by Kyra Davis
“The plan was never to bring down HGVB,” Lander persists. “This is my company too, Adoncia. And now, with my father out of my way and Travis handicapped by scandal, I will be able to reshape this bank. I’m going to be a pivotal part of its leadership, and in the not-too-distant future I will be named the youngest CEO of a top-tier bank in the world. I’m going to run this place the way it should be run. I will reclaim and redefine the Gable name. Travis and Edmund, they will have nothing by the time I’m done and I . . . I . . .”
“You will have everything,” I finish for him. “That’s always what this has been about for you. Not revenge but ambition. I was right . . . I was right and I didn’t stop you.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me.”
I shake my head, almost in awe of his audacity. He’s standing before me, the light of the city at his back, tapping his fingers against the bare surface of his desk. Part of my brain registers that he seems nervous, worried, maybe even hurt. But then, what does that matter? In a world where the rich and powerful can get away with crimes that if perpetrated by anyone else would result in life sentences, what is it exactly that matters?
“Micah’s in a panic,” Lander says, stepping to the side of the desk, bringing himself a little closer to me. “He knows that his accounts are this close to being confiscated by the Feds, which means he’s in trouble with the other members of his organization. He also knows that the people of other crime organizations, like Javier, will feel that Micah misled them about the security of HGVB. He’s left the country, and if he comes back I’ll make sure he regrets it.” Again, Lander moves closer. “I won’t let him hurt you. I won’t let any of them hurt you.”
“They already have,” I whisper.
“No, listen, I will do everything I can to get your mother’s case reopened. I’ve hired an investigator. He’ll be contacting you soon. And in light of White’s current disgrace, I was finally able to convince the DA to look at the case again. It’s still going to be tricky, because White was a cop, and sometimes cops look out for their own, so records may disappear.” He uses his fingers to make quotation marks around that last word. “There are no guarantees, but there’s a chance. And in the meantime I will bring my father and brother low at every opportunity. Do you hear me?” He steps forward once more and takes my face in his hands. “They will have nothing.”
“Your definition of nothing is skewed,” I say dully. “Sixty million dollars isn’t nothing.” I pull away from him, sink into a small leather sofa placed against the wall. “The only person who’s leaving with nothing is me.”
“No,” Lander says sternly. He sits by my side, putting his hands over mine. “I won’t allow that. And you don’t need to leave. Not long ago you said that we could be together, and now it’s true. Stay with me, Adoncia. I will protect you and I will work with you. We can claim the power that Edmund and Travis are being forced to relinquish, but we’ll use it differently. We can have luxury and wealth and everything that comes with it without losing our souls. We won’t let up on them, but we won’t let them consume us either. We’ll have rich, full lives. We’ll be happy. And that, that can be part of our revenge.”
I feel the tears stinging my eyes as I gently pull my hands away. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gable,” I say, my voice hoarse with emotion. “But I would rather leave with my version of nothing than be part of your version of everything.”
I think I hear him call after me as I rush out, but I can’t be sure.
And besides, it doesn’t really matter.
chapter thirty-three
* * *
Down in the subway station, waiting for the train, I study the backs of my hands. Holding them out before me, my fingers outstretched, looking at the veins, the bones, the skin, the things that make me me. I know what I’ve walked away from. I know most women would think I was crazy. Hell, there are probably people right here in the subway station who think I’m crazy, this quiet woman with decent clothes and wild hair who can’t stop staring at her hands.
The thing is, I don’t know how to live the life that Lander wants me to live. I don’t know how to accept injustice. Part of me knows that my inability to do so is a flaw. There are so many injustices in this world. To paraphrase a line in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, if we let the pain and injustice of the world touch us too deeply we’ll become cripples or saints . . . and I’m no saint.
And besides, Lander isn’t asking me to simply find ways to live with any injustice. He’s asking me to be by his side knowing that his brother and father have gotten away with heinous crimes. That among many other things, they’re probably going to get away with locking up my mother. His suggestion that I satisfy myself with taking Edmund and Travis down a peg or two whenever the opportunity presents itself and hoping that maybe we’ll find the evidence to prove that they set my mother up for murder, it’s not enough for me.
It shouldn’t be enough for anyone.
My train arrives and I step inside the nearest car, finding a seat on the sideways bench along the wall. I feel almost hollow, almost. Because there is something there. Deep down I feel it; it’s the low, pulsing rhythm of my anger, just waiting for me to tap into it again, waiting for me to give it strength, direction, and purpose.
How very familiar.
I think back on how Lander told me that I had turned revenge into a reason to live. And now I really see it. Because every one of us needs a reason to live. We can’t just exist. That doesn’t work. Sometimes people survive simply because their particular battle for survival is so intense it becomes a war. If they live, they win. If they die, they don’t. You see this phenomenon in refugees, in the homeless, in the oppressed.
People can live for war. I lived for war. It’s such a tangible thing. A vitalizing thing. Anyone can tell you that if you want to really feel alive all you need to do is put your life on the line. But of course my war wasn’t over my personal survival. I may have been torn from my mother, but I’m not a refugee. I made my war with the Gables.
