I just stopped calling her back. This is reminding me of guilt I’ve tried to bury—bury! My fault? My tightrope jiggles. Bounces.
“Oh, right,” she says. “Trying to be your friend. Smart. I bet she also knew your husband. Before, I mean.”
“Well, of course.” I search for steady footing. “Sure. We’d hung out. They’d planned my surprise birthday party together. She’d sent his law firm business. So what?”
She narrows her eyes. “And then Joe Rissinelli shows up at your door. Did he tell you Katherine sent him? Or did she?”
Sent? I remember the day they arrived, the day of closing arguments, one soon after the other. I remember I’d noticed they knew each other. But they’d both worked at City, so it seemed logical.
“No. Neither of them said that.” I’m trying to untangle what Ashlyn is getting at. See if she has a reasonable point. She’s nuts, I need to keep remembering that. I’m simply playing along with her non sequiturs.
“Exactly. So now your husband is gone. And Joe Rissinelli is gone.” She holds out a finger as she says each name. Nods, as if she’s reached some conclusion. Then adds another finger. “Katherine knows me, too. She brought me to you, remember? Did you know she’s from Ohio? She never told you that, I bet.”
“Ohio? Yeah, she did. I knew that.” My brain used to work, I know that. I also know that for the past month I have pushed my limits, sleep deprived and emotionally frazzled, working to untangle the murder of a child whose face insists on morphing into my own daughter’s. I’ve struggled, every day, to keep these things separate, though it’s impossible, but the world goes on and I’m doing my best, I tell myself, sitting here in the sun with a crazy person. Doing my best to save my own life. Sometimes it feels like I’m succeeding, sometimes it doesn’t.
I stare at the rectangular holes in the ground where the swing set used to be. It’s really hot out here. I need water. I need to go inside.
“Exactly.” Ashlyn nods, as if she’s now discovered the solution to a difficult problem. “Dayton. Ever wonder how she and I got together? Why I’d agree to see her? A reporter, or—whatever she calls herself, editor?”
“She is an editor.” I frown. I can feel my forehead furrowing. A drip of sweat trickles down the middle of my back. My T-shirt is sticky, and my feet are hot. It had crossed my mind to ask how Kath got access to Ashlyn, but she’s spent her life as a journalist. She has connections. That’s why she’s successful.
“Of course she is,” Ashlyn says. “But ever wonder what she does in the other part of her life? How often she might go back home to Ohio? Where she might hang out? Like a certain night club?”
Katherine? At a night club? I wonder if we’re talking about the same person. Or in the same language.
Ashlyn stands, looking down at me, shading her eyes with one hand.
“Hey. Did she know Ron Chevalier?” She persists, not waiting for my response. “You know that’s not his real name.”
“Yeah, I wrote that,” I say. “You think she knew Ron? Wait. You knew her in Ohio? She never mentioned that.”
“I’m not surprised.” Ashlyn shrugs, sits back down on the bench, flaps one leg over the other. “She probably only told you what she needed to tell you. Next time you talk—hmm, I bet she hasn’t called recently, has she?” She’s nodding, like she’s reading the expression on my face. I’m glad I can’t see it because bafflement is surely an understatement. “Next time she does? Ask if she knows my stepfather. Well, if you do, she’ll lie, so whatever,” she says. “She’s not going to admit it. It’s probably part of the plan.”
“What plan?” I stand, stretch my shoulders. I am stiff from sitting too long. My brain is frying. I am about to faint from the heat. I have no idea what Ashlyn is talking about.
“But you’re all about the research, right?” She’s smiling as she points at me, again, with one forefinger. “Check it out.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The smoke detector is shrieking. In the middle of the night. I hit the ceiling, it feels like, then peel myself off as I leap out of bed, heart in my throat. I know the stupid alarm sometimes does that—when the humidity gets too high, or there’s dust in the “sensor lens,” the instructions had explained. Still, it’s terrifying. My first thought is never “it’s a false alarm.” It’s always “I’m going to burn to death.”
Ashlyn almost crashes into me in the hallway. I’m in one of Dex’s law school basketball shirts. She’s in a black camisole and underpants.
