Emily smiled and her eyes sparkled. “He is.” Then she grew serious. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done if something happened to you or Jeremy. I guess I never thought about that before.”
“Nothing did. Nothing permanent anyway.”
“But it made me realize. I don’t appreciate you enough sometimes.”
Diana hoped she remembered this conversation when the painkillers wore off. Assuming she wasn’t imagining the whole thing. Emily was being so . . . so sweet.
“Dog and I are going out for a bit if that’s okay,” she continued.
“It’s fine. Chloe’s here, isn’t she?”
Emily nodded. “I was wrong about her being a flake, wasn’t I?”
“People are complicated, Emily. I think we’re all a little flaky at times.” Diana hadn’t told Emily the whole story about Chloe, though she might, in time.
“Like me, is that what you mean?” Only Emily said it with a laugh, not the nasty accusatory tone of the past.
“And like me.”
Emily kissed Diana’s cheek. “Can I bring you anything before I go?”
“No thanks. I’m getting up now.”
*****
It was almost dark when Diana opened her eyes to another knock on her bedroom door. So much for getting up.
“I brought you some soup,” Chloe said, setting a tray on the dresser. “You haven’t eaten anything since you’ve been home.”
“I can’t seem to stay awake long enough to get out of bed. How’s Jeremy?”
“He’s fine. He and Emily’s boyfriend seemed to really hit it off.”
An older male paying attention to him would please Jeremy no end.
Chloe took a plastic bag from the tray she’d brought. “I have something for you,” she said. “I know you must hate me—”
“I think maybe I should, but I don’t. I hate that Roy’s dead, that Trace shot him for no reason, that you would be with someone like that. But I don’t hate you.”
“I hate myself.”
“You saved my life and Jeremy’s, Chloe. Don’t forget that.”
Chloe bowed her head. “I should have saved your husband’s. Or tried, at least. I’ll never, ever forgive myself.”
Diana was still sorting out her feelings, but when all was said and done, the anger she felt was directed at Trace and the senselessness of it all, not at Chloe.
“I took your husband’s gym bag the day he was shot.” Chloe continued. “We thought he might have had money in it.”
Diana could see the pain and shame in her face.
“There was a gun. I threw it in a Dumpster to get rid of it. And some clothes that I threw away, too. But also, these things.”
She handed Diana the bag. Inside was a set of keys, a photo of a younger Roy with a slender, regal-looking woman she assumed was Roy’s mother, and a second photo, of Len, Allison, Roy, and herself.
“I’m so sorry,” Chloe said. “For everything.”
Diana studied the photo of Roy, or Brian as he would have been known then, and the woman whose features he’d clearly inherited.
“I talked to my attorney again,” Chloe continued. “He doesn’t think the district attorney wants to ‘go for blood,’ as he put it. It turns out they’d like to resolve things as quietly as possible, but he says they’ll want to check with you first.”
Would they expect her to demand retribution? To insist that justice be done. Diana didn’t see how sending Chloe to prison resolved anything. “I’m glad they’re being reasonable.”
Diana turned her attention to the keys Chloe had handed her. There were five in all. Four she recognized as house, office and car keys. She fingered a small, flat key she didn’t recognize. The number imprinted on the face was the number of Roy’s post office box. She experienced a rush of adrenaline.
“Chloe,” Diana said. “I’d like you to do me a favor.”
Chapter 43
Diana held the ordinary white envelope in her hands. Roy’s handwriting, addressed to himself and postmarked the morning of his murder. It was among the letters Chloe had brought her from Roy’s post office box.
She wanted to read it, and at the same time she was afraid to read it. Her memories of Roy were all she had. She didn’t want them poisoned any more than they already were.
Finally, she took a deep breath and slipped her finger under the envelope’s flap.
I have no reason to doubt Jamal Harris, but you never know about people, especially ones who end up in the justice system. And he’s not going to like what I tell him. If things go bad, I want the record set straight—for Diana and Jeremy more than anything. And because I can’t let evil triumph.
