Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “They?” I manage to say.

  “But if you write the true truth, Mercer, here’s the thing. No one but Katherine will ever read it. If you hand in that book? That book will vanish. Because Katherine will know I told you. And boom. Gone.” She picks up her empty wineglass, puts it down again. Shakes her head, once, twice, dismissing. “Who knows. It may already be too late.”

  I watch the downpour muddle the window, my front yard change into an impressionist painting of unrecognizable green and brown and gray. Or maybe that’s my brain. Maybe it’s the four-in-the-afternoon wine. Maybe it’s impossible for me to see anything in the world as it really is any more. “Too late for what?”

  “Or maybe not.” She puts up two palms, as if stopping her own thought. “Listen. Katherine’s got to contact you soon. She’ll act like it’s to see if we’re making the deadline, but it’ll really be to find out whether you’ve gotten me to ‘confess.’ If you say yes, then she’ll know she’s got a problem. That I talked. She and her pals will also realize that you know too much.”

  “I? ‘Know too much?’” My wineglass is empty, too. We’re going through a lot of wine. And we keep using the same words. “I don’t know anything.”

  “That’s what you think. But maybe you do. You don’t really know, right? And that’s my problem. Our problem. It only matters what they think is true.”

  “But there is a truth, Ashlyn. There is what happened to Tasha.” I’m clearheaded enough to remember that, at least.

  “So what? All that matters is what they decide to believe. Just like a jury.” She stands and paces, like she always does, this time from kitchen window to the back wall. I turn my head like a tennis game to follow her.

  “Look. Katherine set both of us up. Not just me. From you, she wanted Dex, obviously. And now she can’t have him. Obviously. Right?”

  She stops, her expression sympathetic, head tilted. “And you’re the one who caused his death, you know? I’m sorry, it sounds awful, but in her mind, you did. In her mind, it’s all your fault. You ruined her life. And she sees you as the reminder of that. Plus, she’s relying on your self-guilt. That you’re thinking—if only I had been a better driver. A better wife. A better mother.”

  “Ashlyn!” I stand, almost crashing my chair over. “Come on. That’s cruel. Completely cruel. Responsibility? Me? I spent my whole life—”

  She backs off. “Well, okay, but you might have died, too, you can’t deny that. And if you had died, she’d be totally off the hook. But you didn’t die. You just killed the rest of your family. Sorry to say so, but you did. If you’re facing reality.”

  She’s right, of course. I’ve beaten myself up with that every day for the past 486 days. Every single day. But I never connected Katherine with the accident. And I still can’t.

  “Look, I’ve thought about this,” I say. “Katherine meant to kill me? She cut my brakes? Drugged me? Or something? So she could be with Dex and Sophie?”

  “Oh, now you remember? Your brakes didn’t work? That’s pretty interesting, right?”

  I sit down again. Cross my arms over my chest. The brakes were fine. I’m pretty sure. “No. That’s totally insane.”

  I’m so enraged that I say insane on purpose.

  But she just keeps talking. And pacing again.

  “But what if.” She holds up one finger as she heads back toward the sink. “They sent me to you—to test me. To see if I’ll keep my promise not to talk. Katherine herself set you up for it.” She mimes air quotes, makes her tone cloying and obsequious. “‘Oh, Mercer, you can get her to tell you everything.’ Am I right?”

  She is, but it would’ve been easy for Ashlyn to guess that.

  “Katherine gave you that wet T-shirt photo of me, didn’t she?” Ashlyn persists. “To make me look bad. But she completely misrepresented that, didn’t she? Ever wonder who gave it to her?”

  I try to answer, but she keeps talking.

  “So. If I fail the ‘test,’ and tell you what really happened—I’m dead. And you are, too. But Katherine would win anyway, because she has control. If you write something they don’t want made public—she can easily make sure that book never sees the light of day.”

  I don’t believe any of it. But what worries me is that in some twisted world, I can semi-envision it. I’m relieved the thunder did not clap at that point. It would’ve been too ridiculous. Instead, it keeps raining.

