For the Best

by Vanessa Lillie

  “Are you scared of him?” I taunt, taking a big sip. “Think you’re next on our hit list?”

  “That’s not funny.” Ethan twists the glass topper on an almost-empty decanter of whiskey. “It would be nice to enjoy our family being together tonight. The person who attacked Dr. Castle is put away, hopefully, getting the help she needs. Let’s take a breath, okay?”

  I raise the glass. “Let the fun begin.”

  He shakes his head, but I can see the relief. We’re all here. We’re all contained in this boozy bubble. “I’m going to see if your mom needs help.”

  He leaves, and I do a quick refill before checking my phone. The Reba video views are already at fifty thousand. A local news producer emailed to see if I’d sit down for an interview.

  This is what I wanted. My name has been cleared, and we’re all innocent. Hooray. I take another drink.

  “There’s my girl,” Dad says. He’s absolutely beaming in his too-tight plaid shirt and khakis. This is about as dressed up as I’ve seen him in a while. “How you feeling, kid?”

  “Like another drink,” I say and really mean it. Fighting with Ethan is unusual, and I can probably count on one hand and one finger how often I’ve felt like I’m the one who’s actually right in an argument.

  “You seem pouty. What’s wrong?”

  I’m torn for a moment, wondering if I should honor Ethan’s plea to let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe the video with Dad dragging me down the street doesn’t matter now that there’s Reba. I need to accept that this is over.

  Dad sips his drink, then adds a squeeze of lime while he hums a silly song. He’s gotten so overweight, so blustery and sad, here in his little cave, clinging to the opinions of strangers for validation.

  Can’t fault him for that.

  I try to find the words. To accuse my father of lying to me, even when I know it’s not an accusation. It’s the truth.

  Isn’t that what Terrance kept telling me? To restore justice, you first have to admit you’re wrong. To acknowledge the harm that’s been done. Only then can you heal.

  That makes me a coward at best.

  “I had an idea,” Dad says with a smirk. “They’re launching that professor’s book tomorrow night at that South County vineyard. Since our name is clear, we should go. Hold our heads high. They tried to kick us both out, but we survived.”

  He raises his glass and waits for me to clink. “You mean crash the party?” I ask, shocked.

  “Email Miller,” Dad says. “Everything has been cleared up, surely. We should be welcome after the hell the board and that whiny widow put you through.”

  “I don’t know, Dad.” I try to imagine what that would even look like. The two of us all dressed up and schmoozing with all the other funders and friends of Dez. “I doubt they’d even let us in.”

  “We could record it all. If they kick us out, it’ll make for that many more views, right? All upside.”

  He laughs and hits his glass against mine as if we’re celebrating. But it’s too forceful, and for a moment I wonder if they’ve cracked or almost broken. Would that lead us to finally putting them down, or would we just swallow the booze and shards of glass anyway?

  “What’s wrong, kid? We worked hard. Your name is clear, and we should be on that stage.”

  “Fine,” I say, and I pick up my phone to email Elle. Maybe she’ll run the Reba video by the board. I’m sure they’re all together, working to get the finishing touches done for the event. Dad could be right. It would feel so good to finally be back where I belong. “We’d be the life of the party.” I grin at him and take another drink. “Maybe tell a joke or two. Show that all is forgiven.”

  We throw a few more ideas around, and I have gin-fueled hope for a moment that maybe I will get my job back. That there is a reset button, and everything will turn out okay.

  I leave Dad by the bar, and I take my drink into the kitchen to check on Mom and the guys. She’s chopping bread at the window and staring out at the backyard. Standing behind her, I can see the view: Ethan and Fitz outside kicking the soccer ball across the pool. With twilight’s arrival, the blue-green glow illuminates their laughing faces as they kick it back and forth.

  “They’ll fall in,” I say from behind her.

  She keeps staring through the window. “Nice to see someone using it. All it cost us.”

  That stops me cold. “What do you mean?”

