The Truth About Love

by Sheila Athens

  “We’re meeting with the bank tomorrow.”

  He wondered how long it would take Gina to figure out his dad was drunk. Sure, her past wasn’t as pristine as he’d once thought it might be, but she still seemed rich and classy. Drunks in those families were called alcoholics. And they were still rich and classy. His dad would never be either. “I’m not doing the commercials.”

  “One afternoon of taping? You can’t spare that for your old man?”

  “I’ll let you two talk.” She tipped her head in Martin’s direction. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  The older man waggled his eyebrows at Landon once she’d gotten in her SUV and was backing up. “Ni-i-ce.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You don’t want to talk about her”—he motioned toward her SUV as she pulled away—“then let’s talk about my new business venture.”

  “Don’t mention my name when you’re out there talking to people about it.” He didn’t want to be associated with this.

  Martin’s eyes narrowed. “I wish I could remember the exact time you became too goddamn high and mighty for your own father.”

  “Good-bye.” Landon took a step up the sidewalk toward his front door, mad that his dad hadn’t asked about the Cyrus Alexander case. He didn’t want to talk to Martin about it, but it would have been nice for him to care enough to ask.

  “Don’t have time for me now that you got a sweet little squeeze like that around?”

  Landon returned to face his dad. Gina wasn’t his “squeeze,” but that wasn’t any of his dad’s business. “The invitation’s still open. Dinner and a ball game. Anytime you want to come over without some agenda.”

  Martin’s jaw twitched in the moonlight. He stared at his son for several seconds, then stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and walked toward the street.

  Landon exhaled, trying to rid himself of the toxic tension that thrummed through his veins when his dad was around. This wasn’t at all how he’d wanted the night to go. Granted, the kiss with Gina had been fantastic. Better than fantastic.

  But what had he been thinking, kissing her back? And why had he felt so offended when she’d pulled away? To make things worse, he hadn’t been able to form a rational thought in her SUV—hadn’t tried to talk with her about Cyrus Alexander. Hadn’t emphasized the fact that the guy had lost all his appeals. He’d just sat there like some horny teenager, unable to talk when the head cheerleader was nearby.

  His cell phone rang in his pocket as he trudged to the fridge for a bottle of water.

  “You okay?” Gina asked without a greeting as soon as he answered. “I wasn’t sure if I should stay . . . or go . . . or what.”

  “Visits from my dad are always such a pleasure. You did the right thing—got out while you could.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.” He pulled the last grape Nehi out of the fridge. He really wanted a beer, but with his father’s history of drinking, he stuck to the nonalcoholic stuff when he wasn’t out with his friends.

  “You sure?”

  “Not now.” He cradled the phone against his shoulder as he tugged the cap off the bottle. “Not ever.”

  “You two don’t get along very well.”

  No shit.

  He took a big gulp, knowing he needed to say something nicer to her than what he was thinking.

  “Not a great history there?” she said before he could come up with a response.

  “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but this isn’t something I like to talk about.” He’d realized since he was a kid that other people had different experiences. Other people had families. He’d always be the kid whose mom had to work in a run-down country store and whose dad hadn’t wanted him. Even with his football success, he’d always be the kid who didn’t belong.

  “You should treat him with a little more respect.”

  He scoffed. “Did your dad live with you growing up?”

  “Yes.”

  He could almost imagine her nose rising into the air as if to say “Of course my father lived with us.” He’d learned a long time ago that people like her took family for granted. That they assumed everyone had one.

  “And what does your father do for a living?” he asked her.

  “He’s a hospital administrator.”

  “So he goes to work, brings home a paycheck, stays sober long enough that they want to keep him working there?”

  “Yeah . . .” Her voice had a questioning tone.

  “Then don’t tell me how to treat my dad,” he said. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  Gina and Landon stood as the professor from the university in Tampa entered her office.

  “Dr. Stanton.” Gina extended her hand and the older woman shook it. “I’m Gina Blanchard. The administrative assistant asked us to wait in here.”

  “That’s fine,” the woman said as she turned toward Landon.

  “Landon Vista,” he said as he shook her hand.

  “I didn’t expect people who were so”—Dr. Stanton motioned for them to sit as she circled behind her desk—“young.”

  “Landon—I mean, Mr. Vista—works for Senator Byers,” Gina said. “And I work for an organization that gets wrongly convicted people out of prison.”

  “Which must make my work particularly interesting to you,” Dr. Stanton said. Gina watched her movements, trying to figure out if she knew Landon’s history as an eyewitness to a crime, but Dr. Stanton appeared to be unaware.

  “Yes,” Gina said. “I read up on your work once I found out we’d be interviewing you.” The professor’s research on false memories made her one of the leaders in the field.

  Dr. Stanton turned to Landon. “And you?”

  “I . . . ummm . . .” Landon fidgeted. Gina had e-mailed him links to all the articles she’d read online, but she wasn’t sure he’d read any of them. “I’m familiar with your research.”

