Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  You take my phone from me and swipe left, scrolling through half a dozen shots of what looks like stills from a stalker film. My conclusions about what this is are no more valid than ones you might be drawing.

  “That’s Hannah’s bedroom,” I say.

  “We need to show Vern.”

  That is, in fact, the last thing we need to do. “Absolutely not. Especially not considering that I more or less broke into her house. Well, I didn’t exactly break in.” I remind myself the door was unlocked. “I let myself in, and only because I had to. No one answered the door and I worried Hannah might’ve done something stupid.” I swipe my index finger across my throat, pantomiming someone who’s decided to take the self-inflicted route. It’s easy to be nonchalant about suicide now that I know no one has committed it.

  “Is she all right?”

  “She isn’t dead, if that’s what you’re asking, but she’s on mental health observation because Marjorie thought she was suffering some kind of breakdown.” Anyone who attended Matthew’s funeral would agree.

  “Marjorie?”

  Clearly nothing is making sense right now, for which I blame Vern’s endless accusations and questioning. It’s like he’s sapped the brain right out of you. “She’s here.” I roll to a stop at a light and turn to gauge your reaction. “Marjorie is here. She doesn’t hate you, and she knows about the book.” It’s nice to deliver good news for a change. “Hannah told her, and she’s willingly filled in the blanks.” Marjorie’s isn’t a happy story, but it’s a good one. Intriguing. Dramatic. Captivating. It’s everything your agent and publisher could hope for, a windfall when we need one most. “Her account of events explains everything.”

  I summarize Marjorie’s account of events, including the abandonment for which she is trying to make amends. I tell you that Hannah refuses to be reasoned with, that she won’t forgive her mother for making the difficult decision, and that you, to your chagrin, are locked into position as a go-between.

  You look as incredulous as I feel. Marjorie’s cooperation is the first break we’ve caught in some time. “Harper, Peter wasn’t even investigated for those things, let alone convicted.”

  “There’s photographic proof.”

  “You know as well as I do that won’t hold up,” you say. “Photographs of injuries don’t prove where they came from. Peter would have every right to sue.”

  You’re referring to libel, which is a nominal risk at best. Nothing you are writing is knowingly false, nor can any of it defame an already convicted felon. Peter’s reputation is spotty. It would be nearly impossible for him to prove substantial damage to his character.

  “It’s a risk of nonfiction,” I say, “and the odds Peter would ever take you to court are slim.”

  I have to believe that, after twelve years of legal hassles, Peter’s assets—with which to sue you—are tapped. He wasn’t a poor man, but he wasn’t rich, either.

  “You’re forgetting King.”

  I’m not forgetting anything, and wherever the misconception came from that you introduced Peter to the idea of Gregory Phillip King, it’s still ridiculous. Even Marjorie doesn’t blame you, which I tell you to alleviate whatever this is that mimics a conscience. “And you’re probably wrong about how Peter feels about you, too.” Yes, you meddled, but you were trying to help. You wanted more than anyone to see Hannah safely home.

  “I’m not sure about this.”

  It’s in your nature to be mistrusting, and your concerns are valid, but Marjorie’s is the only point of view from which it makes sense to write this book. Hannah simply doesn’t know enough. It means villainizing Peter, but you’ll come to see, as I have, that he deserves it. He’s harmed Marjorie in ways no living being should ever be injured. He is the source of our problems. I don’t forget the trouble Marjorie has caused us or entirely excuse her extreme actions, but I forgive her. You will, too, when you see what she’s endured.

  The future of your book depends upon it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I HAD ALL BUT DECIDED to let Deon off the hook where Marjorie is concerned, given that she has come forward on her own. It feels unfair to demand quid pro quo when he hasn’t actually done anything wrong—at least, he didn’t commit murder. I know this as well as I know it’d take time for his superiors to arrive at that same decision, possibly only after an Internal Affairs investigation.

