The Last Thing He Told Me

by Laura Dave

  What the plan is going to be. He means the plan to move her, to move us. He means that he wants me to help hold it all steady when he tells her that life as she knows it is over.

  “And we need to talk about something else,” he says. “I didn’t want to get into it before, but I haven’t been completely transparent with you…”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  “We received a package yesterday with a zip drive of Owen’s work emails. I had to verify they were real, and they are. He kept meticulous records of the pressure Avett was applying to push through the IPO, despite Owen’s objections. And all the work he did after to try and make it okay…”

  “It wasn’t just a specific guess then?” I say. “About Owen’s culpability in all this?”

  “No, I guess not,” he says.

  “So it’s really my husband who tamped it down?” I say.

  My voice rises. I try to check it, but I can’t. Because Owen is doing everything to protect us, even from wherever he is now. And I just don’t trust that Grady knows how to do the same.

  “He has certainly helped,” he says. “WITSEC can be challenging about who they’re willing to help out, and these files plus his history underscore why he didn’t blow the whistle until now. Why he felt he had no choice but to stay on board.”

  I take this in, feeling a weird mix of relief and something else. At first I think it’s irritation at Grady for withholding this, withholding that he’d heard from Owen, but then I realize it’s something more sinister. Because it’s starting to crystallize for me—what else Grady’s been withholding from me.

  “And why are you sharing this information with me now?” I say.

  “Because we need to be a united front when Bailey gets here,” he says. “About WITSEC, about the best way for you guys to move forward. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you won’t be starting over, not completely.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that money Owen left for Bailey? It’s legitimate earnings. It’s money Owen kept clean,” he says. “You’ll be entering WITSEC with a nice nest egg. Most people in our program don’t have anything close.”

  “Sounds to me, Grady, that you’re saying if we decline, the money goes away…”

  “If you decline, all of it goes away,” he says. “Being a family again, safely, goes away.”

  I nod, knowing that’s what Grady’s trying to convince me of—that I should be on board with Bailey and me entering protection. That I need to be on board because everything is set up for Owen to join us in this new life. Everything is set up for our family to be reunited. New names, but reunited. Together.

  Except this is what I can’t let go of despite Grady’s insistence, what I know Owen doesn’t want me to let go of. My doubt. My doubt when I think about the leak at WITSEC and when I think about Nicholas Bell. My doubt when I think about Owen’s hasty exit and what I know about him, which would explain it. The only thing that would explain it. Everything I know about Owen is convincing me of something else.

  Grady is still talking. “We just need Bailey to understand that this is the best way to keep her as safe as possible,” he says.

  As safe as possible. That stops me. Because he doesn’t just say safe. Because there is no safe. Not anymore.

  Bailey isn’t wandering the streets, but she is on her way to this office and to a world in which to be as safe as possible, Grady is going to tell her she is going to have to become someone else. Bailey, no longer Bailey.

  Unless, of course, I manage to stop it. All of it.

  Which is when I brace myself against it. What I need to do now.

  “Look, we can get into all of this,” I say. “The best way to handle Bailey. But I just need to go to the restroom first… splash some water on my face. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”

  He nods. “No problem.”

  He holds the door open and I start to head out of the conference room, pausing in the doorway, pausing when I’m right next to him. I know this is the most important part, making him believe me.

  “I’m so relieved she’s safe,” I say.

  “Me too,” he says. “And look, this isn’t easy, I get that. But this is the best thing to do, and you’ll see, Bailey will get comfortable with it sooner than you think, and it won’t all seem so scary. You’ll get to be together and we’ll get to bring Owen to you as soon as he reemerges. I’m sure that’s what Owen’s waiting for now, to make sure you’re safe, first, make sure you’re all set up…”

  Then he smiles. And I do the one thing I can. I smile back. I smile like I trust him that he knows why Owen is still gone, like I trust a relocation will be the answer he and his daughter need to be together. To be safe. Like I trust that anyone is capable of keeping Bailey safe—except for me.

  Grady’s phone rings. “Give me a minute?” he says.

  I point toward the restroom. “Can I?”

  “Sure thing. Go ahead,” he says.

  He is already walking toward the windows. He’s already focusing on whoever is on the other end of his phone call.

  I head down the hall, and in the direction of the restroom, turning back to make sure Grady isn’t watching. He isn’t. His back is to me, his phone to his ear. He doesn’t turn around as I walk past the restroom’s door and the elevator, where I press the down button. He keeps staring out the conference room windows, staring at the rain while he talks.

  The elevator arrives blessedly fast and I jump in, alone, pushing the close button. I’m in the lobby before Grady gets off his phone call. I’m outside, in the rain, before Sylvia Hernandez is sent into the ladies’ room to check on me.

  I have turned the corner before she or Grady look on the conference room table and see what I left there for them to find. I left the note on the table, beneath the phone. The note that Owen left me. I left it for Grady.

  Protect her.

  And I walk at a quick clip down the unfamiliar Austin streets to be there for Bailey now, to be there for her and Owen the best way I know how, even though it’s taking me back to the last place I am supposed to go.

