She Regrets Nothing

by Andrea Dunlop

  “Cameron, what happened?” she said, crouching beside him. She felt she should fear him given the state in which she’d found him, but just then he didn’t seem capable of much. Laila found herself wanting to comfort him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice choked with panic.

  “What does that mean, you don’t know?” Had he found her like this? Gone into shock?

  “We got in a fight. She found out about us; someone sent pictures! Oh God. Oh God. She fell. Her head.”

  So it was as it seemed, Laila thought, not daring to look back at her cousin where she lay, where Cameron had felled her. Simon had gone nuclear, Laila thought, left no chance that the pictures wouldn’t destroy her, though he might not have bargained for who else would be taken down in the process. Laila looked back up and realized that the corner of the countertop was bloodied. She crawled on her knees to her cousin’s body, focusing directly on the unsullied skin of the wrist that lay splayed closest to her. She placed two fingers on it, and what felt like an eternity passed as she waited to feel a pulse. And there it was, weak but present. Liberty was not yet dead.

  “What are we going to do?” Cameron said. Laila turned back to him. Consumed by fear, he looked ten years younger suddenly.

  We. Laila turned this over in her mind. So now they were a we? The power of the moment flooded her; it was dizzying, this reversal in their roles. Cameron at her mercy. At any other point, she might have enjoyed having the upper hand on him.

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” he stammered, and when Laila said nothing, her silence only made him more nervous. His eyes were big and wet, desperate. It was an irrational question, of course, but Cameron appeared as though he were clinging to only a very thin shred of sanity.

  “Oh, Cam. No, I don’t think she’ll be okay.” She took his hand, and he clutched hers fervently. “We need to call someone,” she added finally.

  “Laila, no, oh God! I’ll go to prison, I can’t . . . oh God!” The mention of calling the police seemed to have snapped him back into a frantic reality. Now he was on his feet, his hand wrapped around Laila’s forearm. He looked manic, and though his face was pleading, it was impossible not to find him menacing once he was on his feet: all six foot five of him. “Anything you want,” he said, leaning toward her, his breath smelling of whiskey, “you’ll never have to worry about money. Five million? That’s no problem. Okay? Just say you’re with me. You know I would never have done this on purpose.” He choked on his last words. Did he believe that? Laila wondered. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but Liberty did not simply fall, or Cameron would have called the ambulance himself. And her face; he’d hit her. Forcefully enough to have thrown her off her feet.

  They’d called Cameron’s mother who, according to him, would “know what to do.” Her voice on the phone was brutally frank. She told Laila to call the police and tell them she’d discovered the body; she told Cameron to go down the fire escape and to wait in the back alley where there would be a town car in a matter of moments. Laila was electrified with fear, but Elin told her to just make it through the night; she would take care of it. And she had. It turned out that the very wealthy could frame a man for murder relatively easily. In New York, DAs were elected officials, and like any other politicians, a great number of them were wont to be helpful to those who could keep them in power. Sean Calloway—scum, yes, but murderer, no—had, of course, been having an affair with a married woman, which was the reason he’d been in the building that night. And the reason said woman didn’t come forward. That she knew he was innocent, that Liberty’s true attacker walked free, was a cross the woman was evidently willing to bear. This, Laila could understand, for she too had opted to save herself. She had, she reminded herself over and over, not done any harm to her cousin. She imagined that had she attempted to call the police right away, refusing to go along with Cameron’s plan; in the heat of the moment, he might have hurt her as well. For hadn’t he proven himself capable of that right before her eyes? The only tiny amount of guilt she felt was in knowing that the last thing Liberty had known of Laila was her betrayal. But this too she would not let take hold: the revelation had not been her doing. If it were up to Laila, she surely would have taken the secret to her grave, as she would perhaps now still do.

