The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  “Well, is it really that surprising? You were engaged. He’s not going to throw away all evidence that you ever existed.”

  “Then how come he never called?”

  “Maybe he just didn’t see the point. It was too painful or something. And then he met Molly, so was he going to mess that up by suddenly healing old wounds with his ex-fiancée? He just moved on. It’s what people do.”

  It’s what most people did. Not me, at least not romantically. Short version: I started out okay with Kevin, the Roseburg High quarterback who deflowered me in the back of his pickup my junior year in high school after a year of patient but heavy petting. He cried when I left for college, where I got by on late-night hookups before settling in with Jack the end of sophomore year.

  Since Jack, there were a lot of variations on my current situation with Ryan, meaning nothing serious and more than a little dysfunctional. I did manage one other long-term relationship: four years with Jared (in-house counsel at an insurance company), who even floated the idea of marriage, but only on the condition that I set aside what he called my “all-consuming ambition.” Instead of leaving, I turned our relationship into a professional rivalry. Rather than accept my ring and commence with cake tasting, I hardened my efforts to kick ass at work, no matter the personal consequences, so I could make partner in big law, the way Jared never had. But then that hadn’t worked out, either. I lost the job and eventually Jared.

  I only really tried one more time after that. Chuck was a good guy, much kinder than Jared. But I met him when I was just starting to work for Don. The learning curve was excruciating, and Melissa had personally vouched for me with her uncle. I was terrified of losing my job, so I kept choosing Don and our clients over me and Chuck. After too many canceled vacations and no-shows for dinner, Chuck made the mistake of saying he was tired of feeling “like the woman” in our relationship. In a wine-fueled rage, I decided to show him what emasculation by me actually felt like. I said things that couldn’t be taken back.

  Maybe other people move on, but I hadn’t. I moved more in circles. Sometimes when I thought about the connections from one man to the next, I thought that being alone was predestined.

  I’ve never been able to explain why I did what I did to Jack. The best I can do is to say it was because he was too nice—at least for me. Just like Jack said, his kindness made it impossible for me to leave him.

  What did my mother say after Jack’s first trip to Oregon? “I don’t know how you got someone so nice to fall in love with you.”

  “BUT HE MUST NOT HAVE moved on completely,” I said now to Melissa. “Not if he had those pictures. Buckley even said something about Molly finding them once and flipping out. And he still kept them.”

  “Olivia, I swear, if you of all people start crying, I’m cutting you off. And not to be rude, but ever since he got arrested, we haven’t had a single conversation that would pass the Bechdel test.”

  We’d learned about the test in college, probably from Charlotte. A woman in a cartoon by Alison Bechdel said she’d only see a movie if it had two women in it who talked to each other about something besides a man. If either Melissa or I droned on too long about a guy, the other would invoke the rule and change the subject.

  “I’m not talking about some man. I’m talking about Jack. Not even, but about my instincts about Jack.”

  “What’s going on here? You can’t possibly be thinking about you two starting—”

  “Oh, of course not. I’m actually wondering if he might have kept the pictures for a different reason. What if—what if I really broke him? He was always so fragile.” Jack saw rejection and humiliation in even the smallest slights. But on the night we broke up, the hardship wasn’t imagined. Me. Owen’s crash. The psych ward. His first book, written three years later, basically about what a bitch I am.

  “How many times have we had this conversation? He had a breakdown. His brother died. But everything worked out—”

  “You’re not hearing me. What if it didn’t all work out? What if Jack never got put back together again? I’m rethinking everything I thought I knew about him. Like that mix tape. It seemed sweet at the time, and now it seems a little obsessive. Maybe this side of him was always there, and I pushed him over the edge.”

  “Okay, now that’s just stupid. Take anything that’s sweet for a twenty-year-old guy, and it’s like serial killer shit on a forty-year-old. Dungeons and Dragons. Pet lizards. The Doors. Making those stupid Monty Python voices. Collecting . . . anything. Need I go on?”