  Everyone Should Take Inventory

  Here’s what I know.

  At night, before he went to sleep, Owen did two things. He turned on his left side and then he leaned into me, wrapping his arm around my chest. He would fall asleep that way—with his face against my back, his hand on my heart. He was peaceful.

  He went for a run every morning to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge and back home.

  He would live on Pad Thai, given the choice.

  He never took off his wedding ring even to shower.

  He kept the windows open in the car. Ninety degrees or nine degrees.

  He talked about going ice fishing on Lake Washington every winter. He never went.

  He couldn’t turn off a movie, no matter how awful, until he’d made it to the credits.

  He thought champagne was overrated.

  He thought thunderstorms were underrated.

  He was secretly afraid of heights.

  He only drove a stick shift. He extolled the virtues of only driving a stick shift. He was ignored.

  He loved taking his daughter to the ballet in San Francisco.

  He loved taking his daughter on hikes in Sonoma County.

  He loved taking his daughter for breakfast. He never ate breakfast.

  He could make a ten-layer chocolate cake from scratch.

  He could make some mean coconut curry.

  He had a ten-year-old La Marzocco espresso machine that was still sitting in its box.

  And he was married once before. He was married to a woman whose father defended bad men—even if he thought it was a little simplistic to call them bad men, even if he thought it was incomplete. He accepted his father-in-law’s work because he was married to this man’s daughter and that’s who Owen was. Owen accepted his father-in-law out of need, out of love, and maybe out of fear. Though he wouldn’t have named it as fear
. He would have named it, incorrectly, as loyalty.

  Here’s what else I know. When Owen lost his wife, it all changed. Every single thing changed.

  Something broke open in him. And he became angry. He became angry with his wife’s family, with her father, with himself. He was angry about what he’d allowed himself to turn a blind eye to—in the name of love, in the name of loyalty. Which is part of the reason why he left.

  The other reason is that he needed to get Bailey away from that life. It was primal and it was urgent. Keeping Bailey anywhere near his wife’s family felt like the greatest risk of all.

  Knowing all that, here’s what I may never know. If he’ll forgive me for what I feel like I have to risk now.

  The Never Dry, Part Two

  The Never Dry is open now.

  There is a mix of the after-work crowd, a few graduate students, and a couple on a date—spiky green hair for him, tattoo sleeve for her—completely focused on each other.

  A young, sexy bartender in a vest and a tie holds court behind the bar, pouring the couple matching manhattans. A woman in a jumpsuit eyes him, tries to get his attention for another drink. She tries, simply, to get his attention.

  And then there’s Charlie. He sits alone in his grandfather’s booth, drinking a glass of whisky, the bottle resting beside it.

  He runs his finger along the glass, looking lost in thought. Maybe he’s playing it back in his head, what happened between us earlier, what he could have done differently when he met this woman he didn’t know and his sister’s daughter whom he only wanted to know again.

  I walk up to his table. He doesn’t notice me standing there, at first. When he does, instead of looking at me with anger, he looks at me in disbelief.

  “What are you doing here?” he says.

  “I need to talk to him,” I say.

  “Who?” he says.

  I don’t say anything else, because he doesn’t need me to clarify. He knows exactly who I’m talking about. He knows who I’m angling to see.

  “Come with me,” he says.

  Then he stands up and steers me down a dark hallway, past the restrooms and the electrical closet, to the kitchen.

  Charlie pulls me into the kitchen, the door swinging closed behind us.

  “Do you know how many cops have come in here tonight? They’re not asking me anything yet, but they’re coming in so I can see them. So I’ll know they’re here. They’re all over the place.”

  “I don’t think they’re cops,” I say. “I think they’re U.S. marshals.”

  “Do you think this is funny?” he says.

  “None of it,” I say.

  Then I meet his eyes.

  “You had to tell him we were here, Charlie,” I say. “He’s your father. She’s your niece. You’ve both been looking for her since the day he took her away. You couldn’t keep that to yourself, even if you wanted to.”

  Charlie pushes open the emergency door, which leads to a back staircase and the alley below.

  “You need to leave,” he says.

  “I can’t do that,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  I shrug. “I have nowhere else to go.”

  It’s true. In a way I’m uncomfortable acknowledging to myself—let alone to him—Charlie is the only shot I have left to make this okay again.

  Maybe he senses that because he pauses, and I see him falter in his resolve. He lets the emergency door close.

  “I need to talk to your father,” I say. “And I’m asking my husband’s friend to help make that happen.”

  “I’m not his friend.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” I say. “I had my friend Jules find Ethan’s will for me.” Ethan, using that name. “His real will. And he put you in it. He put you in it as a guardian for Bailey, along with me. He wanted her to have you if anything ever happened to him. He wanted her to have me and he wanted her to have you.”

  He nods slowly, taking this in, and for a second I think he is going to start crying. His eyes water, his hands move to his forehead, pulling on his eyebrows, as if trying to stop the tears. These tears of relief that there is a window open to his seeing his niece again—and tears of utter sadness that seeing her for the last decade has been an impossibility.