But Lander isn’t offering me a new war, only a watered-down version of the old one. I’m not even sure if he’s offering me love. He’s never said the words. I know who he is now, but I still don’t really know how he feels.
Maybe, maybe I could live for love. But I can’t live for ambiguity. More to the point, I can’t live for an idea that can be so easily yanked away from me. Not again.
So I’ll go back to my base camp and draw up a new battle plan, one just as fierce and challenging as the last one, but one more likely to end in a clear victory. Because when all is said and done, vengeance and war are the only things I can count on. They may challenge me, but they’ll never leave me.
After getting off the train, when I’m about a block away from home I notice someone sitting on the bottom step of my building. A woman. And as I draw closer I see who it is. Jessica. She has her legs stretched in front of her, crossed at the ankle, unmindful of the fact that she’s sitting on the ground while wearing a twelve-hundred-dollar dress.
“Hi,” she says when I finally reach her. “I was wondering if you might like to join me for a cup of coffee.”
We take a cab all the way down to the Village. Her choice, not mine. But I’m literally bursting with curiosity now, so much so that if she had suggested we get coffee in New Jersey I might have agreed just for the opportunity to hear whatever it is she has to say.
We sit in a little independently owned café. Jessica is using both her hands to cradle a white porcelain cup, a perfectly crafted milky heart hovering on top of her specialty latte. I had opted for just plain old coffee. I’m done with putting on pretenses for Jessica.
She really does look worse for wear. There are dark circles under her eyes and new creases on her forehead. She’s gained a little weight too, which isn’t such a bad thing since she was ballerina-skinny before, but it’s surprising. The one thing Jessica had always seemed to be in control of was her appearance, and designer clothing aside, it looks as if she’
s begun to let that go.
I wait for her to introduce a topic, but when she doesn’t I sigh and tap the toe of my shoe against the dark wood floor impatiently. “You look like you haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”
“I haven’t had a drink or a pill in seventy-one days. Although Travis doesn’t know that,” she says tersely. “I swear, sobriety has very little to recommend it.”
I look again at her dark circles and the way she’s clutching her cup. She might be telling the truth. “If you hate being sober so much, why did you stop with all the . . .” I wave my hand in the air as if gesturing to all the substances Jessica likes to abuse.
“I had to. I had to be alert. I needed to be able to focus on what’s going on.”
“You mean the HGVB scandal?”
“Oh dear lord, why would I care about that?” She shakes her head impatiently. “No, no, my husband has been seeing Cathy Lind!”
“Ah.” I sip my coffee. “Well, that can’t surprise you. You were always accusing everyone of sleeping with your husband, why not her?”
“She’s different.”
“Yes, I agree,” I say blandly, then glance over toward the register as one of the cashiers calls out a name for a ready order.
“Cathy Lind has a wealthy husband,” Jessica goes on. “And I’m sure he had her sign an ironclad prenup before they married. If she’s risking all that it’s because she feels certain that Travis is about to get rid of me.”
“I hear there are reviews for divorce attorneys on Yelp.”
“I didn’t say he was going to divorce me, I said he’s going to get rid of me.”
I pause, my coffee cup halfway to my lips.
“I know too much for him to let me just walk away, Adoncia.”
Slowly, very slowly, I put my cup down, my eyes glued to hers. “You know my name,” I say quietly.
“I’ve known it for some time,” Jessica replies, falling back into her chair, looking suddenly bored. “I used to worry about you, you know. The little girl who had lost her mother to prison. I tracked you for a few years after the trial. I even donated money to a youth program one of your foster families tried to get you involved in. I cared. And then you show up with the clear intention of ruining my life. That’s what I get for caring.”
“You lied under oath.” My voice is so low, so steady, so perfectly couched in anger.
Jessica shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “We all do what we have to do. That’s the world we live in. That’s how it works.”
“My mother died in prison.”
“Your mother was a home wrecker.”
“She didn’t deserve to die.”
“Well, she didn’t deserve a happy ending either.” Jessica drums her fingers against the table. “Nick Foley had children, both still in their teens, when your mother started sleeping with him. Did you ever worry about what happened to them?”
“They both went to college. One’s in advertising and the other’s a podiatrist.”
“Exactly! They could have been at the top of New York’s social hierarchy, but they were so traumatized by their father’s affair it affected their grades and they were forced to settle for second-rate universities. Now they have to spend their days listening to commercial jingles and touching other people’s feet!”
“Jesus, you’re a bitch.”
Jessica raises her eyebrows in a passing indication of annoyance tempered with a degree of indifference.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on the table. “Forgive me for saying this, Jessica, but you don’t come across as a woman who is legitimately in fear for her life.”
