Книга - Everything to Lose

Everything to Lose
Andrew Gross


The heart-pounding new thriller from the co-author of five No. 1 James Patterson bestsellers including Judge and Jury and Lifeguard, and the Sunday Times bestsellers The Blue Zone and Reckless.WHEN YOU HAVE EVERYTHING TO LOSEYOU STOP PLAYING BY THE RULESHilary Cantor’s life is falling apart. She has lost her job, is about to lose her house, and is running out of money to care for her young son with Asperger’s syndrome.But when Hilary is first on the scene of a fatal car accident, she finds a satchel full of cash on the backseat – enough to solve all of her problems. Her split-second decision has devastating consequences…Because the money she takes is at the heart of a conspiracy involving murder, blackmail and a powerful figure who’ll do anything to keep the past buried. They don’t just want their money back: they want Hilary’s life – and that of her son…









ANDREW GROSS

Everything to Lose








Table of Contents

Cover (#uf2f88373-f726-50c7-bd22-dc2a1c57afc6)

Title Page (#ufed4b1c5-e124-5453-9006-2ec7c6961f46)

Prologue (#u89c9ea9e-95d2-5b04-a9c2-a2c7522bc33b)

Hilary (#u309038d7-b62a-5774-9f03-b550046f796e)

Chapter One (#uc55089b6-4316-5106-ae08-ac63ef354669)

Chapter Two (#u71bd58da-dd0f-52f5-9a84-e122f4b23e57)

Chapter Three (#u50cf923e-6601-52b1-954e-825e0013f734)

Chapter Four (#u456dccad-ae7d-582e-be33-2456fadb0b6a)

Chapter Five (#u86acce94-17c1-547b-8f12-cfed4c6125e0)

Chapter Six (#u48ff4054-1075-5fcf-94f6-b9682fcb5af3)

Chapter Seven (#ub4822554-40e5-5230-8d4e-215f7815d57a)

Chapter Eight (#uaa3d4728-8c0c-5ce3-aee3-d52b07dd037b)

Chapter Nine (#uaedb1309-5bba-57de-ace7-cb3a86d752b0)

Chapter Ten (#u808c865f-0bde-5e94-a49b-1c25da5901dd)

Chapter Eleven (#u4777779d-92dc-5d23-8a8c-438505440c44)

Chapter Twelve (#u03b6833c-79da-5031-9c08-88dbbd12d526)

Chapter Thirteen (#u72306d76-3313-5963-a1de-978f9a3e4b54)

Chapter Fourteen (#u8656945d-d8cf-5826-861c-740da0acb7f2)

Chapter Fifteen (#u57b6d854-a3ef-5869-b4b0-b77ae720c028)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Patrick (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Mrs. O’B (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Landry (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Novels by Andrew Gross (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue (#ulink_b14ab263-4ed3-5f45-a0c1-53e37fe28575)


The two of them lay together in the breezeless night on the banks of the Arthur Kill, overlooking the dark container ports of New Jersey.

He knew this was the last time they would be together.

This was their spot, on the blighted western shore of Staten Island, beneath the shadowy trusses of the Goethals Bridge and by the chained wire gate of the shuttered-up soap factory that years before had given Port Ivory its name. The ground around them was pocked with deep man-made holes. He’d always been told that the government had dug them, connected to a network of tunnels as part of a defense project during the Second World War. Now they were just the open, unhealed sores on the face of the abandoned landscape that protected him from the outside world.

The dark world that was encroaching on him tonight.

“You don’t have to go,” he said, his voice cracking as he stroked her apricot-smelling, honey-colored hair. His life was as gray and drab as the world around him. She was the only thing that added beauty to it.

“Yes, I do. You know I do. We’ve known that from the start. We both have to get out of here. Next year it’ll be your turn.”

His turn … He was poor; no one in his family had ever gone to college. With his father gone, how would that ever happen now?

“C’mon, you’re smart.” She smiled and stroked his face. “You’ll go far.”

Yes, he would go far. He felt it, no matter how everything seemed stacked against him. “I don’t know.”

And he was smart. Though sometimes he had trouble convincing his teachers, who were really stupid themselves and had no idea what was inside him. In a couple of days she was headed off to Canisius College in Buffalo. He’d known from the start that one day she would leave him behind. But now that the day had come, it felt no different from all the other hurt in his life. She was the first person he had truly known, who saw what was truly inside him. Not just the part he showed to others. Though they kept their time together hidden from everyone else. They made up names—she used his nickname, Streak. In the third grade it was given to him because he ran faster than anyone else. But since then it had morphed into something else, something his stupid younger brother had come up with that he hated.

Mean Streak.

For the kinds of urges that rose up inside him. Things he couldn’t control. Things the family saw. But his brother was a lying little pest who he should have dealt with long ago.

He called her Cordelia, from this play he’d been reading. The most beautiful and truthful. And most loyal. Now he would have only the wincing smell of chemicals and gasoline and these lonely trestles to remind him that she was ever here.

“You know we could go away.” He faced her. “College isn’t so great. We could go out west. My uncle has a ranch out in New Mexico. I was there once. It’s beautiful there. I could get a job. We could—”

“Ssshh …” She placed her finger against his lips. “No, we can’t. We just can’t. This is the way it is. Don’t spoil this. I want to remember things as happy between you and me.”

“You’ll meet someone,” he said. He felt something rise up in his blood. She would. Someone older. Cooler. Nothing will ever be the same.

“No, I won’t.” She giggled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Not someone like you.”

Yes, you will, he knew, as clear as the lights were bright. Leave. Just like his dad had left. Back when he was six. He barely remembered him now. His mother always called it his fault. That he was just too much to take. Mean Streak.

And then Mike, five years older, who enlisted in the marines and was killed in a copter crash at Camp Lejeune while still in basic training.

Like every person he had ever put his trust in had left him. The night suddenly felt so sticky it seemed to cling to him like cellophane.

Yes, you will, he said to himself, certain. Leave.

He would never let that happen again.

“What?” She cocked her head, fixing on him. “You’re looking at me funny.”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

It was that nothing would ever be the same.

“It’s late,” she finally said. She pulled up her top and arched her back to wiggle up her jeans. “You’re acting so strange tonight. Maybe we should just head back.”

“Just another minute,” he begged. He felt that tingling start to come over him. He willed it to go away. “Please.”

“Okay, just one …” Her eyes lit up mischievously. “But you know what that always leads to, silly …”

He pulled her close, stroking her soft hair over and over, pushing the demons back, back into the hole where they crawled out from, his hand suddenly coming to rest on her shoulder.

A tanker went by, arcing into a wide sweep into Port Elizabeth, a sight they’d watched together surely a hundred times.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I mean, it’s so ugly it’s somehow beautiful. There’s a word for that somewhere. Much as I want to leave, there’s something that I just can’t leave behind.”

“Yes, it’s beautiful.” His blood began to heat. But not in the way it usually did with her. In a different way. Why should someone else get to have her? Why should someone else get to feel what he felt? In a few months she would come back home. Would she even call him? The little boy from the flats she’d left behind? When he saw her with someone else, would she even look at him? If he went up to her, she probably wouldn’t even remember his name.

She was right about one thing, though, he knew. He would.

Go far.

“Streak,” she murmured, reminding him that it was time. But he just acted like he hadn’t heard her and continued to stroke her hair. The things he knew so well: the apricot scent of her shampoo; the slippery feel of his thumb against the sweat on her neck that he would run his fingers over for the last time. Wanting her more than ever, just not wanting her to go, to leave, like they had all left, never coming back.

Suddenly aware of the parched, gagging sound that came from her lips, and how her eyes stretched to twice their size, searching out his in an incredulous and kind of accusing way. Everyone he’d ever loved, everything he wanted to keep for his own just once reflected in them—those wide, scared pools.

Not even realizing that his hands had come together with a seeming will of their own and tightened, a noose of last resort, around the nape of her long, bare neck.



HILARY (#ulink_3120b21f-6387-54e7-9663-43c3e4cc8777)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_dddf6425-1f1e-5a27-9595-6b410ef8b1cf)


I read somewhere that every life is the story of a single mistake, and then what happens after.

Whether it’s brought into the light and owned up to. Or left buried in the darkness of the soul where it all just multiplies in consequences and festers into something far worse.

One wrong decision that can’t be taken back. Even the best of lives has one.

And thinking back on that night, on the backcountry road between Westchester County in New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, I felt my own life starting to come down around me like the intensifying drizzle that glared through the oncoming headlights, I could look back where I had run headfirst into mine.

Normally I wouldn’t even have driven this particular route to Jim’s, my ex of four years, who’s remarried now to Janice. It’s a winding and poorly lit stretch with turns that can come at you pretty quickly if you’re not familiar with them, or maybe distracted, as I might have been that night.

But I’d thrown a few bills to mail in the car and driven north on I-684, just to get out of the house and think, so I came back down and cut across from Bedford, which seemed the fastest way. These past four years had become a bit of a struggle to keep things together for Brandon and me. I’d never asked for much in the settlement, even when my lawyers were pushing me to rip the coat off Jim’s back, which in his case meant the condo in Costa Rica where he went with his pals to go bonefishing and surf; whatever was left of his construction business, which by that time was on fumes and down to mostly house painting and a few remodeling jobs; and of course his perfectly restored ’70 Porsche Targa, which, if he were ever honest, was the true love of his life.

I’d just wanted out, as quickly and painlessly as possible.

And four years back Brandon was the sweetest, slightly nonverbal three-year-old with soft blue eyes and a mop of sun-blond hair.

And also the healthiest.

Ahead, the brake lights flashed from the vehicle about fifty yards in front of me, the driver taking a curve a bit wide. I slowed my Acura SUV, staying several car lengths behind.

He was three when we first started noticing it. At least when we started admitting it. He’d always been slow to talk. When other kids were gushing phrases and cuteness, Brandon mostly stared distractedly and pointed at things he wanted. We had him in a Montessori Stepping Stones program and one day his teachers called me in and said he seemed to be having trouble interacting with the other kids.

What made me concerned was that the head of school, Ms. Roby, was at the meeting too.

“Well, he’s always been a bit high-strung,” I said. “He was high-strung in the womb. In our house, when you want to know the temperature, you can just check Brandon.”

Their laugh was brief and polite.

They mentioned that he had difficulty writing—which we’d seen, of course—and completing his tasks. Switching from one activity to another, he would even throw fits. There were times, they said, when he became downright defiant.

They suggested that maybe he should see a specialist in this kind of thing.

What I was praying was just a heavy dose of ADHD was diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome, and not a mild case either. Though they claimed that Brandon’s IQ, especially on the creative side, was sky high. They just weren’t sure how to reach him. Clearly they didn’t think they could do the job for him there, in such an open learning environment.

So I found a school, Milton Farms, in Greenwich, which specialized in severe learning difficulties. It was expensive, close to fifty grand a year. I went back to work to help with the costs. Not as the rising magazine executive I’d been before I left to start a family. Assistant publisher of Modern Lifestyle in New York. But as the comptroller for a small marketing firm in Westport, Connecticut. Not exactly the glamour job—the recession was in full throttle and publications were shutting down left and right or going digital, in any case, not exactly hiring. But it was reliable—Cesta Pharmaceuticals had been the backbone of their client list for the past twelve years. More important, it allowed me to stay close to home for Brandon.

I brought in just enough to make sure he could stay in school—which after a year or two was really starting to show results—and pay my share of the mortgage and the real estate taxes.

