Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Today is no different. No mail at all. How bleak is that? Like I have nothing, and no one. Even my mail has given up on me.

  I almost don’t hear the car pull up, but then it turns into our driveway, tires crunching on gravel. Katherine. She pops out of her white Lexus, slams the door, and trots up the walk.

  “Nice look,” she says, eyeing me. “Sweat pants, very hip.”

  “Gimme a break, Kath,” I say, patting my fleeced thighs. “I’m working, not out having glamorous fun in the real world. Because of you, remember. And this completely impossible assignment.”

  Katherine, white jacket, dark-wash skinny jeans, bright blue heels, holds out a manila envelope. “You’ve got mail,” she says.

  I take it, puzzled. I just checked the mail. “What is it?” I gesture to the still-open front door. “Want to come in, watch Georgia testify? She’s on in fifteen.”

  “Nope, no can do,” she says. “But take a look at the goodie I just brought you.”

  I bend up the metal prongs to open the envelope. “What is it?” I rip up the sealed flap.

  “I got it from a friend of a friend,” Katherine says. “I had to come over. I wanted to see your face when you opened it.”

  I draw the piece of paper from the envelope.

  “We’re not releasing this,” Katherine goes on. “And we’re not sure if anyone else has it. We’re crossing fingers it can be exclusive for your book. Maybe the cover.”

  It’s eight-by-ten, heavy paper. I turn it over. It’s a photograph. In color.

  “What on earth? It’s Ashlyn, right?” A sign on the wall behind her says something that’s partly obscured. STU is all I can make out. But I can make out quite a bit about Ashlyn.

  “Yupperoo,” Katherine says. “Wet white T-shirt. Apparently our girl entered a contest. Like, last year.”

  “S-T-U is Hot Stuff, don’t you think?”

  Kath nods. “Unbelievable, huh?”

  I look at it, picturing how it must have happened.

  “Good thing we didn’t have cell phone cameras when we were that age, right?” I say. “Not that there’d be anything like this. And I always wore underwear in public. But—is it fair to make her a murderer because she was partying?”

  “You wanna fight the optics battle for Ashlyn?” Kath interrupts, raises an eyebrow. “It is what it is.”

  And with that she’s gone, her car a flash of white and chrome disappearing down Norwalk Street.

  I stand in the doorway. Staring at the photo. If Katherine has this, does Royal Spofford? What would the jury think?

  Ashlyn’s wet, laughing, lip-glossed, and wearing a truly translucently glistening T-shirt in front of a room full of Hot Stuff partiers—I guess, because you can’t see anyone else in this shot. But does that mean she killed her daughter? It doesn’t. It’s one of those things Dex would call phony-relevant. It seems like it matters. But it doesn’t.

  What definitely is going to matter—Georgia Bryant’s testimony. I click on my computer. She’s about to tell all.

  Five minutes in, I’m riveted. Ignoring my lunch. I can’t even write. This is too cinematic, like some 1940’s Joan Crawford melodrama. Georgia Bryant, the suburban mother who’s made an unimaginable choice. Grandchild over daughter. Justice over loyalty. Her blue skirt does not quite match her too-tight jacket, and there’s a dusting of what might be face powder on one wide lapel.

  So far what she’s telling the jury, sometimes wiping tears with a shredding white tissue, exactly corroborates the way I’m telling the story in the book. That’s reassuring. But I’m obsessed with Georgia’s state of mind. How can she do this?

  For the millionth time, I look for emotional clues in the family photos published in UpClose Magazine. Preteen Ashlyn in curls and silver ankle bracelet, soaking wet, posing at some swimming pool. Ashlyn as a teenager, high-kicking in a cheerleader mini, pale-pink V-neck sweater just a bit too tight. Ashlyn as a chubby new mother, radiant, I have to admit, with a tiny Tasha Nicole in her arms and a beaming Georgia hovering behind them.

  But Ashlyn had become a self-styled seductress, who had decided—if you buy the Commonwealth’s theory—that her own daughter’s very existence was an impediment to her party-girl fun.

  How does a mother—a grandmother—live with that?

  “Why did you agree to let that detective hide in your closet?” Spofford is asking.