  “Good,” the professor said. “Then we don’t have to start with the basics.” She rested her elbows on her desk. “So what do you want to know from me?”

  Gina opened her notebook and dug a pen out of her purse as she spoke. “In my line of work, we know that eyewitnesses are often wrong.” She avoided looking at Landon.

  The professor nodded.

  “But why are they wrong?” Gina continued. “How do they think they saw something they really didn’t see?” God, if she’d only known the answer to that after Tommy’s murder. Before she’d sent Nick Varnadore to prison.

  The professor sat back in her chair. “The mind has a tricky retrieval system. People under stress—like those witnessing a robbery or a homicide—sometimes don’t capture the right details. And if they do, the mind may not retrieve them correctly. That’s why the witnesses often don’t get even the most basic details correct, like whether the perpetrator was bald or had a complete head of hair. Sometimes they don’t know whether the guy’s white or black or Latino.”

  Landon sat forward in his chair. “But what if they saw something before they knew the crime had taken place? Doesn’t that increase their level of accuracy?”

  Gina shot him a warning glance. He was asking about his own testimony, though the professor didn’t know it.

  “Being under stress is only one of the ways our memories are bastardized,” Dr. Stanton said to Landon. Gina wanted to look at Landon’s reaction, but she didn’t.

  The professor continued. “The biggest finding in recent years is that other people can plant false memories into our brains. Sometimes it’s on purpose and sometimes it’s by suggestion. An accident.”

  “Can you give us some examples?” Gina had read about this in the articles online. She’d spent time rehashing the days after Tommy’s death, as if hoping to find someone else who’d first planted the thought that Nick Varnadore was the one who’d pushed To
mmy off the train trestle. But no. It had been all her doing.

  “I studied a woman last year who claimed to have been on the Jersey Shore during Hurricane Sandy. She was seeking medical help for what she claimed to be PTSD from the storm.” Dr. Stanton opened her desk drawer and pulled out a file folder. “Except the insurance company didn’t buy it. She was having a hysterectomy in Omaha during Hurricane Sandy. They knew it because they’d paid the hospital bill.”

  “So why would she claim to have been in New Jersey?” Gina asked.

  “She’d spent days during her recovery with nothing to do but watch TV. She’d seen the videos so much she actually believed she was there.” Dr. Stanton opened the file she’d retrieved from the drawer. “And this man.” She spun the file so that a man’s mug shot was facing Gina and Landon.

  Gina thought she’d seen the picture before, but couldn’t remember the story behind it.

  “William Thomas. His neighbor suspected him of having an affair with his wife, so the neighbor kept asking his own daughter about the times that Mr. Thomas had touched her inappropriately. After a while the little girl had false memories of being molested by Mr. Thomas.”

  Landon frowned. “He did that to his own daughter?”

  Dr. Stanton nodded. “Sad, isn’t it?”

  More like sickening. Or evil. “How’d they figure out it didn’t happen?”

  “The neighbor eventually turned himself in. The wife threatened to leave if he didn’t tell the truth.” The professor shrugged. “He ended up admitting he’d talked the little girl into it.”

  “I hope the wife left him anyway,” Gina said. “And kept the daughter away from him.”

  “I think she did.” Dr. Stanton stood. “Come on. I’ll show you our research lab.”

  They spent the next two hours touring the school’s facilities for the study of how the brain recalls facts, experiences, smells, and other stimuli. They listened to the professor’s stories about how false memories had been planted in people’s minds by therapists, well-meaning friends or family members, and even television shows.

  “So,” Gina said later as she and Landon walked through the parking lot toward his truck. “What do you think?” He’d been quiet all afternoon, asking questions of Dr. Stanton only a couple of times.

  “It’s . . . a lot to absorb.”

  She glanced sideways at him. He looked a bit shaken. So he did realize how Dr. Stanton’s work could apply to his own testimony. Gina decided not to push it with him. Not until he’d had a chance to process everything they’d learned today. At least she’d had a few days to think about what she’d learned in the articles. And a much longer time to think about how her testimony had locked up the wrong guy.

  They walked in silence, both engrossed in their own thoughts.

  It had been dark the night of Tommy’s death. She’d just pulled up to their regular gathering spot—the old train trestle out off Highway 63. She’d turned her headlights off as she approached—everyone did when they came here so that Rachel Crawford’s grandma wouldn’t see them from across the river and call the sheriff on them again. Like it mattered when her house was so far away.

  But that’s what teenagers in her hometown had been doing for years. And that’s what she’d done that night. It was why it had been so dark. Why it had taken her a minute or two to realize that someone had plunged off the trestle and into the river. Even longer—oh, God, much longer—to realize it had been Tommy. She’d been certain it was Nick Varnadore who’d pushed him. The crowd of teenage boys had been laughing and joking as they drank beer on the trestle. The sheriff found out later they’d also been passing around a bottle of tequila someone’s big brother had bought them.