Which soon became all the mortgage and real estate taxes, as by then no one was really interested in Jim’s eight-thousand-square-foot McMansions and his construction business was floundering. And Janice, the blond Greenwich divorcée Jim had taken up with barely a month after our divorce became final and married a year later, finally said enough to bankrolling the operations.

Not to mention the two perfectly preppy and healthy boys he’d inherited from her who now seemed to take up all of his attention. I also paid for Elena, who cleaned the house and picked Brandon up from school most days until I got home. And the weekly behavioral and language tutoring at $150 an hour. And the day camp Brandon went to in the summer for kids with disabilities.

Or the rare times we actually got away these days. Which soon became what time to get away …

For a while, my folks helped out as much as they could from their teachers’ pensions. My aunt and uncle, actually. My birth parents were killed in an auto accident when I was eight, and Uncle Neil and Aunt Judy took me in, as they didn’t have children, and I never felt for a second that I wasn’t theirs. I even called them Mom and Pop. They’d bought a small boatyard on Long Beach Island and the recession had hit that even harder than the home building business. My dad’s health wasn’t what it once was and there were boats to pay off that hadn’t sold, that they were paying interest on top of interest on to some finance company. Thank God I’d always kept a little savings separate from Jim from my working days. But now that was just about gone.

For the past year, Brandon and I had been living exclusively on what I brought in; Jim was MIA. Maybe I’d let it go on for too long. The couple of guys I got close to and who I might have seen something happening with both backed off when they got to meet my son. And in truth, he was a handful. I was thirty-six, an eyelash from being broke, months behind in my school payments, with a house my ex had left me that was now completely underwater and a son who ate up every cent I earned.

I saw what was ahead of me, the way the driver in a chase scene going ninety might see the upcoming cliff. Every night I fell asleep, my arms wrapped tightly around my pillow, knowing that all it would take would be one unexpected nudge to send us over the edge.

And how there was no one, not a single person in this world, to catch us.

I’d been there years before in my own life, feeling the terror of sudden abandonment and instability, and that was the last thing I wanted my own son to feel.

Yet somehow we always made it through. A bonus here, a tax refund there. And Brandon showed such clear signs of improvement, it made everything worthwhile. The little nudge that could send us toppling never seemed to come.

At least, not until yesterday, that is.

My boss, Steve Fisher, called a bunch of us into the conference room. It looked like most of the division I worked for. There was Dale Schliffman from accounts, and two of his senior managers. Dawn Ianazzone from Creative. She’d been hired about when I was. A couple of administrative people who worked on the Cesta account.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw Rose from personnel standing alongside.

Steve looked uncomfortable. “Yesterday Cesta informed me that they were going to be making a change … A change of agencies …” He shrugged sadly. “I’m afraid that means there have to be a few changes around here as well.”

I heard a gasp or two. Someone muttered, “Holy shit.” Mostly we all just looked around, suddenly realizing exactly why we were there.

An hour later, in my one-on-one, Steve shook his head, frustrated. “Hil, you know you’ve done nothing but first-rate work since you’ve been here. I wish there was something we could do.”

“Steve …” I didn’t want to beg, but I could barely stop the tears. “I have Brandon.”

“I know.” He let out a sympathetic breath, nodding. “Look, let me check one more time. I’ll see if there’s anything we can do.”

Which ended up as just an extra week’s salary for the four years I’d been there. And one more month on the health plan before I went on COBRA.

I was officially in free fall now.

Which explained why I was here tonight on this winding, backcountry road, heading to Jim’s, which I hadn’t been to in years other than to drop off Brandon for a weekend every couple of months. And even that had become rarer and rarer these days.

When I saw what looked like a deer dart across the road about fifty yards ahead, and the car in front of me go into a swerve.




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d09303f0-5e7b-5176-a7f6-e3aae544eba2)


It was a black Kia or a Honda or something. I was never the best at recognizing cars. It swerved to avoid the deer as it bolted past and then another car heading in the other direction.

Maybe the driver got blinded in the lights.

The front of his car spun out. He was going around fifty, and was headed into a curve. I watched him make a last effort to brake, then the back end drifted off the shoulder and suddenly the car just rolled.

A jolt of horror ripped through me.

The curve was at a steep embankment and the car plummeted over the edge and tumbled down. I hit the brakes, craning my neck as I went by. I watched it roll over and over until it disappeared into the dense woods. I heard the jarring sound of impact as it came to a stop against a tree.

Oh my God!

I screeched to a stop about twenty yards past the crash site. I leaped out and ran back to take a look, my heart racing. I smelled the steamy burn of rubber on pavement and the smoke coming from the engine down below. I could see the car’s taillights, still on; it had cut a path though the thick brush. It was clear that whoever was inside had to be badly hurt.

I was about to race down when another car backed up on the far side of the road, the one that must have passed it a moment earlier. The driver, a man with a round face and thin, reddish hair combed over a bald spot, put down his window. “What’s happened?”

“Someone drove off the road,” I told him. “I’m going down.”

I headed down the incline, tripping on the brush and losing my footing in the damp soil. I fell on my rear, scraping my arm, and got up. I knew I had to get there quick. The car had spun over twice and come to a rest right side up, the front grill sandwiched between a couple of trees. I saw that the roof near the driver’s seat was severely dented.

I could see someone in the driver’s seat. A man. His door was wedged against a tree. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I peered through the window and didn’t see anyone else. I knew I had to get this guy out. He didn’t seem to be conscious. He could be dying. He looked around seventy, white hair, balding, slumped against the wheel, blood streaming down one side of his face. He wasn’t moving or uttering a sound.

The engine was smoking.

“Are you all right?” I rapped on the glass. “Can you hear me?”

He didn’t respond. It was clear he was either dead or unconscious.

“Mister, are you okay?” I tugged on the driver’s door one more time, but you’d have to rip it off or move the car.

From above, I heard the driver of the other car call down, “Is everyone all right down there? Do you need help?”

“Call 911!” I shouted back up. I’d left my phone in the car. “Tell ’em there’s a single driver who’s not responding. I can’t get to him. The door’s stuck, and I don’t know, I think maybe he’s dead. They need to send an ambulance.”

I could barely catch a glimpse of the guy through the brush as he hurried back to his car. I looked at the smoking hood and had a sudden fear that any second the engine might catch fire. Maybe the right thing was to back off and wait for help, but with the guy non-responsive, the engine smoking, the stronger voice inside me pushed me to see if he was alive.

I ran around to the passenger side. The door there wasn’t obstructed and opened easily. I wedged myself into the seat. In front of me, the driver’s head was pitched forward and a trickle of blood ran down his forehead as if it had been bludgeoned against the wheel. His eyes were rolled up. His white hair was matted with red. I reached across and pushed him back against the seat. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?” Again, he didn’t respond. I’d taken a CPR course a few years back, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do for him.

There was a black leather satchel on the floor mat that must have fallen off the seat in the crash. I picked it up so I could squeeze in closer.

My heart almost jumped out of my chest at what I saw.

A wad of money. Hundred-dollar bills. Neatly wrapped together. I couldn’t help but pick it up and flip through. There had to be a hundred of them—Jesus, Hilary!—bound together by a rubber band. A hundred hundreds would be what …? I did the math, ten thousand dollars. The satchel was open slightly at the top, and so far the guy hadn’t moved or even uttered a sound. I couldn’t help but satisfy my curiosity, unzipping it all the way open.

This time my heart didn’t jump—it stopped. And if my eyes had been wide before, they surely doubled now.

Holy shit, Hil …

The bag was filled with similarly bound packets of cash. All hundreds! Reflexively I pawed through them. There were dozens of them. This time the math was a little harder to calculate.

I was looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I looked over at the driver and tried to figure out what some old guy driving a beat-up Honda would be doing with this kind of cash. Maybe the receipts from a business. No, that wouldn’t make sense; they wouldn’t be all hundreds. Maybe the guy’s life savings that he’d been hoarding for years under his bed.

More likely something illegal, I speculated.

I pulled myself across the seat and tried to determine one last time if he was alive or dead. I even put my hand on his shoulder and shook him. He didn’t move. I spotted a cell phone in his lap and picked it up. There was a phone number and a partially written text on the screen. “Heading back wi—”

Heading back with what?

Heading back with the cash, of course. What else would it be? The message hadn’t been sent. On a hunch I looked for the time of that last entry: 6:41 P.M. It was 6:44 now. He’d probably been about to text that when the deer bolted out in front of him. That’s why he couldn’t control his car. Something that every father begs his own son or daughter not to do …

I put the phone back.

It was clear there was nothing I could do for him. The EMTs and the police would be here any second. The engine continued to smoke; I realized I’d better get out of there. I pushed backward on the passenger seat and my eyes landed once again on the open satchel of cash.

In business, I’d made a dozen deals for this amount of money, but I’d never actually seen so much in cash. At least, not staring directly up at me. It might have been only an instant in actual time, but yesterday’s events came flashing back to me: losing my job; the four-weeks’ severance; how I’d had to beg for an extra month on the health plan. And how the past couple of years were such a struggle …

Then this … Enough to take care of so many things: Brandon’s school, which was five months past due; a good chunk of my payments on a house that was now completely underwater. Even help my folks. Life-changing money for me. I’d never done a bad thing in my life. I mean, maybe smoked a little pot back in college. Stolen a book or two out of the library. But nothing like this.

Nothing like what was suddenly racing through my mind. You must be crazyto even be thinking this, Hil …

Suddenly the guy called from back up on the road. “They’re on the way!” I still couldn’t make him out through the brush. “I’m coming down.”

Everything I’d been raised with, every code I lived my life by, every voice of conscience inside me told me just to let it sit. I didn’t know who it belonged to. It could be gambling or drug money for all I knew. Possibly even traceable. Whatever it was, it damn well wasn’t mine.

I just stared.

Then I felt my blood begin to surge. The guy was dead. Who would ever know? If I just got the hell out of here, didn’t take it with me now, but maybe hid it, then came back another time? I’d gone to a few Al-Anon meetings with a friend back in my twenties, and I remembered this role-playing game they used, on how easy it was to slide back into past behavior—in one ear, there was the addict side, to whom they gave the name Slick, and in the other, the person’s rational side. Slick, seductively whispering in your ear like the devil: “Come on, you can handle it; no one will know; it’ll just be this once.” On the other shoulder, your conscience countering, “You’ll know. This will only be the start of something bad. Once you do it you’ll never go back.”

We all have a Slick inside, the exercise was meant to show.

And it all just caught me at a point when my life was crawling on this teetering sheet of ice. And I saw Brandon there, all the good work he had done taken away, on that ice with me, about to split into a hundred pieces beneath my feet. And nowhere to go but in. Into the black, freezing water.

And I’d been there before.

“Shit,” I heard the guy cry out on his way down, sliding in the wet brush as I had.

“Be careful!” I yelled back. “It’s dangerous.”

If you’re going to do it, you have to do it now, Hilary.

In that moment there was no offsetting argument or rationale. Not that it was someone else’s money. Nor that it didn’t belong to me. Or whether it was legit or dirty.

There was just Brandon. And the fear that I no longer could take care of my son. I didn’t see it as right or wrong. Only that fate had given me a way out. And I had to take it. My heart felt like it was beating at a hundred miles per hour.

I zipped up the bag and lifted it out of the car. I hesitated a last second, almost hoping that the guy on his way down would suddenly appear and the decision would be out of my hands.

But he didn’t.

I took the bag and hurled it as far as I could deep into the woods. I prayed it wouldn’t be visible when it landed—sitting up there like a fucking neon arrow was pointing to it, and I’d have to admit to the police what I’d done. But it landed about ten yards in amid a thicket and disappeared into a clump of brush.