  Deon doesn’t deserve the scrutiny any more than you do, and I feel like we’ve come to a point where we can relax, at least about a few things. The book is back on track. We have everything we need from Marjorie to finish this manuscript, to make it great without further talk of repayment or breach of contract. At least that’s what I thought before this phone call.

  “Peter’s dead,” Deon says, and I nearly drop my phone from shock.

  “Are you sure?” When I asked Deon to look into Marjorie’s financials, I never imagined this.

  “Positive. Marjorie filed a wrongful death suit against the prison.”

  “And she won?” I can’t imagine under what circumstances Marjorie might’ve convinced a jury to side with her on a wrongful death suit involving a murderer.

  “Apparently there was a pre-trial settlement. The payout amount is sealed.”

  Confidential, and potentially substantial enough to have made Briarwood more affordable for her than for us.

  “How did he die?” My brain conjures scenarios: Peter committing suicide with his bed sheets; beat to death by an overzealous guard with a grudge; killed by another inmate’s homemade weapon fashioned from a plastic fork or toothbrush, possibly contaminated with feces. My frame of reference for these things is mostly television, which is poorly researched fiction at best.

  “Coroner’s report cites hemorrhagic pneumonia. Apparently medical misdiagnosed him and rather than put him in the hospital, they put him in isolation, figuring he’d get better. He didn’t.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Deon says.

  Any hope I might have had of visiting Peter vanishes, along with any leverage I might have had against Marjorie in the event she stops collaborating. I remind myself that Deon still doesn’t know about Hannah or this book, and while I can’t risk tipping him off, he’s my only hope for an alternate viewpoint on this dead man.

  “Have you come up with anything on Vern’s blackmail theory?” I ask.

  “I haven’t, but I’m still looking into it. Vern isn’t exactly an open book.”

  “Tell me about it. Did you ever talk to him?”

  “To Vern? As in, did I ask him outright what he’s thinking about this case I shouldn’t be involved in?”

  “To Peter,” I say. With Peter dead and us about to blame him for Hannah’s disappearance, the least I can do is view him through eyes other than Marjorie’s. Through someone’s whose perception isn’t jaded by marriage.

  “I did when Hannah went missing,” he says, “but not after.”

  For the disappearance, not for the murder.

  “What did you think of him? How was his behavior?”

  “You mean, did I think he was a killer?” Deon probably thinks I mean to blame his dismissal of Peter as reason for King’s death, but enough people blame themselves for that already.

  “Of course not. No one would’ve seen that coming,” I say.

  “I should have, in hindsight.” Deon recounts those first twenty-four hours—Peter near tears, pacing, constantly checking the phone, pleading through the media for Hannah’s return. Hyper-focused on Gregory King after someone—he couldn’t say who—put in his head that Hannah wasn’t his first abduction. It floors me that after all these years, Deon doesn’t know it was you. “Peter insisted King had Hannah. He warned me he’d get her back himself if he had to. I figured it was just talk. King wasn’t our guy.”

  “But wasn’t he spotted around the Harmans’ house?” I ask.

  “Neighbors put him at the scene earlier that day, and some said he was around a lot”—he emp
hasizes “a lot”—“but Marjorie denied it.”

  “Denied? As in, you questioned her about possible infidelity?”

  “There were rumors but no proof.”

  Some rumors stick, and the only reason I assume this one didn’t has to do with Hannah’s disappearance. Who would badmouth even the worst mother or wife after she suffered something like that?

  “And King—you said something about another abduction?” I only know what you’ve told me about the Ohio case, and it’s not nearly enough.

  “He was falsely accused,” Deon says, and something in his tone tells me to drop it. I’m toeing a line, and King isn’t the problem. Marjorie, however, might be. I’m starting to see another side of her which will complicate things, one that doesn’t tell the whole truth.

