For the Best

by Vanessa Lillie

  This is where my father did the unthinkable thirty years ago. Subconsciously, I must have known it was the anniversary this month. It’s been three decades since murder and lies reconfigured our family and that of Santiago’s family, who live across town.

  I don’t try to picture Santiago playing, any more than I try to picture my parents holding hands, strolling down the street. Neither of those things happened after that day.

  My father did kill him, even if it was ruled an accident. The charge, vehicular manslaughter, didn’t seem to carry enough weight for what happened when an eleven-year-old boy jumped in front of the car. Dad was driving me to ballet because I demanded he do it. He had been drinking. I remember that much because the whole car smelled like gin.

  In our family, the incident is referred to as “the wreck.” But the car wasn’t wrecked at all. We could have kept driving it after it was released from police evidence. But the sight of it caused me a panic attack so severe the detective who brought it to us had to take it away. He was my dad’s buddy, so I think he kept it.

  Everything was wrecked: my father’s job, my parents’ relationship, my sister giving two shits about any of us. We were wrecked.

  So yes, I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to live with shame. Working to build my new life bigger and better so people would forget the truth of where I came from. Forget what was done or not done. Forget our lies as we built our pool, hoping that if it was hot enough, people would come back. But no matter how deep we dug or how clear and perfect the water, the truth was still there. It’s our foundation, rot and all, and everything new built upon it is destined to collapse.

  But maybe we’re not the only ones.

  I call Phillip from the car. Because as mad as I am at my father, someone else was at the bar that night. And Dez Castle may have had more to gain than anyone.

  VIDEO TRANSCRIPT 9

  TESTIMONY OF LOUIS WORTHINGTON

  LOUIS WORTHINGTON sits beside his lawyer, RONALD MYERS, at a table across from DETECTIVE FRANK RAMOS in an interrogation room inside the Providence Police Department.

  FRANK

  For the record, please state your name, and I’d ask your counsel to do the same.

  LOUIS

  Louis Worthington.

  RONALD

  Ronald Myers.

  FRANK

  Can you tell me where you were the night of July tenth?

  RONALD

  My client doesn’t wish to share that information at this time. It was a personal matter, and unless there is a charge, he’d prefer to keep silent.

  FRANK

  Perhaps this will help. Let me play an audiotape of a woman who got cash out of the ATM at the Wrong Side of Hope Bar that night in question. Her name is Debbie Memphis, and one of my officers is asking the questions.

  FRANK presses play.

  [VOICES ON AUDIO PLAYER]

  OFFICER

  Please say your name and that you agree to be recorded today.

  DEBORAH

  I agree to be recorded. I’m Debbie Memphis. Well, Deborah, I guess, but no one calls me that.

  OFFICER

  Can you tell me what you were doing at the Wrong Side of Hope Bar on July tenth?

  DEBORAH

  Getting a drink with a friend. Oh, you want to know everything. My friend is a local personality. He’s kind of a celebrity. You like all that shit? Well, me too. It’s Lou Worthington.

  OFFICER

  How long were you there?

  DEBORAH

  Couple hours. Lou can really put them away. I’d hoped we’d go somewhere more romantic, but I guess he’s buddies with the owner. One of the Lou Crew—that’s his online show. Anyway, we were there pretty late. Maybe until nine p.m. Right about when his daughter showed up with that professor who got killed that night.

  OFFICER

  Did you or Louis speak to her?

  DEBORAH

  Hell no. We’re not public with our . . . friendship. And she was drunk, so who knows how she would have acted. He made a joke about the apple not falling far from the tree. The way he said it was funny, not mean. We were already on our second bottle of wine. Lou drinks fast, and he keeps my glass full because he’s a gentleman.

  OFFICER

  Please tell me about seeing Dr. Castle with Juliet Worthington-Smith.

  DEBORAH

  Castle came to the bar after the owner had dropped our check, which was cheap for all we drank. VIP perks, I guess.

  OFFICER

  What time did Dr. Castle arrive?