  Laila had seen Cameron only once since that night, when she was summoned to meet with him and Elin several days later, after Liberty had died. Elin had received her coldly, a paragon of brisk, Waspy efficiency. They sat in the parlor, and once the maid had brought them a round of gin and tonics, Elin got right to it, reaching for her orange Hermès Constance bag and pulling out a check to hand to Laila. All the while Cameron stared out the window as though the whole thing weren’t happening. Laila began to wonder why he was even there.

  “Fourteen thousand,” Laila said, gingerly taking the check from her and examining it.

  “It’s the maximum that can be given as a gift without incurring huge taxes. For the remainder, you’ll be set up as a contractor for the Michaels Foundation. We’ll say you’re doing,” she waved her fingers as though pulling an idea from the air, “marketing work. But this should tide you over for the time being.”

  Laila wasn’t sure she liked the idea of being tied to their family in this way. She’d have preferred to take the money and be finished with it, to move forward and try to forget what she’d done. Onward ever. But she sensed that this was not Elin’s first experience with hush money, that the woman knew what she was doing.

  “That will take quite a long time to pay out five million, won’t it?” she ventured.

  At this, Elin laughed. “Oh, my dear, no. One hundred thousand is plenty.”

  Laila’s face fell. Plenty for what? she wondered. For helping someone get away with murder? It certainly wasn’t enough to live on in New York for long, though she wondered if that was the idea: give her what amounted to a small fortune, but only if she went elsewhere to spend it.

  “That’s not what we agreed to, Cameron,” she said, and he turned slowly to look at her. Unbelievably, he actually shrugged, as though he had no part in any of this. Now panic crept up Laila’s spine. For she wasn’t innocent, she knew: she’d perjured herself, obstructed justice.

  “Well, that’s what we’re offering,” Elin said.

  “And if I don’t accept?” Laila said. She was not the one who’d committed a crime—or at least not the crime—so how was it that she felt so backed into a corner?

  Elin smiled again; this line of conversation seemed perfectly within her comfort zone. “Well, I suppose you’d be wise to consider the consequences of that. Accessory to a murder, extortion on top of that.”

  “What? But . . . Cameron,” she spoke as though he was not in the room, “he’d go down too.”

  “Oh, darling, there will always be ways for us to protect ourselves. But you, on the other hand . . .” She didn’t need to finish the thought. “And you should think of your family as well, how they would feel about your part in this. Don’t be selfish.”

  A hundred thousand dollars. Laila took a sip of her drink. It was more money than she’d ever had in her life, this much was true. Had someone offered her this amount when she was first in New York, she would have considered it generous; but for a family like the Lawrences or the Michaelses, it was nothing. A small portion of Nora’s closet would have added up to as much. It showed what they thought of Laila—that she was a trifle.

  “You know, Elin,” she said, “having gotten to know both of your children so well, I wouldn’t have thought the Michaelses were the type of family to go back on a deal.”

  Elin laughed. “There was no deal. Cameron was out of his mind; he didn’t know what he was saying.”

  Her gaze was steely. She wasn’t really beautiful after all, Laila thought. Her eyes were too small, almost beady, and her forehead was oddly high—it was Thatcher Cameron and Reece had inherited their looks from. Though Elin still left you with the impression that she was beautifu
l—through her sumptuous clothes, her feline grace—and that was something altogether more difficult to pull off.

  “A million,” Laila said, trying to keep her thoughts level. How had she walked in feeling as though she had all the leverage only to have it dissipate so quickly? “I know it’s not going to hurt you,” Laila said, “and I can be out of your lives forever.”

  “Mom, maybe . . . ,” Cameron began, leaning forward into the conversation once more.

  Elin leveled a look at him that seemed designed to remind him to let the grown-ups do the talking. He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say. Laila looked at him, but he refused to catch her eye. In profile, she thought that perhaps he also benefited from a similar illusory beauty as Elin, for he did not, in the wan light of the parlor, look so dashing after all.