  “On the other hand.” Ashlyn pulls up a chair next to me, scoots it closer, out of its normal place. “If you fail, and I don’t tell you the truth—that’s our only chance. Katherine still wins, because her secret is safe. But she’ll think I kept my promise and duped you. She doesn’t care if you don’t get me to confess. She wants us to lie. That’s what she wants.”

  What’s the word—stupefied? I’m sure that’s how I look.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Mercer. But I’m telling you. That’s the only answer.” Ashlyn nods, agreeing with herself. She stands, and opens one of the kitchen cabinets, then another. Yanks out a bag of pretzels, and opens it with her teeth. Salt spills onto the kitchen floor.

  “Listen.” She sets the bag on the table, open end facing her. “It doesn’t matter what you think or believe. About me, or about anything. We’ve—you’ve—got to write a story that proves to them you don’t know. You’ve got to make something up. In the end, Katherine gets a book, and you get a book, and I get to be truly free.”

  “Make something up?”

  “That a new concept to you?” She whaps my arm with the back of her hand, as if she’s told a good joke. “Making up a story?”

  I move my arm away from her. She pulls out a pretzel, stabs a finger through a loop. Takes a bite. Then another.

  “Who is they, though?” My turn to talk. She’s never gotten close to telling me that. Or maybe she has.

  “Mercer, for crap sake, do you not understand what I’m telling you? You don’t want to know that!” She swallows, then puts her hands together in front of her mouth, breaths into her prayer-like palms. Then points them at me. “Listen. If you get too close to the truth in what you write, I’ll stop you. But it’s better for you—trust me—if you don’t exactly know.”

  Still no thunderclap, thank goodness. “Make something up?” I repeat.

  “It’s only a book, for god sakes.” She rolls her eyes. “Right? If it’s true enough, there’s no law that says it has to be the whole real story.”

  Feel of real is how Katherine herself had put it. But screw her, right? Although I’m still not entirely convinced about her and Dex. I wish I had analyzed what was in his dresser drawers before I trashed everything. Wish I had researched our credit card bills, even looked at them, but I never had. I never questioned his dinners out “with clients.”

  “You’re a reporter,” Ashlyn waves a pretzel at me. “They always make stuff up.”

  My turn to roll my eyes. No, we don’t. I suppose.

  “But if we do that, Ashlyn, make something up, the public will never know who killed Tasha Nicole. Don’t you care?” If she loved her daughter, wouldn’t that be an unthinkable outcome? “That person will never be brought to justice.”

  “I understand that, right?” She drags her hands down her face, as if wiping her expression away. “But listen. Which is more important? Meaningless ‘justice’ for my poor dead Tashie—or saving your own life? And frankly, mine?”

  “You honestly think…” Crazy? Or not? Did I want to find out? And I realize I said “the public will never know who killed Tasha Nicole.” As if I’m accepting Ashlyn didn’t. “You honestly think, and I cannot believe I’m saying this, you honestly think we’re in danger?”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely. But we don’t have to be. If you want the truth, fine. I’ll tell you. But then we—you—have to come up with a different story. A plausible, believable story. It’ll be a big bestseller for you, like, you’ll be the only one who could convince the truly innocent A
shlyn Bryant to tell the real story.” She makes air quotes again. “If they go for it, we’ll both be safe. Otherwise—”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Otherwise I don’t know. Or maybe I do. Another accident.”

  Truth? Or not?

  Maybe I’m beyond comprehending what’s true. Maybe it’s unknowable. What does it matter what’s in some book? I’m only a writer. No matter what anyone writes, people believe what they believe.

  Have I been living a lie? That’s all that matters to me now. Easier to create someone else’s reality than to face my own.

  “Okay,” I say, toasting Ashlyn with my empty glass. “Let’s find you a new truth.”

  But how will I find a new one for me?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “I don’t see anyone watching us,” Ashlyn says. First thing she did after coming into the living room this morning was go to the front window, pull the edge of the linen curtain liner in front of her face, and try to look outside without being seen. Her second Wednesday morning—and last, thank goodness—in my house. “But I guess we wouldn’t be able to tell. How’re you doing on the book?”