  “Stop it, I’m serious.”

  “Come on, that was funny.” I wasn’t budging. “Where’s this coming from, Olivia?”

  I wanted to answer the question. I wanted to tell her that it was possible for GSR to linger on clothing for a month, but extremely rare. That Jack probably knew Malcolm Neeley would be at the football field that morning. That good people like Ross Connor and Scott Temple were telling me that maybe I didn’t know Jack as well as I thought I did.

  But I couldn’t. I downed the rest of my drink and signaled for another. We stopped talking about Jack after that, but in my head, I continued an internal debate.

  On one side were my suspicions. I had been so convinced from the second Buckley called me that Jack had to be innocent. But what grounds did I have for my assumptions? On the other side was my guilt. This was Jack—good, honest, and decent. Who was I to suspect him of something so heinous?

  And then there was a voice trying to reconcile the two sides. Maybe he was guilty. Maybe he was an angry, vengeful psychopath. But if he was, who had made him that way?

  Me. I did that.

  Chapter 14

  I FINALLY DRAGGED myself home after Melissa insisted on feeding me a plate of beef Stroganoff to help absorb some of the gallon of alcohol in my system.

  Despite my promise to Melissa that I would take three aspirin with two glasses of water, I opened a bottle of Cabernet and carried it with an empty wineglass into my bedroom. Once I had changed into a T-shirt, I poured myself a big glass, climbed into bed, and flipped open my laptop.

  The New York Post website had gone live with an article that would be in tomorrow’s pages: an interview with Malcolm Neeley’s son Max. “I was appalled at the way the lawyers for my father’s killer tried to blame the victims at the bail hearing. And I’m astonished that a sitting judge fell for it. My father wasn’t perfect, and I know a lot of people blame him for the horrifying atrocity that my younger brother committed. But Todd was mentally ill, and my father loved us both as much as he knew how. I will not allow these lawyers to deprive him of his humanity.”

  Scott Temple had mentioned that the media winds could change tomorrow. Now I was wondering whether Temple had encouraged Max to go to the press. Temple and I were bound by the court’s gag order, but the victims’ families were not.

  I closed the Post article, pulled up Jack’s e-mail account, and typed in the log-in information.

  jack<3smollybuckley

  I was in.

  Scrolling through the messages felt like a more intimate version of the late-night drunken cyberstalking I’d engaged in occasionally over the years. Instead of author Q and As and book reviews posted to his Facebook page, I was reading his actual e-mail. About half was the same kind of garbage that filled my in-box: coupon codes for free grocery delivery, a reminder that his gym membership would lapse in two months, a nastygram from an online reservation system for no-showing at Gramercy Park Tavern the previous night. Most of the other half of the messages were from friends and acquaintances in response to the news of his arrest: “Jack, I doubt you can check e-mail but didn’t know what else to do. What is going on?” Lots of vague offers to help: “Let us know if we can help?” “Does Buckley need anything?” Only a few of these people had actually bothered to call Charlotte.

  I clicked his Sent folder and scrolled down to the message he sent Charlotte after he first spotted the woman in the grass: “She was carefree, sitting on the grass and
reading a book, which reminded me of Molly. And she had long dark hair and was drinking champagne right out of the bottle, which reminded me of—well, you know who, but don’t like it when I mention her name.”

  When I’d seen this message the first time, I’d been in Charlotte’s kitchen. I hadn’t had time to parse Jack’s words. Obviously he was talking about me, and not for the first time. If I had broken him, wouldn’t he hate me? Would he still mention me like this—like he missed me?

  I flipped through the messages between him and Madeline. After she responded to Charlotte’s missed-moment post on the Room site, Jack sent her a quick note saying he had been mortified when his friend did something so rash, but thought the least he could do was follow up. “I hope I wasn’t staring at you like a weirdo. I really was curious about what you were reading, and why you were doing it in a gown with a picnic basket. As for my attire, the T-shirt was a gift from my sixteen-year-old daughter.”