“Is something on fire?” Her hair is crazy askew, her eyes wide.
“Do you smell anything?” The shriek of the alarm forces us both to yell, and we clamp hands over our ears. “The alarm sometimes does this, but—”
“The fireplace!” She points down the hall to the living room. “You think they set a fire? I’ll check there! Or the kitchen!”
“I’ve gotta turn it off in the basement,” I yell over the unrelenting noise as I head to the door in the dining room. Ashlyn dashes down the hall.
Do I smell something? Maybe. Kind of. I try to clear my brain and cover my ears as I rush down the gloomy back stairs. Stupid smoke detector. Dex always promised to get it fixed, but it refused to malfunction when the electrician was here. It never woke Sophie up, the good news and the bad news. That always worried us.
“Dammit!” The pile of video-equipment boxes I’d dumped at the bottom of the stairway almost splats me on the concrete floor. I grab the wooden banister for balance and kick the packing boxes out of the way with one bare foot, my continued swearing obliterated by the intensifying noise.
I find the breaker box. I pull open the dented aluminum door. Dex always handled this. It hasn’t happened since he was gone. I find the label—in Dex’s blocky printing. I flip the black plastic switch.
Silence.
“It’s the kitchen!” Ashlyn calls out.
“What?” I race back up the steps two at a time. Now the alarms go off in my head instead. “What?”
She’s holding the toaster cord in her hand, and a wisp of dark smoke rises from a piece of charred bread still in the slot.
“It wasn’t a false alarm,” she says.
The kitchen reeks of burned toast. “Did you make toast?” I say. Ridiculously. My feet are gritty from the basement floor.
“Huh? Did I—?” she says. “It was turned up all the way. You trying to burn down the house or something? Hey. Kidding. But maybe the thing shorted out, or whatever? Did you maybe … leave a piece of bread in here? And it stuck? I don’t know how these things work.”
“Me either. Maybe. Thanks.” Did I? I’m grateful for a solution, anyway. And the silence. And the lack of a spreading fire. Stupid toaster. “Good thing the alarm woke us up.”
“I’m used to alarms. Better this than some guard calling a bed check.” Holding its black plastic handles, she dumps the dead toaster into the stainless steel sink, then jams the blackened bread down the disposal. “So this is only a coincidence, right? Crossing fingers. Let’s go back to sleep.”
“Coincidence with what? Why crossing fingers?” The kitchen clock reads 4:31, but these comments of hers—you think they set a fire?—aren’t throwaway lines.
She shakes her head. Shrugs. “I’m overthinking. I guess. You know? Quinn’s house?”
“Ashlyn? There’s no connection to—they caught those people. Right? But you think someone would set a fire? Who?”
“Really. Forget it. Your toaster sucks. So there’s nothing.”
“But today, in the backyard, you were talking about—” After her ravings about Katherine and Ohio, she’d gone inside to watch TV, then went to her room with a bag of barbeque potato chips and a glass of white wine. I’d tapped on her door for dinner, but she said she just wanted to sleep. So much for working. “You were talking as if you were afraid of someone.”
“Yeah, I know.” She yawns, fingers her hair away from her face. “I probably panicked, you know? Seeing the police? It brings back so muc
h—so many terrifying memories. And like you said, Quinn’s house. I knew I should have disappeared somewhere, right after the verdict. I never should have agreed to this book thing. But honestly, Mercer, I don’t think they’d set a fire. Really. No. Like you said, this is not about me, right? Like you said, they caught the guys.” She smiles, as if she’s admitting her own personality flaw. “Go back to bed.”
No way I’m going without answers. And she’s the one who brought up Quinn’s house.
“Ashlyn? They who? They—the people who I think you’re saying took your daughter? Or killed her? Those they?”
She adjusts the strap of her camisole, then seems to realize she’s wearing basically underwear. I see a pink star tattoo on the swell of her breast, just like Quinn described.
“I’ve got to figure it out,” she says. “How much I should really tell you. How much is safe for you to know. It’s probably fine.” She purses her lips, begins a frown. “I sure hope Joe Rissinelli’s okay. You hear from anyone?”