  I drink the last of my coffee, place the mug on a People magazine Ashlyn left on the coffee table. I’m in jeans and a T-shirt, frazzled and exhausted. I’d stayed up late last night working on the book—honestly trying to write. But it’s more difficult to originate fiction than to embellish reality, and everything I wrote was terrible. Phony, coincidental, ludicrous. I deleted it all. When I put 487 on the mirror this morning, I saw dark circles under my dark circles. I’m working in the living room today, instead of the study. Computer on my lap and not the desk. Maybe a change of scene will give me inspiration.

  “No one’s watching us,” I say, not answering her question. “What’s there to see?”

  She sprawls onto the striped wingchair, cutoffs and bare feet, and I’m hoping she hasn’t slathered on that orange sunscreen. The chair survived Sophie, but it couldn’t survive that. Yesterday’s rain has stopped, but Wednesday can’t decide whether to go gray or golden.

  “I have an idea,” she says.

  “Terrific,” I say. Which is a good thing, since I certainly don’t. I’m trying, and failing, to write a true-crime book that’s not true. Because all I want is Ashlyn out of my life. And Katherine out of my life. I can’t think about her and Dex. When this book is done, Ashlyn and Katherine will disappear. The rest of it never will.

  “What if…” She crosses her legs on the chair, yoga style. Her cheeks are still pink from the sun, her lips glossed, her hair in a soft ponytail. No dark circles. “I’m not saying this is true, obviously, just what if. What if my stepfather was like, running drugs. When he did the Mercy Flights. I know he flew to Boston, all the time. That’s real. He knew about the Boston airport. And, you know, the harbor. But what if he was a drug mule for maybe Ron Chevalier? And at some point, they got caught. And Katherine, who like I said before, knew Tom from Ohio but is now in Boston and has connections, suggested Dex be their lawyer.”

  My terrible ideas were more plausible than this one, but as long as she’s talking, I’ll listen.

  “I mean,” she goes on, “there’d be no reason for Dex to tell you about some piddly drug case from Ohio. But if Katherine sent it to him—Oh! like she sent me to you, remember? Wow. Two birds with one stone? Right? Anyway, possibly Dex didn’t want to mention it to you, because of, you know. Or didn’t want to say anything about her connection?”

  “What connection?”

  “Whatever we decide it was.” Ashlyn rolls her eyes. “I mean, we haven’t come up with that yet. Did Dex tell you about every case he got? Like, before he knew you?”

  “I guess not.” My bare feet are propped on the coffee table, and I can feel my knees getting stiff. I tuck a throw pillow behind the small of my back, and pop the laptop screen to black. Before he knew you. “He told me about some of them, sure, but not all, I suppose.”

  It’s true, I didn’t know everything about his entire life. Clearly not. I’d met Dex on an interview for a story about a financial blackmailer I was writing for City. He and I we pretended the only reason we had drinks afterward was to continue talking business. That charade lasted about an hour. We were married within a year. But I am no longer thinking about that. I’m not. Or anything that happened afterward.

  “So how about that for a beginning?” Ashlyn says. “Say the drug people used Tasha as a hostage, told me they’d kill her if I ratted them out. People would believe that, right? You can take it from there.”

  “Not really, Ash.” I shake my head. “You can’t simply make up actions and motivations out of thin air. The book’s got to include what was presented in court, and use that to explain your side of the story. There’s no evidence about drugs, or Mercy Flights, or your stepfather. Nothing at all. Your story has to feel realer than that.”

  “Oh right. Good point.” She shifts position in the wing chair, dangles her bare legs over one side and rests her head on the opposite armrest. “Hmm. Let me think.”

  I stare at the keyboard in my lap, reconsidering. Yesterday I was scared, then sad, and hurt, and—okay, drunk, and basically completely out of it. But “making something up” is a terrible idea. Ridiculous. Bizarre. When the time comes, I’ll tell Katherine I can’t make the deadline. Or something. Not sure how I’ll deal with her, though. That’s what kept me up last night.

