Keep No Secrets

by Julie Compton

  Again, she nods.

  "Why didn't you show these to me when we drove to Hannibal? Why have you let so much time pass? You're a sitting duck. Who's to say they haven't followed you? Who's to say they aren't watching us right now? What do—?"

  "Jack, stop. No one has followed me, okay? If they knew where I was, they would have just sent the letters directly to Brian's place, right?"

  Not necessarily. "Why didn't you show me these the other day?"

  "You want the truth?"

  The question reminds him of the one Claire posed when he asked if she trusted him. Why does everyone think he's afraid of the truth? He's made a career of getting to the truth.

  "I wanted your help only if you wanted to help me. I didn't want you to help me simply because you were afraid not to."

  Why is he helping her? He wants to know the truth—about Jenny, about Alex

  —but is it something more?

  He thinks back to the last time he was at Jenny's house in Lafayette Square, the last time he saw her before she ran. He remembers how they fought in the

  kitchen; they'd both begun to crack under the pressure of their secret about to be exposed. How, without him even

  realizing it, she forced him to make a choice between her and Claire before the choice was forced on him. He thought he'd chosen Claire. He wonders now if somehow he'd already chosen Jenny by deciding to go home with her.

  "You knew I'd help you," he says quietly. "No matter what."

  "I believed so. But I needed to be sure it was for the right reasons."

  "Did I pass your test?"

  She smiles sadly. "With flying colors."

  After an unsuccessful attempt to convince her to find a safer place to stay, he takes her back to the motel. This time, he doesn't simply drop her off in front.

  Instead, he accompanies her to the door and makes her wait there while he checks the small space for evidence of intruders.

  It's silly, but it makes him feel better to do it.

  "We dodged a bullet today," he says when they trade places at the threshold.

  It's as if they pre-choreographed their moves to ensure they won't be in the room at the same time.

  She nods; she understands he's

  referring to the trooper. "Maybe I should go back to Chicago. You have the letters now. There's no need for me to stay, right?" She removes her coat, releasing the scent again. "It won't be good for either of us if someone discovers I'm here."

  The panic he felt in the car returns. He should be skeptical. He should ask her why she came in the first place. Why didn't she simply call him? Why didn't she simply mail copies of the letters to him? And the letters themselves are odd, too. Who would threaten someone to collect an almost three-decade old debt?

  But just then, he doesn't care about the answers to these riddles. He only cares that she might disappear again.

  His phone vibrates against his chest.

  He knows from the ringtone that it's Claire, and he senses Jenny recognizes it, too, from the drive to Hannibal.

  "You'd better get that," she says lightly.

  "We'll talk later."

  She begins to close the door, but he stops it with his hand. Her expression turns intense, suddenly expectant. Does she think he might be about to finally come in, to step into the room with her and lock the door behind them? He lowers his eyes. Whether he feels guilt for having misled her, or ashamed to think she might see straight into the darkest corners of his heart, he doesn't know.

  "What does it mean?" he asks.

  "What does what mean?"

  "The name. Ayanna. What does it mean?"

  She won't answer unless he meets her stare. When he does, it feels like looking into the sun. He needs to look away, but she won't answer if he does. And he needs to know.

  "Innocent."

  Jenny carefully locks the deadbolt and slips the chain into its slot. She tosses her purse and coat onto the nearest bed and then peeks out the drapes to watch him drive away. Despite what she told him, she lives in fear of being followed, of the writer coming to make good on his threats.

  After retrieving a large manila

  envelope from her suitcase, she sits on the opposite bed. She fingers the envelope, putting off the moment. As many times as she's looked at the contents, it's still hard.

  With trembling hands she lifts the flap.

  The contents are slim: a handwritten note, a typed, three-page report stapled behind it, and several glossy, five by seven, color photos.

  She doesn't reread the note or the report. She doesn't need to. She

  practically has them memorized. But the old pictures draw her back again and again. Always the pictures.

  Jack sitting on the hood of her car in the parking garage, alone, waiting for her.