  Madeline’s response: She was the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding. The post-reception celebration continued in the bridal suite at the Gansevoort. When the newlyweds kicked everyone out, she saw the opportunity to watch the sun rise, snagged a bottle of champagne from their VIP bar and a book from her room, and walked over to the pier. “P.S. The book was Eight Days to Die.”

  That was when Jack responded with his schmaltzy e-mail about why the book was one of his favorites.

  No response for two days, then Madeline explained that she’d been traveling for work. She said she’d started law school then became a social worker.

  So she’s like me, I thought, but also a do-gooder like Molly.

  I closed the computer, took a few more sips of wine, and scooted down under my covers. As I felt the bed spin beneath me, I thought about all the conflicting thoughts I’d been having about Jack’s case.

  I couldn’t just rely on my gut as if it were a Magic 8 Ball. Did Jack hate Malcolm Neeley? Outlook good. Did Jack really see the woman in the grass? You may rely on it. Did Jack murder three people in cold blood? My sources say no. Did someone find out where Jack would be that morning and set him up? Better not tell you now.

  No, the only right answer here was the most frustrating of all, Concentrate and ask again. And this time I concentrated not on my instincts, but on the facts. Jack hated Malcolm Neeley. He made a threatening comment about Neeley when the lawsuit was dismissed. He had e-mails from this Madeline person, but there’d been no wedding party at the Gansevoort the night before he supposedly noticed her at the pier. There was, however, ironclad proof—both video and Jack’s admission—that he was near the site of the shooting at the time bullets were fired, and had a way of knowing where Neeley would be at that very moment. Jack’s explanation for being at that location and at that time was borderline fantastical. He left his building with a picnic basket and came back without it—video again, this time courtesy of his apartment building. His shirt tested positive for gunshot residue just a few hours afterward. And Scott Temple, whom I trusted about as much as I’m willing to trust any prosecutor, told me the case was solid.

  Things weren’t looking good.

  But then I remembered a client I’d had three years earlier who had refused to take what I was pushing as a no-brainer plea deal: two years for involuntary manslaughter in exchange for dismissing a murder charge. I spent half an hour, barely pausing for breath, running through all the evidence against him so he’d see the risks he was facing of a conviction at trial. When I was finished he said, “But I know something no one else knows: I didn’t do it. So please, for one second—just one—imagine that I really am innocent, and then maybe everything you just said will sound different to you.”

  We kept digging, and three days later, Einer found a casino security guard who could testify that the state’s principal witness was in Atlantic City when he supposedly saw my client shoot a liquor store clerk in the Bronx.

  As much as I had been telling myself and anyone who would listen that Jack couldn’t have done this, I had spent the day entertaining doubts. So, for one second, I imagined that he really was innocent. Yes, Jack hated Neeley, but he wasn’t alone in that sentiment, and the comment he’d made about justice needing to find Neeley was by some standards a remarkably restrained reaction to news that the lawsuit was dismissed. As for Temple’s representation that there was more evidence to come, he hadn’t actually offered up the goods, and prosecutors engaged in early pretrial bluster all the time. If Jack wore that checkered shirt to a firing range and then hung it in his closet until he pulled it out to meet Madeline, it would explain the GSR. Gunshot residues were unpredictable. They could last days, weeks, even longer. They could even remain present on clothing after a washing.

  That left the bizarre explanation for being at the waterfront at the same exact time Neeley was shot.

  I sat up and opened my laptop again. I copied Madeline’s e-mail address and composed a new message, this one from my law firm account.

  To: mlh87@paperfree.com

  In the subject box, I wrote, Very important legal matter, then realized I may as well have typed “send me to your spam folder.” From Olivia Randall, Esq. That was better. To the holder of this e-mail address, this e-mail account appeared in the course of investigating a legal matter for a current client. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss the matter with you as soon as possible. Any communications we have would be considered attorney-work-product and would therefore be confidential. I would be happy to compensate you for your time—I deleted that last sentence. I could always offer money later if she did not respond, but didn’t want to open us up unnecessarily to the argument that we were paying this woman for her testimony. It would be better if you reached out to me privately. If I do not hear from you, my client will have no choice but to share the information we have with the police. I provided all of my contact information and then reread the e-mail three times, trying to will my brain into sobriety.

