Her Perfect Life

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  When she’d first “disappeared,” hiding in an apartment Kirkhalter had found for her in upstate New York, she’d watched news conferences where the detective had insisted they were looking for her. She’d wondered how the hell he’d gotten away with that charade, but no one seemed to push them.

  The detective had told her that day to choose a new name that would be easy for her to remember—and difficult for someone to guess. And to keep it secret, even from him. So she’d picked Sasha, for the mysterious character in the Virginia Woolf novel they’d been reading in English class, and Forrestal, like her actual last name, Atwood. Kirkhalter—or whoever was in charge of the whole thing, she’d never been totally sure—had sent her a blank Social Security application to fill out, with a new number already on it. Every month, money from a trust account went into her numbered bank account. Enough to keep her in food and shelter and reasonable security. And anonymity.

  At eighteen, there wasn’t much backstory they needed to concoct.

  Becoming Sasha Forrestal, she’d chopped her hair and bleached it, changed her eyebrows and her attitude. No one from nowhere, an orphan without a history. She had no choice; she was not only protecting herself but her family. She could never relax. Never feel free. Never escape that someone might be looking for her. And looking to kill her.

  She’d become a waitress, then a line cook, and then a sous chef, saving tips and salary and as much as she could of Kirkhalter’s stipend. Saving for what, she wasn’t sure. She could cook, she could make people happy and nurture them. As long as they didn’t ask any questions. She’d learned how to defend herself, just in case.

  She’d buried herself in books. She’d missed school, feared for her education and so devoured the classics, books on the syllabus lists she’d never be assigned to read. She moved to historical fiction and mysteries, and romances, allowing herself to live someone else’s life and deal with someone else’s problems. Making narrow escapes and wrong decisions and still ending up happy or at least enlightened. The Prisoner of Zenda, she’d read, and Les Misérables, anything that had to do with loneliness and separation and the isolation that came with guilt and remorse. Crime and Punishment. She’d read it dozens of times.

  When her mother died, she took her life in her hands—so Detective Kirkhalter had warned her—swathed herself in a black shawl and headscarf, and hovered just past the small ring of mourners who’d come to say goodbye to Cecile Blair Atwood. Dad was long gone, and Gramma Lily. The very memory brought more tears to her eyes.

  She’d seen Lily, too, at the funeral, not seven years old anymore but eighteen, the same age as she herself had been when she’d spent her last day as Cassie.

  On the ten-year anniversary, she’d read the almost-nostalgic coverage of her disappearance. So last century, it had faded into history.

  But even as Sasha, she was still Lily’s sister. Felt a stronger bond with her, even, since they were the only two left. She’d followed Lily’s career like a secret special fan, not difficult to do with a sister who thrived on social media. And when Lily seemed to settle in Boston, Sasha had left her job in the anonymous crowds of New York City—where part-time restaurant jobs were easy to get—and moved what few belongings she had up here to New Hampshire. Close enough to see Lily on cable, far enough that they’d never cross paths in real life.

  Now, after all these years, after she’d been Sasha longer than she’d been Cassie, she’d decided, What the hell. She’d find her sister. Risk it. Go for it.

  Lily would recognize her, of that she was certain. Sure, a part of her had been hesitant. Terrified, really. To undo the infinite caution that more than twenty years of hiding had taught her. What if they—whoever they were—were watching Lily, to see if a Cassie-possibility tried to contact her? Lily had a daughter now, too, and that broke her heart. Cassie might have been an aunt, was an aunt, not that her niece had ever known her.

  She’d researched the prison sentences for people convicted of manslaughter. Turned out, because she hadn’t planned to murder Jem Duggan, it wasn’t first-degree murder. The maximum sentence for manslaughter, she’d learned, was twenty years. She’d served that. More than that.

  She remembered closing that internet search, feeling a weightless sense of freedom as she passed judgment on herself. She’d paid her dues. She could set herself free. She was sick of it, of looking over her shoulder every minute of the day, Kirkhalter’s “people” be damned.