  The two of them standing next to the car, facing each other, her hands in his.

  The two of them climbing into the car.

  She drove, he was the passenger. They look as if they're the two unhappiest people in the world. How ironic.

  The two of them at her front door as she unlocks it.

  Her sitting on the steps of her back porch in the middle of the night, her bare legs extended beyond the roof, drenched from the rain.

  Jack sitting on her neighbor's front stoop the next morning, looking even more distraught than the night before.

  Jack still sitting there as she leaves, as she ignores him. It was so hard, what she did to him that morning. He had fallen asleep holding her, but when he woke, she pretended, in the cruelest move of her life, that it meant nothing. That he meant nothing. She wonders, would everything have ended differently if she hadn't turned on him? She doesn't think so. She was wrong to let him in that night, but she knows she did the right thing when she pushed him away.

  She sets everything on the bed and gazes around the room. So why is she back? His life is difficult enough without her interference. She couldn't have predicted Celeste's allegations, but nevertheless, they've been made and the timing couldn't have been worse.

  As if to answer her own thought, she grabs her purse and pulls out a small envelope like the others she handed him but with a more recent postmark. She unfolds the fourth letter, the one she didn't show him, the one that brought her back.

  WE KNOW THE TRUTH.

  When she left town four years ago, she had decided to get out of his way, his life, so he'd have a chance to repair his marriage and keep his family together.

  She blamed Maxine for what happened to her own family, and she was determined not to follow in her footsteps any more than she already had.

  Even when she began receiving the letters, she didn't consider involving Jack.

  Why would she? They had nothing to do with him. They frightened her, she'd be lying if she claimed they didn't, but she can live with her own fear. She always has.

  But this message—this threat, she's certain it's a threat—rises to a whole new level. Like the others, it has to potential to destroy her, but it could also destroy him, too. She can't let that happen.

  If he must find out the truth, she must be the one to tell him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "CLOSE THE DOOR behind you," Jack says when Dog Jefferson pokes his head in Jack's office later that afternoon. He waves him in.

  In Jack's opinion, Malik "Dog"

  Jefferson is the best investigator in the DA's office. He's not the oldest or most experienced, but he's the most persistent, and his energy could power the lights at Busch Stadium. He grew up fatherless across the river in East St. Louis, but when a purse-snatcher stabbed and killed his mother, Dog came to Missouri to live with his older sister Lakeisha in Hyde Park. He was only sixteen.

  When the police gave up looking for the assailant—Dog insisted they never really tried—he found his mission. Five months later, after skipping too much school to secretly work the case, he marched into the police station and delivered the evidence needed to make the arrest. He never returned to school.
r />   Jack didn't know any of this when Lakeisha, who worked in the DA's office Victim Services unit, asked him to give her little brother a job to keep him off the streets. The murder, and subsequent arrest and conviction, had happened in Illinois several years back and garnered only minimal attention from the media.

  Only when Dog sauntered into Jack's office with a Cardinals cap on his head and a chip on his shoulder did Jack hear the story. By this time, Lakeisha's little brother wasn't so little. He was twenty years old and at least two inches taller than Jack's six feet. When Jack asked him why he'd dropped out of school, the kid spent the next forty-five minutes intricately explaining about his mother's murder and his discovery of the

  assailant's identity. Jack was impressed by his resourcefulness. He saw the pride behind the simmering anger and knew the kid was at a crossroads.

  "Get your GED and I'll hire you as an apprentice investigator," Jack told him.

  Sure that Jack was putting him off, Dog uttered an expletive and left the office in a huff.

  He came back six months later,

  diploma in hand and a smart-ass look on his face that dared Jack to keep his promise. Jack put him to work that day under the tutelage of his best investigative team. He's been fiercely loyal to Jack ever since.

  Now, Dog drapes his long, slim body in one of the chairs in front of the desk, one leg over the armrest. Three years later, he still wears the same baseball cap.