I’m exhausted, and frazzled, and feel like I’ve had a narrow escape, which I might have, I guess, if the smoke alarm hadn’t worked. I understand that she’s trying to change the subject, and I’m concerned about Joe, too, but I’m not going to let her distract me with her on-again off-again stories.
“No,” I say. “Nothing about Joe. But about tonight, Ashlyn. It’s hard for me to decipher what things you tell me are real. Is there someone who even might have set a fire? The stuff you told me about Katherine? Quinn’s house aside, okay? It makes writing a true-crime book kinda difficult. Since I don’t know what’s true. You’re the only person who does.”
“Trust me,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”
“But you don’t have to ‘figure out’ the truth.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You do.” She touches the toaster in the sink with one finger, then flattens her palm on it. Then turns the faucet on it, dousing it with water. “Let’s get some sleep. We have work tomorrow.” And she’s gone.
It’s impossible to sleep and think about a fire at the same time. It’s too hot in my bedroom now. And in my imagination. Quinn’s house. I stick my bare feet out from under the blanket. Stare through the predawn gloom at the swirls on the white ceiling. Could someone set a fire in my house? How? Who? Who’s in this house anyway, the pizza delivery guy? Ashlyn? But she put it out. And it was only my unreliable toaster. I’m ridiculous. I’m making up stuff again. And embarrassed to be considering a pizza delivery arsonist. I turn on my side, struggling to get comfortable. Did I forget I was making toast? I could have. I guess.
But something else haunts me. I was the one who’d contemplated burning the house down myself, maybe a month ago. And when I heard that alarm, I wanted to live. What does that mean?
I punch the pillow into a different shape. Ashlyn. I don’t understand her at all. She’s not behaving like—well, yeah. How do I know how someone who’d murdered her own child would behave? She wouldn’t go around crying all the time. Unless she thought that was the way someone who didn’t kill her own child behaved. So a murderer would pretend to be sad. Ashlyn’s not sad, real or pretend. Except about herself.
I close my eyes, not only in exhaustion, but in confusion and emotional defeat. How would I appear to someone who’d just met me?
Finally I get up, shower, and write on the mirror, 480, trying to regain my bearings and share the story, but somehow Dex and Sophie don’t help. “Please don’t leave me,” I whisper, touching the edge of the four. “Please.”
Ashlyn’s up too, and in the kitchen. She presents me with coffee. Skim milk. “You look tired, Mercer,” she says. “And listen, I trashed the toaster. So you don’t have to think about it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
We bring our coffees to the study. Ashlyn’s more talkative this morning than she’s ever been. She’s right, I’m tired, but I’m awake enough to know she’s still giving me nothing. She’s prattled—that’s the only word—about Tasha’s birth (horrible until they finally gave her drugs) and seeing her daughter for the first time (tears) and how unhappy she was to be living at “Tom and Georgia’s.”
“I needed to find a real job,” she says. She’s standing, her back to me and facing the bookshelves, as if she’s fascinated by my collection of journalism memoirs and true-crime books. “And I was hoping it’d be out of town. Dayton was—well, not good. For so many reasons.”
She steadfastly dodges questions about the identity of Tasha’s father.
“Was it your father?” It makes me cringe to do it, but I have to ask. She’d denied it a couple of days ago, insisting I’d “remembered it wrong” because of the wine. But that’s ridiculous. Typical Ashlyn. I know she said it. And it seems so repugnantly possible to me. Plus, she’s the one who had the wine.
“Stepfather,” she says, turning to face me.
“Stepfather.” Only marginally less hideous. “Was it?”
“Here’s the deal.” She pulls a book from the shelves. I can’t see what it is, but being Ashlyn, she won’t put it back, so I’ll look later. “I’ll tell you about that as soon as I decide how to do it.”
It’s like talking to quicksand.
But we’re almost to the place in the Ashlyn-and-Tasha timeline where, according to all my research, Ashlyn connects with Ron Chevalier and Hot Stuff. If we continue at this pace, the facts (if such a word means something to her) about Tasha’s disappearance and death should be coming soon.
Day 5 goes by. Day 6. Day 7.