  “And what about my father?” he says.

  “I don’t think he wants her to have anything to do with Nicholas,” I say. “But the fact that Ethan put you in there lets me know that my husband trusted you, even if you seem pretty conflicted about that.”

  He shakes his head, like he can’t believe this is his reality. It’s a feeling I can relate to.

  “This is an old battle,” he says. “And Ethan isn’t innocent. You think he is. But you don’t know the whole story.”

  “I know I don’t.”

  “So what do you think? That you’re going to talk to my father and broker some peace between him and Ethan? It doesn’t matter, nothing you say matters. Ethan betrayed my father. He destroyed his life and ended my mother’s life in the process. And if there’s nothing I can do to mend this, then there’s nothing you can do either.”

  Charlie is struggling. I see it. I see him struggling with what to tell me about his father, what to tell me about Owen. If he offers up too little, I won’t walk away from him. Maybe I won’t walk away if he says too much either. And he wants me to walk away. He thinks it’s better for everybody if I do. But I am playing past that. Because I know there is only one way to make things better now.

  “How long have you been married to him?” he says. “To Ethan?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “He’s not who you think he is.”

  “So I keep hearing,” I say.

  “What has Ethan told you?” he says. “About my sister?”

  Nothing, I want to say. Nothing I know to be true. She doesn’t, after all, have fierce red hair or love science. She didn’t go to college in New Jersey. She may very well not know how to swim across a pool. I know now why he told us all those things—why he made up such an elaborate backstory. It was so, on the off chance the wrong person ever approached Bailey, if the wrong person ever suspected Bailey of being who she actually was, she’d be able to look that person in the eye and honestly deny it. My mother is a redheaded swimmer. My mother is nothing like the person you think I belong to.

  I meet Charlie’s eyes, answer honestly. “He hasn’t told me much. But he once told me how much I would have liked her,” I say. “He told me we would have liked each other.”

  Charlie nods, but he stays quiet. And I can feel all the questions he has about my life with Owen, all the questions about Bailey: about who she is now and what she likes now and how she may still be a little like his lost sister, who he clearly loved. But he can’t ask any of those questions, not without fielding questions of his own, questions for which he doesn’t want to provide answers.

  “Look,” he says, “if you want someone to tell you that there’s enough goodwill because of Kristin that my father can get over what happened between him and Ethan, that they can reach some kind of truth, they can’t. He won’t. It doesn’t work like that. My father isn’t over it.”

  “I know that too,” I say.

  And I do know that. But I’m banking on the fact that Charlie wants to help me anyway. Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be having a different conversation—a conversation neither of us wants to have about what Owen has done to this family. And to me. We’d be having a conversation that would break my heart wide open.

  He looks at me more gently. “Did I scare you earlier?” he says.

  “I should be asking you that.”

  “I didn’t mean to come at you the way I did. It was just that you surprised the hell out of me,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe how many people come here, stirring up trouble for my father. All these crime junkies who saw the trial coverage on Court TV, who think they know my father, who want autographs. Even all these years later. I think we’re on som
e criminal enterprise tour of Austin. Us and the Newton Gang…”

  “That sounds awful,” I say.

  “It is,” he says. “It’s all awful.”

  Charlie looks at me, taking me in. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing. I think you’re still hoping for a happy ending. But this story doesn’t end well,” he says. “It can’t.”

  “I know it can’t. I’m just hoping for something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  I pause. “That it doesn’t end here.”

  On the Lake

  Charlie drives.

  We head northwest of the city past Mount Bonnell and into Texas Hill Country. Suddenly I’m surrounded by rolling hills, trees and foliage everywhere, the lake muted outside the car windows, tepid. Unmoving.

  The rain abates as we turn down Ranch Road. Charlie doesn’t say much, but he tells me that his parents bought their Mediterranean estate nestled on the shores of the lake a couple of years ago—the year Nicholas got out of prison, the year before his mother died. This was his mother’s dream house, he says, this private retreat, but Nicholas has stayed there since her death, on his own. I learn later that it cost them a cool ten million dollars—this estate which, as I see on a plaque at the foot of the driveway, Charlie’s mother, Meredith, named THE SANCTUARY.

  It is easy to see why she has chosen this name. The estate is enormous, wildly beautiful, and private. Entirely private.

  Charlie enters a code and the metal gates open to reveal a cobblestone driveway, at least a quarter of a mile long, that slowly winds its way to a small guardhouse. The guardhouse is covered in vines, making it inconspicuous.

  The main house is less inconspicuous. It looks like it belongs on the French Riviera—complete with cascading balconies, an antique-tile roof, a stone facade. Most notable are the gorgeous bay windows running at least eight feet tall, welcoming you, inviting you in.

  We pull up to the guardhouse and a bodyguard emerges. He is pro-linebacker huge, dressed in a tight suit.

  Charlie unrolls the window as the bodyguard bends down, leans against the driver’s-side window. “Hiya, Charlie,” he says.