  “Because the police said they needed to hear what she told me,” Georgia answers. “They said—”

  “Objection!” McMorran sounds angry. Even I know that calls for hearsay.

  “And after that,” Spofford carries on after the judge sustains, “what did you learn?”

  Quinn plants her palms on the defense table. Ready to leap up at the first inadmissible word.

  “Well, that police detective showed me the drawing, and that little girl had the same barrettes as Tasha. I knew it was Tasha. But Ashlyn said she saw her alive that morning.”

  “And what did that mean to you?”

  “It meant Ashlyn had to be lying. Because I knew Tasha was dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Quinn McMorran. Georgia Bryant. Ashlyn Bryant. The three women create a chilling legal triangle. In one corner, a defense attorney preparing to destroy the direct testimony of the woman in the opposite corner, the person who should be Ashlyn’s prime advocate—her own mother. At the apex of the triangle, Ashlyn herself, in a central-casting neutral sweater and virtuous gray skirt, listening to every word. Glued to my desk chair, I’m listening, too. Quinn’s talented, but her client is a monster.

  Quinn starts her cross-examination with some predictable questions, clearly designed to lay the defense groundwork—ridiculously shaky as it is—for “good mother Ashlyn.” Quinn gets in a couple of successful moments, I have to admit. She’s certainly making Georgia look less sympathetic. But she can’t make Ashlyn look less guilty.

  No matter what happens in the courtroom, I figure mother and daughter will never speak to each other again. Talk about betrayal.

  HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT

  “Let me ask you this.” Quinn McMorran’s tone revealed a hint of scorn, her antagonism showing through her practiced politeness. “You never witnessed your daughter Ashlyn abuse Tasha in any way, did you?”

  Georgia Bryant shifted in the hard wooden chair. She hated that look on the lawyer’s face. Like somehow something was Georgia’s fault. Which it most certainly was not.

  “No, I did not.” This was the truth, certainly, if she meant hitting Tashie. Ashlyn never did that. That she’d seen.

  “And Tasha never went without food or shelter or anything she needed in life?”

  “No, she had everything.” Tom and I made sure of that, she wanted to say.

  “Did Tasha love Ashlyn?” McMorran asked.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, she did. She’s her mother.” So now it had to be over. Ashlyn herself could not criticize her mother’s answers. Georgia felt better. No one could say she hadn’t defended her daughter. Nauseating as it was.

  “Just a few more questions, Mrs. Bryant. First, were you and your husband attempting to trademark Tasha Nicole’s name?”

  She heard the rustle from the courtroom audience. Her husband was staring daggers at her. They hadn’t told anyone about this, not even Spofford. Certainly not Ashlyn. How could this woman know?

  “Yes.” Georgia said. Spofford had told her only to answer what was asked. But she couldn’t stand it. “But it never actually—”

  “I see.” McMorran didn’t let her finish. The attorney picked up a manila folder. Opened it. “And finally, this copy of UpClose Magazine.” She held it up, showed it to the judge and jury. And the TV camera. “This is marked exhibit M, your honor. May I approach?”

  She came so close to Georgia she could smell the woman’s perfume. “Now Mrs. Bryant, this is an article about this case, correct? With, among other things, family photos of Tasha Nicole as a baby, and my client as a high school cheerleader. Are these fr
om your family album?”

  “Yes.” The woman could not know about this, could not!

  “Isn’t it true,” McMorran went on, “that you sold these family photos to the magazine?”

  She knew. How did she know that? “Yes,” Georgia said.

  “For how much money?”

  There was no way out of it. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Let me clarify,” Quinn said. “You sold your family photos for twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Objection,” Spofford barely looked up. “Asked and answered.”

  McMorran gave Georgia a look. Gotcha. Georgia shot one right back. Bitch.

  “Nothing further,” McMorran said.

  Thank God. Georgia tried to calm her breathing, still her heart, quiet her frazzling nerves as District Attorney Spofford approached her again. She knew this was called “redirect.” At least he was on her side.

  “One question,” the DA said. “Isn’t it true.…”

  His voice sounded funny, she thought. It had a little undertone.

  “Isn’t it true that you believe your daughter killed Tasha Nicole?”