  She’d seen the guy in the dark green hoodie—Nick’s hoodie—step toward Tommy in the dark. He shoved Tommy with both hands, knocking him onto the boulders on the riverbank below. Traumatic head injury had been the cause of her brother’s death, and she’d been there to witness his last few seconds of life.

  She got the sense that Landon was watching her and glanced sideways at him.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “What’s that?” They kept walking.

  “How you can never forget what happened.” His face was solemn. “How it’s always there. With you.”

  “Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “It really does suck.” She wanted to share her story with him, though she wasn’t sure why. “Every now and then I have a few minutes when I forget about it.” She took a few more steps. “But it’s always there.”

  “They use DNA to figure out who really killed your brother?”

  She shook her head. “The other guy finally came forward. Couldn’t live with himself knowing the wrong guy had been convicted.” She swallowed. “It was dark. I didn’t know.”

  He reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze—a sign of solidarity—as they continued through the parking lot. She liked that he was there for her. That he knew that she, too, had demons that she wrestled with.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me,” she whispered when they’d finally reached his truck. Though no one else was around to hear her, just saying it out loud felt a little rebellious.

  He brushed against her as he reached to open the passenger door for her. “The next time we come to Tampa, we need a better plan.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  They were so close she could see a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. She lifted her hair off the back of her neck. The damn Florida heat made even a walk across a parking lot unbearable.

  “There are world-class resorts here, but we’re making a five-hour drive back tonight,” he said.

  She chuckled. “The state isn’t going to pay for us to stay at a resort in Tampa.” But maybe Landon would. She glanced sideways at him. Was that what he was implying? That they spend the night here?

  Together?

  She rushed into her seat, eager to get some distance between them. She needed time to contemplate that thought.

  What would she say if he asked her to spend the night here? It was a conflict of interest with her job—that was for certain. But they were hours away from Tallahassee. No one would ever know. And this was a vacation destination, where people came to relax. To unwind. To go a little bit crazy.

  She certainly wouldn’t suggest it herself.

  But if he offered, would she accept?

  Landon glanced over at Gina where she slept in the passenger seat of his truck as he drove. The rays of the setting sun glinted off her hair. Her eyelids fluttered a bit, then settled. She’d taken off her jacket, and her rose-colored blouse fell open just enough for him to see the sprinkling of freckles across her sternum.

  Would she have spent the night in Tampa with him if he’d asked?

  Any other time, he would have jumped at the chance for a spontaneous rendezvous with a beautiful woman. But this was Gina, the woman who felt guilty just for kissing him. His self-esteem didn’t need the kick to the groin he would have gotten if she’d turned him down. He’d already decided he wasn’t good enough for her, but no woman had ever complained about his performance in the sack. A night in Tampa might have been good for both of them.

  But today’s visit to Dr. Stanton had shaken him up. Hell, he was a math-and-science guy himself. Those were the two subjects that had right and wrong answers. Period. Not that mumbo jumbo about identifying themes in literature or trying to figure out which ad campaign would make the fickle public buy more of a certain brand of ketchup. He liked when there were solid answers. And scientific research proved things that couldn’t be disputed.

  Dr. Stanton’s research on false memories had proven, time after time, that the human brain was fallible. That someone could believe they’d experienced things they’d never experienced.

  Had someone involved in Mama’s murder case convinced him he’d seen Cyrus Al
exander running from the country store? He tried to remember the officers and social workers he’d talked to that day, but their faces all ran together in his mind, like a kaleidoscope of eyes and noses and lips all tumbling together into a memory that couldn’t be trusted. He’d been scared, not knowing if his mom would go to heaven or not. Not knowing what they’d do with her body. Not knowing where he’d live or if his dad would come after him.

  He gripped the steering wheel harder, thankful that Gina was asleep so he could be alone while he thought all this through.

  If other people remembered things they hadn’t seen, was it possible that he hadn’t seen Cyrus Alexander running from the country store?

  What if his testimony had helped put an innocent man in prison all those years ago?

  What if Mama’s killer was still out there?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Landon rolled over in his bed, trying to get back to sleep for the third time since he’d finally dozed off at about 4 a.m. They’d gotten home from Tampa close to midnight. He’d gone straight to bed after dropping Gina off at her apartment, but the visit with Dr. Stanton—and the time he’d spent with Gina—had kept his mind churning like a blender.

  When he’d finally dozed off, she haunted his sleep, luring him like one of the sirens they’d learned about in that mythology class he had to take sophomore year. Twice, he’d startled awake, sure he could smell her perfume and hear her rustling the sheets beside him. Positive it had been her hair tickling his face as she straddled him. Absolutely certain he’d felt himself inside her. But it had been only dreams.

  God, he really needed to get a grip.

  She wasn’t someone he should be lusting after. She was the woman who was trying to prove that every important fact in his life was wrong.

  And worse yet, she and her stupid task force had made him start doubting what he’d seen the day Mama was murdered. For fifteen years he’d been certain the right guy was in prison. Certain that, though he could never get his mother back, at least justice had been served. At least he’d helped nail the guy who’d killed the one person who’d ever loved him.