It was done.

The other motorist finally made it down. He seemed in his fifties, in a sports jacket, striped shirt, and loosened tie. As if he was on his way back from a hard day at the office. He had a flabby, ruddy face with thin, reddish hair combed over a bald spot.

“You were right. You could kill yourself getting down here.” Wide-eyed, he focused on the wreck and then the driver. “Shit,” he whistled, “is he …?”

“I think so. I tried to get at him, but he’s completely wedged in. I couldn’t even open the door. Not that I could have done anything anyway. He was already gone.” I nodded toward the engine. “I think we ought to back away …”

“I think you’re right. The police said someone will be here soon. I saw the deer up there. It took off into the woods.”

The police. At the sound of the word, I felt my heart start to patter. If they found me here, I’d be a witness; I’d have to leave my name. There’d be a record that I’d been first on the scene. If the money was ever reported missing, it would lead right back to me. I glanced at my watch. Four minutes had elapsed. Others driving by might see our cars and stop to help.

“Listen …,” I said, hesitating.

“Rollie,” the guy said, pushing his hair across his brow. “McMahon.”

“Jeanine,” I said, in a moment of panic, knowing I needed to say something, so I came up with my middle name. “Rollie, I know this is crazy, but I really have to get out of here. I’m already late to pick up my son. He’s in this basketball league. The cops will be here any second and, you know how it goes, they’ll have me tied up for an hour. You said you saw the deer …”

He nodded. He seemed to think it over for a second, a round-shouldered, amiable dude. “I guess you’re right. No worries. I’ll wait for them. You can go on ahead.”

“Thanks.” I blew out my cheeks. Realizing that every second I remained here might get me in a load of trouble. “You’re a lifesaver.

“Shit …” I looked at the body and grimaced at the choice of words.

“You ought to leave me your info though,” he said. “In case the police want to contact you.”

“You’re right. I’ll leave my card on your car. Under the windshield wiper. That okay …?”

He nodded. And glanced back at the wreck. “Like you said, it’s not like there’s much we can do for him anyway.”

“I’m really sorry to run out like this.” I looked at the dead guy one last time.

“Go on. Go get your kid,” he said. “Raised three myself. I know what it’s like. I’ll wait here.”

I waved thanks and hurried back up the slope, feeling like hell that I’d taken advantage of such a nice man.

On the street, a car going in the other direction slowed to see what was going on. I averted my face and waved him on like everything was okay.

Suddenly I heard the wail of a siren from behind. I turned and saw flashing red and blue lights through the trees, heading my way. Shit. I hurried to my car, climbed in quickly, and started it up. For a last second I questioned whether I should stay. Admit what I’d done now. Anyone might have been tempted. Probably nothing would even come of it.

I heard myself say inside that I could always follow it up. I could track it and see if the money was ever reported missing. And if it did end up rightfully belonging to the guy, I could send some kind of note, anonymously, to his family, about where it could be found. They’d be happy to get it back. No one would even have to know what happened. Or care, ultimately.

Right?

The siren grew louder.

I pulled away just as the police car came around the bend. I accelerated and looked back at it in the rearview mirror as the police car slowed.

A hundred yards ahead, I passed a poster on an electrical pole. An election poster that hadn’t been taken down. BRENNAN FOR CONGRESS. In bold underneath his photo, COMMITMENT. INTEGRITY.

If I ever needed to come back, I could use it as a marker.

This time, Slick won out.




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2db43b89-2fe2-5fe6-8969-8df2de30a403)


Jim and Janice lived in a colonial on a couple of acres with a pond in back.

Janice’s house actually, whose CFO ex-husband had come through for her slightly more supportively than mine had for me.

Clearly, Janice had gone in the opposite direction when it came to Jim, who was, at heart, a big-shouldered, overgrown teenager. The truth is, there’s not much not to like about him: he’s always happy, usually finds the fun in life; always the last one to ever figure out that anything’s actually gone wrong. Other than maybe he’s way more of a dreamer than he is a provider, and a little light on the scale when it comes to family responsibility.

I met him when he’d just turned a couple of torn-down sixties ranches into brick and glass McMansions at the height of the housing boom. He took me sailing to Nantucket and up the coast of Maine on his motorcycle, things I’d never done in my life, having grown up in the Bronx and majored in cultural anthropology at NYU. He was kind of a furry brown bear to me; that’s even what I called him—Bear. No one I knew ever understood the match.

There was nothing particularly acrimonious about our split. We just grew apart. We still remained friendly mostly. I didn’t even mind that as his business declined, the alimony and child support payments gradually petered out. It was just Jim being Jim, in my view, until he got back on his feet. The thing that was hard to swallow was how he seemed to enjoy being a dad to Janice’s boys a lot more than he did to Brandon, who tried hard when it came to sports, but let’s be honest, we were talking a different league. Janice’s kids played squash and did moguls. At Milton Farms, the varsity basketball team was co-ed.

Not to mention, I didn’t come with a couple of mil in the stock portfolio … And her kids didn’t beat their heads against the wall until they turned blue when you took away their Xbox.

I pulled into the driveway and noticed the gleaming blue new Carrera parked in front of the garage. Jim’s old Targa was like a relic compared to it. I parked, still reeling a bit from what had just happened on the road. Jim must have heard me drive up because he met me at the door on the wide front porch with his arms wide, as if I was bringing the beer to a Super Bowl party. “Hey, Hil …” He shot me that walruslike, everything’s-cool-here smile through his thick brown mustache. “You’re sure looking nice.”

“Thanks.” He put a hand on my arm, and we stood there awkwardly before he leaned in and gave me a kiss. “Thanks for letting me come by.”

“Come on in.” He was in painter’s pants and beat up Cole Haans. He looked like he’d added an extra ten pounds. “You sounded anxious. The boys are upstairs doing homework. Pinot …?”

I would have loved a glass of wine. Shit, a couple of them would have gone down smoothly about now. My heart still hadn’t calmed a beat. “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I didn’t want to be any more relaxed than I had to be.

“Come on in the study.” He shuffled through the foyer that had a perfectly polished Biedermeier table and antique candelabra, framed pictures of the boys and Janice.

Who suddenly appeared as if on cue from the kitchen. Her blond hair in a short ponytail, in a form-fitting fuchsia lululemon yoga outfit, holding one of the boys’ crested Brunswick jackets. “Hil …”

“Hi, Janice. Been a while.”

“It has.” She came over and gave me a kiss. “Sorry the place looks like it does …” I noticed a couple of suitcases at the bottom of the stairs. “The kids are on break Friday if we can get through exams and squash practice, and then we’re headed out to Vail.” She blew out a weary breath and wiped her brow as if she’d been shoveling the driveway. “Crazy, right?”

Other than the suitcases, the place looked like it was being photographed for Architectural Digest in the morning. And it was nice of her to frame so vividly how differently our lives had vectored. Brandon and I had gone to Epcot in Orlando two springs ago.

“Yeah, crazy.”

“Well, I’ll let you two go over whatever it is you’re here to discuss …” As if she had no clue in the world about what that might be or why I would be here. “How’s Brandon, by the way?”

“He’s actually doing great, Janice. Thanks. He’s almost caught up to grade level in math and you ought to see what he’s drawing these days. The place has really had such an amazing effect.”

“That’s so inspiring. We’ll have to have him for a weekend when we get back.”

“I know he’d love that,” I said. Actually he’d hate that. He always felt like an outsider, unable to compete with her boys at almost anything. And over the past two years, those invitations had become fewer and fewer, always revolving around the boys’ sports practices and family trips. Jim rarely even showed up at school on parents’ day anymore.

Janice held up the jacket and sighed. “Doesn’t anyone ever hang things up around here … Always nice to see you, Hil. Let’s be in touch.”

“C’mon,” Jim, said, mercifully pointing toward the study, “let’s go in here.”

We went down a step into the sunken wood-paneled room with a brass-hearth fireplace that looked like something out of a Martha Stewart catalogue. The wall with the windows was painted a textured green, with two brass sconces bracketing each window. In between them hung a painting of a guy in an ornate Chinese robe with a Fu Manchu mustache down to his waist.

“Janice’s side of the family?” I asked. Truth was, I couldn’t find a single trace of Jim in the entire house. Except maybe in the back, in the McMansion of a play shed he had built, where I knew they kept a couple of small ATVs for the boys to race around the pond, the lacrosse nets and sticks, the pool rafts.

“Distant cousin.” He chuckled. “You never met?”

“Somehow, no … Of course we didn’t get invited to the wedding …”

“C’mon, Hil, you didn’t drive all the way up here to take shots at me. Anyway, you sounded worried on the phone.” He leaned forward, his beefy forearms on his knees. “You want to tell me what’s up?”

“Listen, Jim, something’s happened. I need to go over a few things with you.”

“Brandon?” He actually sat up and seemed concerned.

“No, Brandon’s fine. He’s doing multiplication and division now. Everything’s going real well. And you should see his artwork. He’s doing amazing things, Jim. I think he’s got a real talent.”

“That’s really good. I know I should come and see it. I mean to. It’s just I’m always—”

“Look—I know he’s not exactly the son you’ve always wanted. He’s not exactly someone you can take boogie boarding at the beach or out to the driving range like Lucas and Trey. Though God knows he does try. But now I need some help, Jim. I don’t know if I can cover the costs any longer. At Milton Farms. I’m four months behind in tuition and next year is coming up. I can’t keep going back to Neil and Judy. They’re getting on. Dad’s starting to go downhill. They survived the storm okay, but they’re underwater on a couple of big boats. They kind of zigged when the rest of the world zagged …”

“Guess I know how what feels like,” he said with a glum smile.

“Anyway, they’re gonna be needing whatever they have for themselves. And you’re Brandon’s father, for God’s sake—” I gazed around.

Jim’s eyes drooped guiltily and he sat back, the cat out of the bag now, as if it was ever really in. “I’m sorry about Neil. No one likes to hear that.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. My dad always liked you.”

He folded his thick fingers in front of his face. “You know I had to close up Double Eagle, don’t you, Hil?”

Double Eagle was his construction business. “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Jim.”

“I was gonna call you about it. Then I figured, hell … you’d probably just think I was trying to wriggle out of another check.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that. I know that company was a big part of you.”

I thought back to those early years when he was making three, four hundred grand a house, several times a year, much of which long ago went down the drain in the financial meltdown, the houses sold at a loss or borrowed up to the hilt against. “But, Jim—look at how you live. I need some help now. You can’t hide behind that anymore.”

His toothy smile turned downward. “I don’t have to tell you the story here, do I, Hil …? Look, I understand how most of this has always fallen on you. I know you’ve had to change your life. And, no BS here, I admire you for what you’ve done. I do. It’s just that right now … you’re bringing in a helluva lot more than me.” He snorted cynically. “Right now the UPS man is bringing in a helluva lot more than me.”

“Well, as of the other day”—I fixed my eyes on him— “that’s all changed.”

“What do you mean, changed?”

I told him about Cesta and Steve having to cut things back. That I basically got four weeks’ salary and a month on the health plan. “I’m behind on everything, Jim. We were basically living check to check the past year as it was. Now …”

He nodded, his mustache curling into a frown. “I’m really sorry, Hil. That sucks.”

