Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “I…” She takes a breath. “I called my parents to say I’d get her the next day, and if that was okay, I was going to Ron’s.”

  “And then?” I take the calendar back, rip off the page, tuck it in my pocket. Shove the rest back into the drawer. Wonder if there’s Advil in there.

  “The next day I went to pick her up. And she wasn’t there. My mother wasn’t there, either. My father told me—I wasn’t to say a word.”

  “Your father.”

  “Stepfather.”

  “What did he tell you? Not say a word about what?”

  “Is this what we’re supposed to be doing?” She gets up, puts two English muffins in the new toaster. Her cutoffs are very short, but she’s twenty-something, and I suppose that’s what they wear. “Aren’t we supposed to be going over the trial, like we were before?”

  “Sure, we’ll do that. But Ashlyn, why didn’t you tell anyone you’d dropped her at your parents and she wasn’t there the next day? I mean, isn’t that an instant ‘not guilty’? Wait—are you saying now your parents killed Tasha? And tried to frame you for it? Your stepfather? Your mother? Your stepfather didn’t testify. Is that why? If Quinn knew all that—”

  Ashlyn nods.

  “—why didn’t she call him?” I finish my sentence. “Or why didn’t you testify to that?”

  “I wanted to! I truly wanted to.” She leans toward me, pushes her coffee away. “I wanted to get up there and rip that jerk Spofford’s face off. But Quinn wouldn’t let me. She said she was pretty sure I’d be found not guilty—there were no forensics, remember? They couldn’t prove when and where and how Tasha died. I remember her exact words about me testifying. I’ll tell you if you don’t use them.”

  I hold out both palms, agreeing. She makes such a big deal out of everything.

  She opens her mesh bag and takes out a tube—my tube—of citrusy-sweet sunscreen, and squeezes a melon-colored strip onto her bare leg.

  “She told me, ‘you’d better keep quiet.’” Ashlyn smooths on the orange goo, wipes her hand on her—my—cloth napkin. “She said, ‘The only thing you could do is screw it up.’ Exact words.”

  The coffeemaker beeps that it’s out of water just as the muffins pop from the toaster.

  Ashlyn coats her other leg. Then stands. “I’ll go get the newspaper,” she says.

  Screw it up. I mull that over. Quinn was only invested in a not guilty. It’s the verdict that matters to her, not the reality. But if Ashlyn knew what happened, or offered some remotely plausible explanation, wouldn’t Quinn have followed that reasonable doubt to the ends of the earth? Why not show who the real killer is? Why not set up a sensational Perry Mason moment and hit the verdict out of the ballpark?

  I smell the sweetness of mango sunscreen before I see Ashlyn in the kitchen door. Does it take this long to get the paper?

  She puts the thick Sunday Globe, encased in its yellow plastic wrapper, on the kitchen table.

  “Is there a cat in the neighborhood?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. Cat? “Why? Did you see a cat?”

  She shrugs. “Nope. But there was a dead chipmunk on your front steps. A baby.”

  “What?” I stand, thinking of my bare feet and wondering where I put the dustpan. The English muffins lose their appeal. “Poor little thing,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I got rid of it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I peel off my T-shirt, push back the shower curtain, turn on the faucet. We’re meeting in the study in fifteen. Wonder what Ashlyn’s story of the day will be.

  It’s naive of me to expect her to make sense. She’s a liar. That’s why she didn’t testify. Of course I haven’t forgotten her “they’re out to get me” and “you’re involved, too” pronouncements, but she dodges every time I ask her to clarify. Changes the subject, or says she was kidding, or says it doesn’t matter. Truth is, she was lying.

  She admitted lying to Joe Riss, too. Wonder if Katherine knows he’s missing? If he’s missing. I haven’t heard from her. Or him. So I have no one to ask. Should I call Overbey? Or does that make me look suspicious? That’s ridiculous, but who knows what he thinks. Besides, I could never let Ashlyn know I called him.

  Quicksand.

  I reach a hand into the shower, testing. I have to admit, though, with a whole week gone by, I’m losing hope I can trick Ashlyn into confessing. In truth, I’m flat-out failing. Like Wadleigh Rogowicz. And like Royal Spofford, who—as Ashlyn herself reminded me—wielded the power of law enforcement and the entire judicial system. I’m only a writer, I reassure myself as the shower water finally heats up enough. There is a truth, there is a justice, but maybe I’m not the one who can find it. I have such a headache.

