Her Perfect Life

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Oh, dear heaven, I thought. What the hell was I supposed to say?

  “About what?” Pitiful, and repetitive, but maybe he’d tell me.

  “About Cassie. Damn it, Greer. Did Lily hear from Cassie?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. That wasn’t my information to give. I had already betrayed Lily, already done something despicably inappropriate, and somehow this, being asked to tell her final secret—I couldn’t do it.

  “I have no idea,” I told him.

  “Have you talked to her today?”

  “I’m at Channel 6. She’s not here, is all I know. But you know that, too. Look. Banning. I have nothing. Nothing to tell you. If Lily’s in your driveway, then why don’t you go ask her why?”

  “Look. Greer. I’ll deal with Lily. You’ll get a call to go pick up Rowen at Graydon. Then you’ll both come to my house.”

  “What?” My answer came out a yelp, and I was glad no one was around to hear it.

  “Apparently, Headmistress Glover has been trying to reach Lily all morning, but Lily’s phone has been turned off.”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “Oh dear. Tell the headmistress that when you see her. But apparently Rowen’s class is being dismissed early today, teachers’ meetings or some such, and poor Petra’s car is in the shop, where she is, too. Funny how that happens, today of all days. And you are next on the Graydon call list, are you not? Rowen needs to be picked up now and brought here. Because here is where Lily is, and she cannot be left home alone.”

  “That’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,” I said.

  “And yet, all true.” Banning’s voice was velvet. “And if you refuse, then our Lily will hear the whole saga of your little aquarium jaunt. If you agree, Rowen will have a lovely note of explanation, which she can happily present to her mother, in the headmistress’s own handwriting on her own personal stationery. Ms. Glover will simply cash the nice check. She trusts you to take care of Rowen. Isn’t that perfect?”

  I closed my eyes, just for a beat. “What do you really want?”

  “I want Rowen to be safe. I want my client to be able to go home happy. I want Lily to be reunited with her sister. I want you both to keep your jobs. Isn’t that exactly what you want, too?”

  I hated him. Hated him with all my being. But maybe it was shooting the messenger. Lily had an impossible secret past, and that past existed whether Banning told us about it or whether we found out the hard way. Sometimes there are no good choices, just necessary ones.

  “Where will Rowen meet me?”

  “In front of the school. Fifteen minutes?”

  “Twenty,” I said. “And then I’m done, Banning.”

  “See you soon,” he said.

  CHAPTER 57

  LILY

  Maybe Cassie wasn’t coming. Lily’s ears almost ached with listening for an arriving car. She’d thought about going inside Banning’s house, telling him about the Instagram connection, about their plans. He’d grill her, she figured, but she had no specifics, only that it was Cassie, definitely Cassie, alive, and somewhere five hours away, and with a cell phone and an Insta- gram account. Lily had checked it, of course, @Zendagirl, and saw she had nothing posted, no followers, and was only following one person. Lily Atwood.

  Lily, waiting in the driveway, had scrolled through her own Instagram photos, imagining her life through Cassie’s eyes. Cassie, a drug-dealing killer, examining Lily’s affluent, privileged, perfect life. Cassie would know of the Emmys and her TV investigations, of Lily’s glittering appearances at charity balls and celebrity bike rides and her perfectly lighted promo shots at the news desk. She’d know about Rowen, the BG with penguin ribbons. Lily took a deep breath, wondering how that made Cassie feel. Seeing how different their two lives had been. How different their choices had been.

  Cassie had taken her eighteen-year-old self and created some kind of a life. Lily would recognize her, she was confident of that. You could not disguise a sister.

  She opened the car door, steeling herself to tell Banning what had happened. My sister is—could she even say those words, my sister?

  Closing the car door behind her, she leaned against the warm metal, arms crossed in front of her. She was stalling, but there was no reason to go inside. Spring had blessed her with a perfect day, as if nature approved of what was about to happen. She lifted her face to the sun, knowing Cassie felt the same sun, wondering if Cassie had ever been happy again. How could she, if she’d killed someone?