  “This is not a negotiation, young lady. As I said, the checks will be sent to you. Now if you’ll excuse me.” With that she swept out of the parlor. The housekeeper reappeared and hovered by the threshold as Laila finished her drink.

  “So you’re just going to let your mother do this?” Laila finally asked, causing Cameron to glance nervously at the help.

  “You should go,” he said, getting to his feet wearily. He glanced down at her one last time as he walked out of the room, leaving her alone in the parlor.

  But Laila had not relented; she’d simply changed her strategy. She’d gone on the morning show to remind Elin that legal matters weren’t the only thing at stake. Laila had a story, which that fall was still the story, and there were other ways she could do damage to the Michaels family. She hadn’t revealed anything, but the reference to domestic violence was meant as a message to Elin. But Elin had not taken it seriously. The only big reaction Laila had gotten was from her own family, who had issued a cease and desist. Now, more than at any other moment, Laila simply had nothing left to lose. She clearly needed to do something that hit a little closer to home for the Michaelses.

  Accepting Elin’s lowball was not an option. It stung too much, this idea of continuing her mother’s tradition of being sent off in shame with the tiniest of consolation prizes: trinkets, minor-league hush money, memories of what might have been. Laila wasn’t going down like this. What more did she have to lose?

  Dear Reece,

  I’m sorry to have been avoiding you, and perhaps this is the wrong thing to do, but I feel compelled to explain. You’re not seeing the whole picture and I can see that it’s causing you distress. I begged Cameron to tell you himself, but he refuses. I think that his grief over Liberty is compounded by the circumstances that these photos and text messages will explain, and I hope that by telling you all of this, you’ll be able to help him truly heal. I don’t wish to cause anyone any more pain. Please understand that I thought your brother truly cared for me and I was, I suppose, mesmerized by him. I will regret it forever and my only solace is that Liberty never had to know.

  Love,

  Laila

  Reece got the message on her phone as she came out of the subway; she’d been heading for home, having stayed late at the office as she increasingly did—a vain attempt to distract herself from her reality. She read Laila’s message with growing horror and took only a cursory glance at the attachments—a series of text messages between Laila and her brother, and worse, photos of the two of them in an unmistakable clinch—before she shoved her phone back in her pocket. The implications were all too clear. Her brother had not changed for Liberty—Reece saw now how naive she’d been to think he had—and for his side piece, he’d chosen a family member of his beloved. No wonder Cameron didn’t want to see Reece; he probably felt guilty as hell. Reece felt her throat go tight with rage. She could kill her brother, rip him to absolute shreds. She didn’t even have the energy to think what she would do to Laila. How she had abused Liberty’s kindness then gone behind her back. As the knowledge seeped into Reece’s brain, it began to fill crevices in her memory. The looks she’d caught between the two of them. The time at the Lawrences’ upstate house when they had disappeared together. How long had this been going on? How did it start? When did it end—if, in fact, it had ended? And why was Laila telling her? Why had she chosen Reece to unburden her soul upon? Did she truly think that this information would help her in some way? Or was she simply passing the weight of the secret onto Reece to carry?

  Her head was spinning. She prayed that Liberty truly had known nothing of this; that she had died thinking the man she loved was faithful and that Laila did not take all of her kindness for granted. What now? She couldn’t tell anyone, at least for the moment. She felt desperate to speak to her brother before Laila revealed it to someone else—what if whatever specious logic had compelled her to share this information with Reece also moved her to tell the twins? She was terrified of being implicated by association, that Cameron’s betrayal would mean she’d lose the Lawrences forever. Reece changed course and headed for Cameron’s town house. She considered sending him a text message, but as Cameron had been so patently avoiding her as of late, she opted for dropping in on him unannounced. Cabs passed her by, but she continued walking. She wore flat riding boots, but her feet ached anyway. She opened the front of her coat; she needed the crisp October air on her skin to bolster her strength.

