The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

  She’d left the note on her iPad in the tiny house, along with a digital trail that confirmed everything I’d suspected. Thousands of emails between Addison and “Corbin,” including dozens in the aftermath of the incident at Nightshade. Addison’s fear was obvious, as was her desire for someone to tell her everything was going to be okay. Which Corbin did. He told her how to get to his house, promised to come down that weekend, ordered food to be delivered to her. Elise, keeping Addison as something of a pet all that time we were talking about what might have happened. Addison’s messages started to make less and less sense as she got sicker, delirious. It was after Wyatt was shot—something Addison saw on the news—that she wrote she finally wanted to go to the police.

  That was something Elise couldn’t stand for. Her efforts to contain the truth of what had gone on were successful up to that point, more or less. Successful for her. Not so much for everyone else involved. That was when Elise went out there.

  Being right had never felt so bad.

  Elise’s iPad also revealed the extent of her deceit—almost a dozen men taken in, sending her money via PayPal. Her beautifully appointed home was the fruit of that tree, and another clue lying in plain sight. But no one had wondered how the Hazletts afforded all that on just Brock’s modest salary.

  When I’d lost sight of her that day, her pink coat against the snow, she’d been almost to the top of the ridge. Far enough that she might have managed to get away clean, or to lie down in the snow like she’d said, alone, at peace. But instead she came back. Not for me, but for someone. Brock? Addison? Her boys? Jordy? Just to cement her legacy as the most mysterious one?

  I’d have to live with not knowing, and I hated it.

  FORTY-ONE

  Addison’s father couldn’t even look at me. But I was just there to make introductions, so I didn’t especially care. “Julia is very smart about these things, so just follow her lead, okay?”

  Addison nodded. She was still pale, still tired-looking, but moving on her own steam, at least. The conference room at Julia Raymund’s office had been freshly dusted, I noticed, and I wondered who’d done it. “Do you want me to leave, or stay?”

  “Stay,” Addison said, as Julia said, “You can go.”

  Julia still hated me, but she’d grown on me a little: she’d managed to get my brother’s remand lifted while I was in the hospital, so the gross little visitation booth was a thing of the past. The possession charges were still open-ended—the court system moved at a snail’s pace for everyone—but Julia was talking to the prosecutor about a plea to a lesser charge, one that kept him out of jail.

  Addison gave a small smile. “Please stay.”

  I took a seat in the corner and listened as she recounted her version of the events to her new lawyer. I knew most of it already, but hearing it again didn’t make it any less shocking. Especially the part that took place in the office of Nightshade, the six minutes off-camera.

  “I knew he was drunk,” Addison was saying, “and it wasn’t anything new, dealing with drunk jerks in there. He kept telling me, ‘Hey, you look so familiar, don’t I know you from somewhere?’ But he wasn’t the kind of guy who usually comes to the bar. When I took a break between sets, I thought he was gone—so I went over to get a drink but there he was. And he said he had to talk to me privately, that he was a cop, and if I didn’t want to get in trouble I needed to cooperate. He said he’d been trying to find me for weeks. I just didn’t know any better.”

  Julia nodded. “Did he threaten to arrest you?”

  “It was, like, implied? He acted like Shane—my boss—he acted like Shane had already promised that I would. I don’t know. It was confusing, and I’d had a few drinks already. So during my break we went into the office.”

  She wiped at her nose. “He said he knew who I was, and what I’d done, and that I had to pay him back. I legit had no idea what he was talking about. And that’s what I told him, but it only made him angrier. He was so drunk—it was like, how with some people it’s hard to tell, they seem sober one second, then totally out of it the next. Like that. He said I ought to be ashamed of myself, that he was going to make me pay. He lunged at me—tore my shirt, actually. That was when I ran out of the office. I should’ve gone into the bar, where there were people. But I went back to the dock, and he followed me. Grabbing at me, shouting. At one point he pulled me down. I told him to get off of me, but he just kept grabbing, his hands were all over my backside—he was saying, ‘Where’s your wallet? Give me your wallet.’ It was terrifying.”

  Her father couldn’t seem to look at her either; he just stared at the dusty calla lilies on the table, a silent ball of rage.

  “I finally got up. I tried to get past him. But he grabbed me again. We were standing just above the loading dock, next to the fence. And this time, instead of trying to pull away, I pushed. I shoved him off of me as hard as I could, and he fell backward, the fence just kind of sagged in and he fell—and I looked down and saw him. He was clearly not—his head, there was so much blood. And I just panicked.”

  Addison paused here, breathing slowly. “In the morning, after I’d been at Andrew’s, and I walked home, I called my voice mail—my phone was still in my locker at the club, but I thought maybe I could get Wyatt’s phone number out of a message he’d left me or something.” She rubbed her eyes. “And I had so many messages from him. He said the guy was dead, that Shane made him help—it was just awful. I wanted to get as far away from the whole thing as I could. I wasn’t trying to kill the guy.”

  “No, of course not, honey.”

  “I just wanted him to stop grabbing me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Am I going to go to jail?”

