I hope he’s okay. I’m sure not. I wish I had someone else to talk to, bounce ideas off, or provide a second opinion on Ashlyn’s mental state. But I have to rely on myself.
“Good morning,” she says, as she comes into the study, cutoffs and flip-flops, coffee mug in hand. She sits, as usual, in the Sophie chair, which I struggle not to refer to as the Ashlyn chair. “You hear from Katherine?”
Katherine again. “Nope. But she knows we’re writing. She’ll call, when it gets closer to the deadline.”
“Pretty close now, though, right? It’s like, Saturday. A week to go. Seems odd.” She sips her coffee. “Was she acting weird, or anything? Last time you saw her? I mean, before I came? Like worried? Or upset?”
I save the manuscript page I was sort of working on, and think about that. In fact, yes. Kath was upset. There was the bomb scare at Arbor Books. And she thought she was being followed by someone in a silver car. But I don’t need to tell that to Ashlyn.
“No more than usual,” I lie. I add a smile. “She’s an editor, she always worries.”
“Really? No?” Ashlyn seems to consider that. “She told me she was freaking out over being followed by somebody in a silver car. And there was a bomb scare at her office. And she told me she’d told you that stuff.”
“Oh, right.” So begins the cover-up. “Guess I forgot.”
“You forgot. Yeah, okay. You forgot.”
I open the manuscript to a different section, preparing to change the subject. Wondering why Kath mentioned that to Ashlyn.
“Why does that matter?” I can’t believe I’m taking the bait. And now trying to make my lie make sense. “It could have been anyone. There’s a bomb-scare thing, schools and stuff. Your trial. It’s a constant problem in Boston. And people drive like maniacs in Massachusetts.”
“Sure,” Ashlyn says. “Or else…”
Silence.
“Or else—someone was trying to warn her to stay away from this story.”
Silence. I cross my arms on the desk, lean forward. “Listen. Ashlyn? If you know something, why don’t you just tell me? Is Katherine involved in—” Oh, stop. I am not getting sucked in to this. I try to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Is there something I need to know?”
“You already know it. I did not kill my daughter.” Ashlyn extends her arms above her head, fingers stretching to the ceiling, her black T-shirt lifting to expose a pinkly tanned abdomen. Then she points to me with two forefingers. “But you won’t let yourself believe it. If that guy Royal Spofford and a slew of cops and detectives couldn’t convince a jury I did it, why do you think you can? But you’re so full of your writer self—you think I’m guilty, and you’re creating a whole reality to prove I am.”
“That’s just not true.” Where’s this coming from? “We’ve had this discussion, Ashlyn.”
“I know, right? With you trying to persuade me you’re like, ‘open to the real story.’ But I can totally tell you’re not. I’ve told you some perfectly logical ways Tasha could have—” She stops. Screeches to a halt, midsentence.
“I’m looking for the truth, Ashlyn,” I say in the silence. “That’s all. I want to write the truth. Wouldn’t it be … easier? To simply tell me that?”
She covers her face with both palms, and her thin shoulders quiver, her hair tumbling over her hands.
“My daughter is dead,” she wails through her fingers, and when she takes her hands away, her face is splotched with red and her wet lashes glisten. “You never ask me about that. Never ask me if I miss her, or how I can live without her, or anything, anything like that. Every night I cry and cry and cry into my pillow, terrified you’ll hear me.” She wipes the tears from her flushed cheeks, one side, then the other.
“I’m her mother,” she whispers. “Her mother.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
She ran out of the room after that, and I heard her flop onto her bed. I mean, the guest bed. I thought about going in to comfort her, but is that my role? My list asks Why A not sad abt Tasha? Maybe she is. Maybe I subconsciously didn’t want to go there, so I never brought it up. But she didn’t either. But then again, I didn’t either.
I stare at the open manuscript now, the words swimming in front of me and the task looming impossibly, like I’m trying to write in a foreign language.
