Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  WHETHER OR NOT IT SHOULD, Vern’s hypothesis calms me, casting your relationship with Ansley in a new, more flattering light. Maybe you aren’t sleeping with her. Maybe she is blackmailing you, and maybe Claire—God, quiet, sweet, Claire—was blackmailing Marjorie Harman, too. But with what? It was Marjorie’s daughter who went missing. I try to tie all of this together and can’t, but if Vern’s right, maybe you’re not the prime suspect in Matthew’s murder and we can still be okay.

  I feel like I haven’t breathed for days until now.

  I think of Ansley slamming the door in my face, standing accused of sex with a married man twice her age, and almost laugh out loud.

  “Something funny?” Vern asks.

  I suppress the smile, attempting to hide my relief.

  “Not really,” I say, “but you’d have had to know Claire. She was a social worker for Christ’s sake, not a criminal. None of this makes sense.” It feels good to react genuinely to one of Vern’s questions, rather than with suspicion or evasion.

  “I agree,” he says. “Something’s definitely missing.”

  “Nothing I can help you with.”

  He is displeased. His investigation has yielded so much, and yet none of it has context.

  “I’m sorry.” I recognize his understandable frustration. “I wish I could.”

  Not only for the sake of getting this investigation behind us, but for my own peace of mind. An hour ago, I’d have thought you were the biggest scumbag on Earth, a man taking advantage of a defenseless young woman who might well be extorting you. But the set of questions I walked into this room with has been replaced by an entirely new list, and I hate how I’ll have to come by the answers.

  A long silence passes between us, Vern chewing his lower lip as if he expects me to say something. I have been here too long, probably said too much already, and I imagine my car, still parked outside Ansley’s, as egged, keyed, or worse.

  Do I owe her an apology?

  Maybe, though it seems the worst idea ever to knock on that door again.

  Vern clears his throat, gathers his papers, and returns them to the growing file folder that contains some but not all of our secrets. He starts to speak, stops, and starts again. “I think we’re finished for now.”

  I get the feeling he might have wanted to ask something else, but he’s careful because he can’t prove I know a thing more than I’ve already admitted.

  He says he’ll call me back when he can.

  “I can go?” I verify I’m not being held on anything related to the call that Ansley or one of her neighbors placed.

  He nods. “Do you need a ride?”

  I do, but he’s the last person I’d take one from. What I need are answers, and my being stranded at this precinct offers an opportunity for both.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll call a friend.”

  He tilts his head. “Not Bert?”

  I shouldn’t have said it, but Vern seems pleased with my disinterest in talking to you. He’s working the crack, prying at the seam between us in the hopes that, should it get wide enough—should he prove to me you’re the person he thinks you are—I’ll turn on you. I let him believe that might be true.

  “Not Bert.” I point to the folder. “I’m not ready to see him just yet.”

  Yes, Vern, there’s a chance I might work with you after all.

  The interview ends on a promising note. Vern hands me his business card and musters a sincere apology for exposing you. He’s not sorry you’re a liar, but he doesn’t relish being the one to tell me about it.

  Unfortunately, I already knew.

  I follow Vern out of interrogation and down the hall to the vestibule above the steps that descend onto a vacant and dimly lit sidewalk. A car passes, but not another until seconds later. It’s late, and it’s dark, and there are more dangerous places in the world than with you.

  “You’re sure you don’t need a ride?” Vern asks.

  “I’m sure.” I exit the brownstone and lengthen my purse strap, slipping it over my head the way I would in the city or any crowded place, and locate my cell phone.

  Vern lingers behind the precinct door. It’s killing him, not knowing who I’m calling, though I fear he suspects. I dial one of the few numbers committed to memory as I walk out of view, worried I’m, again, doing exactly the wrong thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DEON PICKS UP ON THE third ring, and though it is the middle of the night by this point, he isn’t sleeping. He doesn’t sleep on any regular schedule or as peacefully as most, something he chalks up to the unpredictability of his job. “Harper, hey. It’s late. Is everything all right?” He sounds both pleased and surprised to be hearing from me.

  Phone calls at this hour imply something for which I’m not angling, a one-off encounter or something else best kept in the dark. Rather than convolute an already complicated scenario with a detailed answer, I say, “I need your help.”

  Whether or not I have any right to ask for it, and whether doing so compromises Deon professionally, he won’t refuse a distress call. I use this to my advantage, the dire circumstances serving to break the ice of our tenuous relationship, a half-finished romance rooted, at least on my part, in spite. Brought on by the need to prove to you, and to myself, that I am still desirable. I hadn’t intended for things with Deon to get as intimate as they did, certainly not so quickly, and I won’t belittle what he and I had by comparing it to what you’ve shared with a multitude of women. Ours wasn’t only a physical affair, but an emotional one. Something I hesitate to call love only because of how much I hurt him when I dissolved it.

  If I loved him, I couldn’t have let it end how it did.

  I would have told him how badly I wished it hadn’t.

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  I hear the tossing of covers, a grunt as Deon leans over to pull on a pair of shorts because while he wasn’t sleeping, he was trying. He’s a naked sleeper, Deon, something you probably wish I didn’t know about him.