  “No,” Julia said.

  “Can you promise that I won’t?”

  “It’s not ethical of me to promise, but you’re not. You’ve been through something terrible. Anyone can see that.”

  Addison glanced over at me. “If it hadn’t been for you—”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t go down that path.”

  I’d been down my own version of it a lot lately. There wasn’t anything good for anybody on it.

  FORTY-TWO

  On the anniversary of my father’s death, I woke and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Over the past week it had warmed up, the snow that paralyzed most of Ohio melting and leaving everything a muddy grey. Then the rain started. It was still at it, big drops slanting sideways against my bedroom window. The day of his funeral had been like this, raw and damp. I’d read somewhere that Columbus had as many cloudy days as Seattle, and I believed it.

  I didn’t want to go to the cemetery. But no one ever wanted to go to a cemetery, and I’d probably gone to other places I wanted to go to even less. So I dressed in black cords and my new Sorel boots—the old ones weren’t the same after a swim in a murky, frozen pond—and a black sweater under my raincoat.

  I was still cold. There was nothing wrong with my body temperature. But there was a chill under my skin that I couldn’t quite shake.

  Reading Elise’s note hadn’t helped.

  Neither had rereading it, which I did right now, then I crumpled up the note and threw it away, then fished it out of the trash. This was my morning ritual. The copy paper it was printed on had gone soft and worn from all the creasing and smoothing.

  Eventually I’d throw it out for good.

  But not yet. I felt like I owed her that much.

  * * *

  I made one stop before I headed over to Greenlawn. I’d decided a few days earlier that I should wait until I had a clear head before confronting Gail Spinnaker, and while I didn’t exactly have that now, I did have a desire to rid my apartment of her thirty-odd pairs of leggings, and to yell at her a little.

  “I was starting to get worried about you!” she said when she saw me, a false note of cheery concern in her voice. “I called you twice, and I didn’t hear—”

  I waved her away. “I just wanted to tell yo
u that I’m taking some time off. A few weeks, maybe more. So I’m not going to be able to finish up the investigation before your big launch after all.”

  Gail’s pink-glossed mouth was a flat line.

  “I hope you didn’t have anything riding on it,” I went on. “For instance, I hope you didn’t tell anyone it was already taken care of. Like a newspaper, for example.”

  Now her eyes narrowed. “That’s—”

  “Why couldn’t you just have been honest?” I said. People elsewhere in the warehouse were beginning to notice our conversation, heads popping up to watch it unfold. “I don’t know if you hired me just to give the illusion of being on top of it, or if you were just trying to get the faulty product off the shelves. But you should have told me. I still might’ve helped you. It kills me, that despite your whole women-supporting-women buzzword campaign, you still don’t get that.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “You could have turned this into a real opportunity. So you made some styles with a material that’s lower quality than the norm—why not notify your wholesalers, have them return it to you, and then donate it to a shelter? It might not be performance quality, but it would sure work for layers in this weather.”

  “What, and have a bunch of hobos as walking advertising? Do you know what that would do to brand perception? God,” Gail said, almost laughing. “Do you not know anything about marketing?”

  I’d been planning to dump the boxes of leggings on her doorstep on my way out, but I suddenly got a better idea of what to do with them. I turned and headed through the doors and said over my shoulder, “I’m happy to report that I don’t.”

  * * *

  There were six of us at Greenlawn, crowded under three umbrellas: my mother and Rafael under one, Tom and me under another, Andrew alone under the third, Matt standing half in the rain rather than cozy up to anyone else. My father’s headstone was slick with rain. It said,

  Detective Francis J. Weary

  Born December 11, 1957

  End of Watch February 8, 2015

  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9.

  Generic and tacky at the same time; he would have hated it.

  He would have hated the plastic American flag staked into the soft ground too, the silk tulip that had seen better days.

  A bottle of whiskey would be more appropriate.

  I made a mental note to come back with one at some point.

  I made a mental note to come back.

  My mother read a little bit from the Precious Moments bible and we said all the prayers we could remember and that was that.

  “We ought to warm up with some coffee,” my mother said, wiping her eyes. “Why don’t we go to the old Clarmont. It’s a Panera now. Get some coffee to warm right up. A little Weary family breakfast.”

  “Sure, yeah,” Andrew said.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “I don’t like their coffee,” Matt said, but no one acknowledged him.

  As we filed back to the five vehicles we’d arrived in, Tom said, “Maybe we can get together later on, for a drink?”

  “Do you work today?”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t like Panera coffee either?”

  “As you know, I like any and all coffee, even instant. But your mom said Weary family.”

  “Rafael’s not family, but he’s going, I mean, they drove together.”

  “Yeah, but he’s, you know, they’re together. A unit.”

  We looked at each other for a long time.

  “Would you just come to breakfast already? The mini soufflés are going to be gone and I’m going to be mad, okay?”

  Tom nodded, his warm brown eyes crinkling up into a smile. “I can do that.”

  “Good.”

  “Roxane.”

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me.”