  I hit the Send key. Or, at least I thought I did. I’d have to check the next morning when my head was clearer.

  I’M REVIEWING MY NOTES ONE final time at counsel table. When I reach the end, I smile to myself because I know every line of my opening statement cold. I even hear the intended inflections in my head—it’s the “government’s burden,” not the “government’s burden.” When Judge Amador enters the courtroom, we all rise, and I straighten the jacket of my best suit—the black Escada crepe with the zippered front. Everything is perfect.

  ADA Scott Temple’s opening seems to flash by in an instant, as if it never even happened, and then it’s my turn. Good morning. My name is Olivia Randall, and I represent Jack Harris. The ADA makes this sound simple—black and white, cut and dry—because that’s his job. One of the jurors coughs, and then I hear another one talking to his neighbor before a few others join in. If I could have your attention. But they continue talking. I look to Judge Amador for assistance, but he shrugs. Temple smirks at me from the prosecutor’s table.

  Again, ladies and gentlemen. They are speaking so loudly now that I can’t hear my own voice. My client has a right to be heard. I am screaming but the din of the courtroom grows louder. I start pounding on the railing before the jury, and the man closest to me—juror number six, I’m certain he’s a product manager for a soap company, but can’t remember how I know that—begins to laugh. I knock on the wood so hard that my fist aches. “I think I broke my finger, Your Honor.”

  Somehow that one sentence is heard, and the judge tells me to exit through a door at the side of the courtroom so a nurse can check my hand. When I walk through the door, I’m in my old apartment—the one on Mercer. The one I shared with Jack. I walk through the living room into the kitchen, then back through again to the bedroom.

  Jack’s brother, Owen, is lying in the bed, his bare chest tan and lean against the crisp white sheets. He rolls over, turning his back to me. I see blood on the pillow.

  I open the closet door, and find a room I never knew existed.
It is larger than the entire apartment combined, but is filled with taped boxes and cotton-draped furniture. Jack is standing in the corner. He looks young, like when we were in college.

  “Olivia, everything’s fine. I hear you. Can you hear me?”

  I know these are the words he is saying, but I can’t actually hear him. “No, I can’t. But I know, Jack. I know.”

  His lips keep moving, but I can no longer make out the words. I tell Jack that something is wrong. The room is silent.

  Suddenly he’s the one standing in the jury box, pounding on the wooden railing. The knock is quiet at first, then becomes louder and louder. I can tell he’s yelling, but no sound comes from his mouth. I can only hear the pounding.

  “Olivia!”

  I reach for him and feel something cool and hard against the palm of my hand, and then it’s gone.

  The wine. Somehow I know it’s the wine.

  When I opened my eyes, I realized the pounding was real, and it was coming from my front door. A half bottle of Cabernet was seeping into the carpet next to my bed. I grabbed what was left and balanced it on the nightstand, then pulled off my T-shirt and used it as a towel to try to sop up the wine.

  The knocking continued, and I heard my name again. Wrapping myself in the robe from my bathroom, I made my way to the front door. Thanks to the distortion of my peephole, Einer’s nose looked inflated, like one of those dog-shaped balloons.

  “What the hell—,” I said, opening the door. I saw my building super, Vladimir whose-last-name-I-could-never-remember, standing behind him.

  “This man who looks like clown said it was emergency. You need 911 or something?”

  “No, Vlad. I’m fine. Thanks. This idiot works for me.”

  I could tell Vlad was amused as he walked toward the elevator.

  Einer was also amused as I stepped aside to let him in. “You know what doesn’t go with that outfit? A boyfriend.”