  A chewed toothpick dangles from his mouth. His casual, streetwise demeanor belies his meteoric rise to become one of the office's top investigators. Now Dog spends much of his time mentoring others.

  "What's up, Boss?"

  Jack stares at him, thinking. "I need a favor." His stomach flips in protest.

  "Anything."

  "It's . . . personal."

  Dog's eyebrows speak his confusion.

  "By that I mean, it's not official business." He's hesitant. He wants Dog to understand he can turn Jack down

  without repercussion. "It's just something I'd like you to do for me."

  "Does this have to do with that girl?"

  "No." Jack takes a deep breath.

  "Though I might want you to help me with that, too." He rubs his face. He still hasn't had a decent night's sleep since his arrest. If he weren't so exhausted, would he be doing this? He looks Dog in the eye. "Can I trust you?"

  Dog's infamous anger flares briefly.

  "Shit, show me some respect, man."

  "If anyone finds out, we'd both lose our jobs."

  Dog swings his leg off the armrest and sits properly. Jack now has the level of attention he wanted.

  "Boss, you are my job. If they toss you out on your ass, they might as well toss me, too."

  At that statement, Jack pulls out Jenny's letters.

  Later, Dog walks out of Jack's office with copies of the letters in his pocket and the story of Jenny's past in his head. Jack slips his own copies into the large Black's Law Dictionary on the credenza behind his desk, but then reconsiders and moves them to a more obscure tome that hasn't been opened for years. His cell phone chimes. He glances at the lit screen and sees the word "Boss." It's Earl.

  "You sitting down?" Earl asks without introduction, and Jack's stomach lurches again.

  "Yeah. What now?"

  "We've got a trial date."

  If Jack had managed to eat his burger earlier, he'd be losing it now. "That was fast."

  "I pushed for an early date. We can't let this drag out. It needs to be heard and put to bed before it completely destroys your career."

  "When?"

  "April 1. We've got a little over fifteen weeks to pull this together. With the holidays, it will seem shorter."

  April Fool's Day.

  "That's not all, Jack. I have some news you'd have welcomed a few weeks ago, but the timing couldn't be worse now."

  Like a kid who plugs his ears to avoid hearing something he doesn't want to hear, Jack closes his eyes and seriously considers simply hanging up the phone.

  As if by doing so, he can make it all go away. "I'm listening."

  "The appeals court just issued a decision on Alex's appeal. They've granted him a new trial."

  "Okay." He takes a deep, cleansing breath and tries to consider the

  implications of this news from all angles.

  "Okay." His office phone will light up with calls as soon as the media learns of the decision. He'll be expected to have a response, which should, of course, be the response of one who got what he wanted.

  And that's exactly how he would have responded before Celeste's allegations, before Jenny returned to town. Instead, his reaction to the news is infinitely more complex, because he knows the hunt to find Jenny will resume—this time with sharpened urgency. He also knows his own obligations have become much

  clearer. Yet, even with this knowledge, all he wants to do is warn her. All he can think of is her answer to his question about her alias. "Innocent."

  "Jack? Do you know where she is?"

  Jack can't help but notice Earl didn't even say her name. He knows he doesn't need to.

  "No." Technically, it's true. She said she might go back to Chicago, so for all he knows, she's halfway there. A lawyer's distinction, but that's what lawyers are taught to do, isn't it?

  If Earl recognizes the lie of omission, he feigns otherwise. "Good. Try to keep it that way. You shouldn't even be talking to her anymore." He sighs at the other end of the line. "Shall I handle any statements to the press?"

  "Yeah, for now. I'd appreciate that. No one will consider it unusual that I don't comment while Celeste's charges are pending."

  "I agree. Speaking of Celeste, TC

  called." Just like that, Earl segues to the next item on the ever-growing list. TC is the private investigator Earl hired to work Jack's case.

  "And?"

  "He did some digging into the Del Toro family history. You knew her parents are divorced?"

  "Yeah, the mom lives in Florida, I think."

  "Right. Celeste ever tell you anything about her?"

  "Not really. Why?"