  “So. About Katherine.” As if Ashlyn’s reading my mind. She sits up, plants her feet on the carpet. Leans forward, earnest. “She’s got to be involved with this, because, and this part is true: Tom sent Katherine to me. Suggested I tell my story to her. My mother wanted Tom and her—Mom I mean—to stay totally out of my life, but now I’m thinking. What if Tom worried about keeping me quiet? And wasn’t sure he could do it alone? I mean, they’re like, on a cruise in the Caribbean now. Can you believe it? How’d they pay for that? And what if she never comes back? Like, drowns or something?”

  “What?” I say. Now Ashlyn’s cribbing from another tabloid story.

  “Just saying, Mercer. A cruise! Anyway, Tom was probably counting on me being convicted, then it wouldn’t matter what I said, it’d just be the ravings of a whacked-out murderer. But once I got that not guilty—wait. Maybe that’s where Dex came in. They needed legal advice about whether they could get me convicted of something else.”

  That, I know is wrong. Do I have to say it? “Dex was dead then.”

  “Okay, okay, right.” She grimaces briefly. “That’s why I need you, to keep this all straight. Okay, so he and Katherine must have been involved before. During the drug case.”

  “What ‘drug case’? You just made up the drug case.” I put the laptop on the coffee table. Check for coffee, but my mug is still empty. A tiny ray of sun attempts its way through the front window. “‘He and Katherine?’ Meaning Tom and Katherine? Or Dex?”

  “We’ll figure that out. Maybe Dex was why the cops were hanging around here last week. Because maybe Joe Riss was involved, too?”

  Ashlyn stands, then paces again, front window to the sliding back doors, then back to the living room, back and forth. She sits on the couch, facing me. “Seriously.” She tucks one leg under her. “Not for the book, but for real. Joe Riss and Katherine—did they know each other?”

  I remember closing arguments day, and peanut-butter sandwiches on this very couch, and Dex’s boxes arriving, and Joe’s tattersall shirt. When everything seemed semi-normal. “Of course they did. You know that. You told me that.”

  “Oh, right. And Dex and Katherine knew each other.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. So what?”

  “So now you need to find out how the three of them are connected. Joe. Dex. And Katherine. Not for the book. Not for me. For real life. For you.” She nods, pressing her lips together. “You’re doing this for you. Listen, do you think you could get into your husband’s law office? Look at his files? I’ll go with you, if doing it by yourself would be too diff
icult. Because of what you know about Katherine.”

  “It’s only a photograph.” I hear the edge in my words. “It doesn’t mean anything.” It’s so unnerving that I introduced Katherine and Dex. But wait, that’s wrong. She knew I interviewed him for that blackmailer story—but I thought it was my idea. Did she send me to him? Set us up? “So what if they knew each other? Nothing sinister about that.”

  I make it true by saying it.

  “And I just cannot believe, not for a moment,” I go on, persuading myself, “that Dex would do that. To me. And Sophie. And us. No.”

  “Okay, fine. End of discussion.” Ashlyn stands, brushes off her palms. “Forget the heart. We’ll just agree there’s no connection between them. Or between them and what happened to Sophie. Not to mention Tasha. Write the book any way you want.”

  She takes a few steps toward the hallway, then turns back to me. “And Mercer, listen. I’ll shut up about it. I promise. If you don’t want to know the truth about your own life, like, if it’s easier not to know it, or makes you happier not to know it, great.”

  “I care about the truth,” I say. “But it’s only a photo.”

  “Right. Listen, I’m only trying to help here. Say … if you went to his office. You could get like, schedules. Diaries. Letters. Maybe there’s something. And if there’s nothing, all good, right? Because then you would know for sure.”

  “I do know for sure, Ashlyn. Dex loved me. Beyond question.”

  “Good then,” she says. “More power to you.”

  “Great.” So that’s over.

  “I’m just saying, you know,” she points at her own chest, “if I thought my husband was having a big affair with a good friend, or like, my boss, it’d kill me. But you’re okay with it. The possibility I mean.”

  “The poss—”