  Immersed in soapsuds, I feel like I’m washing more than a dead creature off me, even though I wasn’t the one who disposed of it. Maybe I should decide that whatever her story is, fine. I’m paid to write it. Besides, the only thing worse than letting a crazy murderer go free is a crusading reporter getting it wrong.

  When I write our numbers on the mirror, 484, I try hard to connect. “Is it possible she’s innocent?” I whisper. But Dex and Sophie don’t answer. “Would it be okay if I let go? If I gave up on this?” No answer to that either. I have such a headache. Might as well face reality. I have a hangover.

  I open the medicine cabinet for ibuprofen, and as I take out the white plastic bottle, I see my labeled prescription container of Ambien. Which is not where it usually is. Or is it?

  Advil, hand lotion, aspirin. All where I left them. Tiny faceted perfume samples. Three lipsticks. All in place. And the Ambien. Which is not.

  The sleeping pills are mostly there for backup. I haven’t taken one in months, but it’s reassuring to know they’re available. I put down the Advil and secure the towel I’ve wrapped around me, cinching it tighter. I twist open the Ambien bottle, rattle the pills. What I’m looking for, I don’t know. I have no idea how many orange ovals were left.

  I twist the bottle closed. This headache is a hangover. Too much wine.

  Wine. I think of the wine. And then Ashlyn’s insistence that I had the wrong glass. If someone—Ashlyn—put pills in my wine, she certainly wouldn’t be so stupid as to essentially point it out. If you’re gonna drug someone, you’ve got to be more subtle than that. If she’d blown it, she simply wouldn’t drink hers. And try her ploy again later.

  Plus, wouldn’t I have tasted it? You can’t just put medicine in wine and expect someone not to notice. Unless it’s the third glass, maybe.

  But what would be her goal?

  I turn on the water in the sink to splash my face. When I bend over, my towel falls to the floor. The chill I feel may not be only because I’m naked. The running water reminds me of this morning. When I came into the kitchen, Ashlyn was washing the wineglasses. I thought she’d decided to be helpful.

  I wrap the towel again, and slug down four ibuprofen. When I put back the pills and close the mirrored cabinet, my numbers are gone.

  What are Dex and Sophie trying to tell me? I open the cabinet again, take out the pills. Clutching my towel and pill bottle in hand, I take the two steps into the hall, then one step into my bedroom. Close the door. Think.

  Am I the crazy one?

  If Ashlyn gets rid of whatever gets in her way, and she’s decided I’m in her way, and she tries to kill me, that’d be completely stupid. She’d be the first suspect. But wait. My shoulders sag, and I lean against the closed bedroom door. If she runs? They wouldn’t even look for her. No one knows she’s here. Except for Quinn. Who’s gone. And Kath. Who’s been out of touch. And Joe. Who’s strangely unavailable.

  And yeah, I’m the one who hid her from the cops.

  Am I the crazy one?

  I open the top drawer of my dresser, scoot aside the folded underwear and my passport and my envelope of secret money—secret from who?—and stash the pill bottle way in the back. Like that’s not the first place someone would look. But no
one is going to look. I take the pill bottle out, and push it between and mattress and the box spring. Like that’s not the second place someone would look. Maybe I should just dump the pills down the toilet, flush, and then they’ll be gone. And with that flush, I’d punish only myself, since I’ve made up this entire drama about a pill bottle that may or may not have moved.

  I am the crazy one.

  But I’ll leave them under the mattress for now.

  Ashlyn’s in the study. Standing in front of my desk. Almost blocking it from me. Shadows from the shutter slats behind the open curtains make prison bars on her face.

  “Hi, Merce,” she says. As if we hadn’t just been talking. “Can I confess something to you?”

  My face must have some kind of surprised look, I can feel it, but this is the last thing I’d expected. Confess? Hey. Maybe to get what you want, you have to give up the quest and let go. Maybe I’m wrong about the pills. I’m dry and dressed. The ibuprofen seems to be working. If Ashlyn the Drama Queen wants to confess, I don’t care if she was in the study alone. I’m ready.

