by D. J. Palmer
“Well, it worked. We’ll talk about it, too, all our regrets—later though, after you rest and get your strength back.”
“Regrets,” Glen muttered under his breath, his gaze drifting to another time and place. When he looked up at Nina, he was present again. “I thought a lot about those in the box. But I want you to know why I was in Carson. Why I lost my job at the bank. It’s important you know.”
Nina glanced at the bandage covering the cut to her palm from the glass shard she had turned into a weapon. She could still hear the skin rip as she pulled the makeshift dagger across Simon’s throat. It was as if she could feel his warm blood on her skin.
“Let’s get you healthy. Focus only on that for now. Then you can tell me your story. And I’ll tell you mine.”
Chapter 63
A week later, Nina showed up at the hospital with a bottle of whiskey. Truth serum. Glen had finished his daily physical therapy session, but instead of going back to his bed, he and Nina found an empty conference room where they could talk and drink.
It was time.
They sat next to each other on a hard-cushioned couch. Glen looked much better with each day. His color had returned; his cuts and abrasions were well on the way to being completely healed. His doctors were impressed with his progress, and the nurses and PT therapists managing the lion’s share of his care and rehabilitation were equally encouraged.
Nina and the kids had come to see Glen every day, but he had requested this private session with his wife. He was tired, beaten, battered, but he had to cleanse himself. He had to purify.
They both did.
“I like your hair,” Glen said.
Nina had cut it short, modern and stylish.
“Thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it the way it was one second longer. Bad memories.”
They shared a quiet laugh. Nina poured two fingers of whiskey for each of them.
“Am I even allowed to drink?” Glen said slyly, sneaking glances like he was getting away with something.
“Not long ago this would have been the only medicine you’d have been given. So drink up.”
“Don’t tell the nurses,” Glen said. “They’re very protective of me.”
That was a bit of an understatement. Those nurses were hawkish at holding the media at bay. The story of a man imprisoned in a soundproof box wasn’t dying down anytime soon.
“Cheers,” Nina said, lifting her glass.
They both kicked back the first drink, and Nina poured them another. Truth serum. She’d tell Glen everything, but first, Carson.
It all started with the bank. If Nina hadn’t been left in dire financial straits, Simon’s efforts might not have worked so effectively. Instead, he had taken advantage of a perfect storm, a confluence of events that had nearly served his purpose. So now it was a moment of reckoning. Why had Glen lied to her for all those years?
“I lost my job.”
Nina appeared nonplussed. “So you got fired. Why? And why not just come to me?”
“No—no,” Glen said, sounding impassioned, a man with pride still in him. “I didn’t get fired for something I did wrong. I got fired because I was suspicious that my bank was acting unethically. I tried to report it, but the CEO wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say. I guess he preferred the profits.”
Nina became more intrigued. “Unethical, how?”
“Branch managers at my bank were opening hundreds of unauthorized accounts, issuing unauthorized credit cards to our customers so that they could charge all sorts of fees. The scheme was netting big dollars.”
“Just like Wells Fargo,” said Nina.
“Screwing customers out of their hard-earned money isn’t the exclusive privilege of the big banks.”
“So they fired you for trying to blow the whistle?”
“I wasn’t just fired,” Glen said, sucking down the whiskey like water. His lips were moving more freely with each sip.
“Go on,” Nina said.
“Before they got rid of me, senior management—and I’m pretty sure it was at the CEO’s direction—trashed me in my Form U5.”
Nina looked perplexed. “Form U5?”
“It’s like a report card for people who work in financial services—or at least, anyone who works as an investment advisor. I had one, even though I didn’t really need it for my job. If you have one, a hiring manager looks at your U5 more than your résumé. Those comments in my U5 immediately turned me into poisoned goods. The system works well if a worker takes advantage of a customer, but if an employer unfairly defames an employee, it’s impossible to get it corrected, and it means the end of your career. There is no recourse. No organization you can turn to for help. One black mark on the U5 and you’ll never get a job in finance again.”
Nina nodded. She got it now. Glen didn’t just lose his job. He’d been blackballed. He was persona non grata in a career and an industry he loved.
“I thought I was finally earning enough to stop worrying about every little expense—and then overnight, I couldn’t get a job as a teller in Podunk, Anywhere. My U5 followed me like a curse.”
“That’s outrageous,” Nina said, sounding genuinely upset. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have understood that story a heck of a lot more than you secretly draining our bank accounts.”
“Why didn’t I tell you?” Glen repeated the question with a pitiful little laugh. “God knows, I should have. I didn’t start out intending to do what I did. I thought I could handle it on my own, that eventually I’d land another bank management job, one that didn’t need a U5. I only went to Carson to fish, away from everyone who knew me, so I could think, come up with a game plan, a plan B.
“Instead, I found out that when you’re approaching fifty and you’ve had only one career path, forging another isn’t a quick and easy thing to do. In my case, it was impossible. I kept thinking my luck was going to change. My résumé would land on the right desk, or something like that, but no. After a year of failure and constant rejection, I had to accept my fate. We were destined for bankruptcy no matter what I did.”