  DEBORAH

  Well, it was right after I went to get cash from the ATM so we could play a little keno before we hit the road.

  OFFICER

  You withdrew cash at nine thirteen p.m.

  DEBORAH

  Well, there you go. Castle came in right as I was getting up. I got the money, got our keno numbers, and sat down.

  I recognized Castle immediately. He was on The Daily Show, and not that I watch that trash, but my kids have it on when they visit. Plus, Lou had talked about Castle on his show. What’s the thing he does called, Storming the Castle? (laughs) I said, “Hey, Lou, isn’t that the fella you say is going to be the downfall of the Poe Foundation?”

  Lou seemed mad, so we left. No way either his daughter or that Castle fella noticed us. It was so crowded, and they were drunk, it looked like to me. I dropped Lou off at his house after we . . . talked a little bit. That was ten p.m. at the latest. I remember there weren’t any lights on in the house, so his wife had gone to bed. All clear, you know what I mean? I called him a couple days later when I heard Castle had been killed right after we were there. And they’re saying his daughter did it. I mean, that’s crazy. No way she’d kill someone.

  OFFICER

  Did you see Dr. Castle or Juliet talking? Can you describe how they were interacting?

  DEBORAH

  Well, that’s kind of embarrassing. I saw that his daughter was crying, and I asked Lou if we should get involved. Maybe that Castle guy was being mean, you know, making her cry like that. But Lou said it was their business. That she made her bed with that . . . guy. Well, do you want me to say what he said?

  OFFICER

  Yes, please.

  DEBORAH

  Well, it wasn’t the N-word, if that’s what you’re thinking. He called him an “uppity brother.” But he was really drunk and probably tired. I doubt he meant it.

  OFFICER

  What happened when you called Lou to talk about Dr. Castle’s murder?

  DEBORAH

  Oh, well, he said that it was probably a hate crime. He said, black fella like that on the news and publishing books. He has a target on his back. Those things happen, you know.

  OFFICER

  Have you seen or spoken to Lou since that phone call or that night?

  DEBORAH

  No, he said we should cool off for a while. He said let’s not talk about that night and pretend it didn’t happen. I’ll be honest, I’m a little raw about it. He’d been saying he’d leave his wife for me. Now he won’t even answer my phone calls.

  OFFICER

  Did you recognize anyone else there at the bar that night?

  DEBORAH

  Just his wife.

  OFFICER

  Lou’s wife was there?

  DEBORAH

  No, no. I don’t know what she looks like. Dr. Castle’s wife. The rich one. What’s Lou call her, the whiny widow. (laughs) She followed Castle inside and was watching him right by our table. I wouldn’t have realized it except that press conference. She had on that same shiny green dress. Looks like a damn nightie. I wasn’t about to forget a woman looking like that in a dump bar.

  FRANK RAMOS turns off audio.

  FRANK

  You care to tell your own version of events, Mr. Worthington?

  LOUIS

  I agree with everything she said. If you’re not arresting me, we’re leaving. And I certainly hope you’re interrogating Dez Castle as well.r />
  FRANK

  We’re investigating everyone who had something to gain. Should I play the tapes of your harassment of Dr. Castle or save it for the grand jury?

  LOUIS

  We’re leaving, Ron.

  Chapter 21

  Dez Castle lives in her family home, one of the largest among many big colonial homes on the historic cobblestone Benefit Street. I pull up in a metered spot across from her house, and it’s not long before Phillip’s car is parked behind me. Providence walking tours, which I’ve never done, would probably tell you about how wealthy merchants and sea captains built these homes on the hill to look downtown in the late 1700s. Not that they were only shipping corn and beans.

  Phillip gets out of his car and heads over to me, stopping on the sidewalk near a tall gas lamp harkening back to old money and old rules that generally didn’t favor either of us.

  “How was the police station?” Phillip asks as I walk around the car.

  “It was fine,” I say and try not to seem rattled. “Let me grab my purse.” I open the passenger-side door and reach inside to take a long sip of my to-go sherry-Honest-apple cocktail. It dulls part of the sadness, and I pull out my bag with the video camera.

