“She’s not allowed to speak of the work she did for me,” Melisandre said. “I hope she can afford to pay the fine for breaching confidentiality.”
“You’ll find that nondisclosure statements don’t apply in criminal cases. You should remember that from Elyse Mackie. She tipped off the state’s attorney about her affair with Stephen, told them Alanna had walked in on them. If Alanna had testified at your trial, she would have been called to verify that. But Alanna didn’t testify, thanks to the arrangement you had with Stephen.”
“Arrangement.” It was the first sense of any real emotion on Melisandre’s part. “I made a deal with the devil. He told me he could get me a mistrial, that I would fare better with a judge than a jury, that he would then write a victim impact letter that beseeched the judge to understand how mentally ill I was. He would admit at last what he had never admitted—that he sat back, ignored my distress, left me untreated because he had no empathy for me. All I had to do was give up my children. He manipulated a fragile, guilt-ridden woman into walking away from her own daughters, but disguised it as a favor to me.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Yes, and I’m the best guardian for the girls. Ask Ruby what she wants. She prefers for me to take care of her. Not that woman Stephen married, not his mother. Me.”
“What about Alanna?”
“She’s seventeen. It doesn’t matter as much. As I understand it, she’s going to petition the court to be an emancipated minor.”
“Yes, and as you understood things, she was going to be charged as a juvenile and probably do no time at all, or be sent to a relatively low-key juvenile facility. To be fair, you can’t be faulted for not keeping up with the changes in the juvenile system since you’ve been abroad.” At Melisandre’s surprised look, Tess added: “Tyner told me that you expected Alanna to be under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court. You counted on it. Even as you told us that you would never do anything to hurt Alanna, you were busy framing her. Sharing with Ruby the text of the notes, giving her the books so she could play show-and-tell at police headquarters. Clueing her in on Tony Lopez, too; all the while insisting that you would never tell the police about Alanna’s trip to see him Friday night. Sending a reporter an anonymous note, then corroborating every detail when he called you, pretending to Tyner that you were naïve about how the press worked. You framed one kid so you could care for the other? That’s a hell of a Sophie’s choice, Melisandre.”
“Ruby needs me. Ruby wants to be with me. I didn’t kill Stephen. I can’t help what Alanna thinks. I have to do what’s best for Ruby.”
Tess stared at the book in front of her. Yesterday, under the baleful gaze of Emmett Verlaine, she had promised herself not to judge other parents again, lest she be judged and found wanting. But this wasn’t about being a mother. It was about being human.
“My daughter has this hideous stuffed animal, a kangaroo in a clown suit. Clownie. I never expected it to last—it’s an ugly, generic thing—but I think it’s going to be with her until she goes to college. Anyway, whenever she’s arguing for something—she’s three, she argues a lot—she says, ‘But Clownie wants me to have it.’ ‘Clownie wants me to have a second dessert.’ ‘Clownie wants me to have another show.’ Listening to you talk about Ruby, it’s like ‘But Clownie wants me to frame his older sister so I can take care of him.’ Only Ruby is clueless, isn’t she? You made Ruby believe that her sister had killed their father. You confided in her, leaked information to the press that she would recognize, alerted her to read the story when it was online. Then you sat back, clutching your pearls—well, your signature gold chains—too overwhelmed to know what to do.”
Melisandre reached a hand toward her chains, jerked it back.
“Ruby may verify that I gave her those books,” she said. “But only after she asked for them. Besides, you work for Tyner and, by extension, me. Anything you know belongs to me.”
“Tyner’s listened to the audio, Melisandre. You may never have remembered to upload your videos, but you did engage the transcription app both times. I guess if Harmony hadn’t quit, you were planning to fire her—leaking to the newspaper was a nice twofer that way. You would blame her for the article, then fire her according to the impetuous pattern you had already established. That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about her receiving that transcript when the app automatically kicked it back. She’d be off the project and you’d have removed her e-mail from the notification list, so it couldn’t be forwarded to her. You probably even managed to cancel the transcription. But you forgot that the audio lived on, still on your old phone. Tyner and I listened to it this morning.”