Is she trying to convince me she’s innocent? Or is she trying to get me to see there are other ways Tasha would have been killed? And as a result, make me understand there’s reasonable doubt? And if there is … who am I to raise the bar on justice?
Leaning back in my chair, I feel the beginnings of a deadline headache. No matter what I ask, Ashlyn won’t give me more details about Katherine. My theory is that she concocts the beginning of a story, then can’t come up with a believable way to finish it. She’d bragged to Sandie DiOrio that she was good at making stuff up. But maybe not as good as she thinks. This is me she’s talking to. I already know the real story. Or, most of it. I think.
I look at my trusty list of questions, only some of which are getting answered. I hear her open, then close, the slider to the backyard. Good. Let her calm down out there. And in here, I’ll cure my deadline headache by planning my next move.
She emerges for dinner—pizza again. I missed it so much, she’d said. Thanks for letting me binge. She seems to be over her sorrow, and her suspicions of me, so I pretend her tears and accusations never happened. We avoid reality, whatever that is, and a few tentative hours go by.
I’m back on my tightrope. Waiting for the right moment to tackle another item on the list. The duct tape.
There’s no way she can explain away the duct tape. It clearly came from Ohio, so said the witness. And that’s about the only thing in this whole saga that’s unwaveringly true.
“Can you believe we’ve been together a whole week?” I pour her another glass of white. We’re into our late-night sitting-on-the-couch ritual, which I think encourages the increasingly sunbaked and possibly wine-vulnerable Ashlyn to talk.
“I know you’re sad, and I’m so sorry.” I go on, lying, but refuse to go as far as “I know how you feel.” “You better now?”
She says nothing, takes a sip. I wait.
She clicks on Lifetime, some show about tumble-haired teenage girls and a cute-but-sinister science teacher. I wait.
“The duct tape on the fridge at your house.” I finally broach it over our third glass, after she’s clicked through a few shows on Hallmark and SyFy, and finally left the TV on, but muted, showing Law and Order. The woman has no sense of irony. “I’m thinking, how do you explain that? I mean, how do we explain that?”
“Explain? Duct tape on the fridge?” Ashlyn smiles. We’re two chums chatting on a Saturday night in front of an empty fireplace and a humming TV. “Well, the thing on the bottom kept coming off, so Mom fixed it with duct tape.”
“Yeah, that’s what she and Detective Hilliard testified. But you know what I mean, Ashlyn. How do you explain that the same duct tape was on—in—” I don’t want her to start crying again. “Involved.”
Ashlyn swirls her chilled sauvignon blanc, watching it spin in the stemmed glass. “Remind me. Did anyone ever testify the duct tape on the fridge was the same roll as the tape used in the—” She looks at me. “Involved?”
I scratch my head, pretending I had to think about that. “No.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“Well, the tape on Tasha, forgive me, was Ohio tape. And there was tape like that in your home.”
“And millions of other homes in Ohio, certainly, or that company would be out of business.” Ashlyn drains her glass. “And it wasn’t on Tasha. If you remember. So your question is?”
“How do we explain that connection, though?” I persist. “Of all the duct tape in all Ohio, how did it get used in a crime that took place in Massachusetts?”
“Explain.” Ashlyn tilts her head. “Explain? You know what? I gotta say I still kind of don’t get this. You’re going t
hrough the whole trial with me. Like I have to prove I’m not guilty. But—” She runs a finger around the rim of her wineglass. “But the jury already decided I’m not guilty.”
I begin to apologize, then switch gears. I’ll go with the old “best defense is a good offense.”
“You want to stop? That’s okay, seriously.” I keep my voice polite, even sympathetic. To prove I’m not threatening her. You don’t want to threaten Ashlyn. “I’m only the hired hand. Katherine and Arbor Books are paying me to write your redemption. Correct?” I don’t pause to let her respond. “That’s what I agreed to do, Ashlyn. But, and I don’t mean to sound harsh, really I don’t, but if you can’t handle the hard questions, then how am I supposed to provide the answers? Questions aren’t criticism. They don’t mean I’m against you, or trying to hurt you. They’re just questions that need to be answered. I’m only doing my job. My part of our job.”