  “Your precinct.”

  I almost can’t say it.

  On the list of things Deon cares most about, his job is near the top, but below things he can’t have, like me. “What happened?”

  This isn’t the reaction I expected. I figured Deon would warn me off of mentioning his name, insist I not let Vern, in particular, know it’s him I’ve reached out to, but his concern is for me and not for himself, which breaks my heart a little. “I don’t have time to explain. Will you come? I’m outside, walking down the block.”

  In the dark, armed with nothing but a key.

  “Stay where you are. I’m on my way.”

  The line goes dead, and I do as I’m told, settling in on the stoop of a closed insurance agency, texting Deon the location of where to look for me. I check the time while I’m at it, taking note of the fact that I’ve been gone almost all night and you haven’t called once. Either you don’t care where I am, or Ansley, whatever she is to you, has already explained that she last saw me in the backseat of a patrol car.

  I can see her face in shadows still, pressed to the glass as I’m escorted away. There was no remorse in her expression; at least I didn’t imagine there was. It was too dark and getting late, and all I could do was imagine things, like that I was about to be questioned and arrested, blamed for things you did, and perhaps for things I did, too.

  I consider texting you that I’m fine, to shake you up with talk of bank statements and verbally attack you for making me an accessory, but I won’t, not before I have enough evidence to convict you. I learned this strategy from Vern. It’s one he’ll undoubtedly use against me at some point, too, unless Deon can somehow save me.

  We could have had something, Deon and I, had I been braver, less stupid, and less in love with you—not Bert Stone, so much as bestselling author Bertram Stone—the thing I still wish I was. The thought of being a detective’s wife just doesn’t hold the same allure.

  And yet, here I am, waiting on him and risk
ing our exposure to Vern.

  He needs to know which friend I’ve called, and when he realizes it’s Deon, he’ll draw assumptions that should seem unfair but aren’t. He’s right to suspect, and while he is focused on you, I could easily be next. He won’t rest until he’s put someone in jail for Matthew’s murder—not only because he’s driven, which he clearly is, but because the public and his conscience demand it.

  An approaching car slows and flashes its headlights. Deon’s made record time getting here, for which I’m indebted. The hour, this location, and my anxiety are working overtime to convince me of things that aren’t true.

  None of this is my fault.

  Deon unlocks the passenger door and throws it open for me to get inside. He’s wearing a pair of familiar basketball shorts and a T-shirt with its stitching showing. That it is inside out is evidence of how quickly he’s come to my rescue. The shadow of an emerging beard covers his chin, and I decide I like him this way. Chaotic, rugged, concerned, and he seems to be the only one, with what’s going on with me.

  I get in, close the door, and hug him out of habit before buckling my seatbelt. It’s easy to fall into this old routine, to want him—which should be the last thing on my mind in a moment like this, but I’m desperate for something good in my life. I’m shaking, not out of fear or excitement, I don’t think, but from some automatic response I can’t put a finger on.

  Deon reaches between the seats and grabs a windbreaker, mistaking whatever this is for a chill. Maybe I am cold, since the cabin is at least ten degrees cooler than the swampy night air had been, but this feels more visceral. I pull on the jacket, which doesn’t fit me at all, and imagine that I must look a wreck. Deon would say I’m being self-conscious, that I am never anything but beautiful to him.

  He is, you realize, the last man in my life to have paid me a compliment.

  Infidelity is easier than marriage.

  This must be why you’re so prone to it.

  “Where are we headed?” Deon pulls away from the curb, performing a three-point turn to keep from passing the station.

  He can’t be too careful, and I can’t blame him if he doesn’t want to be part of this.

  I’d back out if I could.

  “Take a left at the light,” I say, not yet telling him where we’re going or why.

  Deon does as I instruct, driving while I contemplate the critical questions to ask.

  What details I have to give in order to get answers.

  I need to know everything about Hannah Harman’s disappearance, twelve years too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I PROBABLY SHOULD, but I don’t hold back.

  I tell Deon about the bank statements, the Key account, and Vern’s blackmail theory, which doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. There’s no apparent connection between the four of you—you and Ansley, Marjorie and Claire—and Deon doesn’t make any more sense of things than Vern and I did. For that, and for other things outside of his control, he is sorry. He apologizes more than once for me being hauled off in a squad car, questioned for hours, and lied to by you.

  I’d tell him I’m used to it, but this isn’t what he wants to hear, and if I paint you in a further unflattering light, I run the risk that Deon will refuse to help altogether.

  I confess to being at Ansley’s house, confronting her about your assumed affair. I’m embarrassed, not because I wasn’t right to suspect you but because I so quickly leapt to that conclusion with her. I’m careful not to let on how many times I’ve been right about you and other women, because the last thing I want to add to this SOS call is any misunderstanding on Deon’s part that I’m doing this to rekindle things between us.

  “It would’ve explained some things.” Deon takes my side, as always.

  “Things sure as hell need explaining.” I’m near tears, though I can’t put my finger on why, beyond the fact that unloading like this feels wrong. Selfish. I’ve drawn Deon back in with a single phone call, and I hadn’t meant to.

  He reaches for my hand.