“It does suck. But that doesn’t make anything go away. I’ve cut back on a hundred things over the past few years to keep everything together for Brandon and me. I hoped we had some equity still in the house, but there’s zero in the current market. I had it appraised. The whole thing’s underwater, which, let’s face it, is pretty much how you left me. And anyway, what would be the chance of refinancing now with no job even if there was something to pull out? I’ve been working full time, putting everything toward our son, while you’re what, zipping the kids off to squash practice in that new Porsche I saw outside …”

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “That’s a little cold, don’t you think, Hilary?”

“No. No, it’s not cold, Jim. Look, I’m sorry … I know it’s hard to close the company. I know it’s like closing a chapter on yourself, an important one. I get that. But it was no picnic for me getting fired and seeing the past four years go up in smoke. My savings are shot, Jimmy. You’re Brandon’s father. This isn’t about my fucking shoe allowance or jetting down to St. Barth’s for my tan … Jim, I need you to stand up. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

I was trying to hold it together. Promising myself not to cry or let my emotions come through. But my eyes started to sting and there was no way of holding them back. “I can’t go it alone anymore. I tried.”

Jim reached over to the side table and pulled out a couple of tissues from a quilted Kleenex box. He handed them to me.

I dabbed at my eyes. “Thanks.”

“So how much we talking about?” he asked. He leaned back on the couch.

“I don’t know … The school alone is close to fifty grand. I’m so behind on the tuition plan they’re starting to give me calls. There’s still the mortgage and the taxes … Look, I see you have a new family and I’m happy for you. I am. But I have my family. And you’re his father, Jim. I’m going to do whatever I can to do what’s best for my son. Your son … Whatever that is.”

His gaze grew a little harder. “Just what do you mean by that, Hilary …?”

“I don’t know what I mean. I’m just asking you, please, don’t make me beg.”

We were kind of face-to-face, the tears cleared, my desperation out on the table. All of a sudden I could see what was turning through his mind. What must have been from the moment I called, because what other reason could there have been for me to ask to come over?

He’d have to go to Janice. He probably didn’t have a dime apart from her anymore.

He probably didn’t even own the Porsche parked in front of the house.

“Look. He cleared his throat. “Things aren’t exactly rosy around here either.”

“What does that mean, Jim?”

He shrugged. “Janice had to take a job. She’s gotten her real estate license. At Pepper Loughlin’s place. You know, it’s on the avenue, where that stationery place used to be …”

I stared blankly.

“In fact, the whole damn house is up for sale. Trust me, her divorce settlement is just about enough to keep the kids in school and take care of our nut. Even the furniture’s up for sale.” He nodded to Fu Manchu. “Distant cousin on the wall included. And the fancy table out front, what’s it called, Biedemeister, or meier? I never know. That as well.”

“Jim, you’re on your way out to Vail.”

“Kind of like our last hurrah.” He snorted. “I mean, you can’t let the kids think things are bad. Not in this town anyway. You know what I mean. I’m tapped out, Hilary. The well is totally dry. Trust me, that Porsche won’t even be in the driveway when we come back.”

I felt a weight crashing through my chest. An elevator falling. The thought snaked through me that if I stayed here even a minute longer, everything would come crashing down and I’d start to cry. “All I’m asking for is what you owe me. Don’t you even care about your son? Can’t you—”

Suddenly the boys ran in. Lucas and Trey, Christopher Alexander III. Like marauding outlaws in The Wild Bunch riding through a Mexican town, except with Brunswick crests on their dress shirts. “Trey won’t give me the Xbox stick,” Luke, who was ten, whined. “And he called me a douche. Didn’t you, Trey?”

“No, I didn’t! He’s lying!” Trey said defiantly, with a glare that read, When we get back upstairs, you’re dead, you traitor.

“You know Hilary,” Jim said, catching Luke by the arm. “Brandon’s mom.”

“Hi,” Trey said, barely shifting his glare from his brother. “Douche bag,” he mouthed silently.

“Hi,” said Luke, not even looking at me, just sticking his tongue out at his brother while in Jim’s hulking grasp.

“Hi, guys,” I said. “You’re both getting so big …” All I could think of under the circumstances. I couldn’t believe I came up with something so lame.

“I’m sorry, Hil.” Jim shrugged, his expression hapless. “I hear things are starting to pick up in some places. Maybe I can start up again next year.”

“Sure,” I said, standing up, trying to hold it together. “Next year.”

“Hey, dudes.” Jim cackled. “Homework done? Time for one last game of Madden?”

“Yay!” the two shouted as one.

“C’mon, Jim, I’ll take you both on. You and douchie here …”

Jim stood up too, carrying Luke like a sack of wheat with those ham-hocklike arms. “I’m really sorry about the job, Hil. How about I’ll be in touch when we get back. Okay?”

“Don’t worry about it. I can see you’ve got your hands full. Something will come up. Always does, right?”

I picked up my bag and made my way to the door.

“Hey, Hil …”

I turned, praying inside he’d had some change of heart and come to his senses; some realization of what he was putting me through.

Jim winked, holding Luke upside down. “You’re looking good, Hil. You really are.”

I knew if I didn’t get out of there now, I was going to cry.




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8408d2c7-7662-556d-9bfb-8ddc0358be4c)


Back in my car, any semblance of control completely broke down. Tears filled my eyes even before I put the key in the ignition. I could take the whole new family thing—Jim playing überdad—even though it did eat at me where the hell he’d been for the last four years with Brandon. I could even take the spanking-new Porsche, which alone would have paid a couple of years of tuition.

What I couldn’t take was that he’d basically just washed his hands of us. When he could see I was falling. How could you just look at me and say that, Jim? I put my head against the wheel and shut my eyes. About your own son?

It was clearly all on my shoulders now.

I started the car and it took everything I had not to ram it headfirst into Jim’s Porsche and leave it a mound of crumpled steel. I backed out of the driveway and almost made a U-turn a block away, then regretted that I hadn’t.

You could sue his ass, Hil, I said to myself as I drove. There were deadbeat laws. No judge in the world would side with him. But I knew Jim’s assets in his own name might even be less than mine. He was probably down to his ski jacket and a pair of Cole Haans.

And that would all take time. And lawyer’s fees. Money I didn’t exactly have right now. Even if there was something left to take. Whatever was left was surely now in Janice’s name.

What I had to do was figure out how to get through the next two months.

I put the radio on, 1010 WINS news. A Pakistani minister had been blown up in a suicide attack. Residents of Staten Island were still angry over delays in storm relief. Something about a Connecticut politician whose wife had tragically drowned on a family vacation in South America. I winced, suddenly aware of my own blessings. Whatever I was going through, at least Brandon was healthy and alive.

It was 7:36. I’d promised Elena I’d be back by eight. Two things were going around in me.

First, that I would do anything for my son. Anything. Whatever it took.

Any mother would.

And the other, my mind drifting to the satchel in the woods, was that I’d already made enough bad choices that had put me in this situation.

So what was one more?

Which was basically what I was dwelling on when I realized I’d already driven past the highway and was headed back toward the accident site.

As I got near, the road narrowed to a single lane, yellow police tape now marking off the site. Three county police cars and a tow truck were there, all kinds of lights flashing.

I slowed. I couldn’t see if the Honda had been removed. It seemed that it hadn’t. I figured there had to be all kinds of people getting things together down there. With everyone traipsing around, who knew if the satchel hadn’t already been discovered?

Who knew if now they were looking for the person who had flung it there?

I went over what I’d told Rollie. “I’m Jeanine …” That was all. No Hilary. No last name. I knew I’d touched a couple of things—the car doors, the victim’s cell phone—but even if they were able to remove my fingerprints, they certainly weren’t anywhere in the system. Nerves suddenly wormed their way through my stomach on whether, if it came to it, Rollie could have ID’d my car.

No. I was sure. I’d parked a ways down the road.

I felt pretty safe.

Which didn’t completely eliminate my fear that the part of the county police force that wasn’t currently on site here would be waiting for me at my house.

They weren’t. Though I did let out a sigh of relief as I drove up the cul-de-sac Jim had developed and into my driveway. Only Elena was there, putting on her coat when she heard me come in through the kitchen door.

“How was he?” I asked, coming in from the garage.

“Eezy tonight, missus.” Her English wasn’t exactly the best, but she was devoted to Brandon and indispensable to me. Not to mention that my son adored her. “Heez in the bed.” She grabbed her bag. “I be in tomorrow at ten. And don’t worry, I pick him up at school.”

“Elena …” I was trying to decide how I should tell her. That I was going to be around for a while. That I had no idea how long I could keep her on, with her present hours. She was like part of the family to me.

“Sí, missus …?” She looked at me with those round, trusting eyes.

“Nothing. I’ll probably be here in the morning, okay?” I knew there had to be some kind of explanation. “Drive home safe.”

She smiled brightly. “Good night, Miz Cantor.”

I closed the door behind her and went through the large brick-and-glass neoclassic Jim had constructed, which was now buried in debt. I had tried to refinance it for years and pull out whatever equity I still had in it, but with home prices still down and Jim’s credit a mess, it simply wasn’t in the cards. Since Jim’s name was still on the note, he was supposed to pick up half of the $1.6 million, interest-only debt, $4,290 a month, a parting gift from the days when lenders were throwing loans at his business. Even though rates had dived in the past year, now I’d have to disclose that I no longer had a job and that Jim’s company had closed. God only knew what workout committee that would put me in. I was scared I could lose the house. In today’s market, the place might go for only 1.6, $1.7. The truth was, I couldn’t leave and I could no longer afford to stay. As it was, I was only praying that some loan officer wouldn’t be reviewing the loan and call me to tell me they were foreclosing.

“I’m home, Brand!” I shouted into his room. “I’ll be up in a minute …”

I went up to my bedroom. High ceilings, a Palladian window overlooking the pool. Which last year I didn’t even open in order to save on the cost. I pulled off my sweater and jeans and threw on the pajama bottoms and yoga T-shirt I usually crawled into bed with. In the bathroom, I pulled my bangs into a scrunchie and took off my makeup. I had short brown hair, a small nose, and wide hazel eyes that I worried were starting to show the strain of everything. I was only thirty-six, had always been told I was pretty, Natalie Portman pretty. But my days of wishing for some handsome knight were over. Everything was all in my hands now.

I went into the kitchen and put on some water for tea, then back down the first-floor hall to Brandon’s room. He was curled up in his bed, playing on his iPad. A design app called FLOW, which always intrigued him, muttering, “Tie, tie, tie, tie …” to himself, which he often did when he was in his own world.

“Hey, guy.” I sat on the corner of his bed.

He didn’t answer, just kept swirling the colorful arrows on the app with his index finger.

“Cool design!” I curled up on the bed next to him.

I always said there were two of him: Sweet Brandon and Mean Brandon. Mean Brandon was where he would say to people who were averting their eyes, “I want to cut off your head.” No matter how many times I took him aside and scolded him, telling him that it was totally inappropriate. When he was four we had a dog, but I had to get rid of it because Brandon once tried to cut off its tail.

There was a time a few years back when I was really worried about him. Who he was inside. Who he would grow up to be. I’d read about these children with what they called C-U tendencies. Callous and unemotional. Kids who seem to carry the gene or the early dispositions that turn them into psychopaths. At times Brandon showed some of the signs. I read about things like the Child Psychopathy Scale and the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits and the Antisocial Process Screening Device. In a particularly defiant stage, I even had him tested. But when everything was in, Brandon tested within only one standard deviation from the norm. Nothing to worry about, I was told.

Sweet Brandon won out.

“Tie, tie, tie, tie, tie …,” he droned to himself. I leaned down and stroked his hair.

Then all of a sudden: “Where were you?”

At times his questions seemed to come from out of nowhere.

