The Noel Stranger
Page 18
“The trial hadn’t gone well.” He smiled darkly. “That’s an understatement. To begin with, I had already confessed to the crime, so I had no leverage. Nothing to bargain with.”
I remembered what Clive told me the other evening about not pleading guilty.
“There was no doubt that I was going to prison. The only question was for how long. So there I was, numb and nauseated, my mind spinning like a top, wondering how long it would be before I saw my house again. I felt crazy, like I was losing my mind.
“Then, in the midst of that insane moment, Andrew walked into my house. Not exactly someone I wanted to see. Part of me wanted to punch him, but the fact was, I didn’t have any fight left in me. I asked him if he’d come to gloat or to steal. He said he came to talk. I said there was nothing left to talk about and no time to do it. I told him my lawyer would be there any minute to take me to court. He said, ‘I know. That’s why I’m here.’
“I said, ‘I’m going to prison, brother. I hope that makes you and your cronies happy.’ I took out my wallet and offered him a hundred-dollar bill. ‘Here, buy some champagne and have a toast on me. To your felon brother. May he rot in prison.’
“He just looked at me and said, ‘You’re not going to prison.’
“I said, ‘You clearly haven’t been following my trial.’ Just then my lawyer honked his horn outside. I said, ‘That’s my ride. Lock up after yourself.’
“I started to leave, but he said, ‘I’ve been following your trial, Aaron. You’re not going to prison, because I am.’ Then he set his driver’s license and keys on my counter, along with a small leather book. ‘I’ve put everything in order. These are the keys to my car and house. The house alarm number is the last four digits of your phone number. This notebook has every bank account, username, password, and code I have. It’s all yours. There’s a wall safe behind the floral painting in my bedroom. The combination to it is in the book. Inside the safe are keys to my safe deposit boxes and the Cabo condo. Everything else you can figure out.’
“ ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
“He said, ‘I’m taking your place. I’m going to leave with your lawyer, and you’re going to take my car and drive to my home and start a new life with my name. Now give me your driver’s license.’
“I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I told him, ‘You can’t do this.’
“His eyes welled up. ‘I have to do this,’ he said. ‘I helped them betray you. You never would have gotten caught up in any of this if it wasn’t for what I let them do to you.’
“I said, ‘I’m not going to let you.’
“He looked at me and said, ‘I figured you would probably say that. So I’m going to lay out your options. You can give me your license and let me do this, or you can go to prison while I go home and wait for the verdict. If you’re given anything besides probation, I’ll blow my head off with that Smith & Wesson you gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday.’ He stared me in the eye. ‘Believe it or not, I actually do have a conscience. I can’t live with what I’ve done. Guilt is its own kind of prison. It’s what hell is made of.
“ ‘Sorry to spring this on you, brother, but those are your options. You let me go to prison for a few years and attempt to make amends and assuage my guilt, or you go to prison with the knowledge that you killed your brother. That shouldn’t be too hard a decision.’ He held out his hand. ‘Now hurry and give me your license. I’m assuming my lawyer charges by the hour.’
“I took out my wallet and gave him my driver’s license. He said, ‘You might as well give me the whole wallet, because after today, Aaron Hill doesn’t exist outside of prison.’
“As I handed him my wallet, my cell phone rang. It was my lawyer. Andrew said, ‘I should take that too.’ He handed me his phone as he answered mine, saying he would be right out. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you. I hope this will help you forgive me.’ He began to turn, then stopped and said, ‘One more thing: I didn’t know Scott was cheating with Jamie. I would have prevented that if I could have. I would have told you. I’m not that despicable.’ I thanked him. He said, ‘Thank you for letting me do this. I’ll see you in a couple of years.’ Then he put on his sunglasses, walked out of my house, and drove away with my attorney.
“I went down to the courthouse to watch the rest of the trial. It was maddening seeing the prosecution paint me as a monster and watching my brother take it. When the jury pronounced their verdict, Andrew didn’t even flinch. After the gavel came down, my brother looked back and made eye contact with me. Then he nodded slightly and turned. The officer handcuffed him and took him away.”
He took a deep breath. “My brother gave me his name. For the last two years I’ve lived as Andrew Hill.” He looked at me. “He’s out now. He’s still in Colorado for the time being—but not as a convicted felon. I’ve given him his name back. He’s Andrew again. And I’m Aaron, the ex-convict with a record.”
I let the pronouncement settle. Then I said, “What if I told you that I love you no matter what you’ve done or what your name is?”
“I would say you’re a fool.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Good-bye, Maggie.”
“Where are you going?”
“Someplace where bad things never happen.”
CHAPTER
Forty-One
Today I had the most unexpected of visitors with the most unexpected of stories.
—Maggie Walther’s Diary
The commercial world of Christmas kept me busy. There were parties everywhere, and my company catered more than its share of them—sometimes up to three events a day.
I had already abandoned my plans to go back home to Oregon, cataloging the idea in the “What was I thinking?” file. I suppose it’s evidence of just how desperate I was to get away from my situation—like a coyote chewing off its leg to escape a trap.