  “So he said that Dez was there that night Terrance was killed?” Phillip asks, repeating what I texted him. “What time?”

  “I have no idea. He mentioned it at the end.” I swallow the guilt that I’m not sharing that my father was there too. I’ll deal with that later. Besides, Phillip always hated my dad, and I don’t want to revisit that old fight.

  We cross the street toward Dez’s home. It’s a soft butter yellow with big bay windows on both levels facing the road. Heading up the staircase are tall planters that lead to a placard with her family name and EST. 1797 near the ornate double doors.

  “Terrance told me it’s a good thing her side of the family were the abolitionists,” I say with a half grin at Phillip.

  “The other side weren’t,” Phillip says. “But at least they built Brown University with all that blood money. Imagine what they’d think about Dr. Terrance Castle teaching there. Teaching about justice, of all things.”

  I swallow thickly, and the silence is heavy between us, so I knock and wait.

  Minutes pass. Then Phillip presses the buzzer. “Let’s try it this way,” he says.

  The green light comes on beside a security-system sticker in the window. The bright logo looks out of place stuck to leaded-window glass. Phillip frowns at it for a moment. “I recognize that security company,” he says, pointing at the small logo.

  “What?” I say softly. “Who?”

  He looks closer at the sticker. “I’ll tell you later.”

  I realize Dez may be watching us through her Nest camera or whatever fancy alarm system she has that Phillip knows about.

  “What do you want?” says a woman’s voice through the intercom that sounds like Dez.

  “I just got back from the police station,” I say. “They mentioned something interesting you should hear.”

  There’s a long pause, and I wonder if she’s going to leave us here. Or maybe she’s calling the police. As Phillip shrugs, an inside door squeaks, and then a lock clicks. There’s another beat, then a few more, and finally the door swings open.

  Dez is in an expensive-looking green silk dress. Her eyes are thickly lined in a cat’s-eye shape, and her hair is in a messy twist on top of her head. Her thin, rich, and crazy brand is intact.

  “Yes?” she snaps. Her barely visible eyebrows punch up.

  “Can we talk?” Phillip puts his hands in his pockets. “Please?”

  “Terr said you weren’t welcome in our home,” she says to him, which is news to me. “With his passing, are his wishes buried too?”

  “I don’t know.” Phillip glances down the stone street. “But Jules is going to be making a video about you being at the bar that night. This might concern your wishes more than his.”

  I smirk at how Phillip is playing this, as if I’m the pain in their ass. But he is right. “I’ll set up across the street. Make sure to have a great shot of your big fancy house for all the area weirdos to look up on Google Maps.”

  Her full pout pinches for a moment. “Everything has changed.” She swings the door open wide with a flourish. “And nothing.”

  We follow her inside in a waft of a strangely bitter-smelling perfume.

  “Close the door, please,” she says in a soft, slightly bored tone I had heard whenever she joined Terrance at a planning meeting. It annoyed me she was there at first, but she actually began to take my position on certain points that made our messages more practical. Probably her interest also made it easier for Miller to advocate for her taking over the Genius Grant project, so maybe I should have stuck to my initial skepticism.

  We go through the second door and enter the foyer. Instead of large and grand, it’s only a dark hallway, with each door pulled shut.

  From behind, Dez reminds me of a water snake. Her green dress swishes back and forth as she slithers past paintings of dead, rich relatives. Her feet are silent on the wood floors, and I notice she’s barefoot. Finally, she stops and slides open half a double door. Light floods, and I blink until my eyes can adjust.

  There are tall windows trimmed in ornate wood and long curtains. The room is large and rectangular, and the bookshelves suggest it’s a library. I glance around, and it appears the room was split in half. On one side are mounds of papers, books, magazines, and newspapers. They are piled on the floor, along the empty fireplace, on the coffee table, and all the way over to a large wooden desk against the wall.

