Millie let out a long whistle.
“I confirmed it with the St. Colomb Falls clerk’s office. Amanda was a juvenile, so the criminal records are sealed, but they told me enough.”
“I thought she had a whole journal about her dad stalking her?”
I nodded. “And she’d told her Park Slope friends that the dead friend was alive and well in Manhattan,” I said. “Amanda was troubled,clearly—seems to have been delusional, which calls into question all her observations. Or so the prosecution will say.”
“So no one was stalking her?”
I shrugged. “No one. Or someone other than her dad.”
“Weird that your friend Zach didn’t notice, huh?” And she meantweirdas in:There’s no fucking way that’s true.
“Apparently, Amanda was high-functioning. Her friends didn’t notice anything wrong either. Then again, they’d only known her for a few months. But she had a job and took great care of her son, everyone agrees about that. Her delusions must have been contained. Zach claims she hadn’t said a word about her dad in years, not about any stalker either,” I said. “Sounds like they didn’t talk much about anything.”
“You believe him?”
“About that I do. Zach’s a narcissist. I don’t think he had any interest in hearing about Amanda’s problems. My guess is he made clear she was on her own.”
“Well, that’s fucking awful,” Millie said. “Where does it leave you?”
“Stuck on a case, and with a client I want the hell away from. But I’m pretty sure the only way to do that is to get the charges dismissed. Some unidentified person’s fingerprints are in the blood on those stairs. Which means somebody else was there that night. Somebody who didn’t call the police and who hasn’t come forward.”
“Of course it doesn’t necessarily mean your client didn’t kill her. He could have been there, too. He could have hired someone.”
“I know,” I said. “But even if he did, I’ve got to get him off if I want to keep my job. Unless I can figure some other way out, like finding something I can use against Zach. Make it worth his while to let me off the hook.”
Millie nodded. “I like that idea much better. Either way, just getyour ass away from this whole thing. Life’s way too fucking short for this bullshit. Trust me.” She lifted one of the folders off the floor and held it out to me, but didn’t relinquish her grip. “This is everything I’ve got. And I’m giving it to you on the condition that you don’t do any more of your own sleuthing out in the field. I will find you someone to help for free if need be.”
I nodded too quickly. “Of course not.”
She let go of the file. “Hmm. That’s what you said yesterday. It’s bad karma to lie to people who are dying.”
“Come on, you’re not—”
“I am, Lizzie,” she said. Her expression was serious, but also calm. “That’s the reality. And it could happen anytime. That’s what the doctors have said. Point-blank. A bunch of times. They don’t go around telling you to get your affairs in order just for shits and giggles. This whole chemo thing is a Hail Mary pass. It’s possible it’ll even make me worse, fast. That’s why all the emails. I wanted to be sure I’d spoken to you … in case. You know I’ve always been more than happy to do anything that might make things a little bit easier for you. After everything your mother did for me when Nancy was sick, that’s the least I could do. But me being the intermediary—it was always a Band-Aid, wasn’t it?” She was quiet for a moment, then looked up at me through narrowed eyes. My heart was picking up speed. “What does Sam know, exactly?”
“He knows about the fraud, and my mom’s heart attack,” I offered weakly. “But Sam … he thinks that my dad is dead, too. That’s, um, what everyone thinks.”
“You’ve been telling everybody your dad is dead?” Millie asked, her expression a mixture of disappointed and dumbfounded. “All this time?”
“I needed distance from the whole situation,” I said, and God, did I sound defensive. “You saw me. I was a mess.”
And I was, for a long time. Of course I did eventually pull out of my depression. Enough so that I made my way to college andlaw school, made friends, got married. All of that a long time ago. And yet I’d let Millie keep on running interference for me like I was still a seventeen-year-old girl so grief-stricken I couldn’t get out of bed. But that was eighteen years ago. I hadn’t spoken to my dad for eighteen years. And I could live with that, but what about my mother? How sad she would be that I’d never gone to Greece myself in all these years, that I’d never set foot again in a Greek church.
He’d sent a few letters over the years. Not the desperate pleas you might expect, though, no begging for forgiveness, no proclamations of love. Because that wasn’t my dad. He didn’t feel any of those things. His few letters had been matter-of-fact updates—mechanical, obligatory. Like he was trying to keep me in play in case he needed me later. Millie had also told me over the years when he’d asked about me. Was I doing well in school? What kind of money was I making? Never really about me. And he never once asked Millie why I hadn’t visited myself. She’d made that very clear to me, always. She’d never wanted me to feel guilty.
“But distance is different than complete amnesia, Lizzie,” Millie went on. “And you’remarriedto Sam.”
“I know.” My heart was hammering.
Millie stared at me then, for such a terribly long time. My whole body felt hot, shame blazing through me. I was ashamed of what my father had done, yes. But even more of my inability to face it. Instead I’d shoved it deep down, where it was now buried beneath all those other things I’d tried to will out of existence—Sam’s persistent drinking, our debt, my derailed career, my nonexistent baby.
“Well,” Millie continued. “You can keep on pretending he’s gone, I guess. That’s your choice. But it might feel different without a go-between.”
“Have you seen him recently?” I asked.
“Few months ago. I still try to go once a year. And he still calls occasionally, once every six months. In between, I can get enoughinformation from my contacts at Elmira. Your dad’s the same old, three-quarters asshole, one-quarter charming son of a bitch,” she said. “Listen, I’m not defending him or what he did. Hell, he wasn’t the best guy to begin with. But eventually he is going to get out, could be as soon as three or four years from now. Then what? It’s a free country. He could come see you.”