She’s driving me crazy. I’m taking her step-by-step through the trial, transcribing what she says, and then trying to craft that into an outline. She has an explanation, sometimes several of them, for everything. Someone’s out to get her, and they took Tasha. Her stepfather is involved. He’s bad, he’s good, he’s rich, he’s cash-strapped. He’s a child molester, look what he did to me, who knows what he did to Tasha. Her mother knew. Her mother didn’t know. Tasha was dying. Valerie is still out there, she must be part of it. Ron is involved. There were drugs at Hot Stuff. There might be drugs. Everything was stolen. Ashlyn knew too much. Ashlyn didn’t know anything.
How am I supposed to write anything from this? I’ve asked her a million times. Tell me the truth. Tell me what happened. And she does. Then does it again. Differently. How much of it is fantasy? Or, and I can’t stop myself from considering it no matter how I try to avoid it, is it reasonable doubt? I know what I believe to be true. But if I don’t know for certain, might another story be true?
Anyway, she’s constantly underfoot. We’ll reach for a paper towel at exactly the same time. Or the TV remote. She drinks the last Diet Pepsi. Doesn’t change the toilet paper roll. Leaves towels on the shower rod so I can’t close the curtain. Puts dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher—apparently she thinks I’ll clean up after her. The book she’d been examining was the Marcia Clark memoir about prosecuting O. J. Simpson, which would be interesting if it weren’t so obvious. I can’t even use that detail; people would think I made it up.
It’s probably half the pressure and half the impossible assignment—I recognize that—but I’m feeling caged. Imprisoned by a deadline. Trapped in a jail of my own journalistic making. Sharing a cell with a murderer. Trying to search for the answers that’ll set me free. Or something. I’m running out of clichés.
Funny that Ashlyn seems to feel just the opposite. She’s luxuriating in it all, the couch (where she’s claimed the right corner, with the end table and clicker), the fridge, the TV. Her using the bathroom still creeps me out, but Dex and Sophie, back again, thank heaven, have agreed they understand.
We talk in the mornings, and then I work in the study while she sits in the backyard. She’s out there now, with an InStyle magazine and the sunscreen she took from my linen closet. At least she asked first. I have not said so out loud, but the study, my domain, is still off limits for her, unless I’m there, too.
I’m struggling to hide my annoyance and disdain. And my
goals. It’s important that she believes I believe her. How many times did I hear Spofford remind the jury that Ashlyn gets rid of whoever is inconvenient? In her way? I don’t want that to be me.
We’ve only been out once, the day after the fire, to get a new toaster. At Home Depot, which was weird. The duct tape displays were still up. And I kept looking for Kelsie. We’re getting food delivered from the grocery service now (I save the receipts for Katherine) and Ashlyn flirts with that delivery guy, too. Once I think she let him in as she put the food away—I heard voices from the kitchen. But when I came in from the study to check, she was alone.
I stare at my computer screen. It’s already Saturday now, a week since she arrived. Truth is, I’m stalling about the actual writing, and mostly watch trial videos. She thinks I’m working like mad, but I don’t want to get invested in her make-believe. If I write it all and she finally tells what really happened, I’ll just have to unwrite it. I’m running out of time, though. I know that. Rolling the deadline dice.
She still hasn’t confessed, not even close, or given me a pathway to nail her.
It should have been easy to prove whether Ashlyn fabricated the tale about Katherine, but Kath’s still not answering her cell or office phone. Predictably unpredictable. I left messages, another one just a minute ago, so she’ll certainly call back. She’d told me she lived in Dayton, so that’s either something or nothing.
Talk about something or nothing—I haven’t heard from Joe Riss either. Or anything about him, and that’s bothering me, too. We’re not really friends, and never hung out together until the trial, so it’s not as if he’s suddenly missing from my life, but he’s a good guy. I mean, I guess, except for that passport and jewelry thing Overbey made sure I knew. Maybe it’s a messy divorce, and the wife is difficult. There’s been nothing in the paper or on TV about a missing person, so that’s reassuring. Joe’s probably on some hush-hush assignment. I would have heard if something had happened.
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