She takes a tube of lip gloss from a side pocket of her thin gray jersey hoodie. Slides out the sticky applicator, smooths a glow of transparent raspberry over her lips, back, and forth. Pauses, holding the still-glistening wand.
“Ever hear anyone say I didn’t love Tasha?” she asks.
“Ah, nope.”
She jabs the lip gloss at me. “Did you ever, ever hear anyone say the slightest thing, not counting Spofford trying to make me sound like a monster, but some real person, witness, or friend, or cop, even my parents, say anything that ever sounded like Tashie and I were anything but happy?”
“No, but—”
“And don’t you think, Mercer, don’t you think that if there was anyone, anyone, who would have been able to say anything specific at all about my horrible motherhood, anything, that Spofford would have put that person on the stand and dragged every disgusting part of my life into the spotlight? On international television? But there was nothing, right? And no one.”
“Ah, sure, I completely understand.” I’ll let her think she’s making a point. This ‘good mother’ stuff is meaningless. As if you would hit your kid in front of someone.
“All the so-called evidence is circumstantial.” She tucks the tube away. “And the jury, thank God, understood that. So why do I have to explain anything?”
“Because for the book—” I begin.
“Remember when McMorran brought on the crime scene tech person to testify?” She cuts me off. “Let’s watch that part. It was pretty short, if I remember right.” She tilts her wineglass at me. “And I do.”
“Sure,” I say. “But it’s so late. Maybe let’s wait until tomorr—”
“No,” she cuts me off. “I’ll run to the bathroom. You go get your tablet. Now or never.”
When I get back, she’s back, too, and has poured more wine in both of our glasses. I find the clip, and hold the screen so both of us can see, and push Play.
We watch Quinn McMorran as if in another life, because we don’t know where she is now, march across the brown courtroom carpeting to a glowing projector. The screen is still white, and blank.
“That’s where Spofford just took down the crime scene photos,” Ashlyn says.
“Did you look? When he showed them?” I’ve already asked her that, but I want to see if she’s keeping track of what she’s told me.
“Kidding me?” she says. “I have enough nightmares without seeing what happened—somehow—to Tasha. And like I said, I was still half-believing it wasn’t her.”
In the video, McMorran snaps off the projector switch. As the courtroom lights come back up, she returns to the defense table, walking deliberately.
“What were you thinking right then?” I ask.
“I was in another world, kind of,” she says, her voice soft. “I think she touches me and, yeah. See?”
Video Quinn stands behind video Ashlyn, and puts a hand on her client’s shoulder.
“Then I did look,” Ashlyn says. “At that cop on the stand. See how she hasn’t budged? Here comes the part I want you to remember. Listen.”
“Officer Ruocco,” McMorran is saying. “Is there any evidence in those photos, tragic as they are, that links whatever caused whatever happened to the little girl—is there any evidence that links that death to my client? Anything at all?”
The entire courtroom stayed still, I remember that. Not a breath, not a motion, not a sound.
The woman on the stand—blinking in restored light—touches one of her gold earrings. She shakes her head.
“No.”
“And that’s all.” Ashlyn pushes the stop button on the video. “That was the end of her testimony, right? There was nothing, nothing, nothing. And they don’t even know how Tasha died.”
“Do you?” I can’t resist asking.
Now the living room is more silent than silent. The air thick with emotion and history, and the fate—not fate!—of a little girl. And the future of her mother.
“Let me ask you this, Mercer. Like the lawyers do. Just yes or no. Do you think I did it?” She points at herself, poking one finger into her chest. “Killed my own daughter? After the jury decided I didn’t?”
“Of course not.” What else am I gonna say. She left out the proved beyond a reasonable doubt part. And I’m the jury now.
“Because if you’re trying to … I don’t know. I’m so scared,” she says. She’s full-out crying again, and looks at me, lashes wet, snuffling. “No one believes me. No one. I bet the jury still thinks I did it. That’s why we have to—do you promise—”
I pick up my wine.