For the past nineteen years I have built a life as Roy Walker. A wonderful life. Much better than anything I ever dreamed possible. And it’s because of this—because of the family I adore and professional achievements I’m proud of, that it’s so hard to do what I have to do.
My real name is Brian Riley. I was born and raised in Littleton, Georgia, where the golden summer of my eighteenth year turned my life inside out.
I worked that summer as a busboy at one of the local resorts catering to rich and powerfully connected summer folks. Senator Saxton was a guest at a nearby compound, along with his wife and his daughter Mia. To make a long story short, I fell head over heels in love with Mia (it seemed like love at the time, although I suspect it was little more than youthful passion that would have faded by winter). She professed to feel the same about me. She was funny and smart and beautiful, but there was a reckless abandon about her, too, an eagerness to throw off the confines of her privileged life and embark on adventure. She’d start Yale, her father’s alma mater, in the fall, and she worried that she was being sucked even more deeply into a life she sometimes found suffocating.
Labor Day weekend, the last big fling of summer, there was a party on a private section of beach owned by the resort. Mostly it was the stuck-up college kids who summered in Littleton and called being a lifeguard a “job.” A couple of them had been giving me a hard time all summer, calling me a townie and a redneck (although I think they meant “blue collar”) and constantly pointing out that they were Ivy League while I wasn’t even headed for college. One of them, Len Phillips, was especially nasty. He’d be a junior at Yale and had the hots for Mia. It stuck in his craw that she preferred me to him.
Everyone was drinking the night of the beach party, but those guys were really pouring them back. They were loud and obnoxious, and seemed intent on ramping up their efforts to belittle me, maybe because they saw it as their last chance. They would intentionally bump into me, spill their beer on my shirt, burp in my face. I’m sure you get the picture. And then Len started in about the silver sun pendant I wore on a leather cord around my neck. It had belonged to my mother, who died of cancer my freshman year in high school, and wearing it was my way of keeping her close. Len called it “sissified” and “dorky.” He kept saying stuff like “Little townie misses his mama.” I took a punch at him and missed. He grabbed the pendant and yanked it from my neck, then dangled it in front of me with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Mia told me not to let it get to me, that those guys, especially Len, were stupid and juvenile. Still, it was humiliating. And the fact that Mia felt she needed to stand up for me made me feel even weaker. Finally, she suggested we take a walk along the beach. It was a beautiful, warm evening. I should have been in seventh heaven, but the teasing from earlier in the evening kept getting under my skin.
We walked and talked and messed around until almost midnight. I thought we should go back, but Mia kept saying no, this was her last night as a “free soul,” and she wanted it to go on forever. I guess that irritated me, too, because anyone as beautiful and rich as she was, anyone who had as many connections as she did, was freer than I’d ever be.
“But I’m not free,” she insisted. “My whole life is rules and expectations.” She held her hands to the stars and sa
id, “Like I’ve never made love on the sand under the open sky. Let’s do it.”
And maybe to be contrary, or maybe because I had the sense I was being used, I told her no. She got mad, we exchanged heated words, and I left her there alone, which I should never have done. But I was angry and hurt, humiliated by the guys at the party, and to tell the truth, a little drunk. I spent the night in a boathouse near one of the docks, feeling sorry for myself and wondering if I should tie weights to my legs and drown myself.
That was the last I saw of Mia. Her father reported her missing the next morning. As you can imagine, there was a huge search for her—and all sorts of speculation. Had she been swept out to sea? Had she run away, which was, to my mind, not inconceivable given her eagerness to experience life. Or had she met with foul play? And since I was the last person known to have been with her, suspicion quickly turned to me. Mia’s body never turned up, but I was questioned, and eventually arrested, although I was never charged, much to the anger of the power elite in Washington and most of the local townspeople, my dad included.