  She hacks at the baguette. “I hate everything about that pool. We live in the Ocean State. We had to dig up my gardens to put that in. Why? So people would start coming over after . . . the accident. Paid for it with blood money.”

  “Mom,” I whisper. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

  “Did you ever ask? He certainly never did.” Disappointment blooms across her face, and she turns back to her bread. “You can’t always take the easy answers, Jules.”

  “What easy answers?”

  “That poor homeless woman.” She shakes her head and begins chopping. “The disappointments never cease in this house.”

  “So if it’s not Reba,” I say softly, “do you think I did it?”

  She drops her knife but doesn’t turn. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “I don’t either.” I take a step back, unsure how to argue. I am so tired of those words. Exhausted by my anger and outrage at my own mistakes.

  She wipes her hands on her apron and finally turns to me, not with the disappointment I expected but with love. “If you are sorry, then you should call Dr. Potter. Take responsibility.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say, meaning it.

  “The light therapy could help you remember,” she says, brushing a few hairs behind my ear. “Dinner will be ready soon. Why don’t you enjoy your family outside for a little bit?” She takes the drink out of my hand and then returns to chopping.

  I follow her advice and head toward the door. My phone buzzes, and while I expect Elle and maybe good news, it’s Phillip.

  We need to meet first thing tomorrow.

  Don’t bring the camera.

  Chapter 31

  Dream Journal, day 5: Dad is pulling me by the arm.

  We’re not in the car. We’re on my street. This feels familiar, and it feels like the night I don’t remember.

  “I can’t, Dad. Please don’t make me.”

  “You have to move your legs,” he says. “Come on, get up, girl. Use your damn legs. Let’s go, Jules. I’m going to get caught.”

  Opening my eyes to bright morning sunshine, I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep, as Drunk Me turned back to Normal Me with the hungover brain. I lay paralyzed in bed all night, replaying that vivid dream. Am I remembering or filling in details out of desperation?

  I hadn’t meant to keep drinking after Mom took my glass in the kitchen following her confession about the family pool. But then I got an email from Miller saying Elle had shown the board my video about Reba.

  Despite these latest claims, we believe the fresh path is best as you deal with your issues.

  I must have read that line a hundred times in the glow of the pool. My fifteen years of work gone. Even hours later, I could scream, and I would if it wouldn’t scare Ethan to death and wake up Fitz.

  My name has been wiped from the foundation’s website. The nonprofits and community groups I supported. The local leaders I helped grow. The nonprofit summit highlighting the best of Rhode Island that got national coverage. None of it matters. They took the credit and moved on. The bitterness bubbles, a familiar scent that wafted through most of my childhood from my father’s every pore and pour.

  “Are you awake?” Ethan murmurs and pulls me closer.

  He’s taken to sleeping with his arms around me again. He did it all the time when we were first dating. I loved it then, such a sweet subconscious gesture. During the Boston summer we met after I graduated, it was hot. I’d slide his arms off, and they usually wouldn’t make it back to me until I was already deeply asleep.

  Over time, it
happened less. But started again when I was pregnant. And now, in this terrible time, it feels as if he’s holding tighter than ever.

  “Just thinking,” I say. The effort of speaking knocks around in my hungover head.

  “What about?” Ethan asks.

  “Dad said if our family doesn’t stick together, then one of us is going to jail.”

  “Don’t repeat anything he said, please. He was really drunk last night, even for him.” Ethan’s voice cracks, and he buries his nose into my neck.

  “It felt like a threat.”

  “It’s how he deals with his problems,” Ethan says, always quick to defend him. “He’s not changing. People never do. Try to accept him and love him as he is.”

  That little speech breaks my heart because Ethan believes those words. It’s how he had any kind of relationship with his mother. It’s how he has this deep and steadfast love for me. The seemingly endless excuses for my behavior.

  I run my hand along Ethan’s neck, feeling along his shoulder where there’s a small circle of cigarette-burn scars. If anyone sees it at the pool or beach, he tells them it was from a motorcycle accident. But it’s from one of his mother’s more sadistic boyfriends.