  A drug dealer, though. Who’d probably destroyed countless lives. She was only eighteen. Lily felt tears in her eyes. Her sister—her beautiful, smart sister—had made a horrendous decision that ruined her life. She’d asked Lily—not in so many words but the reality remained—she’d asked Lily to forgive her. I want to come home, she’d written. But there was no home but Lily. And Rowen.

  No car engines yet.

  Banning must not have seen her, or he’d have come out. He was as eager to hear about Cassie as she was. And he could only think, by Lily’s unannounced arrival, that they’d connected.

  Those files, that’s what haunted her. She needed those, needed Cassie to see them to understand how risky it was. Only Banning’s father truly knew whether it was safe for Cassie to reemerge. Even this meeting, Lily knew, was risky. And Lily had allowed it to happen.

  No. Cassie had allowed it to happen. And she’d have to leave. Ignoring it wouldn’t make the danger go away. Cassie had ruined her own life. All these years later, Lily could not let her ruin hers, too. Hers and Rowen’s.

  Harsh. And horrible. And heartbreaking.

  Still no car engines. Banning’s street was serene and suburban, on one of those days where the wind carried birdsong through the trees and urged the clouds in their journey across the blue. A collection of pudgy robins occupied the lawn next door, pecking and poking the ground with focused determination.

  Lily looked up, startled, as Banning’s garage door clanked and whirred. The white metal hesitated, then lurched, sending the robins next door into a flurry of motion as the segmented sections began to rise.

  Shoes appeared first, then legs, legs wearing jeans, then hands, then a plaid shirt, broad shoulders, a face in shadow.

  Lily straightened, smoothed her hair, tried to decide what she would say to Banning. It half crossed her mind, in a flash of a second, that she’d message Cassie to stay away. Tell her that she’d be in contact again, that she couldn’t make it, that it wouldn’t work. A flurry of excuses paraded through her mind, anything to stop the world and stop this upheaval of her life. But no. She had to assess Cassie’s true motives before Cassie herself took control.

  The figure stood, motionless, at the shadowed edge of the garage. But it was not Banning. He was shorter than the lanky detective. Broader. Bigger. And there were no cars in the darkened garage behind him. Who was this?

  Lily clutched at her chest, took a step back, put her hand on the door handle, her mind racing. If this was someone from Cassie’s past, the “they” Banning and Greer seemed to be sure were still threatening her, Lily had to run. Banning had obviously fled or escaped or been taken away. Lily’s plan—fragile and risky from the outset—had just fallen apart. Lily opened her car door, ready to get away as fast as she could. She’d message her sister to turn around. Warn her. Go back wherever you came from. But how had they found out?

  “Lily?” The man spoke, and his voice stopped her, froze her, as if someone had pressed the pause button on the video of her existence.

  She turned toward the garage, toward the voice, keeping the car door between her and the man in the plaid shirt. Hearing that one word, hearing her own name, in a voice she’d never thought she’d hear again.

  The man stood, then took one step into the sunshine.

  “Sam,” she said.

  CHAPTER 58

  CASSIE

  Did she think of herself as Cassie? Or as Sasha? She checked the rearview yet again, looking for something
or someone she wouldn’t recognize if she saw. She’d connected with Lily, and if anyone had somehow noticed, and somehow found who was connected with her Instagram name—might they be following her? She patted her purse on the seat beside her. She was used to it, the fear. She’d prepared for it.

  The stretch of highway into Massachusetts was infinitely boring, stretches of scrub interrupted by cookie-cutter fast-food places and alien-looking expanses of solar farms, menaced by breakneck drivers. Cassie drove, steadily, eyes on the road, her mind in the past and in the future.

  It was Maree’s little daughter, Zora, that did it, that first day they’d met in the kitchen. Zora holding a plush panda, and the black and white of the stuffed toy, even the way Zora’s thin arm wrapped around her lovey as if they were inseparable. We outgrow our toys, Sasha thought, but we’re not supposed to outgrow our need for comfort and affection. Or the knowledge that we’re not alone.