“I was just out, hon. On some business.” No chance in the world I would tell him that I was with his dad. “What’d you do tonight?”

He didn’t answer, just kept swirling his finger around on the screen, making his squiggly designs. “I heard you tried to teach Elena how to play.”

No response. Only a shrug.

“How did that go?”

He just kept swirling. “She doesn’t even know what an app is, Mom.”

“You remember, I didn’t either not too long ago. Any homework?”

“Some math. And I had to do some sentences. They were boring.”

“Well, one day you’ll realize that what seems boring now is when you actually learn something …” He didn’t look up and this time I couldn’t even blame him. I couldn’t believe I’d actually said something that trite and parental. I laughed at myself inside.

Once I came home and found him playing happily in the tub. These clumpy brown objects, floating amid the suds. At first I thought they were just some plastic toys he’d brought in. Until I realized in horror what it was. Feces. Brandon’s own. He was smeared in it, having the time of his life. He could also beat his head against the wall if he didn’t get his way. And bite his nails down until they bled. Luckily, a lot of this was in the past.

Before Milton Farms.

Now most of the antisocial behavior seemed to be under control.

“C’mon, let’s climb into bed,” I said, taking the iPad away, praying that he wouldn’t grab for it back and act up. I couldn’t handle that tonight.

But tonight he was Sweet Brandon.

He said, “I did a drawing. Wanna see?”

“How about I look at breakfast tomorrow? Right now it’s late.”

“I want to show it to you.” He jumped out from under the covers, went over to his desk, and brought back his sketchbook. He could draw anything. He had a gift. He just saw things that way. The sketchbook was basically filled with the same kinds of drawings. Monsters and underworld creatures that looked as if they had crawled out of someone’s ghoulish imagination. Mean Brandon, maybe. At first I was concerned. With how he acted sometimes and what was clearly going on in his imagination. It was all pretty dark. And always the same things: these creatures. But the doctors all said it was just a sign of a fertile imagination and not to worry. This one had a horse’s snout, the extended ears of an elf, two legs, scaly skin, and malevolent devilish eyes.

“Jeez, Brand, where do you come up with these things …?”

“He’s called Polydragon. Someone at school said my brain is in another dimension.”

“You’re not in another dimension, Brand …” I took the sketchbook and laid it on the table, wrapped the covers back around him, and cuddled closely. “You’re here. With me. I know that I’m not in another dimension. So you can’t be either. Sorry, dude. Maybe once you could draw a picture of the house. Or me.”

“I guess I could,” he said. “But that would be boring.”

I snuggled close to him. “Not to me.”

He smelled so sweet, the purity of everything that I imagined was good in his soul, that would one day come out. For years he barely uttered a word. He’d ask for things by pointing; he wouldn’t let go of crayons or Magic Markers. He’d simply grunt, cry, or babble gibberish. We didn’t know what was going through his head. Then one day Jim and I had the TV on, and I said, “I wonder what’s on next.” And from out of nowhere Brandon blurted, “CSI: Miami, Mommy.” We turned, flabbergasted, sure that this would open up a new chapter in our lives.

It was six months before he spoke another word.

Now look at him, drawing, holding a conversation. How could I possibly tell him he might lose it all: his school, his tutors? The only home he’d known.

“Do you ever think of going away?” I asked him, squeezing my arm around him over the sheets.

He shrugged. “I like it here.”

“I know you do. I like it here too. I just meant, if you could go somewhere else, somewhere new. Different. Where do you think it would be? The beach? Like in California. Or the mountains? You remember we went skiing once.”

He paused a while and closed his eyes, and I thought he had drifted off. Then he opened them again. “The North Pole.”

“The North Pole? Wow. That’s interesting. Why there?”

“That’s where the Polydragons live. Underneath the ice.”

“Oh, I see …”

He nodded into my chest, his voice growing sleepy. “But I don’t want to go away, Mommy …”

“We won’t,” I said softly. “It was a silly thing to even ask. I like it just fine here too. With you.”

“Me too,” he said, closing his eyes.

He yawned and I felt him snuggle his face in my chest. “Nighty-night, Brandon.”

He didn’t speak for a while, and I stroked his hair, a tear rolling down my cheek. This is what I had, I realized. All I had. This is what God gave me to protect, to keep safe. To help grow into a whole person so he could one day go out into the world and prosper, which I was sure he would. This wasn’t his fault. He didn’t choose how he was. Life did. And I wasn’t going to let life set us back. With whatever options I still had.

Brandon’s voice trailed off one last time. “I love you, Mommy …”

I drew him close, knowing what I had to do. “I love you too, honey.”

Sweet Brandon.




CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_935a8e20-6676-5898-8883-56b07d0f9a14)


Charles Mirho nursed a bourbon at the end of the bar in Stamford, Connecticut, waiting for the call that never came.

He was supposed to have heard back by nine. That would have given the old man time to get back home and do what he had to do.

But now it was ten fifteen and the phone still hadn’t rung; the two calls he had placed back to him from his throwaway phone had gone unanswered. He was starting to feel pretty certain something had gone wrong.

That or he was being set up—and not even a fool would do that.

Even an old fool.

The local news was on the TV. Something about a four-year-old who had fallen out of an apartment building in Stamford.

It left two options, and either one meant he was going to have to earn the money he was being paid. Mirho had spent three years as a sergeant in the military police before moving into intelligence. His specialty was interrogations. He was the guy they brought in when all the “new age” shit didn’t get anywhere. Not that that assignment lasted long. A couple of drunken brawls and a messy sexual harassment charge got him a general discharge, hastening his new career. Now he was in private practice. With one highly notable but confidential account. His new specialty was digging up dirt on people. Or creating it when there was none.

Though there was always something, if you pulled up the rock and looked under.

Mirho tossed a twenty on the counter, and had gotten up to leave when something on the overhead screen caught his eye.

A car accident. By the looks of it, a bad one. It was the headline that grabbed him.

FATAL ACCIDENT NEAR BEDFORD

IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY

He stopped and said to the bartender, “Mind turning that up, Al …”

“An old-model Honda, with only the driver inside …” was what he heard.

Then the camera zoomed in on the car and Mirho realized things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

In the parking lot, his cell phone rang. Mirho glanced at the number. Only one person it could be. He answered, not relishing how it would go. “Mirho here.”

“Do we have it?” the caller asked. Mirho was supposed to have gotten back to him by now as well.

“No, not yet.” Mirho sighed. “There’s been a complication.”

“What do you mean by ‘complication’? You met with him, didn’t you?”

“I met with him,” Mirho acknowledged. He’d worked for a lot of tough men in his day. But this was one who knew how to use the hammer. Someone you didn’t want to be feeding excuses to.

He laid the whole thing out for him as best he could.

“So where’s my money, Charlie?” his boss replied indifferently.

“I don’t know, maybe in a police station somewhere,” Mirho said, until something else occurred to him. “Unless someone got there first.”

“Someone got there first? Well, that wouldn’t be good for business, would it, Charlie?”

Mirho opened his car door. “Or for them.”

“Find that money, Charlie. And more important …”

“I know what’s more important,” Mirho said.

But just to make sure, the caller added, “More important, you find me the rest of what we’re looking for as well.”

Mirho’s father, an oil lease salesman from East Texas, always had a saying that selling didn’t even begin until the customer said no. In this trade, it was more like it wasn’t work until something went wrong.

Mirho shut his door and started up his car. “That’s what you pay me for.”




CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_7dd00301-efaa-5c8b-84ab-bddd9cd028f5)


The next day I started sending out e-mails to see what might be out there for me. The first was to Steve, my ex-boss, reminding him to keep his antennae up as he had promised. How Brandon and I were in a real bind. Then I started sending them to people in the industry. Some had already heard and were shocked; others offered to help. Finding a new job was Priority Number One.

I tried to put the accident and the money out of my mind.

I poked around the employment sites. Looking at openings for advertising sales managers, media planners, corporate comptrollers. Nothing seemed on the money. I envisioned crowded cattle calls for positions I was totally overqualified for. Going up against young Ivy League grads with resumés far deeper than my own. Standing in lines at job fairs in front of junior-level human resources managers just out of school.

I pulled my old resumé up on the computer. It seemed woefully thin. I updated it for what I’d been doing these past four years, but it still had this pretty wide gap for the time when I’d just been at home being a mom. I even called the admissions director at Milton Farms, hoping I might qualify for financial aid. They loved Brandon there. They’d never let me have to pull him out.

I was told she was at a conference and would have to get back to me.

As much as I tried to ignore it, the thought of last night kept drifting back.

Taking a break, I went online to the local newspaper’s site up there, the Bedford RecordReview. I needed to know who the crash victim was. What kind of person was he? A solid citizen? Or dirty? Had I taken someone’s life savings? Or a bundle of cash no one would ever even know was missing?

On the paper’s website, I scrolled past articles on safety in the Pound Ridge Elementary School and one about a Bedford investor who had been bilked out of millions in an insurance scam.

There was nothing on the accident.

Sipping my coffee, I switched over to the Westchester Journal-News, which I knew had a daily police blotter.

The big story of the day was of a Yonkers teenager who’d been eliminated from the TV show The Voice. And something about the second in a series of home break-ins in Chappaqua and Mount Kisco.

I kept scrolling down, passing over dozens of local stories, until under the heading of “More Top Stories.”

Then I saw it: “Fatal Crash on Route 135 near Bedford.”

My heart kind of spurted up, then became still. I told myself that whatever ultimately happened, I didn’t cause what happened to take place and the only reason I’d gone down there was to help. I put down my coffee and clicked on the link.

A man, identified as Joseph Kelty, 65, of Staten Island, New York, was killed last night at approximately 6:40 P.M., when his Honda Civic, driving east on Route 135 between Bedford and Fairfield County, drove off the road and down an embankment, rolling over several times and striking a tree. Mr. Kelty was the only passenger in the car.

Sergeant Neil Polluto, of the Bedford Hills Police Department, said an eyewitness spotted a deer cross the road just before Mr. Kelty’s car began to swerve. It was possible the deceased had been texting at the time of the accident. Mr. Kelty was described as a retired line maintenance manager with the New York City Transit Authority, and it was not known why he was in the area at the time of the accident.

My first reaction was relief. There was no mention of any missing money. No mention of anyone else being on the scene. I’d covered myself well.

My next thoughts were about Kelty. A retired line manager with the New York MTA. I brought back the lifeless, bloodied face. So he wasn’t a criminal. A job like that paid what, I guessed only seventy to eighty thousand a year? So what would he be doing carrying that kind of cash? And all the way up there? In rural Westchester.

I’d promised myself that if the money was legitimate, I’d find a way to get it back.

Fate had intervened. For both of us, I guessed. Before I decide to could keep it, I had to find out as much as I could about him.

I went back to the article.

Funeral services for the deceased are being made through Dellapone Funeral Home in Midland Beach on Staten Island.




CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_282d5002-b8db-541e-bdc5-006d44a22c05)


That same day two men stood near a construction site on West Forty-fourth Street in New York City, just off Times Square.

One was large, with bushy dark hair in a black leather jacket that he wore open, as if he didn’t feel the February chill. He was devouring a sausage in a bun from a nearby food cart.

The other was in a blue-and-orange New York Knicks jacket, his baseball cap turned backward.

“Seventy thousand dollars is quite a sum,” the large one, whose name was Yuri, said in a heavy Russian accent. “I tell you that Sergei Lukov is patient man. He shows you restraint, out of respect for your circumstances. I think you know what I’m saying, right? But even a starving whore stays at home when her putchko is aching …”

“Meaning what …?” The man in the Knicks jacket put his back against the scaffolding.