Nina puckered her lips, looking unconvinced. “I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me. You were the noble knight in this tale, trying to do a good deed, and you got a raw deal for it. I would have been on your side. What? You didn’t want to worry me, is that it?”
“You don’t get it,” Glen said, hiding his face in his hands. His breathing turned shaky. “The job was all I had. It was who I was.”
“That’s not true. You also had a family. You were a dad.”
“Was I?” Judging by Glen’s expression, either the whiskey or some memory had suddenly turned bitter. Nina poured them each another splash. “I was a father, sure, but I wasn’t a dad.”
“Not sure I’m clear on the distinction.”
“You’re not a father. You couldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Nina thought Glen was going to clam up. This was the hard part. She took a sip of her drink, and Glen did from his as well. The alcohol was loosening them both. Maybe they could be honest with each other for a change. It wasn’t about money and work. This was about their relationship. A rift in the marriage, the same kind gulf the Coopers couldn’t cross, had made it impossible to see and hear each other. That is, until Simon.
It was obvious to Nina now—so many signs, signs she’d missed. Simon had wanted the best possible source of information to make Nina fall in love with him. Glen was Simon’s Cyrano de Bergerac—the man who could teach him what to say, how to act, how to be around her.
She fit perfectly into Simon’s picture, and Glen was his guarantee that he wouldn’t fail with her, and to her continued astonishment his plan had nearly worked. The gifts Simon bought her, that opal necklace, the eggplant dish he made, his orangey-woodsy smell, things he’d say to her, even the truck he owned—all so comforting to a woman in distress, so familiar. And that special attention he paid to Connor, his eagerness for time togethe
r as a family, it had all come from the same source, little tips Simon extracted to ensure he got his prize.
It sickened Nina to think of the time she had spent in Simon’s bed, making love to him, while her husband was chained up below, perhaps aware she was there, calling out to her in a voice she couldn’t hear. Her children, too, had come to Simon’s, toured the house, gone to the lake, unaware their missing dad was so close by. Simon was so twisted that he probably got off on the danger.
“You and the kids. That’s what I thought about the most down there. I thought how I’m going . . . to . . . miss you all so much.”
When Glen’s voice broke and he began to weep, Nina reached over to take hold of his hands, consoling him.
“It wasn’t all your fault, Glen,” Nina said. “It took me a lot of therapy to come to terms with the role I played. Maybe if I had helped you forge a stronger bond with the kids, you would have taken a different path. But I was selfish. I think I wanted them all to myself. I liked making all the decisions, liked having them come to me. I needed them, maybe even more than they needed me. But I’m not that person anymore.”
Nina took her hands away. It was her turn and she wanted no comfort as she fumbled her way through her admission.
“I know you’re carrying a lot of guilt for what happened, but I’ve got my fair share of it, too,” she began. “I’m the one who let Simon into our lives so quickly. I ignored my better judgment, my own doubts, Maggie’s warnings, misgivings from my parents and my closest friends. I was needy and vulnerable, and I put us all in danger and I have to live with that now.
“You’ve paid your price and I’ve paid mine. We can’t erase the decisions we made, we can’t undo what happened to us, but hopefully, we can try to rebuild.”
“With what? I have no job. We have no money.”
A slim smile crested Nina’s lips.
“I thought about that,” she said, “so I got us a cushion.”
And that’s when Nina shared what she really did when she’d gone upstairs to call the police from Simon’s place using Simon’s cell phone. Obviously, she could have made the call from his basement.
She had gone to the bedroom at the end of the hall, and again saw the picture of Allison Fitch, who bore such an uncanny resemblance to her. But she had other things on her mind.
She opened the closet door.
He said it was here, didn’t he?
There was hardly anything in the closet, making it easy to locate the box she was after. It was big enough to hold a pair of hiking boots, but there was no footwear inside.
“Two hundred thousand dollars, cash, tax free,” Nina told Glen. “I put the box in my car before I called the police. I didn’t tell the kids. They don’t need to know.”
“You clever girl.” Glen was smiling.
“We deserve that money for what we went through. But I’m putting some of it into a nonprofit in Hugh Dolan’s name to support addiction recovery.”
Glen nodded in approval.
“You know, he killed Hugh,” he said. “He broke into his apartment, subdued him, shoved a fentanyl-laced injection into his arm—revenge for his interference, that’s what he told me.”
Nina wasn’t surprised. She already knew Simon had spied on her Facebook messages, so in a way, she had played a role in Hugh’s death. The money wouldn’t cleanse her conscience, but it would help take away some of the guilt.
“Remember how we met?” Nina said.
“Match dot com,” Glen said with a laugh.
“I always wanted a better story to tell,” she said. “My broken jar of pasta sauce. We might not have the greatest how-we-met story, but we do have a good story to tell.”
From a pocket, Nina produced a business card belonging to a major book publisher. A large figure was written on the back.
“I suspect it’s too soon for you to tell our story right now,” Nina said. “It’s too soon for me. But when we’re ready.”
