “How did the authorities know where you were meeting?”

  “They showed up at the Spa looking for Grace,” he said in disgust as he watched the screen. “They threatened Joyce with obstruction of justice if she didn’t tell where she was. She had no choice.”

  Congressman Brandt was blathering on now about the tragedy of missing children.

  “Merde,” swore Liam. “This is a fucking campaign speech.”

  Again, my mother said nothing, but asked Edward, “What will they do to her?”

  “Short term?” Tearing his eyes from the TV, he gentled. “Keep her locked up. Jay is working on what comes next.” He pulled out his vibrating phone and studied the screen. To me, in an undertone, he said, “Good. Jay got her papers.”

  That was something, at least. Federal agents would be all over the house by now. Our fear was that in tearing the place apart for every last bit of evidence to incriminate Grace, they would confiscate what she had on Carter. We were praying she kept them elsewhere. Apparently so.

  “Quels papiers?” Liam asked.

  “Liam,” Mom scolded. “Enough.”

  “Where?” I asked Edward.

  “Her safe deposit box at the bank. The Feds took her key ring, but the bank gives you two keys. She told Jay where to find the second.” When I raised a brow in question, he smiled. “Her spare set of house keys. Joyce had them.”

  “Ah. Redemption,” I said but couldn’t muster a smile. The congressman had ended his news conference. A reporter took over and began recapping the case. Clips appeared of Grace being led in handcuffs from the Inn, into a cruiser, into the police station. They were followed by clips from the day we had gone to Rutland for Chris’s court appearance.

  Not three weeks ago? How could that be? So much had happened, one domino falling, then another and another, each moving another step back i
n time. The past was the root of the rest of a life. I was coming to understand that.

  “Is the coverage just because he’s a congressman?” Margaret asked.

  “And because of the hacking charge,” Edward answered. “It makes for good drama.”

  “Look at you there, Maggie!” Liam cried in excitement. When Margaret snapped out his name, his head turned, freckled face fell. “What?” he asked, seeming oblivious.

  “This isn’t a game show. It’s a travesty of justice. That doesn’t call for glee on any level. Grace is Maggie’s friend. She’s a sweet woman.”

  “How do you know?” he shot back.

  Margaret was unruffled, even serene. “She came to see me this morning. It was a quick visit. She was between clients. I wish we could have talked longer. She needs someone.” Her eyes found mine. “When she left, she squeezed my hand and looked straight at me, and what I saw was raw and good.”

  I hadn’t known. Grace hadn’t said, nor had Mom told me when we’d been in the car. For a time, at least, it had been just between them, which somehow gave it greater meaning. Touched, I pressed a hand to my chest, not sure if I would cry or seize up. Had my mother been looking at me, I would likely have done the former, tears being my go-to since the flood over the green velvet box.

  But she was looking at the TV again, then back at Edward. “Will there be fallout for the Inn?”

  He shrugged. “The computer hacking was worse.”

  He was downplaying it, I knew. But the fact that he did it for my sake turned a little something inside me. Same with the sight of my mother and brother, staying with us, sounding for all the world like they were on our side rather than walking out in disgust. They were a blessing, so much so that I was suddenly overwhelmed.