“How is that possible?”
“Get your head in the cloud, Melisandre. You ran the transcription app while you were interviewing Stephen. The recording’s on your old phone, the one I collected so police wouldn’t seize it. Sure, you got a new phone and the old one is dead, would require a new account to be used as a phone. But all we had to do was charge it, Melisandre. You don’t need a phone number to listen to the recording.”
“I don’t believe you,” Melisandre said. “There is no audio because none of this happened. Stephen and I talked. He gave me a short statement for the film, said he would reconsider the issue of the girls later. I left. I don’t know who killed him and I hope to God it wasn’t Alanna.”
Tess reached into her purse, pulled out a notebook, and began to read. “‘You’re a fool, Missy. You’re still in love with Tyner. This isn’t about the girls. Even when you were in your right mind, you never cared about them. You were—’” Tess had to swallow hard to read the next part. “‘You were always a rotten mother. Not because you killed Isadora, but because you never put your daughters’ needs ahead of yours.’”
“You—you made that up,” Melisandre said, but she was bright red.
“I think you know I didn’t. I think you know it’s word for word what was said. It was there, on your old phone. You could change the password for the Dropbox account, kill out the new transcript when it arrived by e-mail. But this recording couldn’t be undone until you got access to your old phone.”
“And Tyner heard it?”
“Tyner heard it. And you know what, Melisandre? I think he felt—we both feel—that we might have pushed someone, too, if he had said those things to us. It wasn’t premeditated, clearly. Leaving him to die—that’s a different matter.”
It had been hard, listening to the recording. Tess’s victory buzz over her brainstorm to check the phone for the recording had faded quickly. God, the things that spouses, even former spouses, knew about each other. Then the crash, after he said that killing Isadora was the least of Melisandre’s sins. Tess had shut it off, not wanting to listen to the sounds Stephen made as he lay dying, but she hadn’t been fast enough to cut off the sound of breaking glass, his first scream of agony. How had the transcription service let it go? But they thought they were transcribing scenes from a film, probably assumed it was fiction.
“Go with Tyner to the state’s attorney tomorrow. Enter a plea. You don’t have to tell anyone how you tried to frame your own kid. Heck, it will look like you’re trying to save her now. If you do that, I don’t have to release the tape. Tell them it was like the time with Silas, that you froze and Stephen was dead before you could do anything. That’s not implausible.”
“That’s true,” Melisandre said. “I did freeze. I never—I thought—I really thought we could reach a place where we could agree, where he would let me start over with Alanna and Ruby. But all he cared about was thwarting me. He filled Alanna’s head with lies until she didn’t know what to think anymore. He would have done the same with Ruby eventually.”
Tess had boosted herself onto the table during their conversation in order to loom over Melisandre, have a superior posture. Now she dropped to the chair beside her so they were on the same level. Face-to-face. Mom-to-mom.
“You were sick the day you killed Isadora. You were sick and so many pe
ople didn’t believe you. And now, if this gets out, even more people will doubt you. But I do believe you. About Isadora. It must have hurt, to have Stephen throw that back in your face, when he claimed to have forgiven you. When you deserved to be forgiven. For that.”
“I could never hurt one of my children if I were in my right mind.”
“Yet you were prepared to sacrifice Alanna to save yourself.”
“I really thought she would be acquitted. After all, she didn’t do it. And Tyner says Bustamante is such a good attorney. When Alanna started talking about entering a plea, I didn’t know what to do.”
“She knew. The second she saw that book in my car and heard where it came from, she assumed that you and Ruby had colluded against her, that she was outnumbered. The greatest kindness you could do would be to persuade her that Ruby was your dupe in this.”
“She’ll never believe me.”
A voice came over the intercom. “I might.”