  Why had I been so willing to believe her? The simple answer is because she and I are too much alike. Even as Deon tells me Peter’s dead, which Marjorie most certainly should have divulged, I’m making excuses for her, for you, and for this book. Maybe she didn’t tell me about the settlement because of some legal restriction. Maybe she’s embarrassed that Peter’s death had made things easy for her. Maybe there are other reasons for her to have returned that are far less flattering than wanting reconciliation with Hannah.

  I hate that it is within me to always think the worst of people, but an alternate narrative leads me to question things I wish I didn’t have to.

  “What about Peter and Marjorie? How did they seem? Together, I mean.” I test Deon’s investigative skills, curious if he saw signs of trouble. Anyone who went through what Marjorie did, even someone as convincing as she is, wouldn’t have been able to hide it entirely. There’d have been tension, friction at least.

  “Like a married couple,” Deon says. “Like you and Bert.”

  I don’t need a reminder that you and I are not compelling under scrutiny, but he gives me one anyway.

  “That’s not exactly what I mean.”

  “You want to know if I think she was lying about an affair with King?”

  “Since Vern’s brought her back into our lives, I think that’s reasonable. So yes, do you think she’s a liar?”

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  “Care to hazard a guess?”

  “The last thing I want to do is slap labels on someone who has been through what Marjorie has, but there was always something not quite right between her and Peter.”

  “Like she was afraid of him, maybe?” Deon’s not exactly supporting Marjorie’s account, but that he sensed something off alleviates a bit of my anxiety.

  “Not afraid, I wouldn’t say. More... I don’t know. I never could put a finger on it. They argued over fault, which I’ve seen in pretty much every one of these kinds of cases. People need to place blame when something goes wrong.”

  I know this better than most.

  “But their stories were off,” he continues. “Not about how Hannah went missing, or that she left the house and vanished, but why she ran away in the first place. We questioned them separately, and only he cited an argument.”

  Strange that Peter would be the one to admit to a fight. “And Marjorie?”

  “Said Hannah took off unprovoked.”

  I want to give Marjorie the benefit of the doubt because maybe it was easier to say Hannah ran away than to admit violence, but someone as careful as Marjorie wouldn’t have slipped on this minor detail. I ask, in light of what he’s been convicted of, “Then why believe Peter’s is the truthful account?”

  “Because apparently before Hannah disappeared there was talk that Marjorie planned on filing for a divorce.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  THOUGH THE ARGUMENT can be made for unintentional omission, it strikes me as odd that Marjorie didn’t mention either Peter’s death or her plan to leave him prior to his conviction. In fact, she made it seem like she couldn’t have left him if she wanted to—not without risking her life. And the questions don’t stop there. I want to believe her motivations are pure, that she’s only here to help Hannah, but I’m worried about her interest in this book. According to Deon, Marjorie’s financial situation is as bleak as our own. Her employment history over the past twelve years is limited to low-paying jobs, from which she has a habit of being fired. She either quit working altogether or was paid off the books a year ago.

  None of it jibes with a Michael Kors bag and designer heels. I try to come up with a way to carefully broach this subject when I’m nearly run over coming out of the bathroom I’d been hiding in. I shove the phone in my back pocket and attempt to act casual.

  “You have a minute?” You hold out a few printed pages, chest puffed out with an air of confidence I’ve only ever seen when you’ve written something you think is beyond really good. These proud moments are rare, and I hope I don’t have to disappoint you. After the stinging criticism of your first attempt, you can’t handle further condemnation. We can’t endure another round of doubtfulness without ending up at each other’s throats. You’ll blame me for a second failure, and I vow to soften the blow even before reading what you’ve written.

  “Sure. Let me have a look.” Despite my misgivings, it feels good to be a part of something again. Reading your writing is my way of connecting with the inner you, who is so often absent from our marriage.

  “It’s only a chapter, but I think it’s the one.”

  Pivotal. Memorable.

  No pressure.

  I head into the living room and settle in on the sofa, stretched out on my side with a pillow tucked under my arm and the pages held at attention.

  You sit in the chair across from me, eyeing me intently.