  But after she’d never heard back from the detective—and later read he’d died—she was stuck. Without guidance from the one person who knew her real story, it was impossible to know whether it was safe to contact her sister. Or if anything was safe, or would ever be safe again.

  What would Kirkhalter have advised her to do? She’d never know. She was on her own. As always.

  Her first plan was simply to show up in Lily’s office. But that hadn’t seemed fair to Lily, to dump such an ugly history on her unsuspecting sister. She’d warned little Lily, that late final night in her bedroom, that she’d done something bad. But who knew if Lily even remembered. She’d been so young, and so sleepy, and the whole thing was so impossible.

  The second idea, the bouquets of lilies, clearly hadn’t worked. Cassie decided, stirring the soup, that it must have been too obscure.

  Lily was a TV star. Maybe she got anonymous flowers all the time. That’s why Cassie had actually had them sign the second bouquet. And the third one, too. From Cassie, trying to make it clearer. She didn’t know Lily at all, so how was she supposed to get her a secret message? Much less let Lily know how to respond.

  Sometimes, walking with her rescue dog Pooch through the foothills of the White Mountains, she’d allow herself to think of it, alone with nature, where no one would judge her or question her or push her about her past. All those questions people asked without a second thought—Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to college? Do you have family?—she’d shut them down. And as a result, shut down any chance at relationships. She was a murderer. How was she supposed to tell someone that bit of biography?

  And, tramping through slick fallen leaves and tangled underbrush, seeing the occasional blue jay or a skittering rabbit, she always decided, in the end, if she had to give up her life in return for taking someone else’s, the fact that every day was a punishment was what she probably deserved.

  The bouillabaisse simmered, bubbling with promise. Soon, the morning staff would begin to arrive, trickling in with paper cups of coffee and earbuds in to pick up their white Pemberton Grill coats and assignments for the day. They’d stopped asking her to join them restaurant-hopping or going to the movies or celebrating birthdays. She wished she could be their friend, wished there were a way to explain it, but again, there wasn’t. She wondered if they whispered about her, or speculated, or decided she was socially inept. “The reclusive Sasha Forrestal,” so said the article about her cooking in the local paper, because of course she couldn’t do an interview. She’d concocted an elaborate, sad story about being shy and private. About letting her food speak for her.

  She knew if they published her photo, she’d have to leave.

  Back at eighteen, anything seemed possible. She’d thought it would be easy, or at least not so difficult. As she got older, the gaps in her life, the losses, became more like crevasses, splitting wider and wider, trying to separate her from who she was.

  Now she wore her past like an invisible burden. She deserved it, she had no doubt about that. She mourned Jem Duggan every day. She could have saved him, but she hadn’t, and now she was no one.

  At least the contemptible Zachary Shaw and some of his drug-dealing crew were sent to prison back then—and she’d helped with that, no question, telling the detective and the grand jury what she’d seen in Jem’s cabinet in exchange for her freedom and new identity, agreeing to trial testimony that in the end, after Shaw’s plea agreement, she never had to give.

  But Kirkhalter had warned her on that very last day she was Cass
ie. “The memories of those people are long,” he’d said. “And they know who your family is, and they’re waiting for the minute you relax.” So she’d never relaxed.

  Zachary Shaw was dead now, had never been freed. And that was her one good thing. Still, the threat of retaliation—by someone thinking she’d not only ratted out the drug dealers but also killed Jem Duggan—kept her hidden. She stayed in a prison of her own making.

  The bouillabaisse needed more lemon, she could tell from the fragrance, and she pulled open the kitchen’s imposing stainless steel fridge to select a perfect one. The pungent citrus bloomed around her, and she blinked, startled, when juice from the first slice landed in her eye. She wiped it away with one finger, like a tear.

  She’d cried so much.

  She stirred the fishy soup, watching the oil rise to the top, and the bursts of chopped herbs ebb and flow with each movement of the wooden spoon. How many times had she replayed that last moment with Jem? If she had only …

  Her notifications pinged. She took out her phone.

  Lily had posted on Instagram.

  And it was a message to her. Had to be.