  I start to rub his shoulders, which I used to do a lot more when it was just the two of us. My fingers trace the scars, and he leans into my touch.

  Not for the first time, I think about how much he idealizes my family. How hard we worked to keep up appearances. My mom shopped at the resale stores or clearance racks, guessing my sizes for the fall. We had to keep our big house even after Dad lost his job. Mom took on more clients. She paid workers less than minimum wages for a few years so I could stay in resale Laura Ashley and not cause the neighbors to whisper more than they already were.

  But my poor is nothing compared to Ethan’s. He was “last can of beans” poor. He was “asking his neighbors for a stick of wood on a freezing Chicago night to heat their stove while his mom was passed out on the floor with a hobo she probably blew for a fix” poor. That’s a whole different level. My poor made me vain and calculating. Ethan’s poor made him a survivor in ways I’ll never begin to comprehend.

  “It’s hard to love Dad as he is when he’s completely delusional,” I say. “He thought Reba’s confession would open the Poe Foundation’s doors. Like they’d welcome us back with open arms. I think it’s what he’s wanted all along. Now I’m even more embarrassed, which I didn’t think was possible.”

  The shame is in full effect, so I hug Ethan tight and breathe in his support. I remember how Dad liked him from the first handshake. I introduced him early in our relationship because I knew he was the one. I read once that you’re most attracted to people who mirror the relationships you grew up around. Especially the broken ones. We fall in love hoping to repair what was broken and then set ourselves up to fail.

  Unless you ask Terrance. He thought, with restorative justice, it was possible to right wrongs or at least heal what was broken. Even the word is beautiful: restorative. That we have the ability to restore our own well-being.

  “Dada?” Fitz calls from his room.

  “We’re awake, buddy,” Ethan says.

  There’s the creak of Fitz’s bed and his bare feet pattering in the hallway. His puffy sandy hair appears first as he rubs his eyes, still looking half-asleep. “I had a bad dream,” he says. “I need snuggles.”

  “Come here, buddy.” I open my arms, and he hurries to our bed, dropping his skinny legs and pointy elbows right in between us. “What did you dream?”

  He sniffs a little. “I kicked the ball in the pool. Grandpa fell in. I could not pull him out.”

  I wrap my arms around him and kiss his warm cheek. “It’s just a dream.” I rub my nose against his.

  “I’ll make us breakfast.” Ethan gets up and heads to the closet, clearing his throat. “You need a Sprite, babe? Hair of the dog?”

  “Yes, please, mimosa. Light on the OJ.”

  Breakfast is as normal as possible. Fitz chats about the Farm Family’s new puppy. I try to engage, but every bite of toast with fake butter, every sip of coffee or joke from Fitz, feels laden with the unknown.

  I watch Ethan tell a story and can’t keep away the worry that he lied about Reba. Just as he kept the truth from me about my father.

  I married him because he’s a survivor with his own code that’s benefited me. There’s a ruthless chip on his shoulder that says if you don’t protect what’s yours, the world will take it. Maybe there was an echo of my father, those broken pieces I try to replicate and fix.

  Does that mean he’d take this risk—to either twist the words of a mute homeless woman or make them up completely?

  Does this mean he thinks I did it?

  Tears start to burn, and I excuse myself from the table to refill my mimosa. I stand in the cool air of the fridge, and all I can think is that Ethan is a good person. I pushed him to this place.

  You can hold the good and the bad in your hand. I saw it with my father. Even my mother, keeping us there with him in that house. I was given this husband and son, even though I don’t deserve them. There must be balance, and at last, my bad has arrived to restore the equilibrium of all this good.

  A lot has been taken away. I don’t know if I deserve to get it back, but something deep inside is screaming for me to fight like hell to see every ounce of it returned.

  Father’s daughter, indeed.

  I hate myself for ten more minutes, letting the tears spread and drop down my neck and onto my T-shirt. I don’t want to accept this fate of my own making. I want to fight, to snap the thread linking my guilt with justice for Terrance.