  “Confess?”

  “Yeah. I took one of your Ambiens,” she says. “I’ve been feeling guilty about it all morning. You probably wouldn’t miss it, but I couldn’t sleep, not after last night, and I was so upset. And then I—like this morning, I couldn’t remember if I’d put the bottle back in the right place, so, I don’t know, I didn’t want you to worry. Or like, think I was a sneak or something.”

  “I didn’t notice,” I lie. Now I’ll have to put them back. Because she’ll certainly look the next time she’s in there. Checking to see if I’m telling the truth.

  But wait. Does she mean she “took” it? Like swallowed it? Or took it? As in—took it from the bottle and put it in my wine? I certainly can’t ask. And whatever the answer, it might not be true. But I still have to put the rest of the pills back. It’s a signal, almost, that I trust her. Which I don’t.

  “So I owe you, now,” she’s saying, smiling as she perches on the edge of the big chair. “And really, thanks for your patience. I tend to be kinda mood-swingy, you know? I can’t get past that I’m always waiting for the bad thing to happen, like it always does, and I can’t do anything to stop it. But fire up that laptop, okay? And I’ll tell you an important part of the story.”

  “Okay,” I say. Ambien episode over, apparently. As I open a new file, I think—will the truth be true this time?

  Ashlyn’s scooted back into the big study chair, the soles of her bare feet on one upholstered arm. Sophie used to sit that way, but I’m not thinking about that. Sophie’s legs were much shorter, and I loved her how bright-blue stripey dress matched the narrow stripes in the chair.

  “Let me ask you something, Mercer,” Ashlyn is saying. “Who do you think Tasha’s father is?” She gives a tiny smile. “I know you talked to Joe Rissinelli about it.”

  She knows? How? I had my uncertainties about Joe, but it’s odd that he told her that he told me. Although, since I know that part is true, it’s possible Ashlyn’s finally about to spill something else that’s true. I need to encourage her to keep talking.

  “Joe’s a colleague, sure. But he’s never told me he met with you, or interviewed you. Let alone revealed whatever you might have said.” I’m twisting the truth a bit here, trying to protect a fellow reporter. Wherever he is. I’ve continued leaving messages on his phone, but he doesn’t have it. Or didn’t. And the police still haven’t called. “Did you tell him who Tasha’s father is?”

  “Was.” Ashlyn corrects me, pointing a finger. “I told Joe, like, off the record? That Tasha’s father was dead. Killed in a car accident before Tasha was born. But to prove I trust you, I’ll confess about that, too. I made that up. I had to protect myself, didn’t I? From having people know the real truth?”

  My brain shuffles possibilities, then reshuffles them. I can almost hear the sound of it. Protect? Real truth? Joe had told me Tasha’s father was killed in a car accident. No way could I forget that. And his name was … ah. Unusual, like—Marker. Darker. Barker. Barker … Holt.

  “But Mercer,” Ashlyn goes on. “Who do you think would be the one person, the one, that would not only ruin my life, but Tasha’s and my so-called family’s?”

  “Ashlyn? The one person?” I flap down the laptop so I can see her. “I—I don’t want to guess.”

  “Tom. Tom. Tom.” Her voice darkens each time she repeats her stepfather’s name. She draws her knees close to her chest. “Mercer? My stepfather raped me, more than once, and threatened he’d kill me if I told. He said no one would ever believe me, that no one—”

  I shouldn’t interrupt, but this is exactly what I’d been getting at for the past however many days. She claimed she hadn’t told me anything like that. I remember her denials perfectly. Because I didn’t believe them. That “Tom plus Ashlyn” thing had been pretty darn convincing.

  “But Ashlyn, when I tried to bring that up the morning after you first mentioned it, you insisted—”

  She puffs out a breath. Her arms tighten around her legs. “It’s not that fun to talk about. I’ve never discussed it with anyone. Not anyone. But that’s why I’ve been so—I don’t know. Difficult about this.”

  I let that hang for a moment, wondering if the truth has a different sound.

  “I’m so sorry,” I feel I need to say. “But Ashlyn, if you knew…” Thin ice here. “If you knew your stepfather was the father of your child—why did you—I mean, why didn’t you…”

  “It was a life, Mercer. How could I take a life? What mother could do that?”