  But then from the desk at the center and onward, the room is pristine, the wood floors gleaming, lampshade dusted. Only a few piles of carefully ordered papers are stacked on the floor.

  “Which side is yours?” Phillip says with a grin. He looks to me, as if to explain. “Terry thrived in creative chaos.”

  I nod quickly, as if I knew that, which I didn’t. “Are you going through his things?”

  Dez recoils at my question, a flush at her neck that spreads up into her cheeks. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Terry would say he had it all filed in his head.” Phillip walks over to one messy stack. “He’d say, ‘Pick an author, pick a paper, and I’ll have it in your hands in ten seconds flat.’”

  Dez smiles, shifting her attention away from me, thankfully. “He really could do that.”

  Phillip nods softly. “The first time I went to his office at Brown—I mean, it was crazy. Papers were everywhere. I didn’t even say hi. I just shouted ‘Baldwin.’ That was the first book Terry ever gave me as a kid.”

  “Did he find it?” Dez asks, her eyes shining a bit.

  “Oh yeah,” Phillip says. “He jumped over three stacks of papers and landed on one foot by a pile of books. He yelled, ‘Go Tell It or Native Son, son?’”

  Dez and Phillip laugh together, and I smile, but I don’t really understand. I know they’re talking about the author James Baldwin. Terrance often referenced him in drafts of his essays. I never asked why that particular author was important to him. I never bothered to read him myself.

  “Terrance really liked Trevor Noah too,” I say. “We were hoping to get him back on The Daily Show.”

  They both look at me as if I just burped. I don’t know why I tried to join or even one-up, but I did.

  “Anyway,” Dez says, with a fraction of her smile still there. “I can’t bring myself to organize his mess yet. Not with all the work to launch his Legacy Project.” That comment is directed toward me, and she makes sure to catch my gaze. “It’s going better than ever.”

  “Really?” Phillip says. “Is that the final version of his essays?”

  “Oh, yes.” She strides over to several bound copies on her neat desk. “The board is reviewing them now, in time to launch this weekend.”

  “I got the invite,” Phillip says. “Thank you.”

  She stares at me so it’s cle
ar I was not invited. Obviously.

  “You couldn’t finish this book with almost a year of work?” She taps the top copy in the stack as she sits next to it on top of the desk. “I’m already done.”

  “I had a difficult collaborator,” I say, regretting it instantly.

  “Don’t you think I wish I did too?”

  “Hard to say.” I step toward her.

  “May I have a copy?” Phillip asks in an overly kind voice, as if to diffuse.

  “I suppose,” she says, turning toward him. “As long as it’s only you reading it.”

  I grit my back teeth but don’t want to ruin it for him, so I stay quiet.

  “If you don’t like it,” Dez says as she holds the document out to him, “keep it to yourself.”

  Phillip takes the papers without agreeing and puts the copy in his messenger bag.

  “In that stack,” Dez says, pointing toward some files on the floor. “One folder has your name, Phillip. Terr clipped every article with your byline or mention. If you can find it, you can have it.”

  Phillip heads that way and crouches down to dig through the stack. We all stand in silence until he finds a file toward the bottom. He opens and flips through what looks like several old newspaper articles. “Some of my first press clips,” he says.

  “Now,” she says, turning toward me. “Earlier, you were threatening to put my house on your ridiculous Rhode to Justice channel. Please do not.”

  “We can film inside,” I say. “One way or the other, I will share what I’ve found.”

  She slides off the desk. “And what is that?”

  I have one shot at doing this right. I reach into my bag and pull out my video camera. I don’t want to surprise her like I did with Kara. “I’d like to record your side of this story, if you’ll let me. I’m happy to tell it as I see it, but I want to give you an opportunity to speak for yourself.”

  “The ‘whiny widow’ speaks?” she says with tight lips as she drops onto a long velvet couch. “Like I would ever do one tiny thing to benefit you.”

  I pull a chair across from her and take out the tripod, setting up the camera so we’ll both be in the shot. “Wouldn’t you prefer to explain for yourself instead of having only my interpretation?”