  CHAPTER 52

  LILY

  Lily had been right. There were not that many Tosca Manukians. Two, in fact, and one of them was ninety-three years old. Possible, but not the better candidate for the reporter who’d covered the Jeremy Duggan death, the Berwick explosion, and the arrest of Zachary Shaw. The reporter, she knew from her own experience, who must know far more than she’d ever put into her articles back then. Now, if the woman only remembered.

  She rolled over in bed, the early light from the dawn peeking through her white bedroom shutters. Six in the morning, way earlier than she usually woke up, but she’d basically stayed up all night, unable to sleep, unable to turn off her brain, willing the time away until she could call London, where this Tosca Manukian wrote for a boutique literary magazine. Five hours ahead, she calculated, so when she’d finally nailed down her quarry, it was the middle of the night in the UK. Lily ached to call her, yearned to email, but it was ridiculous to do such a thing. Tosca Manukian, crossing fingers she was the right Tosca, would not have been inclined to be helpful if awakened at 3:00 a.m. So Lily waited.

  At six in Boston, though, overseas it was eleven on Thursday morning. She’d tried to talk herself into calling at five, but that still seemed impolite.

  She tapped in the phone number she’d found. She heard nothing, then something, then nothing again as the phone signal somehow traveled three thousand miles. A crackle, then the unmistakable sound of someone completing the connection.

  “Yes?” A woman’s voice.

  “I’m a reporter calling from the United States,” Lily began. She knew, also from experience, that an unfamiliar voice asking someone’s name was sometimes off-putting—conjuring bill collectors or salespeople or police. “My name is Lily Atwood, and I’m the younger sister of—” Lily, nervous, had strayed from her own script. “Is this Tosca Manukian, who used to write for the Berwick Journal? Years ago? Twenty-some years ago?”

  “I’m sorry?” the voice said.

  Lily’s heart sank. Maybe this was the wrong Tosca. She’d stayed up all night, wrapped in her hopes. “Oh, I apologize for—”

  “Yes, this is Tosca Manukian,” the voice said. “And yes, I worked for the Journal. You said your name was—”

  “Lily Atwood.” The relief washed over Lily like a door had opened into her future, or something had been released.

  “Atwood?” Manukian’s voice changed. “As in Cassie Atwood? Was she found? What happened?”

  Five minutes later, Lily and Tosca Manukian were face-to-virtual-face on Zoom. Manukian, pushing a sophisticated sixty, Lily calculated, or older, with elegant cheekbones and gray-streaked hair slicked back in a chic bun. A white shirt and pearls and a navy blazer, Lily saw, almost a copy of what Lily often wore. Now, crack of dawn in Boston, Lily just wore a white tee and sweatpants, although Manukian couldn’t see the sweatpants.

  After Manukian had agreed everything was off the record—Call me Tosca, she’d said—Lily had bullet-pointed the story for her, including the witness protection deal.

  “And that’s all I know now,” Lily finished. It had crossed her mind, in the middle of the night, that maybe Tosca Manukian had known Cassie was in witness protection and helped in the cover-up. But reading her articles, she’d seemed like a solid journalist, and Lily doubted she’d been in the pockets of the cops. Lily’d decided to chance it. “So—Zachary Shaw, Jeremy Duggan, Cassie Atwood. Detective Kirkhalter. You remember?”

  “Of course,” Tosca said. “I looked you up before our call, and saw you in Boston on your channel’s website. Lily Atwood, huh? And you were just a little girl. Hard to believe.”

  Lily had to agree, but there it was. She couldn’t imagine Rowen dealing with that, with the disappearance of a sister, unexplained and mysterious, like a dark fairy tale that turned out to be real. Did Rowen think of her father like that? Someone who’d vanished? The unsettling thought crossed Lily’s mind, but she dismissed it. You can’t miss something you never had.

  Sam Prescott had called Lily, two years ago. Said his new wife was willing to ignore his past. To embrace Rowen. Was Lily interested? he’d asked. In altering the custody agreement? Over my dead body, Lily’d said. Forget it. She’d hung up and collapsed into tears. That was the end of that.

  Sam had made his decision once. Left Rowen. She could not allow Rowen to risk another one-eighty. Sam Prescott could not be in charge of their lives.