I kept thinking how glad I would be when this year was over. These, no doubt, were days I would never forget, but I wanted to. Let’s just say I was looking forward to looking back on them.
With all the business, I was able to keep myself distracted. I was grateful for that. But that’s all it was: a distraction. You can throw a blanket over something you don’t want to see, but it’s still there.
I wondered where he was. I wondered how long it would be before I stopped thinking about him every day and could let him go. Apparently, that’s not what fate had in mind. My story still had one last twist.
It was a few days before Christmas. I had just returned home from catering a redneck wedding dinner that drew moments from The Twilight Zone—like when the drunk, obviously pregnant bride started yelling at her husband of six hours that he was ruining the day because he was more drunk than she was. Then one of the wedding guests loudly complained because we weren’t serving fried chicken and corn on the cob. I told her that the bride hadn’t ordered fried chicken and corn on the cob. The guest replied that that wasn’t her problem and asked what I planned to do about it. I told her there was a KFC just a few blocks away and I’d be happy to draw her a map.
As I was pulling into my driveway, I noticed a red, expensive-looking sports car idling in front of my house. I’m not an expert on cars, but I’m pretty sure it was a Ferrari. I wondered who it belonged to and why it was parked in front of my house.
I pulled into the garage and shut the door behind me. Then, as I walked into my house, the doorbell rang. I walked to the front door. After the brick incident, I’d had a peephole installed by the same people who replaced my window. I looked through it to see who was there. It was Aaron.
I fumbled madly with the lock and dead bolt and swung open the door. The excitement on my face must have been pretty obvious, because the man raised a hand and said, “I’m not who you think I am.”
I stopped, confused.
He stepped closer to me. “You’re Maggie, right? I’m Aaron’s brother, Andrew.”
He looked exactly like his bro
ther. He looked exactly like the man I loved.
“Come in,” I said.
He stepped into my living room. Even his mannerisms were the same as Aaron’s. I motioned to the couch. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you.”
I sat down in the armchair across from him. Andrew glanced at my Christmas tree and sat down. “Nice tree.”
“Andrew and I . . .” I caught myself. “Aaron and I decorated it. It was from his Christmas tree lot.”
“I thought it was a little strange that he got into that business. But if anyone can figure out how to make money selling Christmas trees, it’s him.”
Every time he looked at me I felt peculiar, as though it was him but also wasn’t. It’s like the time I made banana bread and someone had filled the sugar canister with salt. The bread looked the same, but it wasn’t. Finally, I said, “I’m sorry; this is . . . surreal. You and your brother look exactly alike.”
“Actually, I’m more buff than he is these days,” Andrew said. “I’ve had more time to work out in the gym lately.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, “how are you?”
“I’m out,” he said. “Out is good. Free is good.”
“I can’t believe you would do what you did for your brother.”
“That’s why I came to talk to you. If you knew how much he’d done for me, you wouldn’t be surprised. He was always looking out for me. And being a twin added another dimension to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, when I was in middle school, I desperately wanted to play on the school basketball team. I wasn’t a Jordan or a LeBron, but I had talent. I practiced every day to get ready for tryouts. The day tryouts began, some random kid at lunch thought it would be funny to drop a bowl of chili on my head. I broke his nose. Not surprisingly, I was sent to the principal’s office. The principal assigned me detention every night after school for the next two weeks. I told him I had basketball tryouts. He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you punched that boy.’
“There was nothing I could do about it. I could skip detention, but then I’d be suspended and wouldn’t be allowed to play anyway.
“After school I went to the library for detention. When I arrived, Aaron was already there. He had checked in under my name. He just looked at me and nodded. I went to tryouts and made the team. I needed that right then, and Aaron knew it. He always had my back.
“Unfortunately—mostly for me—our genetic duplication only went as far as our appearance. Personality-wise, we were salt and pepper. He was the salt; I was the pepper. I was impetuous; he was methodical. I was careless; he was disciplined. I got in fights; Aaron talked people out of them.
“Mostly, he had more smarts than anyone I’d ever known. He was the brains behind everything we did. I learned to just follow along, because he knew what he was doing; if I couldn’t keep up, he would pick up the slack. I even got an MBA because he did. Except while he was at home studying, I’d be out partying.
“My last year I had a final in global economics. The class was a nightmare. The professor was one of those bitter, arrogant types who treated his students like dirt, then rationalized his cruelty as ‘teaching moments.’ I hated the guy almost as much as I hated the class. I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t care enough to get into it.
“The day before the final, I took a practice exam to see how I would do. I failed it miserably. I knew I couldn’t pass the test. And if I didn’t pass it, I wouldn’t graduate.
“That night, instead of studying, I went out and partied all night. I woke the next day at noon with a wicked hangover. Not that it would have made much of a difference, but by the time I remembered the exam, I had missed it.