Jessica’s demeanor shifts to something steadier and more serious. Her gaze moves out to the street and for a moment she just watches the stream of pedestrians pass us by. “I’m not sure that I’m afraid,” she says, her tone almost meditative. “I’m not sure that it won’t be a relief . . . dying, that is. And yet, he’s taken so much from me. I don’t know if I have it in me to let him take anything more, not even a life I don’t want. And if he does?” She turns her eyes back to me. “He’s going to have to pay a very steep price for it. You can help me with that, but you can’t be as clumsy or impetuous as you were last time.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.”
“The flash drive you found in the closet door. I could have told you that the information on there wasn’t strong enough to get Travis indicted. The only reason I put it there is because those were all the files and evidence I had been able to gather to date, and if something happened to me I wanted to be sure that the police found something. And of course I wanted them to find the keys.”
I can feel my mouth slowly dropping open. “You? You put it there?”
“Yes, that was me.”
“And you’ve been gathering evidence against HGVB?”
“Oh dear God, are you slow? Yes! Obviously I did or I wouldn’t have had anything to put on that flash drive!”
I stare at this woman who I have spent so much time with. This woman who I have given so little credit to. This woman who I imagined as a bitter but hapless victim of Travis’s brutality.
And at the end of The Sixth Sense you realize that the movie you’ve been watching isn’t the movie you thought it was at all.
“But you encrypted the files,” I point out.
“If I didn’t have them encrypted no one would have believed they belonged to Travis.”
“You hid it so well. I only stumbled upon it by chance. It might never have been found.”
“Yes, I worried about that, but if I didn’t hide it well Travis would have found it. Anyway, I thought I had more time to work that detail out.”
“Why the keys?”
Jessica lifts her chin. A few tables over someone’s cell phone is ringing. In line a woman’s rocking a crying child in her arms. But as far as I’m concerned the only two people here are Jessica and me.
“Have you seen it?” she hisses. “His little love nest?”
“It hasn’t been used.”
“It’s being used now.”
I mouth the word oh and pick up my coffee.
“There’s a safe,” Jessica continues. “It’s behind the books on the bottom row of the bookshelf. I’m a little worried about it. If Travis or Cathy decide to read any of those books they’ll find it.”
“Wait a minute, you had that safe installed?”
“Don’t worry, I was very careful to make it look like Travis did that. I got his receptionist to convince him to consider buying a safe. He went to the store, talked to the merchant about it, but left without buying. Then his assistant”—Jessica points to herself to imply that she played the part of the assistant—“called the store to say Mr. Gable had changed his mind. I had it charged to his credit card and installed in his little . . . little . . .” She scrunches up her face as if she can’t think of a term vile enough. “Den of iniquity!” she finally spits out, clearly unsatisfied with the phrase. “The combination is 5-7-01. That’s the date they met. It’s in some stupid little Valentine’s Day card she gave him eons ago. Can you believe it? He’s kept her cards!”
“Jessica, what’s in the safe?” I ask urgently.
“Everything you need to put Travis and Edmund away for the conspiracy to commit murder. I do believe that’s what they call it. Conspiracy? When someone helps to plan a murder but isn’t necessarily the one to pull the trigger?”
“Wait . . . are you saying . . .”
“It’s the evidence that will prove that Travis and Edmund were responsible, at least in part, for both Nick’s death and your mother’s incarceration. Unfortunately, it’s probably enough to convict me too, for bearing false witness, that is.” She pauses and sucks in a shaky breath as I sit across from her in stunned silence.
She has evidence. I try to make the words make sense in my mind. Try to find a hint of jest or deception in her face. But instead I just see her lower lip quiver. For a moment I think she’s
going to cry.
“I thought your mother was guilty,” she whispers. “Travis, Edmund, they assured me she was guilty. And Travis . . . he framed it like it was some kind of test. That if I could just tell this one little lie in the name of justice, for his family, for him, then he would know I was the kind of woman he could spend the rest of his life with. I was so young, I thought I was in love. By the time I realized the truth . . . it was too late. I knew too much. I had done too much.”
She looks at me, her eyes pleading for some kind of verbal response, some expression of understanding, but I can’t even move.
“He took my youth,” she continues. She’s speaking so softly now I have to strain to hear her. “He took my innocence, my heart, my self-respect, and my future and he tore them all to shreds.”
She reaches forward, puts her hand on top of mine. I jump, almost as shocked by the gesture as by what she’s telling me. Jessica has never touched me before.
“Please,” she says, “tell my children that. Tell my children that I made a mistake but that I wasn’t evil. Please tell them that.”
I’m still incapable of a response. It’s all too much. I feel dizzy and sick and . . . and hopeful. This morning my world was in ruins and here, amid the rubble and dust, is hope.
“Make sure he is charged with both murders,” she whispers. “It’s time he pays for taking Nick’s life.” Then she stands up, hesitating only a moment before adding, “And it’s time he pays for destroying mine.”
chapter thirty-four
* * *
The coffee shop is exactly four city blocks away from the apartment Travis got for Cathy. I run the entire way. People look at me as if I might be running either to catch a purse snatcher or because I am a purse snatcher. But I don’t care. I push past them, totally indifferent to their judgments. The hard soles of my flats pound against the pavement. I can already feel the blisters forming but I just don’t care.