Melisandre’s head shot up, her expression a mix of emotions that frightened Tess a little. She knew what the woman in front of her was capable of. Sudden acts of violence, followed by a bizarre paralysis. “Is she—?”
Tess nodded. “After you came in, they set up at the receptionist’s desk, Alanna and Gloria. They’ve been listening all the time through the office intercom.”
And then Alanna was standing in the door, her lawyer behind her.
“I never knew,” Alanna said, “that you didn’t want to leave us. I always assumed you did. That you didn’t want us, or love us. That you let us go because it was what you needed. And when you came back, Daddy told me I was right. He said you didn’t care about us, that you didn’t want us.”
“Alanna.” Melisandre’s voice was pleading and, yes, loving to Tess’s ear.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Alanna continued. “But that doesn’t excuse what you’ve done. I understand now that neither of you ever put us first. I have worried, for so long, that I would turn into you. That I would be crazy, that I would hurt people I love. But I’ll never be like you.”
“Alanna—” Melisandre held out her arms to the girl who so resembled her. But the girl took a step backward.
“I need to go now. I want to be with my sister. They’re burying our father today. We’re all we have. Me, Ruby, and Joey. That’s my family. And I have to take care of them.”
May 11
“It’s actually supposed to be a sixpence,” Kitty said.
“What?”
“It’s supposed to be a sixpence, but if ‘you haven’t got a sixpence a dime will do.’ And I brought a sixpence, the one I used.”
“Of course you have a sixpence. So if I use yours, does it count as a twofer? I mean, it’s borrowed, right?”
And with that, Tess slid the offered coin into her shoe, which happened to be a lovely shade of blue. So there it was—something borrowed, something blue. The shoes were new, too, which meant that most of the age-old bridal ritual had been achieved below her ankles.
The something old was an antique ring, a square-cut diamond that had belonged to Crow’s grandmother, much too precious for daily wear and not at all her style. This ring deserved a movie star or a reality-TV housewife. “Can I have it?” Carla Scout had asked greedily. “When you’re forty,” Tess had said. “Until then, it’s going to live in a safe-deposit box.”
The day was hot for early May. “As if hell is filing an objection,” Tess kept saying. They had chosen to marry at home on a Sunday because it still was their only mutual day off. And they had initially agreed that only family would attend. But family was hard to define. Just their parents and Carla Scout? If they included aunts and uncles, the number of attendees swelled to almost thirty, thanks to Tess’s prolific grandparents. Yet it was unthinkable not to have Kitty or Uncle Donald, Tess’s mother’s brother. Plus, Tess considered Whitney family. And Lloyd Jupiter, the homeless teenager mentored by Crow, who was about to begin work as a PA on another season of House of Cards. In the end, Tess had thrown up her hands and said: “If it’s my fucking day, then I’m going to invite whomever I choose to the ceremony and have a blowout of a party that everyone is invited to attend.”
It was the last time she said “my day,” at least unironically. Carla Scout, however, was convinced that the day was all about her and was very disappointed that the cake was not as she had dictated (rainbow) and that her dress was not purple, her current favorite color. She also wanted to walk all three dogs down the aisle on ribbon leashes. But there was no aisle. Just a very crowded living room, where Whitney, who had applied to be a Universal Life minister in order to preside, led them through the most basic vows possible. The only personal touch was the moment when, instead of asking the parents to give their “children” away, Carla Scout was asked to approve of her parents’ marriage.
“Of course,” she said and burst into tears when people laughed, thinking they were laughing at her. But they were charmed by her airy lilt, the way she pronounced it, “Of cawse.” She still had difficulty with r’s.
Despite the heat, the wedding party had then proceeded to a tent set up in the park at the foot of their hill, where they ate barbecue, drank beer and wine, and danced late into the night. It was really more family picnic than wedding, and that was fine with Tess. She didn’t need to be celebrated for marrying her daughter’s father.