  So far, this morning, not a hint of the others in her house awakening. For now, on this transatlantic call, Lily had privacy and opportunity. Now if she could only get answers.

  “Yes, I agree, hard to believe. It’s been a long time. But, Tosca? Can you remember if anyone ever speculated that Cassie Atwood had been sent away? Or was in hiding somewhere?”

  Silence on the other end. “Wow, no,” Tosca finally said. “I mean—that would be—no. I mean, we all know about college girls. It’s difficult, Lily, but sometimes people, especially headstrong young women, simply vanish on their own. They’re good at it.”

  “Why’d everyone give up on her, then?” Lily winced inwardly at the harshness in her own tone. Saw the surprised look on Tosca’s face on the monitor. “Sorry,” she said. “That came out wrong.”

  Tosca was shaking her head. “You know journalism. There’s one story, and then there’s another one. Dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. Happy to tell you whatever I remember.”

  “Thanks. So much. So—anything?”

  Tosca looked away from the camera, pursed her lips.

  Lily could almost see her thinking.

  Tosca looked up. Touched her pearls. “I was at the hospital one day, when Zachary Shaw—he turned out to be a drug dealer, you know about that, right?—was recovering from the explosion. Trying to see if I could get any information. And there was a young woman in the waiting room, who, I kind of—oh, right. I heard her ask the receptionist about Shaw.” She gave a soft laugh. “This is the stuff I remember. Haven’t thought about it for years.”

  “Was it Cassie?”

  “She never said her name, I’m fairly sure. And I remember she was very pretty, in a ’90s kind of way. But…”

  Lily watched Tosca look up at the ceiling. Tosca’s apartment had a flowery Liberty of London–looking wallpaper, and she sat on a plump, dark green armchair. A languid white cat, sleeping, stretched across the back behind her.

  “She was talking to another kid there. I thought a student, at the time. He had one arm bandaged, and…” She squinted at Lily as if trying to see into the past again. “Maybe a bandage on his face.”

  “And who was that?” Lily wondered why that was important.

  “It’s just—it might have been Jem Duggan. Word on campus was…” Tosca tilted her head, as if a memory was eluding her. “Some student, a chatty freshman girl, told me she’d heard from her roommate that he’d
gone into the fire to save Zachary Shaw. Who knows.”

  “Jem?”

  “Jeremy. They called him Jem. Duggan, they discovered, was never enrolled. Just hung out on campus. And the thing is, it was later that same night that he was found dead.”

  They stared at each other across an entire ocean. Tosca, Lily thought, must be making the same connection she was.

  “They didn’t put his photo in the papers,” Tosca went on. “Turned out he was a drug dealer, too, like Shaw. In league with him. College big shots probably wanted it to go away. But from the one photo the cops showed me afterward—yes. Might have been Jem Duggan.”

  “So, um.” Lily had to ask, had to, and the answer she got would change her life and Cassie’s life. And Rowen’s, too. “So do you—did you—do you think she, Cassie, um.” She was having a hard time getting the words out. “Could Cassie be connected to Jem Duggan’s death?”

  Tosca smoothed one shaped eyebrow, and the cat behind her stretched out two white front legs and tucked them under her again.

  “Your cat is so elegant,” Lily said.

  “Her name is Lillian.” Tosca laughed. “For Lillian Hellman. Small world. And, yes, I did think of it—the explosion, and Duggan, and then the missing Cassie. I asked the police about a connection, but…” She lifted both palms. “They acted like I was crazy. Kirkhalter. I mean, yeah, I know cops lie.” She shook her head, and Lily could see her remembering. “But they totally waved me off.”

  “That’s why she was sent away, is what Walt Banning told me,” Lily said. “The cops—Detective Kirkhalter himself, apparently—arranged it. Got her to inform on Zachary Shaw. And then faked the ‘missing’ thing to give her a cover.”

  “Wow,” Tosca said. “That’s either brilliant or horrific.” She let out a long breath. “If that’s how they nailed that Zachary Shaw, though. Wow. He was a big fish.”