“Meaning everyone has their limits,” the burly Russian replied. Then he shrugged. “Maybe the saying was not so good.”

The other man took a sip of coffee. “I think I get the routine.”

“’Course you get routine. Your people invented routine, right? You probably seen this movie a thousand times. Hey—you sure you don’t want one of these?” The Russian showed him the half-eaten sausage that looked small in his meaty palms. “I come all the way from Brooklyn just for these. You’re missing something good.”

“Thanks, but I never eat anything that would have killed me if it was alive.”

Yuri furrowed his brow. “Pig are so vicious over here?”

“Boar,” the man in the Knicks jacket said. “Cinghiale means wild boar. It’s Italian.”

“Oh.” The Russian looked askance at what was left of his sausage and chomped another large bite off nonetheless. “Boar, huh? Anyway, you know it goes up, Thursday. Three days. Eighty thousand then. Pig or boar.”

“Like the national debt.” The man in the cap pointed to the digital sign on a building high above them, the numbers racing. “Except with a Russian accent.”

“Ha! Good one! Except is Ukraine …” Yuri elbowed him good-naturedly. “Back home, you could get knife in skull for that. Or radiation bath. Chernobyl cocktail, we call it. Very popular at home today. Here, Ukraine, Russian … Like pig and boar, no one knows difference. No harm, no worry, right?”

“No harm, no foul,” the man in the Knicks jacket corrected him.

“Yes. Sorry my English is, how you say, work in progress.” Yuri shrugged. “But my math is still good. And real meaning is, what you don’t want is for this loan to become even more expensive. By that I mean you have no way to pay, so we need to collect, how you call it … in trade. Maybe at your job. I think you have strong idea what I mean by this.”

The man looked at him. Neither of them were laughing now. He nodded. “I have a strong idea.”

“Good. So then you know how life gets truly fucked up for a good guy like you. Where loan gets really expensive. Then it’s not just money—money you can always find. It’s kind of life loan, if you get what I’m saying? And you keep paying and paying. Clock never stops. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …”

“I get it,” the man in the Knicks cap said.

“I know. Because people like us, once we get in your life, we don’t leave so easy. We like cousin from Tbilis who stays on your couch. Your wife cooks for him, mends socks, washes clothes. Then one day you come home and catch him fucking your wife on your couch. And he looks at you with pants down and says, ‘Fuck are you doing here …?’ You see my point? Like that, but whole lot worse. Anyway, I’m trying to do you good turn here. Even though I offer to buy you lunch and you turn me down. I still try to give you good advice.”

“You seem to have a lot of sayings, Yuri.” The man in the Knicks cap crumpled his Styrofoam cup and tossed it in a bin.

“Is true. And I have one more … You don’t need beard to be philosopher. And I’m glad you appreciate”—Yuri chortled and elbowed the man— “because Thursday, seventy thousand becomes eighty. Then goes to ninety. Then …” He wiped his chin with his napkin. “Don’t keep Sergei Lukov waiting too much longer.” He backed away, winking, but a wink that no longer had mirth in it. More like a warning. “Because next time, pig or boar, won’t make one piece of difference, understand what I mean, Lieutenant?”




CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_60d1efb5-6a77-5dbb-a1db-e98719c9ee8e)


It had been three months since the driving winds and unchecked tides from superstorm Sandy swept over Staten Island, battering the middle-class communities of Tottenville, Oakwood, and Midland Beach, situated along New York Bay.

A lot of us who lived in the area never fully appreciated the full impact of the storm. In Armonk, thirty miles to the north, it was mainly a wind event—downed trees and mangled power lines blocking the roads for weeks, resulting in close to two weeks without power.

The heartbreak of the Jersey shore and Staten Island seemed a million miles away.

But driving across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge three days later and seeing the devastation for the first time, it looked to me as if the storm had just happened yesterday.

Homes along the shore were split wide open. Streets were still blocked with whatever the tides and winds had thrown around. A tanker was aground, with the famous message written on the hull: FEMA CALL ME! There were mountains of random debris. From the bridge I could see boats and cars still piled in streets and driveways like discarded toys. Power lines twisted at right angles. My mind flashed to the angry residents who appeared on the news, screaming about how FEMA hadn’t even come around yet, how insurance companies were ignoring them, how they were living in cramped, remote motel rooms, unable to even gain access to their own battered homes.The rebuilding hadn’t even begun.

I swung off the bridge onto Hylan Boulevard. Midland Beach was about two miles south.

Where Joseph Kelty had his home.

I was lucky to even make it to St. Barnabas’s, ignoring what the GPS was telling me, searching for any street that was even open. I had to walk the last three blocks on foot. The church was on Rector Street, a few blocks inland from the demolished shore.

There was a line of people leading into the church, an old red-stone Romanesque-style structure with a bell tower. I took a seat in the back and waited while the pews filled in. Finally the organist played a hymn and people turned; the family began to file down the main aisle. I saw a nice-looking man in his mid-thirties with his arm around the shoulders of a young boy. He had to be Kelty’s son and a grandson. He followed a woman who looked around my age with her husband and two kids. They took their seats. Maybe a hundred people were there. The organist stopped. Finally the priest stood up.

“O God, you are my God, I seek you,

My soul thirsts for you;

My flesh faints for you,

As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

Beholding your power and glory.”

“We are here today to celebrate the return of our friend and neighbor Joseph Kelty to his immortal father.”

A few people wept in the first rows. The priest went through his blessings and prayers, and when it was time to remember the deceased, he called Kelty “a little rough around the edges, except where it counted—in his heart and in his deeds.” He called him a “salt of the earth, good-hearted man, who came into this life without much and would have left the very same way were it not for the bountiful blessings of his family he had built up.”

A co-worker stepped up to the altar, a round-shouldered black man with a graying beard who introduced himself as “Carl. From the tunnels,” who said, “Joe Kelty was as solid and dependable a man as any who ever worked the lines.” He said he would pick up any shift when someone called in with a problem, rain or shine. “Except for his grandson Chris’s birthday. We all knew that day, June seventh.”

Several people in the pews laughed.

“And when he worked his way up to supervisor, even becoming our union rep, Joe didn’t lead by bossing people around. He had a quiet way of leading by example. He’d as soon grab a pick as quickly as any of us ‘tunnel rats’ down there. Show you how it was supposed to be done.”

Carl said they had a kind of ritual in the tunnels that when someone who had spent his life working the lines died, someone they wanted to honor, they named a section of track after him. And that “a quarter mile of the Staten Island Railway between New Dorp and Midland Beach would from this point on be known as Joe Kelty Way.”

People clapped.

“’Course, only those people who work in the tunnels will ever know that.” Carl laughed. “But to Joe, those were his family. After his beloved Paula, Patrick, Annette, and his grandkids. We’ll miss you, man.”

Carl sat down, and the man I’d noticed coming down the aisle stood up and went to the altar.

“I’m Patrick,” he said—a pleasant voice, short dark hair, nice build—“in case you didn’t know. And my dad was one of the quietest, most stubborn, good-hearted, but exasperating men I’ve ever known.” Several people in the pews murmured their agreement. “It was hard to get a good word out of him. ’Course, it was hard to get any word out of him at times,” he said, which drew more laughs. “That was just the way he was. Old school. He’d rather break an arm than break his word. If he told you he’d be there, he’d drive through a snowstorm for you, as he did many times when it came to his beloved MTA, to which he devoted his life. My father always said he didn’t have much, and he was right. But he always gave whatever he had. When I was young, he used to drive me out to the island for CYO hockey … even up to Boston, and we’d ride up together in his Ford—he always bought American!—and we’d barely exchange a word on the trip. Maybe around New Haven he’d turn to me and say, ‘Y’know, you shouldn’ta passed on that shot! Next time take it.’ I thought we were going to have this conversation, and then he wouldn’t say anything again for the rest of the trip.”

A few in the crowd chuckled.

“When Mom got sick …” He hesitated and cleared his throat. “… When my mom got sick, he took early retirement and he went with her, two times a week, every week, to the clinic. It ate up a lot of his pension, certain medications, getting her home care. Anything she needed. He didn’t flinch. And then it was his turn …

“I think everyone here knows, after the storm, even in his condition, there wasn’t a person who worked harder for his neighbors. For Mrs. O’Byrne …” He looked around for the person he was referring to. “Right, Mrs. O’B? I know she’s here somewhere. Her house was devastated and he practically cleared it by himself, brick by brick. When he went to my graduation from the academy, I know that his was the proudest face in the crowd. And he still didn’t say much!” That brought more laughter. I even found myself joining in. “But what he did say, what always stuck with me, was ‘You’re a cop now, Patrick. Be a good one.’ It was exactly who he was. Right?

“And if any of you want to honor his name, you can make a contribution to the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. Or better, come out and volunteer and join the rest of us down on Baden Avenue. We’re all pitching in to get these homes back in order. He’d love that. He really would.

“So bless you, Pop. You and Mom both. Whatever you were doing up there when you went off that road, I know it was for someone’s good. But I’m sure Mom is probably yelling at you now, ‘Why the hell did you even have to go up there …?’” He glanced apologetically at the priest. “Sorry, Father Steve …” More chuckles.

“Well, you can work that out with her for eternity, Pop. Down here, bless you for who you were. We’ll miss you.”

He sat back down and the mass finished up. At the final hymn they wheeled Kelty’s simple casket back up the aisle, the family following behind.

His son glanced appreciatively from side to side as he went past, recognizing most, shaking a hand here and there, thanking them for being there. He stopped for a second to give a hug to someone in the row in front of me.

As he passed by, he even gave an appreciative nod to me.

As I ride back home, conflict rattled my thoughts. On one hand, I felt guilty, hearing what a down-to-earth, honest guy Joe Kelty was. A guy who would rather break an arm than his word.

And I’d taken his money.

On the other hand, I didn’t hear a thing about anything missing from the crash site. About Kelty having lost his nest egg or his retirement funds. No appeal to the person who had taken it to turn it back in. Patrick said his father had spent the large part of his pension on his wife, who had cancer.

So where did this money come from?

No one seemed to have any idea what he was doing up there all that way from home. With half a million dollars in cash.

A salt-of-the-earth guy, I thought, as I crossed the Verrazano-Narrows heading back to Westchester.

Still, one thing I knew:

Joseph Kelty may have been the Rock of Gibraltar to his family or in the New York City subway tunnels.

But aboveground, he was definitely hiding something.




CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_6e86b401-8c44-5490-a365-62dbbe48c836)


Twice a week, I take a kickboxing class at a gym in White Plains in the afternoons. That Friday I wasn’t exactly eager to go.

Finally I just decided that the best thing I could do for myself was to let off some steam. And there was nothing that did that better than delivering a spinning roundhouse side-kick combination into an eighty-pound bag.

I’d always kept myself fit. I grew up playing soccer and running cross-country in high school. In my twenties, I moved on to spinning and hot yoga. I took a little break when Brandon came along. But nothing I’d tried made me feel as strong or as empowered, or let out the stress when I needed it to, or built up the sweat like an hour of spinning, grunting, gut-crunching sidekicks—kicks that sprang not from my legs, but from my core, from deep inside my abdomen. I may be only five feet four and 115 pounds, but I’ve put my instructor, Maleak, who’s cut like an linebacker, on his back plenty of times. “Damn, girl,” he’d say, shaking his head from the mat, “there’s a whole lot of anger in you.”

“Divorce’ll do that,” I’d reply, helping him back up.