He was the sheriff in Littleton at the time, and although he’d excused himself from the active investigation, he bent over backward to show that he wasn’t covering up for his son. We’d never had a warm or close relationship, but his lack of support stung. He assumed I was guilty and accused me of disgracing him and blackening his reputation. He said he couldn’t hold his head up anymore because of me. The next January, he shot himself.
That’s when I left town. I drove away one afternoon and never looked back. I traveled, working odd jobs along the way, and eventually found myself in California, where I decided to make a clean break from my past. I adopted a new name (not legally, I’m ashamed to admit now) and enrolled in community college. I worked hard, I studied hard, and to my amazement, I did well. Well enough to earn scholarships that helped pay for my subsequent education. I graduated from law school and took a job with the DA’s office.
Life was good to me. My career was on track, I had a wife I adored, a lovely stepdaughter, and then a son of my own. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. But I realize now, it was a life on borrowed time.
A year ago my wife’s best friend, Allison Miller, introduced us to a guy she’d begun dating. I recognized Len Phillips right away, and I could tell from the smirk on his face that he not only recognized me too, but that he’d sought me out, a fact he later confirmed. He’d seen my photo in a law journal he happened to read because a customer at the car dealership where he’d taken his car for service had left it behind.
He saw a gravy train. It didn’t start out as blackmail, although we both understood that’s what it was. He agreed to keep quiet about my past—no point making things hard for you and your wife, he said—but he started hitting me up for money. At first, he offered excuses like he was a little short until the end of the month. And then he wanted to “borrow” money for a birthday present for Allison (which I noticed she never received). If I dragged my feet, he’d remind me that he had the power to bring me down.
To my shame, I paid up. Every time. It was a little like being the frog in a pot of boiling water—the heat got turned up slowly. The amounts he asked for were small at first, and it wasn’t hard for me to find the money. But he raised the temperature little by little until he was asking for amounts that I couldn’t easily come by. Before I knew it, I was in over my head.
So many times I came close to telling Diana the truth. I told myself I’d come clean and take what came. But I loved Diana. I loved Jeremy. I loved my job. I loved the life I’d built. I didn’t want to throw it all away.
And then Miranda Saxton’s remains were found. I knew the investigation would heat up again, and authorities would begin looking for me. Len recognized that as well, and he began demanding more and more money.
Years ago I’d hired a private investigator to follow developments in Mia’s disappearance. The guy kept his ear to the ground. He learned of a charm found with Mia’s remains and sent me a photo, which he’d obtained from a buddy of his on the force. He’d been told it was evidence that a man by the name of Brian Riley had killed her.
Once I saw the pendant, I knew what had happened. I flew into a quiet rage. All the time Len had been milking me for money, he’d known that I was innocent because he was the one who killed Mia.
I confronted him and he laughed in my face. Said nobody would believe me even if I was stupid enough to come forward with some “cockamamie” story that put the blame on him rather than me. We both knew who had my pendant that night, but there was no proof. And he doubted anyone who’d been there would remember, even if they’d noticed at the time.
He insisted I had nothing to gain and much to lose by speaking out. Sadly, he was right.
I am a rational man, a man who believes in the law, but what Len did was so grievous, so evil, I began to fantasize about revenge.
I knew Jamal Harris from his previous brushes with the law. He’d cooperated with us in the past by pointing the finger at gang leaders, but now he was facing serious time himself. In one of our conversations (yes, technically they are interrogations, but as a DA you can build an odd sense of rapport with repeat offenders), I mentioned some guy who had done me wrong. Jamal said he’d get rid of him for me. Just like that. I thought he was kidding but he was serious. One thing I’ve learned about guys like Jamal, they rarely joke.
We’re going to meet this afternoon and I’m supposed to give him Len’s name. He’ll “do the deed,” as he puts it, and in return, I’ll hand over some cash and his freedom—from the current charge at any rate. I’ve made it clear I can’t promise help in the future.