  Your fault. Her mind would not let go of that blame, like some annoying song you can’t get out of your head. She turned on the radio, thinking to drown out her relentless conscience. But the classical station she chose wanted her to buy flowers for Mother’s Day, so she switched to Oldies 108. Instantly, she was back on Mountville Street, clueless, full of her self-centered dreams, as if having a hamburger with Jem Duggan—or not—would change her life.

  “But it did, didn’t it?” She heard the bitterness in her voice as she snapped off the radio. Because she had gone to his apartment, because she had left him to die, because she had seen all those pills. Now he was dead, and she was no one.

  Two more exits until the turnoff for Watertown. It had been a snap to google the street corner Lily had designated to her in code. Lily had kept that photograph of her, Cassie thought of that, yet again. It was what had tipped her to make the final decision. Not only that Lily had understood the instructions, but that she’d kept the photo.

  She’d stay Cassie, though. She couldn’t risk using her real name—her new name, she corrected herself, not real—until she was sure it was safe.

  The threat will never go away. Kirkhalter’s warning words were clear in her mind. But he was dead, and that was the problem. Who had told Lily about the letter she’d sent? It had to be someone who knew what happened. And who knew enough to convince Lily that it was safe for Cassie to emerge.

  She had to trust that.

  CHAPTER 59

  LILY

  With the car door between them, Lily had two choices. One, get into the car, rev the engine, and back out as fast as she could.

  Or. See what the hell Sam Prescott was doing in Banning’s garage. Why he was here, rather than with his new wife in wherever the hell they lived. Lily was having a hard time coming up with proper nouns.

  “Sam?” she asked again. That one she knew. Rowen, she thought. But she was safely at school where, at least, nothing could harm her. Lily closed the car door behind her, making her choice to stay. Cassie was on the way. She’d be here in fifteen minutes, if she hadn’t changed her mind. Sam knew about her sister, she’d told him the whole story, as much as she knew back then, along with everything else about her life. Their time together, she almost smiled remembering it, their world for that crystalline moment in time. And then the moment had shattered. But she could not allow Sam to see Cassie. Cassie had to stay separate. Away. Not be connected to her.

  “Yeah.”

  He hadn’t moved except to jam his hands into his back pockets, again a move that transported her. That stance of his, that sometimes undecipherable combination of shy and cocky, that shift of hip and set of jaw. All he’d said was Yeah, and years vanished. She had not made a mistake, no matter how many times she’d replayed it. If she had the chance, she’d have made the same decisions, because Rowen was the result. Plus, she trusted her own judgment. Sam had been honest, and so had she, and there were things that felt—at the time—meant to be. They were Lily-and-Sam once. Once.

  Twentysomething Lily had let her heart win, just for that twenty-seven days.

  “What are you doing here?” She frowned, calculating all the connections that had to be made for this moment to happen. “And I mean—here. How did you find out I’d be here?”

  Sam’s eyes widened, that green she would never forget. Even ten feet away from him, she could feel the pull between them, whether it was loss or need or memory. Or her imagination.

  “How’d you find out?” he said. “I hope you’re not”—he shrugged—“too angry. I’d hoped you’d never know, I have to admit. But when the offer was made, it was impossible to say no.” He took a step toward her. “I’ve thought about us, Lily, so much, and Rowen, and I know I was a total jerk at the beginning, but back then, my wife—”

  She put up her palms, double stop signs. “Just stop talking,” she said. And she couldn’t help it, she scanned the strip of Sycamore Street behind her for Cassie. Just a matter of minutes now before a car would turn the corner and bring Cassie back into her world. The two dangerous secrets in her life, time bombs that were never far from her thoughts, were now on a collision course. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  But not yet. No cars, no buzzing lawnmowers, or barking dogs, or strolling letter carriers. Just the last two people in the universe she’d ever thought would be standing together on a street corner in Watertown, Massachusetts.

  “And wait. How’d I find out?” Lily risked a step closer. Whyever he was here, it was not to physically hurt her. “Offer?”