Besides, Carla Scout was inevitably the true center of attention. Tess watched her daughter dance and twirl, eat all the frosting off her cake, have a meltdown over being denied the right to keep the bride and groom figures, fall asleep under a table, then rise again when the music started. Her father’s daughter.
“She packs more into a day than anyone I’ve ever known,” Tess said to her mother.
“So did you, at that age,” Judith said. “God, you drove me nuts, sometimes.”
Tess found her mother’s candor cheering. “Really? You didn’t spend every minute of the day just wrapped in a gauzy haze of love for your only child?”
“No, I was too busy living in complete fear all the time. That’s the unfair part about being a parent. The bad stuff—the fears, the anxieties—that never takes a break. There’s always something to worry about.”
“What did you worry about with me?”
“Primarily, your hair.” That was a joke, an old one, between mother and daughter. “And the fact that you were an only. Everyone should have a sibling. Your father and I came from such big families and liked it. I always felt as if you deserved a sister.”
I have a cousin, Tess thought, remembering Kitty’s confidence, then realizing her father and mother must already know. She was the one from whom the secret had been kept. Tess and Tyner, although Kitty said she had confided in him a few weeks ago. Somewhere, there was a girl born the same summer as Tess, another Monaghan. Kitty was adamant that she didn’t want to look for her—yet.
“I would have liked to have had a sister,” Tess said. “I think. I don’t know. I don’t really mind being the center of attention. Neither does Carla Scout, in case you haven’t noticed.”
The girl had already rebounded from her nap and was dominating the dance floor with her father, who had used his connections to hire the Klezmer All-Stars for their wedding day.
“Speaking of sisters,” her mother said, “how are the Dawes girls?” Like a lot of Baltimoreans, Judith Monaghan had taken a lively interest in the saga. Tess herself had no appetite for the stories that had unfolded in the wake of Melisandre’s plea, her agreement to serve time for manslaughter. Tess’s heart ached a little to see Melisandre vilified again as a baby killer. Yet she had almost sacrificed another daughter, and she had done that in complete sanity. Tess knew she shouldn’t judge her. Yet she couldn’t stop judging her.
“Sort of okay. Ethan Hinerman is going to be the trustee of their estate. Alanna acknowledged that she has no clue how to handle the money, once it’s all figured out. She also realizes she has to have a civil relationship with Felicia in order
to stay close to Joey. I doubt they’ll ever have any real relationship with Melisandre. But, in a weird way, I hope they do.”
“Parents have to forgive their children anything,” her mother said. “I’m not sure it works the other way around.”
“I’m not even sure it works that way. Some things can’t be forgiven. And yet—she loves them. Melisandre really loves her daughters. I’m sure of that. She loves them, yet all she has ever done is create a legacy of pain for them. She shouldn’t have gone away. She was right to come back, to try to reconnect with them.”
“She killed a man. She killed their father.”
“I know. And then tried to blame Alanna for it. She’s a horrible person. But I can’t help thinking what a thin line separates good parents from bad parents. I have days when I get so angry, when Carla Scout gets on my last nerve and I scream at her and I have to stifle the desire to shake her or even paddle her. I hate it when I scream. I worry that I’m screwing up, every day.”
“Welcome to the club,” her mother said.
“Does it ever end?”
“No,” she said, smoothing back a strand of hair that had slipped from Tess’s unaccustomed topknot. And, for once, Tess let her mother fix her hair without comment.
It was almost midnight when the party broke up and Carla Scout was eased from her flower girl’s dress and into her bed.
“Can I get ma’ied?” she asked Tess. “Can I kiss someone?”
“Sure,” Tess said. “Who do you want to marry?”
“You, Mama.”
Tess’s heart felt like the great glass elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—lurching sideways, then up, up, up. She knew she should explain why this could never be, that Carla Scout could marry a girl, but not her mother. Or her father, to whom she would probably propose tomorrow.
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