But in the last forty-eight hours I’ve discovered that Diana is right when she says my world lacks shades of gray. Killing someone is wrong, even if I’m not the one pulling the trigger, and even if that person is as despicable as Len. As much as I detest him, I can’t be a party to murder.
I’m going to meet Jamal and explain my change of heart in person—I owe him that much. I will tell him our deal is off. I’ll do what I can for him with regard to the current charge, but the evidence I made go away is coming back. And then I’m going to tell Diana the truth. Diana and the authorities. I doubt they’ll arrest Len—it’s his word against mine, after all—but I’m hoping for the best. I’ll be disbarred and God know what else. Diana may leave me, although I pray that’s not the case. It’s not a good solution, but I think it’s the only one I can live with.
I think, but I’m still not sure.
What does it say that I am sending this letter to myself? It shows, even to me, that I lack the strength of my convictions. Should I, at the last minute, decide to give Jamal Len’s name, I can simply retrieve this note from my postal box and burn it. No one will be the wiser.
Will I do that? I hope not. I don’t think so. But you never know.
Diana’s eyes were wet by the time she came to the end. Roy may have doubted his resolve to do the right thing, but she didn’t. He’d have told Jamal the deal was off.
Later today, she’d call Alec and maybe even the press. She wanted the truth known. But first, she needed to explain to her children and Chloe. Yes, Chloe.
A breeze stirred the bare branches outside Diana’s window. She saw a robin sitting on the top branch with his head cocked her direction. He seemed to be staring back at her. When she walked to the window, he chirped several times, then flew past the window and off into the blue sky.
Whenever you see a robin, you’ll know I’m there, and that I love you.
“I love you too, Roy,” she said quietly. “And I miss you so much.”
Chapter 44
Eighteen months later
A gentle breeze blew through the classroom window, ruffling pages of the children’s picture book Chloe read to the assembled three-year-olds sitting at her feet.
“Oh, dear,” Chloe said, holding the book face out. “What should the little bunny do?”
“Run,” the class shou
ted. “The wolf is trying to trick him.”
Chloe loved her job as a nursery school assistant. And she loved the classes she was taking toward her degree. It would take years to finish, but she didn’t mind. Every day was a blessing.
When story time ended and the children had gone home, she took a moment to reread the letter from Diana. She mostly kept in touch by email, but when Jeremy wrote Chloe letters, Diana usually added a few words.
Jeremy had drawn her a picture of Digger and written in large, block letters: I MISS YOU. PLEASE COME FOR SPRING BREAK.
Diana had echoed the invitation in her own note.
Chloe would try to make the trip, at least for a few days. She’d have a chance to see Velma, too, the only person aside from Diana and Jeremy she missed from her old life.
She couldn’t believe how much had changed in one year. She’d spent last spring working in a soup kitchen, serving dinners to the poor—part of the community service she’d been ordered to do for her involvement in the robbery that ended Roy Walker’s life. She still felt she deserved stiffer punishment, but Diana had not only spoken out in her behalf, she’d convinced Chloe that living a good life and helping others was a better way to make things right.
She’d helped Chloe see a lot of things more clearly, in fact.
Chloe’s phone rang as she was packing up her things.
“How about dinner tonight?” Joel asked.
Chloe hesitated. “I should study.”
“You can’t study all the time.”
“There’s so much I don’t know.”
“But so much you do know.”
“You’re sweet.” They usually saw each other on weekends, except for the one weekend a month Joel went back to Georgia to see his dad. Chloe understood he’d asked her out tonight because he was worried she’d be feeling sad.
Her baby girl was one year old today, but Chloe wouldn’t be the mom clicking pictures and cooing, “I love you.” She’d given her daughter up for adoption to a wonderful couple who could provide for her and give her the sort of life every child deserved. It was the hardest thing Chloe had ever done, but she knew that for once in her life, she’d made the right decision.
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