  “Honey, are you okay?” Ethan calls.

  “Quick refill before I get ready,” I say in an overly happy tone as I head into the kitchen. “Phillip texted me, remember? I need to see what’s going on.”

  “Are you crying?” he asks, following me. Before I respond, he pulls me into his arms gently so my drink doesn’t spill. “Can I help?”

  “Weird few weeks, I guess.” That’s all I can say. “I really do need to go. I’ll text you soon.”

  After getting dressed quickly, I leave Ethan and Fitz, promising I’ll be back so Ethan can pick up an afternoon shift at work.

  I arrive at the address near Providence College on the West Side that Phillip texted me, and I realize it’s his house. And I’m not the only one there. There’s a minivan in the driveway with one of those sticker families on the back. Whoever is here has a partner, two small kids, and three dogs.

  The door opens before I can knock, and Phillip looks surprised. “I didn’t hear you pull up. Listen, this isn’t an ambush. But we need to speak to you.”

  I freeze as Phillip’s front door opens wider, and Detective Ramos steps onto the porch. “Sorry to surprise you like this,” he says.

  “What the hell?” I say to Phillip.

  “Do you want to step inside?” Detective Ramos says.

  “Just tell me why I’m here,” I say to him.

  “Our specialist worked with Reba most of yesterday,” Detective Ramos says. “We’re letting her go. And we need your help.”

  “What do you mean?” I say with an uncomfortable laugh. “How can you be sure she’s not confused or lying?”

  “I’ve got another tape for you,” Detective Ramos says. “You’re welcome to use it on your vlog after we make the arrest. Since you both like to be on TV so much.”

  VIDEO TRANSCRIPT 14

  POLICE INTERVIEW

  REBA GABLES

  INT. HOTEL CONFERENCE ROOM—DAY

  DETECTIVE FRANK RAMOS sits next to social worker KIM LAWSON. They’ve arranged a series of photos in front of REBA GABLES.

  FRANK

  Okay, Reba, to continue our conversation about that night. You wrote that you saw an attack.

  REBA

  (whispery voice)

  Hit. Head. Hit him.

  FRANK

  Can you please identify who was hit in the head? (REB
A points at photo.) For the record, Reba has pointed to a photo of Terrance Castle. Reba, who was there when he was attacked?

  REBA holds up two fingers.

  REBA

  (whispers)

  Two.

  FRANK lays out more photos on the table. They are people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities.

  FRANK

  If you can, point to anyone who you saw that night. Either those two people you remember or anyone who looks familiar.

  KIM

  Do you need help getting up?

  REBA nods and tries to stand but is weighed down by the coats and layers around her. KIM helps her up, and REBA takes her hand, patting it as she’s led to the table and all the pictures.

  She walks slowly down the rows, staring hard and violently shaking her head no. She comes to the end and stabs her finger on two photos.

  REBA

  (hisses)

  You. You.

  FRANK

  Let the record show both Juliet and Louis Worthington have been identified as being present when Dr. Castle was attacked. And who hit him, Reba? Who hit Dr. Castle?

  REBA

  (shakes her head and starts screaming)

  Hit. Hit. Hit.

  KIM

  I think that’s all she can tell you right now. Please, you have confirmation of your suspects. Please, let’s stop for today.

  Chapter 32

  The video is over, and, possibly, so is my life. Or what was left of it. Sitting on the bottom step of Phillip’s porch, I consider watching the video again. I deserve to see Reba pointing at the photo of my face and then my father’s. Confirming we were there when Terrance was murdered.

  “Why aren’t you arresting me?” I say to Detective Ramos, staring up at him from the bottom step. “You’ve got my wallet and a positive identification.”

  “Reba said you were there,” Phillip says. “And Lou. But I told Detective Ramos what we saw on the other video last night.”

  “So what?” I whisper.

  Phillip takes a step toward me, his mouth curled in sympathy. “You were too drunk to walk, Jules. I doubt you attacked anyone in that state. Your father appeared fine. He’s the one who’s been lying.”