After class, I’d sometimes catch a latte with Robin, who was forty-five, and whose husband bailed on her five years ago while she was in the process of going through chemo treatments for ovarian cancer, leaving her with two kids in high school and a failing party-planning business. She was able to beat it, and was in remission now, and she’d somehow built her business back up after declaring Chapter Eleven. Now both her girls were in college. We’d gone out a bunch of times. For drinks or to the movies. Robin was pretty and funny, but also one of the toughest women I knew.

That day we had started talking about Brandon, and then about some guy who had asked her out, when I caught her looking at me and she finally stopped and asked if anything was wrong.

It took about three seconds for me to blurt out what was happening. Not everything, of course. But losing my job and how my finances were crashing down on me, and how desperate I was to keep Brandon in school. I’d always prided myself on being a person who could hold it together when things got tough. But I just couldn’t there. In my damp tights, my hair a sweaty mess, my makeup smearing, it just all came out of me.

“You’re preaching to the choir now, honey.” She took my hand. “We all hit bottom, but you’re a gorgeous, capable woman. And smart. I know it sounds like a cliché, but they’re only clichés because they’re generally right. You just have to suck it up and pull through.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, dabbing my eyes with a napkin. “It’s all just kind of crashing down on me right now, and I haven’t talked about it to anyone.”

“You know what they say …” She grinned. “The world always looks bleakest through a double mocha latte and a Starbucks napkin. Or maybe it’s at three in the morning and through a glass of vodka? I do forget.”

“Is that what they say?” I sniffed in and laughed. “You mean it’s not just me.” I took another sip of coffee and picked at a muffin. “I can adapt to anything. But it’s Brandon. I mean, what do we do, give the house to the bank, pull him out of a school that’s totally making a difference in his life; file for bankruptcy …?”

“No. You definitely don’t want to go down that road. That’s your last resort.”

“Without a job, I can’t afford to even stay in Armonk, Robin. Even if I did put him in public school.”

“Hil—” She took my hand again. “It took me six years to build myself back up. My health. My credit rating. And I’m not even talking about who I was inside. What about your ex? Can’t he come to the table?”

I shook my head. “He’s broke. He’s closed down his business. I guess we’re both broke.”

“Shit—I’d call a lawyer on his deadbeat ass anyway.” She chortled. “Trust me, beats kickboxing any day for getting the endorphins going.”

“Jesus …” I blew out a sip of my latte, laughing. “Remind me not to get in your way.”

“Think I’m joking? For two months, I had my girls at my sister’s and I was sleeping in our warehouse,” she said, her eyes fixed on me. “Getting myself to chemo twice a week. For years, who do you think it was I visualized every time I was hitting that hundred-pound bag?”

“It was hard, huh? I mean, obviously what you went through with your health … But the rest. Watching the life you built up around you fall apart. Losing everything you counted on?”

Robin looked at me. This time she wasn’t smiling. “Killer. Hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. And I hope you’re not looking for any fairy tale, take-home nuggets like it was all worth it in the end. ’Cause it wasn’t. It sucked. You just do what you have to do. And first order of business, you protect your cubs, right? That’s what drove me. I’d do anything I could for them. And I did. And you will too.”

“What if there was something you could have done …?” I put down my cup. “Something you didn’t want to do, but that you had kind of in your back pocket, that could have changed things. Changed everything. I mean, financially …”

“You got some rich dude who wants to marry you you’re not telling me about?”

“Not even a broke one,” I said. “Just if somewhere I could find some money …”

“Legal?”

I just looked at her.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not thinking about putting yourself out there, are you? In that case I change what I said. Try Chapter Eleven first.”

I laughed, and shook my head. “Gimme a break. Of course not, Robin.”

“You’d be surprised. There’re a lot of suburban moms who are finding all kinds of ways to pay for Pradas these days.”

“Well, that’s not me. Yet.”

“Good.” She took a sip of coffee and then shrugged. “Look, there’s this … and then there’s the other side of the road. I’ve been on both sides. And it’s dark over there. Short of maybe killing someone or robbing a bank … I’d do whatever you had to fucking do to take care of yourself and Brandon, Hilary. No one else will.”

She took a last gulp of her latte and there was only the slightest hint of humor in her eyes.




CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_50285724-49f0-5d73-be6b-7ea68f01773b)


In terms of money, things were only getting worse. I threw myself into finding a new job. Steve Fisher knew someone in the market for an ad manager. I just hadn’t done that kind of work in years. All my contacts from back then had mostly moved on or were ancient history by now.

Someone else told me about someone who was looking for an accounts payable manager for a local wine distributor. The problem was, it paid only around half of what I’d been making. Enough to pay the mortgage, but no way I’d be able to cover Brandon’s school. Anyway, they were looking for someone with an accounting degree, and mine was in cultural anthropology.

I called up Karen Richards, the head of school at Milton Farms, to see if I could qualify for some financial aid. Brandon was one of their success stories and I always tried to pitch in on school events. The past two years I paid tuition on an extended monthly plan, the only way I could handle it even when I had my old job. But now I was hopelessly behind. And the spring payment months were coming up.

“Hilary, I’m afraid it’s just too late for this semester. Our funds are all allocated. And to be honest, our financial support isn’t really designed for your sort of situation anyway.”

I hesitated. “My sort of situation …?”

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but look at the home you live in, Hilary. Your ex-husband comes here on Father’s Day driving a new Porsche. I know I don’t really know what’s going on, but I honestly think the best solution is to work this out with him. I wouldn’t normally say this, but I noticed you’re several months behind in tuition payments …”

“That’s why I’m calling, Karen.”

“Look, you know we love Brandon. We’ve all seen the improvements since he’s been here. But this is something you need to address. I’ve already spoken to the tuition company. I can only keep them at bay so long. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Hilary?”

“Yes. I understand.” The vise was closing.

“We’re a needs-blind school here, when it comes to aid. But I’m not sure I can run with you if this continues into next semester.”

“I hear you. I’ll figure something out,” I said.

I told Margaret Wheeler and Eileen Pace, Brandon’s social behavior and physical therapy tutors, that we’d have to put things on hold for a while.

“But he’s doing so well,” Margaret said, her disappointment clear. “Look, if this is what it’s about, you don’t need to pay me right away. We’ll work something out.”

Margaret was a retired special ed teacher. Her husband was a cop. Ten days ago I was bringing in more than they did together.

“Just for a couple of weeks, maybe,” I said. I hugged her. “Thank you, Margaret.”

I put together a balance sheet of my finances. You didn’t have to have an accounting degree to see that it was bleak.

I had twenty-six thousand left in the bank, including the thirteen and change I’d received in severance. Forty-two hundred was due every month for the mortgage. And zero chance of refinancing that now. Utilities were another six hundred. Not to mention the sixty-five hundred due next month to the town of Armonk for property taxes. Jim used to pay that, like the mortgage. But no longer. If I made Brandon’s school current, that left me only ten thousand.

The house payments alone would eat that up.

I couldn’t go to my folks again. They owed as much in unsold boats as I had in debts and it was bleeding them dry.

I could cut the tutors, all the stuff for me I’d always fit in—mani/pedis every couple of weeks and facials every couple of months and the trips to the mall.

That was all history now.

I could cut back on Starbucks, along with eating out. I could even cut back on the barre method and my kickboxing, though sending a spinning, grunting side kick into a sixty-pound bag was about all that was keeping me sane right now.

But I saw the wave that was coming at me. Like someone in the path of a tsunami coming onshore with no chance of getting out of the way. Maybe not this month, but certainly the next. It was going to crash over me and snap me in two. Me and Brandon. Like matchsticks. And even if I did find another job, and quickly, the math still didn’t add up.

I looked at the numbers and saw what any person would have seen a while ago.

Everything was falling apart.

It wasn’t Slick anymore who was whispering on my shoulder.

It was survival.

Something had to change or I wouldn’t last another month.




CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_c5a7dce5-712b-52e6-87d5-c796fcb8630d)


“Jim …” I had to try him one more time. I had to try anything.

“Hil …?” His voice was cool and reserved, clearly not delighted to hear from me. “Hil, we’re out in Vail. Can’t this wait until we get back?”

“No, Jim, I’m sorry, it can’t wait. Not any longer.”

I heard him whisper to someone, an exasperated tone, like his hysterical ex-wife was on the phone and can you believe he had to deal with this out here, with ten inches of fresh powder on the slopes and an Irish coffee in his hand?

Maybe I was starting to grow hysterical.

“Jim, I’ve only got a month’s cushion to my name. I don’t know how I’m going to pay the mortgage. Not to mention Brandon’s school. You said you’d think it over and get back to me, but all that’s past. I need your help, Jim. Now. Not for me, but for your son. I don’t care where you are right now …”

“Hil, hang on,” he said. I heard him excuse himself and there were a few seconds of silence. When he got back on, he was probably outside. “Listen, Hil, I thought I told you we’re pretty much in the same pickle.”

“I don’t care about your fucking pickle, Jim. You’re out in Vail. Your pickle is keeping your wife’s name in Greenwich magazine and holding on to your Porsche. I’m doing what I can to protect our son.”

He was silent.

“Jim, look, through everything we’ve always dealt with things pretty reasonably. But I don’t have the luxury of being nice anymore. You owe me for over a year of child support. You bailed out of Brandon’s school. I can’t sell the house. I won’t get a fucking nickel from it even if I could. And I can’t even sue you—it would take too long, even if there was something I could get from it. Jimmy, please … you know I don’t beg easily, but I’m begging. I’m trying to save ourselves …”

I was also begging for him to save me from doing the one thing I didn’t want to do.

“Look, I shouldn’t even say this …” He cleared his throat. “Maybe there is something I’ve kept aside. But we’re not talking much, Hil.”

“How much is something, Jim?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “Maybe five or ten thousand. Max …”

“Five or ten grand?” The blood pretty much stopped in my veins. The math ran over me like a train had plowed into my car. Ten thousand would barely get me past March. No more.

“I had to pay off some obligations with the company. Otherwise, I was headed to Chapter Eleven, Hil. Anything else is Janice’s. And you know, that gets complicated.”

“Jim, that’s only a month, maybe two, of Brandon’s school. I’m not asking for anything for me, but—”

“Anyway, it’s going to have to wait until I come back. This isn’t exactly sitting in my 401(k). And, Hil, all I can say is that this isn’t going to get any easier. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we really are going to have to consider putting Brandon in public school. I’m told the programs are really good up in Chappaqua and Bedford.”

“Chappaqua and Bedford …?” The words fell off my lips like heavy weights.

“I checked. Bedford has a separate special ed school. And Ridgefield, I know that’s in Connecticut, but it’s good too and it’s tons cheaper to live up there as well.”

“Screw off, Jim.” Tears flooded my eyes. I couldn’t hold it back. I’d never said those words to him before.

“Hil, please …”

The phone in my ear, I flashed back to the day we were married. Me, in my white lace dress, my hair in braids. Jim, nervous, clumsy, a big, cushy walrus, fumbling for the ring. I knew he wasn’t the safest of bets, even back then. Just a big, overgrown boy with his toys. But what I did think was at least I had a partner. Someone who loved me for me, whether it worked out in our marriage or not. Someone who would always be there for Brandon if I ever got sick or was in need.

“Why don’t you just keep it, Jim? I’ll find another way.”

“Hil, c’mon. I’m trying my best to—”

“Just keep it!” I hung up on him, and with it the hope that anything was coming to my rescue.

“There’s this,” Robin had said, “and then there’s the other side of the road.”

I threw on a jacket and asked Elena if she could stay another hour.