“Wait. That’s mine,” she says. “Not yours.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say. “I don’t think.” I remember my glass was more full, but she’d topped them off while I was gone.
“Drink this one.” She hands me the other glass. “Don’t want you to get my cold. I guess I moved them while you were getting the tablet.”
“Fine,” I say. And take a sip.
“Do you promise you’re writing to save me?” She wipes her eyes. “You and I, Mercer, we’re still alive! I know you’re sad, I know you miss your daughter. Don’t you think I know exactly how you feel? But it’s unfair if you take everything out on me. You promise, sacred word of honor, on the souls of your daughter and your husband, that you’re writing the redemption book?”
Promise on Sophie and Dex?
She keeps talking, doesn’t acknowledge that I haven’t answered her repulsive sacred word of honor demand.
“Because, Mercer? I need to show the verdict is true. But the parts of our book I’ve seen—your book really—sound like I’m the most horrible person on the planet. That the jury was wrong. And I’m a … a murderer.”
“Ashlyn. Listen. It was a draft. And even you have to admit, the book would’ve been written that way if you were found guilty. Right?”
“But now—”
“Exactly.” I raise my glass to her, then take another drink of the now-tepid sauvignon blanc. “Now we’re writing it that you’re not guilty.”
Not guilty in the jury’s opinion. But exactly the opposite in mine. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat, dead and alive at the same time. That’s Ashlyn and the book. Guilty and not guilty at the same time.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“How are you feeling?” Ashlyn’s already in the kitchen, up before I am this morning. It’s just after ten. She’s washing the wineglasses.
“Huh?” I say, guessing she’s being polite. Maybe she can tell I have a headache. Another headache. “Fine, how about you?”
So thirsty. I get a bottle of water from the fridge. Maybe this will erase the bad taste of Ashlyn’s cross-examination of my motives last night. I’m struggling to wake up, too. I’d slept like “long,” as Sophie used to say. But we’ve got to get this show on the road. I’ll say whatever it takes to get her to talk. Keep her happy.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “Being kind of a bitch. Too much wine, maybe. But…”
“You’re still up for this, aren’t you?” I take a big slug of water. “
Should I call Katherine and say we can’t do it? I hope not.”
“What’s the diff? Katherine told us, like sitting right in this kitchen, you guys would write the book with or without me, remember?” Ashlyn drapes the string of a mesh bag over the back of her chair—my chair—and pulls the sugar bowl across the kitchen table toward her. “I don’t have much choice.”
“So, truce, then?” I put in a coffee pod, get out the milk. Last Sunday morning at this time Ashlyn and I had spent one night under the same roof. Now a week later, it seems like a lifetime. “Let’s start with the premise you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Okay, yeah…” She spins the sugar bowl, once, twice. “Isn’t that what we were always doing?”
“Exactly.” Oops. I have such a headache. But I press on, all congenial as I join her at the table. In Sophie’s chair. “So since that means the story Royal Spofford told didn’t happen, we can’t avoid talking about what did happen. I mean, at some point, we’ve got to face it. State it. Clarify it. That’s the whole point of the book, Ash. We need to give the public some answers.”
Ashlyn stirs her coffee. “I told you I don’t know—”
“Yeah,” I say. “But like—where you were. What you were doing. We could do a timeline. Hang on.” I reach back and open my junk drawer, repository of a tiny screwdriver, a few old matchbooks, random wine corks, and a million rubber bands. I rummage through and find the cheap little calendar, the one I remembered the life-insurance guy left. It’s been there since—well, as the bathroom mirror knows, I don’t need a calendar to count exactly how many days it’s been since I saw my daughter alive. “Here. Show me. When was the last time you saw Tasha?”
“Okay.” She points to a week the year before last. “Somewhere in here.”
“When, though?”
She points again, touching the flimsy page. “That Tuesday. I dropped her at Laughtry Drive. As usual.”
“And did you pick her up?” I circle the day on the calendar.
Trust Me Page 23