  “Hey, sis,” Cameron said casually when he met her at the door, swiftly opening it for her without looking too closely at her face. Had he taken a moment to examine her expression, he would have known something was wrong, but as it was, he seemed to be getting ready to go somewhere. “Come in,” he said needlessly as she followed him into the kitchen. She noticed that unlike the last time she’d been here—weeks ago now—his apartment was as spotless as it had been before all of their lives had descended into chaos.

  “The place looks good, Cam; glad you let the maid back in.”

  He pointedly ignored her comment. Though he seemed to have recovered his hygiene standards, he’d remained distant from Reece—and now, of course, she knew why. Elin had been the only one allowed near him, coming to his apartment regularly to check in on him, cook him meals, and dole out other ministrations. She did no such thing for Reece, but then, she never had. Cameron had always been the one she’d babied. Perhaps Elin had been the one to call the maid.

  “I can’t really hang out; I have to get out the door in a few minutes to head to this work dinner.” He went to the kitchen and plucked a half-full tumbler of scotch off the counter. Cameron had never been a teetotaler, but he never used to drink so much on weekdays. Then again, neither did Reece. Lately, she’d found herself pouring wine the moment she walked into her apartment, steadily refilling it until she fell asleep, many mornings waking with an empty bottle on her bedside table.

  “I’ll take one of those,” Reece said now, drily. She hardly knew where to begin. She still did not completely understand what Laila had hoped to accomplish by telling her about the affair. Perhaps Cameron was now ignoring her too—this, in fact, seemed likely—and she was simply lashing out or looking for revenge. Whatever the case, Reece had realized on her walk over that her brother was not the man she’d hoped he was, that she was in uncharted territory with the sibling she’d once idolized. If her brother had done this, what else had he done during the course of his thirty-seven years that she didn’t know of? She’d always given him the benefit of the doubt—a benefit he’d proven undeserving of.

  “You want scotch?”

  “Why not?”

  Her brother pulled a tumbler down from the cabinet, and for the first time he looked her in the eyes and saw that she hadn’t come by just to say hello.

  “Okay, but I only have a few minutes, I’m supposed to meet Bryce at nine o’clock,” he said, pouring his sister a double.

  “You’re going to be late, I’m afraid,” she said. Any other time, she would have laughed at herself for the menacing tone.

  “Reece . . .” He sounded exasperated. How had her brother grown so far apart from her? She felt as though she were reaching for him across a g
reat chasm, her fingers scrambling in the air, grasping at nothing.

  “I heard from Laila,” she said, the name alone her trump card. With that, her brother sank silently onto the stool next to her and waited, his eyes blinking with disbelief. “She told me everything. About the two of you, about what you did to Liberty.”

  She watched as the blood drained from her brother’s face. She knew she needed to be quiet now, to let him, no, make him speak for himself. She knew her relationship with her brother could never be the same after what he’d done. He’d betrayed the person they’d both loved the most, and, since she was gone, he would never be able to make it right. Liberty would never have a chance to find someone more deserving of her, someone who could love her better. Cameron, who had not yet said a word, got up silently and went to the hall bathroom, from which Reece could hear him vomiting. She fought the urge to go and comfort him, knowing he did not deserve her sympathy; instead she summoned fury, remembering the promise he’d made to her all those months ago that were he to pursue Liberty, he’d do so as a gentleman. He’d betrayed them both.

  Cameron walked slowly back into the room where Reece was standing. He took her by the shoulders; his face was ashen.

  “You have to believe me that it was an accident. We were having this big fight. . . . It got really heated. She fell . . . and oh God.” Her brother dissolved into depthless sobs. He turned away from her, his hands covering his face as if to block out what was happening.

  “She fell?” was all Reece could manage. She felt suddenly dizzy, and her brother’s movements seemed to slow, as though he were moving through water. They were not talking about the same thing.

  “Yes, I promise it was an accident. I don’t know what Laila told you, but she wasn’t even there when it happened; she came after and . . . I told her it was an accident! Oh God. Then she, she . . .”