  “Unh uh.” You know better. I point toward the office and say, “Go,” waiting until you do so to begin reading. It takes me a second to get used to the verb tense, but I applaud your choice. You want readers to see the event as it is happening, and I do, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me.

  “No! No! No! Peter, please!” Marjorie pleads until she can no longer do so.

  Peter’s hand closes around Marjorie’s throat, and he lifts her off her feet. His dark eyes convey intent and pleasure, and Marjorie’s refusal of his advances only stops because he’s closed off her breathing. Her nostrils flare. Peter shoves her onto the bed. Her heels crack painfully against the wooden footboard, sending paralyzing aftershocks through her legs. She scrambles to bury herself under pillows, under the comforter, throwing anything within reach at this man she once loved, the husband to whom she’d pledged fealty until death do they part. With what’s coming, she almost wishes she were dead.

  If only it weren’t for Hannah.

  “You’re making this worse,” Peter says.

  A pit opens in Marjorie’s stomach at the memory of last time. The bruises. The tearing. It would have taken a week to heal on its own. Peter made sure it took several. His interest in her comes as something tidal, passionate and crashing before it retreats for days, weeks, or months. Knowing what he thrives on, she does her best not to let him see her fear.

  He pulls aside the blankets, grabbing the hem of her cotton nightdress and using it to drag her to him. He crawls on top of her, demanding her compliance.

  Marjorie blames herself for falling out of love. For all the time she’d refused him only for him to do what he meant to anyway. It wasn’t violent at first, only inevitable. Now, Peter’s determined not only to force himself on her but to hurt her. To make sure she remembers with each step and every time she sits that he is the one in control.

  The fabric rips. Peter’s fingertips dig into her hips. The bruises ache almost instantaneously. Marjorie tells herself it’s better here than at her throat, though there are probably bruises there, too, and it’s too hot outside for turtlenecks or scarves. Thinking of such mundane things as clothing and the weather distracts her from Peter’s forceful handling. She stares at the ceiling and steels herself for whatever comes next, only it isn’t what she expects.

  The door opens, and eight-year-ol
d Hannah rushes into the room as Peter rips Marjorie’s night clothes to reveal her bare breasts, his attack fueled by lust and violence.

  “Mommy!” Hannah races across the room and gets caught in a backhand that sends her across the room. Blood paints her freckled face, runs over her lips, and drips from her chin onto the beige carpet. She’s hysterical, clamoring to stop the bleeding while screaming for Peter to leave her mother alone.

  Marjorie has heard of strength under pressure, but is surprised at how easily she throws Peter off. She covers herself the best she can with a sheet, goes to Hannah, and pinches her nose to stop the bleeding. Peter turns off like a switch. He looks genuinely remorseful, disgusted not by what he’s done, but that Hannah has seen this. Under oath, Marjorie would have had to say that for his faults, Peter is a good father, but it’s too late. Marjorie has been laying the groundwork, knows what needs to be done, and has put in place what she can to make sure that, if nothing else, Hannah will never witness anything like this again. Normally a nosebleed takes ten minutes or more to staunch. Marjorie doesn’t have that kind of time, and as Peter approaches them, she whispers in Hannah’s ear, “Run!”

  “It’s good, right?” You’ve never been patient. I am not sure how long you’ve been in the doorway, but you startle me.

  I shudder, lift my arm, and show you the goosebumps. “You know it is.” I don’t have to soften anything because there’s nothing to do but praise the gripping, if not questionable, account.

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  You’ve become observant at the worst possible time.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Chapter hangover.”

  The disorientation between reading and reality provides a convenient excuse, but in the back of my mind, I’m trying to reconcile what I know with Marjorie’s graphic account of marital rape, which, had it been conveyed to the police all those years ago might have been the exact escape she was looking for. Peter would have gone to jail. She wouldn’t have had to abandon Hannah or lie to the police. Gregory Phillip King would probably still be alive. Our lives might have been spared.