  I let him take it, but the gesture feels awkward and forced—the opposite of comforting.

  Neither of us knows how to behave anymore.

  “I don’t know how much more I can take.” I’ve somehow become the center of this investigation, looking into leads I have no business researching. I’ve been coordinating offensive and defensive moves that haven’t done a thing to turn Vern away from you. “Vern is a bulldog. He keeps coming at me. Not Bert, me. First, he says Bert had an affair with Claire Davis. Now, he’s talking about blackmail. He’s grasping, and my nerves are shot.”

  “It’s Vern being Vern,” Deon says. “He’s determined, and short on anything substantial to go on. No forensics. No murder weapon. No crime scene. He’s gone through some financials”— some, not all—“and he wants to have found something. Don’t give this more weight than it deserves or you’ll make yourself nuts.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  Deon’s right, of course. Vern is exploiting my anxiety, but it’s not in my nature to be either calm or out of control. All I can think about are potential consequences, and the more time passes, the less I see a way out of this. Vern isn’t Deon. He won’t let a case go cold.

  “Were the statements redacted or manipulated in any way?” Deon asks.

  I try to remember the dates and whether they were consecutive, or if the amounts appeared to have been tampered with. Police use whatever means necessary during questioning; not all of them are honest. I think about how neatly the withdrawals from Key Bank and the deposits into Ansley’s account lined up. “I’m not sure. They might have been.”

  “What about the payments from Marjorie? Were there checks written? Something with her signature on it? Absolute proof?” Deon’s poking holes in the extortion theory to make me feel better, to pacify me in a way his touch couldn’t.

  “No”—I’m grateful because it’s working—“nothing but Vern’s word.” I hadn’t time to fully examine the proof, nor had I the presence of mind. I was so desperate to believe you and Ansley weren’t having an affair that I’d believe anything else, including this blackmail story. “You think he lied?”

  I’m toeing a line by asking Deon to be loyal to me over a fellow law-enforcement officer who could make his professional life difficult, if not impossible. I shouldn’t, but I need to know if, on top of being presented with things about you I don’t know, I’m also being manipulated into potentially testifying against you.

  “I think Vern’s good at his job.” Deon rolls to a stop, turning to me for direction.

  “Right and to the end of the block. Second house on the left.”

  “I also think there’s pressure to solve this case. He’s looking for correlations between the past and present that may or may not exist.”

  “Hannah.” I hate this name being, again, on my lips and the way every single thing that’s gone wrong in our life somehow comes back to her.

  Deon shrugs, pulling up behind my car, which has thankfully been neither vandalized nor towed. “The fact that he focused on that makes me wonder what he isn’t saying. Maybe nothing.” He won’t speculate, which is probably good. I have enough working theories without adding his to the mix.

  “You don’t think Matthew told Ansley what happened to Hannah, do you? That Wayne Price really is innocent in her case? That Bert has been paying to cover up something terrible?” My mind has been working the blackmail angle to death. Every theory falls apart the second I add the variables of others—in particular, Hannah’s mother, Marjorie. Part of me wants to get out of this car and march right back up to Ansley’s door, ring the bell, and confront her.

  Deon, as always, senses this without me saying. “I don’t need to tell you not to knock on that door again, do I?”

  “She might know something.”

  “And she was so forthcoming last time?” Deon makes a strong point.

  I have nothing to coerce Ansley into speaking to me, and I reek
of desperation. She’s in the power position and has seen me hauled off with a warning once. I don’t expect to be so lucky a second time.

  “You’re right,” I say. Of course you’re right. “But it’s bothering me, this all coming up again now. I thought this was behind us, and now I don’t know why it isn’t. Would Vern mention a connection to Hannah without at least a thread of evidence?” It’s a grand accusation if all Vern has to base his hunch on is speculation.

  “It’s unlikely,” Deon says. “There’s something pushing him that direction. I just can’t say what.”

  Fortunately for me, Deon is the lead detective on Hannah’s case.

  Unfortunately for you, it is yet unsolved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IT’S NOT SO MUCH A promise Deon makes as an offer of a goodwill gesture. He’ll do what he can to support or dismiss Vern’s claim that there’s a connection between then and now, between them and you. He’ll go further for me than I’d like him to, but I won’t ask him to stop.

  He’s all the hope I have left, and I take comfort that he’s on my side, even if just an hour alone with him brings back too many old feelings, too many memories, and a profound distaste for all things Stone. I consider what it might be like to finally leave you, to disassociate from Hannah and Matthew, until I realize there’s no way that can happen. I’m too entangled, and this will follow me for as long as I live.

  I return home to find the front door unlocked, the garage door open, and every light in the house on. You’re visible from the driveway, pacing. One hand flails while the other holds the phone tight to your ear, and I can’t imagine who you’re talking to at this hour.

  I watch and wait, wait and watch, reluctant to pull into the garage because once I do, I’ll have to go inside and I’m not sure which is stronger, my curiosity about who you’re arguing with or my need to be elsewhere. Except there’s no safe place away from you, and whatever Deon has done to set my mind at ease is undone in the instant I realize that. I park in my spot, holding my breath as I press the button to close the garage door behind me.