  “Objection! I move for a mistrial!” Quinn McMorran leaped out of her chair, almost knocking it over as she protested “What Georgia Bryant thinks is inadmissible. As counsel is well aware.”

  “And what’s more”—McMorran settled a palm on Ashlyn’s shoulder—“I demand the district attorney be sanctioned for prosecutorial misconduct. This is cynical. It’s manipulative. There’s a human life at stake.”

  Ashlyn’s life, she meant, but I figure everyone in the courtroom was thinking about Tasha Nicole. I had never seen a defense attorney leap up like that, shouting. A Perry Mason moment, I bet TV will call it. If anyone remembers Perry Mason.

  I feel my foot jiggling under my desk. I didn’t start it on purpose. This isn’t about me, I know that, but for me, a mistrial is the worst thing that could happen. If there’s a mistrial, my book dies. Or gets hooked up to life support.

  The monitor shows Judge Green on the bench, paging through papers. The courtroom is silent, everyone in place.

  Would he do it? Send the jury home and force the Commonwealth to start over? A second trial is a defense attorney’s dream. It’s a second chance. Why would Spofford take such a risk with that question? Everything is stopped, now, while the judge decides.

  All this gruesome testimony, the evidence and objections, the backstage wrangling, the journalists’ predictions. It’s toxic. I’m immersed. And more toxic, I’m isolated. No one knows I’m watching, a voyeur with a secret agenda. To punish Ashlyn Bryant. To avenge Tasha Nicole.

  My little girl is gone forever, too. But I, at least, admit why. Although not in court.

  I feel my eyes narrow. There has never been a guiltier person on the planet. A mistrial would put Ashlyn one step closer to getting away with murder. I can see that murder so clearly, it’s almost as if I witnessed it myself.

  The judge’s gavel jolts me from the mental picture of the decomposing Tasha Nicole. “We’ll be in recess until tomorrow at nine,” he says.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In fifteen minutes I’d washed my face, yanked on jeans and a T-shirt, combed my hair, put on real shoes, and I was outside. The air is heavy with the waning summer, the lacy pillows of lavender hydrangea on our—my—next-door neighbor’s hedge sweet and buzzing with satiated bees. Once in the car, I drive up Norwalk Street past the square of stores in the town center, striped awnings and forest green benches, pots of fuchsia begonias trailing ivy along each side of Lincoln Avenue. I blink in the late afternoon sunshine as I arrive in the grocery parking lot, getting my new bearings.

  “Shopping,” I say out loud. “In the real world.”

  Dex’s parents, who I know were trying to help me, showed up with the little Subaru a month or so after the accident. Someone—maybe them, I don’t know—had done something with that wrecked Volvo. Patrick and Lita Hennessey, they meant well, had insisted I needed a car, and the pale gray sedan showed up soon after. I had sworn never to drive again, which was self-defeating and ridiculous, but for a few months I felt like it gave me some control. The Subaru keys sit on my dresser. I do use them, times like now. Or when I go to the cemetery. Or the wine store. It’s not that car I think of when I drive.

  Patrick and Lita are on a cruise. Somewhere. Aruba, I think. Probably, like I am, still trying to forget. It’s reassuring that they’re together. I count my blessings that my own parents, long departed from this world, were not alive for Dex and Sophie’s deaths, or to witness their daughter’s despair. Mom would have insisted I move back home to Ithaca. Dad would have tried to distract me with hiking or tennis. I would have said no, but I miss my parents. I sure would like someone to talk to. To hold on to. To be a family.

  The air goes cold as I swish through the revolving doors of DeMilla’s, the locally owned mini-grocery favored by harried professionals and overscheduled parents picking up forgotten milk or cheese or necessities like wine and diapers. And coffee. I grab a black plastic basket, hang it over my arm. I’ve shopped plenty of times in the past 451 days. But the world is still not quite—reliable, is the word, I guess. I still look over my shoulder at everything. Hearing noises. Half-seeing movements, that when I turn to confront them, vanish. Waiting for someone to ask me something. Pull the rug out.

  “Get over yourself,” I mutter as I select two cans of chicken gumbo soup, then a minestrone, plunk them into my basket. Maybe my frustration is a sign. Maybe I’m weary of sorrow. But I can’t allow it to vanish. That’s disloyal. Grief is what keeps Dex and Sophie real.