  Sam followed her scan of the street. “Banning’s doing some errand. I told him on the phone I’d seen you. When I saw the car, I thought—” He stopped, sentence hanging in midair. “But I guess you came instead of—”

  “Sam. Right now, in freaking English, and with finished damn sentences, tell me what you’re talking about.”

  As he told her what happened, they might have been standing on Mars for all the sense Sam’s story was making. Banning’s approach. His promise. Graydon. Fire alarm. Seeing Rowen coming outside with her classmates. Watching her.

  “Maryrose Glover?” Lily repeated in disbelief. “Did that for you? She would never—”

  “What can I say.” Sam shook his head. “It was all I could do to stay in my car in the Graydon parking lot. And then you arrived. And I saw you, too.”

  But in the end, the wolf was there, Lily thought.

  Sam kept talking, and Lily heard the words, some kind of words, about Rowen, and how he had felt, more and more, that he needed to be part of her life. And he’d hired Banning to help him.

  “And that was you. At the aquarium.” The movie in Lily’s mind, wide-screen and Technicolor and taunting, played the image of it. “Greer,” she whispered. “Greer let this happen. Made this happen.”

  “That’s why I thought you were here,” he said. He’d taken another step closer. “Because you knew.”

  “Don’t. Even come near me.” Lily had always done the best she could. Tried to make the best decisions, tried to protect Rowen, tried to have a life. “You incredible asshole. You incredible asshole. You hideous, terrifying creep of a stalking—I should have you arrested for, for, I can’t even find a word.” She tipped her head back, looked to heaven, tried to understand. Failed. “I thought you were at least human.”

  She grabbed her cell phone, ready to call, but stopped. She had no safe place. Not Greer, not Graydon. Not anyone. And Rowen was—

  “But that’s why I’m here, Lily, don’t you see? I am human.”

  “You’re an assh—”

  “So you said. But every time I tried to do it the right way, you kept me from her. You said, ‘No, never.’ You said, ‘Over my dead body,’ if I remember. You said, ‘Forget it.’” He threw up his hands, turned away from her, then pivoted back. “Could you forget our daughter? Look, I have a new life, and so do you. And it’s all good. But we—we—have Rowen, and it’s not—”

  “Fair, you’re gonna say,” Lily interrupted. Couldn’t help rolling her eyes at the cliché.
<
br />   “Roll your eyes, fine. Exactly what I’m going to say. Because it’s true. I miss her, and even from the damn parking lot, I could tell she was lovely, and like you, and I wish you could—for one moment, just one—understand that I can’t turn that off. No more than you could.”

  “Turn it off? Off?” Lily could barely look at him, but she could barely not. “You didn’t care about her when she was born. You didn’t care when she took her first steps. Said her first word. You didn’t care for seven years. You don’t get to care now.”

  “I always cared! You never let me. Hate me, blame me. Do it. I don’t care. But Rowen should not bear the weight of it.”

  “Oh, right, so you thought the solution was to buy off my producer and my daughter’s—”

  “Our daughter’s—”

  “—headmistress, and hire some detective to—”

  “You weren’t supposed to know.”

  The air seethed between them. A single airplane streaked overhead, a white contrail slashing the blue.

  “Sam. Listen.”

  He cocked his head. “To what? I don’t hear anything.”

  “No, I mean—to me. Listen to me. Banning lured me away from my office yesterday morning so Greer could take you to Cassie. And he told me Greer was ‘missing’ so I wouldn’t wonder why she wasn’t calling. I thought it was a bullshit story when I heard it—” She shook her head. “It might have been true. And I couldn’t risk Greer being in danger.” She realized now how she’d reacted to protect Greer, but Greer had reacted to harm Lily.

  “But none of that,” she finally went on, “was about Rowen.”

  He frowned. And seemed honestly perplexed. “So—”

  Now it was her turn for the bullet-pointed words. Cassie. Confidential informant. Witness protection. Drug dealing. “Cassie sent a message to Banning’s father,” Lily continued, “asking whether it was safe for her to come home. Not a word about Rowen, or you. And that’s why I’m here. About Cassie. Not you and the perfidious Greer, who’ll never work in Boston or anywhere else again, believe me.”