“It’s been better for me this way.”
“Has it, though?” Millie asked, and the concern in her eyes made my own eyes burn.
I looked away when the tears finally came, trying to will my voice strong. “You and I both know what he did that night wasn’t some accident. He stabbed that guy, Millie. My dadkilledsomeone, and yeah, he was upset about my mother, but you know what I think? I think my dad was more angry that guy took his money. He wanted revenge.”
Millie held up her hands as if in surrender. “Maybe so. Listen, I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not trying to talk you into forgiveness. I’m here because I loved your mother and she loved you. All she ever cared about was you feeling safe and happy. I want you to be happy.” She handed me a pack of tissues from her bag; I was crying hard now. “And for what it’s worth, you don’t seem so great. I do not think pretending your dad is dead has been helping you. Not one fucking bit.”
Lizzie
JULY 11, SATURDAY
I stopped back at work on my way home, intent on starting to set things right. One by one, that’s how I’d deal with all the problems I’d been trying to ignore. First up: my financial disclosure form. Without that, Zach had nothing on me and I could be done with him and his case. Two birds, one stone. I was hoping to find Paul at the office on a Saturday. He often was, along with many other, more junior Young & Crane lawyers. Confessing to Paul my misrepresentations on the financial disclosure was a risk. I’d need to test the waters first, talk vaguely and in hypotheticals and bring up the financial disclosure tangentially somehow. Maybe I could be allowed the one misstep, especially after Paul had exposed to me his Wendy Wallace Achilles’ heel.
Young & Crane was quieter than I’d expected. Paul’s office was dark, but Gloria was there outside his office, typing away, looking disgruntled about something—though surely not the overtime. Gloria loved overtime. I checked my watch: 7:27 p.m.
“Is Paul coming back?” I asked.
She shook her head and pursed her lips judgmentally, but kept typing. “Unlikely, don’t you think?” She shot me a loaded look.
Why couldn’t Paul’s secretary just come back? Everything with Gloria was so exhausting.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep the impatience from my voice.
Gloria stopped typing. This time when she looked up, a sly smile spread across her face.
“He didn’t even tellyou? Interesting.” Her voice was smug. “Wendy Wallace. They’re havingdrinks. Or something,” she said coyly. “Isn’t she on that case of yours? Pretty ironic—Paul, of all people, thinking he’s got the right to run around being the morality police.”
I hoped the sense of betrayal didn’t register on my face. But Paul having drinks with Wendy Wallace?AfterI’d told him how nasty she’d been when I went to see her? Of course it was a betrayal, even if it was probably one I should have seen coming.
“Oh right, I forgot,” I said to Gloria. “If you could just let him know I stopped by.”
I wandered back to my office to collect some files to work on at home, feeling wounded. Not that I was one to judge Paul. All I did was curate the truth—about my marriage, my family, myself. But what I’d said to Millie was the actual truth: it wasn’t like I’d set out to lie.
I’d arrived by bus at Cornell’s manicured campus for the start of freshman year upright, but barely. By then, I’d had precisely enough therapy to keep moving, but not really to heal, not in any meaningful sense. Standing in my empty dorm room, with no parents to deliver me or to help set up my room or to cry at the door when they said goodbye, I felt myself backsliding with alarming speed. Like there was a giant black hole of desperation about to suck me away. And then my roommate appeared, so blond and sunny with these big innocent eyes and two warm parents. And just like that a new version of my story—two dead parents, no one in jail—popped out fully formed to rescue me. From that moment on,thatbecame my truth.
And it had been so much more palatable than the actual facts: that my dad had finally found that regular who’d stolen from him and destroyed his business and—in my dad’s view—killed my mother by bringing on her heart attack. They’d argued in the man’s apartment, which the prosecution proved my dad had broken into, thoughhe insisted he’d done so only to find evidence of the fraud. There was a struggle, and the man ended up with a kitchen knife in his stomach. All of it an accident, my dad claimed. But the jury hadn’t believed it—he was convicted of felony murder, sentenced to twenty-five years to life. That was what happened when you killed someone while committing a burglary. And how upset had my dad really been in the aftermath? I was the only one who knew he’d come home that night and eaten dinner like nothing had happened, wolfing down his food with remarkable zeal. I was also the only one who knew he’d asked me to lie and give him an alibi. A request I’d politely declined.
And so my momwasdead and my dadwasgone—like I’d told my Cornell roommate and then Victoria and Heather at Penn, and then Zach and, finally, Sam. He was just “gone” upstate at the Elmira Correctional Facility. Right before law school, I’d even legally taken my mother’s maiden name—I figured law firms might be judgmental. They were; I was right about that. So was the US attorney’s office, but I had made it through the background check anyway, after a few scary follow-up questions. What I had been wrong about was my ability to will the truth away.
It had been right there with me the entire time.
Waiting for the elevator, I bristled when I spotted Gloria again, this time at the far end of the reception area, talking with a woman standing at the polished lobby desk. Talkingatthe woman, more likely. I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly.
“Oh, there she is now,” Gloria called out in my direction, just as I was about to step onto the elevator.Shit.“Um, hello, Lizzie, Maude is here!”
When I turned, there was Amanda’s friend Maude headed my way. She looked distressed, and I absolutely did not want to be dealing with her. From the instantly apologetic expression on her face, my aversion must have been readily apparent.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this, especially on a Saturday. But I did leave a couple messages for you. The prosecutor came by my house … And there’s something I need to tell you. I don’t think it can wait.”
Awesome.
“Sure, no problem,” I lied. “Why don’t you come back for a minute, and we can talk?”
We started toward my office.
“You know, I didn’t even look at your contact information until today. I didn’t realize you worked here, too, of all places …” Maude motioned over her shoulder, gesturing to Gloria. I couldn’t imagine how the two knew each other, and honestly I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get Maude in and out as fast as possible. “I wasn’t even sure the office would be open. But I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”
“Yes, with the endless hours we all work here,” I said, aiming for lighthearted but landing closer to caustic, “we are easy to find.”