  Ice cream next, mocha chip. A bag of almonds. People learn to live with grief. Their lives go on after a loss, even after a devastating loss. They have to keep living. I suppose.

  “Thanks,” I say to the mom in the messy bun and khaki shorts as she moves her double-seated stroller—twin girls—out of the way. “Cute,” I say.

  See? I can handle the world.

  I’m in line at the register, the guy in front of me unloading Doritos, an avocado, and wheat germ, when I spot the rack of eye-candy tabloids set up to tempt impatient impulse buyers. MURDERING MOM’S SECRET CONFESSION, one headline reads. It shows a blurry silhouette of someone who may or may not be Ashlyn Bryant possibly kissing someone whose face is also blurry. Another one, with a picture of Anna Nicole Smith, says TASHA: NEW VICTIM OF CURSE OF NICOLE. In the holder beneath it, a glossy magazine, Insider, promises TASHA NICOLE’S SECRET BROTHER with the sub-head IS HE ALSO IN DANGER?

  This I cannot resist. I know it’s complete bull. There is no brother. I put my basket on the conveyor, walking beside it as it creeps forward. I flip through the slick magazine pages, looking for the “Tasha’s brother” story.

  “Horrible, right?” says the cashier. She’s maybe seventeen, attempting suburban Goth, wearing a black T-shirt under her bright red DeMilla’s apron. Her name tag says Carmendy. “To murder your own child?”

  Horrible? You have no idea goes through my mind. “Yeah,” I say out loud. “Can’t believe I’m reading this.”

  “Everyone does. Reads it, I mean.” She scans my soups with a beep, picks up the almonds, beeps those too. “She’s so guilty, right? Ashlyn?”

  First-name basis, I think. Charming.

  “It’ll be interesting to hear what the jury decides,” I say. If the judge decides to let them decide.

  Carmendy’s almost finished with my checkout, and I put the magazine back in its metal rack, careful not to dent the pages.

  “Well, yeah. My friend’s mom is on the jury.” She waves the ice cream over the red light. It beeps. “She says she says the whole thing is awful.”

  She says she says? I untangle her sentence.

  “You mean your friend’s mom, the one on the jury, said to your friend that—” I stop.

  “Yeah.” She rings up my celery, and my Syrah. The conveyor rolls forward. “My friend told me.”

  This is uncharted territory. A j
uror is not supposed to be talking to anyone about anything related to the trial. Now what do I do?

  Grabbing some random gum from the colorful candy rack, I put it on the belt. I retrieve that tabloid with the brother story, slap that on the conveyor, too. A flavored lip balm, peppermint. One gilt-wrapped square of Northern Delight dark chocolate.

  Someone is in line behind me, huffing dramatically as I add to my purchases. I stolidly ignore her, hoping Carmendy will continue to talk.

  “So guilty,” Carmendy says with a roll of her eyes. “And it’s hard for her to get to work.”

  “Your friend’s mom?” Using a time-honored journalism technique, I pretend to misunderstand. I’m not going to do anything with it, but if I can find the friend, I can find the mom. And then I’ll know one of the jurors.

  “No,” Carmendy says. Like, idiot customer. She’s packing the last of my groceries into a second brown paper bag, putting the three cans of soup and the ice cream on top of the eggs. “My friend. She works at Home D, you know? And now Kelsie has to Uber to classes, because her mom needs the car for court. Which they both hate.”

  My brain is on fire. “Thanks.” I say, picking up the two bags. Kelsie. Home Depot.

  “Hi,” Carmendy says to the huffy customer.

  How about that. The revolving door whirls me back into the waning summer afternoon. I stash my stuff in the car, and make a plan, waiting for a desultory landscape truck to mutter by. There are seven women on the jury. Now I know one of them told her daughter the whole thing is “awful,” whatever that means, and “hates” it, whatever that means. She’s also told her daughter about what she thinks about Ashlyn. Which is, apparently, guilty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The hardware store, with few customers this time of day, is scented with newly sawed wood and peaty fertilizer. It’s like the trial come to life. A display of plastic trash bags. Shrink-wrapped rolls of silver duct tape. Rubber gloves.