Nina had plans for that money. In addition to funding drug treatment in Hugh’s name, she intended to provide for Detective Wheeler’s widow, and fund an effort to track down Allison Fitch, and if necessary, try to locate her remains. There was no way to make this up to Dr. Wilcox, but fortunately she was back on her feet and resuming her practice.
Glen’s eyes misted over as he leaned in, put his mouth close to Nina’s ear, and whispered, “I’m just so grateful we’re alive to tell it together.”
They hugged.
At last, finally, after all this time, she harbored no doubts. This was her husband. The man she loved. True, he had made a terrible choice by not confiding in her, but she had made terrible choices of her own. They were flawed together—like all marriages, perfectly imperfect. With time and counseling, Nina had total confidence she could get over Glen’s deception and his lone indiscretion. The mind was funny like that. It could adapt, shift, change directions like sand in the wind.
In another week, he would be officially discharged and they’d move back in together as a family. Nina had rented a new house in Seabury. She had the money. Ginny and Susanna were helping with the move—once again, the comfort of friendship.
As Nina pulled away from Glen’s embrace, she caught sight of something, or someone, over his shoulder. Simon was in the room with them, a gaping wound in his neck, blood splatter in his hair, on his face, his clothes. She didn’t flinch, didn’t scream. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him.
Nina closed her eyes, opened them, and when she did, he was gone.
Epilogue
Maggie Garrity, essay for the Dartmouth College admissions application.
Question: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
It is easy to judge other people. It takes no effort at all. Sit back, look at their choices, and decide what you would have done. It’s as simple as that. But when you’re safe inside your home, on your couch, petting your dog, it’s easy to overinflate your capabilities. Why not imagine you’d be a superhero. Of course, you (amazing person) would punch and kick your way to safety—whatever the danger. But here’s what I’ve learned after my ordeal, the greatest obstacle I’ve ever overcome: until you live it, you don’t know what you would actually do. What you think you’d do is nothing but a fantasy.
If you Google my name, you’ll see story after story about what happened to my family and me. It wasn’t pleasant. It was the worst time in my life. I nearly died. We all did. Some people judged my father harshly for what had happened. They called him a coward for not finding a way to get a message to me, or even trying to make an escape. They thought the man who had taken him prisoner had brainwashed him into developing a psychological alliance with his captor, which is known as Stockholm syndrome.
But these people who judged him weren’t shackled inside a 512-cubic-foot room for nearly two years. My father did what he had to do to survive.
We all did.
So don’t judge.
I wasn’t always good at this myself. There was a time before that I judged kids who are different—kids who are super studious, kids who don’t look or act “cool,” kids who don’t do sports, or any of the “right stuff.” That’s a lesson I learned the hard way.
Toward the end of seventh grade and the beginning of eighth, I was the target of a bully and was cast out of my social circle. I found myself alone all the time, walking to classes alone, studying alone, eating lunch alone day after day. And you better believe I was judged. Some thought I deserved taunting and teasing. Some just wondered if there was something wrong with me. But there was one who offered his hand. One day while sitting in the cafeteria, a boy I once judged and dismissed, a boy who was an outsider himself, asked if he could join me for lunch. I was reluctant at first, but then we started to talk and I found that this boy, a boy I never would have considered before, was smart and funny,
generous and kind.
That was Benjamin Odell. He turned out to be my best friend and he’s one of the reasons my family is still alive.
We live in a fairly small community and I know that after my father’s disappearance, some people had plenty to say about my mother. They said she took up with a man too quickly. They said she put us in harm’s way by bringing a dangerous and deranged person into our lives. They judged her without understanding my mother or our situation.
Those who know my mother well know her to be a smart woman who was very protective of her family. This time she just failed to see the danger in front of her, in front of us all. And she wasn’t the only one who failed to see. My brother was also fooled. And all those who judged her . . . would they have been fooled, as well? Quite likely. This person tricked a lot of people.
For reasons I don’t understand, I saw what my mother and my brother could not. From that terrible time, I learned to trust my own instincts and to fight for what I know to be right. And in time, maybe just in time, my mother and brother came to the same understanding, and together we did what we had to do to save our lives.
I learned something else from my awful experience. I learned about the woman at the heart of it all, and, no, it’s not my mother, even though that’s what the stories say. Victim Zero is a woman named Allison Greene. That’s her real last name. I won’t use her married name because I know she would not want it.
Allison was a battered woman. She was trapped in a horribly abusive relationship. I’ve read her diary many times. I know her story well. I’ve also been looking for Allison for years—a lot of us have. I use the Internet to try and find her and I guess you would call me an amateur sleuth. I haven’t uncovered any leads, but I’m still searching.
Allison was married for about four years and finally, she ran away from her abuser. Nobody has seen her since. At least we hope she ran away. She was pregnant when she disappeared and nobody knows if she escaped or if she had her baby, because her abuser took those secrets to his grave. And who was this abuser? He was the same man who was in our lives, the man whose surface ease and charm hid a murderous soul. Of course, we knew nothing of Allison, or of a baby, or of abuse, when our story started.