Then I drove back out to the accident site that night.




CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_7149d544-3a9c-51d4-8079-34d05e5a9626)


The night was clear, the roads mostly empty. Every stop sign, I told myself I could always turn around. You don’t have to do this, Hil. There has to be some other plan.

I never turned.

On the Bedford–Greenwich road, the landmarks grew familiar. A stone barn I’d passed ten days before. The apple and vegetable farm. I remembered following that Honda, my life in a shambles, watching him swerve, seeing him spin off the road. I slowed, passing a bend in the road that looked familiar. Was it here? That curve? Or farther along?

The police tape was gone now. Everything looked back to normal.

It wasn’t until I passed the election poster that I realized I’d driven right by.

I turned at the first chance about a quarter mile past it and headed back around. There was a hole in the dense brush about the width of a car where Kelty’s car had gone through. I drove on about a hundred yards and found a turnoff with a chain blocking the drive and a NO ACCESS sign. Maybe for a property someone was hoping to develop.

I pulled my Acura in maybe twenty yards from the road. There was a long time between cars going by. I turned off the engine. I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to use a penny of it for my own needs. Only for Brandon. And keeping a roof over our heads.

For a while I just sat there, telling myself that there was this one last chance to drive away. I looked at my face in the mirror. It wasn’t my current face I saw, but strangely, the eyes of a child. Remembering the uncertainty I’d gone through as a nine-year-old, everything I loved and counted on ripped away in an instant.

It had taken me years to learn to trust life again.

I wouldn’t let that happen to my son.

I took my flashlight, and this time my face was filled with resolve.

Welcome to the other side of the road.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_609b1409-55a4-53a8-a864-b0c4fed2ff0d)


A car sped by in front of me and I ran across the road. I found the break in the bushes and shined my light and still saw the tire marks on the pavement, fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

I made my way down the slope.

I slipped this time as well, sliding a few feet down. The brush had been flattened by the path of Kelty’s car as well as all the emergency vehicles and personnel that had been down there. I made it down, casting my light on the tree where Kelty’s car had ended up, now pitched at a forty-five-degree angle. I stood where I was sure I’d been when I climbed inside his car, only a bare patch now. I shined the light over the area in the woods where I had flung the satchel.

I didn’t see anything there.

A flash of fear stabbed me: what if someone had found it? One of the emergency crew who went down there. Or maybe a policeman traipsing around. What if all this had been for nothing and now it was gone?

A week ago that might have given me some kind of relief. That the decision had been taken from me. But now I was more like a wolf who’d left a stash of food for her cubs that was now gone. As if that money was mine all along, not Kelty’s, and someone had stolen it from me!

I started to walk through the brush, sweeping the light in all directions, knee deep in dried branches and dense weeds. I’d spent so much time conflicted. Now there was no longer any doubt about what outcome I was hoping for.

Where the hell was it?

I kept walking, casting the light about haphazardly, nerves kicking up in me. I got to the spot where I was sure it had to be. Ten days ago, I’d seen it sink there amid the leaves and brush.

“Where the hell are you?” I said aloud.

I started to think how maybe I’d made someone else rich. How I was someone else’s lottery ticket. Some lucky Joe who was probably dragging a towline around. I wondered if he’d declared it. Or turned it in. If the police had it now.

No, if they did it would’ve made the news, Hilary. I would have seen it.

Angry, I used my light as a large stick, swatting brush and branches. Then I almost tripped over something. I looked down and didn’t see the bag, only the leather handles peeking through a blanket of leaves.

Thank God! I let out a grateful sigh of relief.

I bent, a bramble tearing at my hand, and pulled it out, the bag resisting for a moment. Then there it was! The same stuffed leather case, as heavy as when I’d hurled it into the woods a week before.

There was no pretending I felt anything but joy.

I took it back to the clearing and set it on the ground. I pulled open the zipper and shined my light in it. My skin tingled all over at what I saw. I was staring at the same bundles of wrapped bills, Ben Franklin’s wise, nonjudging face over and over and over, alit in the yellow, beatific light.

My blood surged ecstatically.

“Forgive me,” I said. To whom I wasn’t sure.

To Kelty. To the police. To my own conscience.

“I’m sorry.”

I zipped it back up, the taste in my mouth bitter and bile-like. I knew the expression, how one bad act opens the door to many others. Acts that flood the world with a hundred awful consequences you could never foresee.

All from a single mistake.

This was mine, I knew. No hiding it.

You’re not just a thief, I told myself as I lugged it back up the hill.

Congratulations, Hil, you just stole a half million dollars.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#ulink_afdbd2c4-b9a9-528c-b35e-bc9b1af15ab9)


The heavyset blond-haired clerk in the Bedford Hills police station looked up at him from her desk. “You said insurance adjuster, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Charles Mirho nodded affably.

Not that he was an insurance adjuster at all, of course. For him, the whole concept of risk management was simply about staying alive. He’d merely had the business card printed at Kinkos, one he’d used many times in his real line of work, which was mostly uncovering dirt on people who crossed his boss and kicking a little ass when it was called for. And sometimes when it wasn’t. He’d simply embossed the Farmer’s Insurance Group logo in bright red lettering on the front so it would look as real as if he’d passed the insurance licensing exam with flying colors.

Mirho smiled at the clerk. Maybe a tad chubby, but she had huge breasts under her pink sweater, and maybe a little too much mascara around those pretty, maybe a shade too trusting eyes. He didn’t see any wedding ring.

“In the vehicular accident division,” he said. “Claims subrogation. You know, two parties put in counterclaims and ultimately the two insurance mammoths go to battle and somehow it gets resolved. Boring stuff.”

Except in this case, there weren’t two parties at all—only one, and the one was in his grave. But Mirho figured his smile was good enough to charm her into getting what he needed. And the gal, whose desk plate identified her as Chrissie, probably wouldn’t know the difference between claims subrogation and how to figure out the interest on her bank statement.

“You say you want a copy of the case file?” she said.

“That would really help me out.” Mirho smiled.

“And you said the name was Kelty? Joseph.”

“That’s the one. You know, the guy who went off the road up here a week or so ago. Let me see, claim number, I have it right here …” He glanced at his notepad, but it was basically just useless scribbling. “606-410BN … Of course, that’s our number, not yours. We’re one of the coinsurers on his life insurance policy. I just happened to be up here on other business and thought I could save all parties a little time.”

“Of course. Poor guy …” Chrissie exhaled sympathetically. “That stretch of road is always a problem at night.” She wheeled her chair across to a computer screen and Mirho got a glance at those wide-load thighs. He always liked women with some meat on them, and tits like calf bladders.

Chrissie punched into her computer. “Let me see what I can do.”

It was a standard request; case files were routinely shared between the police and the insurers. Usually by a formal request from one of the claimants, but in this case, there was no criminal aspect to the case, only lawyers arguing against lawyers. Insurance bigwigs negotiating it out. It was no big deal.

“Found it,” she said. “Officer Polluto was first on the scene.”

“Polluto,” Mirho said. He already knew that. “Maybe I can talk to him as well.”

“Neil’s out on patrol. I saw him earlier today.” Chrissie punched a key. “Photocopy or PDF?”

“A hard copy would be great,” Mirho said appreciatively. “This sure is saving me a ton of work.”

“You, maybe.” Chrissie chuckled. Her boobs jiggled as she stood up. “Be back in a flash.”

Mirho winked and took a seat on the edge of her desk. He picked up the photo of two smiling teenage girls.

He knew how to manipulate people. It all started with that easy way he had, and conveying what he needed without blinking an eye. Extracting information, that’s mostly what he did. Rule Number One: the more brazenly you asked for something, the greater the likelihood you’d get it. Boldness created its own trust.

No dad in the photo, he thought. Maybe a single mom. Or they could be her nieces.

It took six or seven minutes, but finally Chrissie shuffled back holding a manila envelope.

“You’re lucky. It’s not a very large file. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to wait.” She handed it to him.

“You’re a gem!” Mirho knew he wasn’t exactly George Clooney. He was big shouldered and large, with a round head and short shaved orange hair. A ruddy complexion. But he knew he had that smile. Women trusted him. At least they did for a while. “Maybe I’ll see you next time,” he said. “When something else comes up.”

“Something else …?” Chrissie laughed. “This isn’t exactly the South Bronx up here.” She placed her ass back in that chair and smiled up at him. “But I’m always here.”

“Then we’ll just have to see about that.” Mirho waved the envelope at her with a wink as he backed away.

Back in his Escalade, Mirho opened the envelope and pieced through the file. Photos of the accident—the Honda a mangled wreck. He’d watched Kelty drive away with the cash not thirty minutes before. Shit, he’d handed the fucking thing to him. The guy probably got a woodie for the first time in a decade, carrying around that kind of cash, and couldn’t handle it. Popped through his pants, hit him in the face, then he slammed headfirst into a tree.

There was an eyewitness report. The police case write-up. He saw that a deer had bolted across the road. That much he’d been able to pick up from what he’d read in the papers.

Sergeant Neil Polluto, Mirho underlined in the report. Maybe it would be worth paying the good officer a visit somewhere down the line if nothing else panned out.

Only one eyewitness, Mirho noted. That made the job easy. He knew his next call might prove a bit more troublesome. But anything was doable with the right kind of persuasion.

He centered on the name, from Briarcliff Manor according to the report. The witness, the first to arrive at the scene.

The only one on the scene.

He underlined it, knowing his next stop wouldn’t be quite so social.

Roland McMahon.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#ulink_082c1f82-8d60-5df8-9475-d12c301c6e35)


He was always a difficult child.

As a two-year-old, if he didn’t want to eat something or wanted to get down, he would bang his G.I. Joe milk cup so hard, he actually shattered it once and needed ten stitches in his hand. Hardly a day would pass when he wouldn’t tell me how much he hated me; a minute later he’d look up at me with the most contrite and innocent eyes and say, “Give me a hug, Mommy. You didn’t think I really meant all that, did you?”

Did I?

It makes me ashamed to admit he always scared me a little. Of what he would grow into one day.

He always had a dark edge, my son, from the day he was born.

What a thing, living in fear of my own child.

Sometimes he got so angry I had to lock him in his room, but he would only tear up his bed and rip down all the books from his bookshelves. Break his brother’s toys and smash his little wooden chair against the door. A hundred times. Until he ran out of strength. And then he’d whine in that repentant voice of his that he would never be this way again.

But when he was good, he was the most lovable and likable boy any of us knew. We called him Curious George. Because he was so smart and needed to understand everything. It just seemed, somehow, his brain got ahead of his heart, his father always said.

He’ll grow out of it, I would say. He will. You’ll see. Just wait.

Until he left.

One day he just said he couldn’t handle this anymore and I never saw him again.

Once, when he was six, I had him in the bath. It was just me then, and the two kids. Todd was just two. He had a laugh, my Todd; that boy’s giggle could leave the whole family in tears.

His brother was in a good stage at that time. I grew to trust him more. Things had changed in the two years since Todd was born. I was always busy with him, feeding, changing diapers. Tickling him under his chin, trying to produce that giggle. And I had work.

His older brother suddenly had to work to get everyone’s attention. The tantrums grew louder and more frequent. He was always stealing things; then somehow they would miraculously reappear. He always looked to be the hero.

I remember he was supposed to watch over Todd that day. “C’mon, Toddie,” I recall him saying, “c’mon in here with me ’till Mommy gives you your bath.”

I ran after some laundry that needed folding and he brought in one of Todd’s favorite toys. And I heard the two of them playing in the tub. That infectious giggle.





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