“I was embarrassed to tell Aaron. I hated letting him down. A couple of hours later, when he got home, I said, ‘I missed the test.’ He handed me my student ID and said, ‘No, you passed it. Now earn it.’ That’s the way it’s always been.
“When we started our company, I knew I was just riding his coattails, but I was okay with that. I mean, it had always been that way, and it beat punching a clock somewhere. Besides, I was more social and Aaron was more focused on work, so it was kind of a symbiotic relationship. Aaron never once treated me like I was a burden.
“He would bring in these super-wealthy investors, the kind of guys who could drop ten grand on a roulette wheel and not lose any sleep over it. Aaron took their money and made them richer. He was on fire, making all the right decisions, all the right acquisitions. He made just one mistake: he didn’t take credit for what he did. He was too absorbed in succeeding to tell everyone about his success. I once had a professor tell me, ‘In business, sometimes it’s better to look good than to be good.’ There may be some truth to that.
“So when the partners got greedy, they didn’t know I wasn’t making the same contribution Aaron was. Most of the time they didn’t even know which of us was which. They just knew Aaron was taking the largest piece of the pie, and they wanted it.
“They couldn’t make a move without me, since Aaron and I held the majority of the shares, but with my percentage, they could control everything. So they wined and dined me. They didn’t tell me they wanted Aaron out; they just flattered me by saying I should be the managing partner and offered me a rock-star salary and full ownership of the condominium in Cabo San Lucas. The one you stayed at.
“The truth was, it wasn’t the swag I fell for, it was their flattery. I wanted to believe that I was as good as my brother. I wanted to show Aaron that I was more than just his slacker twin.
“So, with my help, they took control. To my everlasting regret, they immediately pushed Aaron out of the company he had started.” Andrew shook his head. “I’ll never forget Aaron’s face when they told him. We were all gathered around the conference room table, but it was like no one else was in the room, just him and me. The whole time, Aaron just stared at me in disbelief.
“The vultures did give me the raise they said they would; they just hadn’t told me it would come from my brother’s paycheck.
“Aaron was devastated. Of course he was. I had betrayed him. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the next week his wife, Jamie, informed him that she had been having an affair with one of the investors and wanted a divorce. I think that’s when he snapped. He had lost his company and his wife. But the biggest hurt, I think, still came from my betrayal.
“Broken or not, Aaron was no quitter. Within a month he had started a new firm. It had the same business model, the same plan; the only difference was him. He was drinking heavily. He wasn’t careful. He wasn’t confident. Then, when some of his early investments didn’t pan out, he went off the rails.
“Rather than accept failure, he started taking his investors’ money and hiding it. I don’t know what his end game was—maybe he was planning to disappear off the grid—but we never found out. He couldn’t go through with it.
“After he turned himself in, I watched him self-destruct. He had lost everything: his reputation, his company, his wife, his family—and, worst of all, his self-respect. Thankfully he cooperated with the authorities. That’s why he got only a couple of years. A couple of years that I owed him.”
I let the story sink in. My heart ached for Aaron and what he’d been through, but in light of our situation, it seemed moot. “Why are you telling me this? Aaron and I aren’t together anymore.”
“That’s precisely why I’m telling you this. My brother visited me every week for those two years. Even after he moved to Utah. He would drive ten hours each way just so we could talk for an hour. I’d wait all week for that hour. It’s what got me through.
“It didn’t matter what we talked about. We’d usually start out discussing the latest headlines or sports, the Nuggets or Broncos, but we’d always end up talking business and some opportunities we could possibly pursue once I got out. Just like old times. Between the lines, he was assuring me that he had forgiven me. And he was leaving me with hope.”
“But then he left me.”
“For a reason. It’s because, in the same way he watched out for me, he was watching out for you. He doesn’t want the woman he loves to live with a broken man. It’s that simple. He left you because he loved you.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe not to most people, but it does to him. Some people love for what they can get. A rare few, like Aaron, love for what they can give. The measure of love isn’t how much you want someone. It’s revealed in what you want for them. He wanted you to have something better than life with a felon.”
“But he knew he was a felon when we met.”
Andrew nodded. “I know. This is where it gets a bit hazy for me too. But I’m pretty sure that my release from prison complicated things. I think, on some subconscious level, he could function as Andrew. But after he gave me my name back, he was Aaron the disgraced businessman. Aaron the felon.” He shook his head. “Names are powerful things.”
I just sat there quietly thinking. Then I said, “What do you think I should do?”
“That depends on what you want. Do you know what you want?”
I nodded. “I want him.”
He looked at me intensely. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then go get him.”
“But I don’t even know where he is.”
A knowing smile crossed Andrew’s face. “Of course you do.”
CHAPTER
Forty-Two
Sometimes love requires us to leap and just hope that there’s someone there to catch us.
—Maggie Walther’s Diary
My flight touched down in Los Cabos shortly before eleven on Christmas morning. I had hired an English-speaking Uber driver to take me to Todos Santos. He was a forty-year-old immigrant from Ukraine named Kostya, who claimed he spoke better English than Spanish.