  And with that she bursts into tears, and I can’t help it, I do, too. I go to the chair, crowding next to her, and put one arm around her shoulders. We’re both crying, and I’m thinking of Sophie, and how often I comforted her in this very chair, for her earache, or a stubbed toe, or something she wasn’t even old enough to articulate. My poor tiny little Sophie, and I can’t help it, I’m crying too hard, and Ashlyn is, too. I can feel her body trembling, and she’s so thin I can feel her bones and the sharp jab of her shoulder blade, and I think about Dex, and how much Sophie loved him. And me. And us. And here’s Ashlyn, twenty-something and single, and her baby daughter relying on her for the entire world, not knowing, consciously, that she was missing a father.

  It’s almost awkward, the muffled sounds of our tears, and being so close to her, and now the silence. The ghosts of our loss. I’m not her friend. But I cannot ignore her. No matter what, I know how she must feel. She must.

  I have to get up, somehow get us back to an equilibrium, balancing not only our shared, or not-shared, grief, but our roles in this project.

  “Want some water?” I say, edging toward the door. My nose is probably red, and my eyes, too. Hers are, as she looks up at me.

  “It was probably selfish, to keep her, I mean,” she whispers. She wipes her eyes with a corner of her pink T-shirt. “I couldn’t promise a wonderful future for that sweet baby inside me.”

  She adjusts herself in the chair, straightens her back. Shakes her head as she continues. “But when I finally faced the fact that I was pregnant, it was probably too late anyway.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ashlyn.” Being genuine now. I mean, who wouldn’t be sorry.

  She slaps her palms on the arms of the chair, one on each. As if closing a chapter, and opening another. “But. Tom.” Her voice goes harsher, and she tosses her hair. “Tom insisted he’d make my life miserable if I said a word. He told me to ‘make up’ a father. A one-night stand, or something. He even said, ‘You’re such a party girl, no one will be surprised.’”

  “Really?” I perch against the edge of the desk. Talk about harsh.

  “Yeah. He said my baby would be taken away. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that, a creature who’d been given life by mistake, what would be the best? I was so confused. And then, so, I had to get out of the house and I had to get away, and I wouldn’t, couldn’t, could never tell my mother or anyone, not anyone…�
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  I try to picture all this as Ashlyn’s words spill out faster and faster. Try to compare what I know with this new reality. But what do I know is true? I’d read about the Bryants in newspapers and magazines, that’s how I “know” what they did and said and thought. But all that’s only what some writer like me decided to make true.

  Ashlyn’s still talking but my brain is spiraling into meltdown. Maybe I’ve spent the last week trying to ruin someone’s life, ruin it more than it was already ruined. Maybe I should be using the power of the written word—my words—for good. Instead of … whatever I thought I was doing.

  If I decided in advance not to believe a word she says, how can I be a fair jury? I’m exactly like Juror G, making up my mind without the facts. But unlike Juror G, I’m still in a position to make a horrendous decision. And make it public. And accept a lot of money for my lies. My heart begins to race, I can hear it, I swear, the rush and pounding in my ears.

  I’d kept asking Ashlyn to explain. She came up with answers, but then, every time, she confessed they weren’t true. But if she truly doesn’t know, as she keeps saying she doesn’t, she wouldn’t be able to tell me. No matter how many times or how cleverly I ask.

  Will it help Sophie and Dex if I write a book saying she’s guilty if she’s not? What if–I feel my brain take a tentative step—what if she’s innocent?

  Maybe this is what Dex and Sophie have been trying to tell me. That I’m wrong. I’m wrong? Someone else killed Tasha Nicole? But who?

  I begin to rearrange the puzzle as Ashlyn talks. Undo my own Rubik’s Cube. See if the pieces might fit together in a different way. A predatory stepfather. A hateful jealous mother. Stolen goods. Ron? Drugs. Valerie? Luke? Ashlyn’s chloroform explanation, what if that’s true? No chloroform was found, not anywhere.

  So how could she have killed Tasha with chloroform? No one ever explained that. The jury certainly didn’t believe she did.

  Even the wet T-shirt. She had a perfectly innocent explanation for that, too.

  She has an explanation for everything. But what if it’s not “explanation”? What if it’s truth?