  "Her parents divorced when she was eight. Her mom got custody, her dad moved back to Puerto Rico. The mom did two short prison stints over the next seven years on drug related charges."

  "Jesus."

  "Celeste's school records reflect that she lived with her maternal grandmother during the time mom was locked up, but TC's information suggests that the reality was slightly different. Mom's boyfriend, apparently, moved in with them when the grandmother's health deteriorated. On paper, Grandma remained the temporary guardian, but in reality, the boyfriend ruled the roost. Mom's way of making sure Celeste didn't get shipped off to dad in Puerto Rico."

  "How old was Celeste when the boyfriend moved in?" Jack asks. After what he read in Celeste's notebook, Earl's report is setting off alarms in his head.

  "Thirteen. During Mom's second prison stay."

  Thirteen. On the cusp of puberty.

  There's so much Jack and Claire didn't know about this girl who attached herself to their son. He thinks of the times Michael had an Away game, and Celeste came to their house anyway and sat in the kitchen while Claire fixed dinner.

  Sometimes she sat at the center island and did homework; other times she helped Claire by peeling potatoes or setting the table. "It's like she'd rather be at our house than her own," Claire once remarked to Jack. At the time, Jack didn't think much of it, and Claire didn't either.

  They figured it was her way of loosening her father's grip.

  He wonders if her attachment wasn't so much to family as it was to Claire. Did Claire sense it, even if she didn't put a name to it? Is that why she managed to ignore the physical resemblance between Celeste and Jenny? He admires his wife for her ability to bury whatever bitterness she still carried—and he now knows she carried a lot—so she could give a young woman what she needed. Yet if Celeste needed Claire, why go after Jack? As much as her attachment to Claire might make s
ense, her accusations against him are inexplicable.

  Jack thinks back to the conversation with Michael after practice, how his answers told Jack only that Celeste wasn't in immediate danger. No more, no less.

  The son of a lawyer learns just how to answer truthfully without telling the truth, too. Jack wonders how much Michael really knows.

  "So did TC find out how she ended up back with dad, and how the two of them came to live in Missouri?" he asks Earl.

  "Why didn't he take her to Puerto Rico?"

  "He doesn't know the answer to your first question. As for Missouri, dad has a sister who lives in Fenton. The sister's husband works at Fabick, same as the dad. We're assuming the job brought him here."

  "What about the boyfriend? What did he find out about the boyfriend?"

  "He's still working on that. I'll keep you updated when he learns more."

  Yet if the boyfriend is the culprit in Celeste's journal, why did she express such fear of her father? Was she simply a teen afraid of a parent's wrath, and Jack blew it out of proportion?

  "Do you think Michael can shed more light on Celeste's home life?" Earl asks.

  "Probably, if he'd talk to me. But those chances are slim." Jack decides not to tell Earl about Celeste's journal or the files on the computer until after he has a chance to run them by Claire. "Like you said, I'll have to be careful how I approach it so it doesn't come back to bite me at trial. But I'll try." He'll also dig a bit more on the computer. "What do I have to lose?"

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE NEWS OF Jack's trial date and Alex's appeal causes renewed but short-lived media attention. A few reporters lingered at the house on and off

  throughout the week, but they finally packed up their gear and left when none of the Hilliard family appeared on the front lawn for an interview. Their neighbors haven't succumbed to requests for interviews, either. Jack's not sure if they're showing loyalty to him, or to Claire, or maybe they simply don't appreciate the limelight anymore than he does. No matter the reason, he's grateful.

  Late afternoon on Sunday, Claire sits in a large easy chair in the corner of the study, skimming the latest Missouri Digest update. Several years ago, over Jack's objection, she painted the room a deep red. He thought it would be too dark and overwhelm the small space. But he grew to love the warm, cozy feel the color gave the room, especially in the winter, and the two of them spent many nights there together, Jack working in front of the computer while she graded papers or, like now, caught up on new case law. But tonight, even standing at the two open French doors, the room feels suffocating.