  He stood there for a moment, debating.

  “Just tell me. I’m not up for deciphering any new mysteries just yet.”

  Tom smiled, lifted a hand to my shoulder, then to my cheek. “Eyelash,” he said.

  “Is that really what you were going to say?”

  He shook his head, his fingers still brushing my face. “You said something the other day that I really didn’t like. In the hospital.”

  I thought back to the hospital room. “What did I say?”

  “Like hell you’re dying alone,” he whispered.

  Then he pulled me into him, tight.

  I’d forgotten what that was like, the solid safety of him.

  No, I hadn’t forgotten.

  I leaned into his chest, a rush of relief in my blood. For the first time in a week, I wasn’t shivering. Maybe longer. Maybe a lot longer.

  “I know that later you’re going to say this is just because today is a hard day, and it brings up a lot of memories. But Roxane, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and not just lately. About how we never gave it a shot. You and me. Not really. You were always so quick to insist that it was just sex. But hey, we’re pretty good together even aside from that, and I want to go on record as saying that I think we should try.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Of course, it might be the worst idea ever.”

  “It probably is.”

  “But isn’t it worth finding out?”

  My face was still pressed into his chest, my eyes closed. I said, “But all the reasons we never tried are still reasons. I don’t want to get married or have kids and those things matter to you. That’s what you said the other day. That you didn’t want a relationship that wasn’t going to go somewhere.”

  I felt him smile against my temple. “I know who you are. And maybe those things matter less than they used to.”

  “You’ll change your mind.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

  We stood in silence for a while that way. A car cruised past over the wet pavement and a voice said, “Get a room.”

  I pulled away and opened my eyes, saw my brother’s Escape rolling past us. “Andrew, what are you doing?”

  “I made a wrong turn, I’m still trying to get out of here.”

  He grinned at me and rolled up his window. The gloom of the last few weeks had disappeared from his eyes, which made me happy. Even though I was the one who’d absorbed some of the gloom on his behalf.

  I said, “Hurry up before Matt gets the last of the soufflés.”

  “You’re very concerned about these soufflés,” Tom said.

  “Hey, I like what I like.”

  I laced my fingers through his and we watched my brother’s car disappear through the cemetery gates. “Is this all an elaborate way of saying you want me to be your emergency contact?”

  Tom squeezed my hand. “That depends on how you answer.”

  I wasn’t exactly in the frame of mind for making plans for the future, but when I’d been lying on that ice, it was Tom I thought about, and that had to count for something. Standing here now, I felt better. Not like everything was okay, but like maybe it would be. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “You know what my answer is.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, as always, to my readers. You’re why I do this. It means the world when someone tells me they love Roxane Weary, and I’m so fortunate that I get to keep telling her story. I’d especially like to mention my book club ladies—you’re the best!

  My writing career wouldn’t be possible without my wonderful agent, Jill Marsal, who wasn’t afraid to take me on as a client even though I’m really bad at phone calls. Huge thanks to her for all of her work on my behalf. I’d also like to thank Jerry Kalajian.

  Daniela Rapp is my editor, and I can’t thank her enough for believing in me as a writer and for always finding ways to make the story better. I’d also like to thank everyone at Minotaur Books, especially Sarah Schoof, Lauren Jablonski, and
Alison Ziegler.

  The team at Faber is wonderful as well—thanks to Angus Cargill, my editor for the UK edition of the book, who pointed out that two of the names I’d first chosen for characters herein were, respectively, the names of a prominent UK car service and a serial killer, and that I should probably change them. (I did.) I’d also like to thank Lauren Nicoll for her great work on publicity.

  Thanks to Dana Kaye, Julia Borcherts, and Meredith Liepelt for their publicity efforts in the US.

  I was lucky enough to be honored with a Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel in 2018 for my (and Roxane’s) debut, The Last Place You Look. Huge thanks to Private Eye Writers of America and everyone who makes the organization and the awards possible, especially Robert Randisi. So many thanks to the amazing crime fiction community for reading, reviewing, and recommending my work. I’d especially like to mention Eric Beetner, Matthew Turbeville, and Kristopher Zygorski for going out of their way to be supportive.

  To the real Michael Dillman: thanks for letting me use your name, and I hope seeing it in print gives you a thrill.

  To my Pitch Wars family: you set all of this in motion, and I can’t thank you enough. Shout-out to Kellye Garrett, who’s so talented and generous that it’s not even fair.

  Thanks to my dearest friends who put up with having a neurotic writer (and the related, even scarier creature, the neurotic writer on deadline) in their lives: Megan Brandstetter and Doreen Vanunu.

  Thanks to Ernie Chiara for always being willing to read my work (and for acting like I’m way smarter than I am).

  Thanks to my parents, Kevin and Eileen Lepionka, who have got to be seriously tired of hearing the “book talk” that I give at events by now, but who still come anyway. I love you.

  Finally, thanks to my partner Joanna and our cats, Snapple and Spenser. The three of them are always here for me when I’m done writing about murder and need a dose of something sweet.