You Deserve to Know

Chapter 49

49

NOW

On Saturday morning, Aimee wakes up for the third day in a row in her childhood bedroom. She rolls over and looks at the other twin bed in the room, the way she did so many times as a girl when a friend slept over, but it is empty. Noa must already be up.

The house is too quiet , she thinks as she descends the stairs. In the kitchen she discovers why. Deb has left a note on the counter that Aimee’s dad is at work but she’s taken the kids out and they’ll be back after lunch. The coffeepot is full and being kept warm. Aimee pours herself a cup and takes it out to the large screened-in porch in the back. From here, it is a quick walk down to Gunpowder River, which empties into the bay. Her mother had been an avid birder. She used to head out in the predawn hours to watch the sun rise over the water, keeping track of all the birds she saw. She’d draw them, adding dabs of watercolor, and leave them on the porch to dry, then tack them up to the wood railings with a thumbtack. None of that is left. All traces of her mother are gone.

Aimee curls up on the wicker love seat, cradling the coffee mug. She had thought Scott experienced that same loss of his mother, but it turned out to be a lie. Her phone vibrates in her pocket, and she puts her coffee down to answer it.

“Good morning, this is Detective Salazar. Do you have a few minutes?” His voice is brusque, as if he’s walking fast. Aimee sits up.

“Yes, I have time.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you on a Saturday, but I thought you’d want to know—”

“Did you find Scott?”

“Actually, your husband turned himself in. He is being processed at the Montgomery County Detention Center right now.”

“Is he going back to California?” Aimee asks. “Will he stand trial?”

“He is going back to California, whenever transport can be set up. I don’t know when. We’ll find out more tomorrow. I just wanted you to know.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not today, I’m afraid. Maybe Monday, after he’s been arraigned. I’ll see if I can set something up before he leaves for California.”

“What about Lisa Greco-King? And Gwen? Can you tell me anything?”

“I guess everything I am about to tell you will be in the public record soon enough. We found trace amounts of Anton’s blood on the front of Lisa’s car, and on the underside of the front wheel. Clearly someone had tried to clean it but didn’t do a great job. We believe she was responsible for Anton’s death.”

“Oh my God.” She turns this over in her mind, flashing back to Anton’s and Lisa’s conspiratorial whispering on her back patio on the day that Anton died. “And Gwen? Is she being charged with anything?”

“No. Not at this time.”

“I can’t believe Lisa killed Anton. Was it to keep him quiet?”

“Well, that’s the theory. That he was starting to crack under the pressure of blackmailing your husband. He was heading to Villain & Saint to talk to Scott. That must have spooked Lisa.”

“So, what—she saw him following Scott, and drove there to cut him off?”

“We’ll never know exactly how it went down, but that’s the idea. We’re closing the case.”

On Monday, Aimee wakes up early to drive to the Montgomery County Detention Center in Rockville, about an hour from her parents’ house. She dresses appropriately—after a little researching online she knows to wear a bra without an underwire and to bring a clear bag to hold her car key and ID. After going through a metal detector, she is led into a large modern room with metal tables and stools bolted to the floor. Small groups gather at the tables while guards stand at the periphery, watching. She sits at an empty table and waits, thrumming with anxiety. She slept terribly last night, waking constantly with panic attacks about how she would raise three children with Scott gone. The hour between three A.M. and four A.M. was spent wide awake, staring at the Maryland Men’s Basketball 2002 NCAA Championship poster on her wall from high school as she went over how to make the mortgage work without his salary.

Finally, Scott enters the room wearing a maroon jumpsuit and heads straight over to her. She knows she’s allowed a short hug at the beginning and another one at the end of the visit, so she rises.

They embrace for a few moments. She clutches his shirt, fighting back tears. She never thought she’d see him again, and here he is. He came back, after all. She pulls back, touching his face. “You shaved.”

“Yeah, for court.”

They both sit on the metal stools, holding hands atop the small table. A guard starts to walk over, and he pulls his hand away. “Sorry. We can’t touch.”

She nods, pulling her hand into her lap. “How did it go in court?” It seems easier to ask a logistical question than to pose the one she really wants an answer for— Why did you change your mind?

“It wasn’t a real hearing. It was on video. I’m going back to California.”

Aimee feels her shoulders slump. She is losing him, again. “What are you charged with?”

“Felony obstruction of justice. But my lawyer says that’s just to get me back there, then they can charge me with something more serious. But he thinks I’ll be able to make a deal if I cooperate and testify against the man who shot Dex.”

“And you’re going to cooperate with the prosecutor?”

“I’m going to do everything I can to minimize the time I spend in prison,” Scott says. “That’s all I can say. I’m really not supposed to talk about the case. How are the kids? What have you told them?”

“Nothing yet. That you’re away on business. But I’m going to have to tell them the truth. Or something like it.”

“Listen, Aimee. I don’t expect you to stand by me. I really don’t—”

“I haven’t made any decisions.”

“I understand, but let me finish. What I did was terrible, but I want you to know that what you said to me the other day had a huge impact. I thought long and hard about my life. I’ve done some things that land in the good column. I’ve done some things that land in the bad. Which column is bigger? Where has most of my life’s energy gone? I’d like to think I’ve done more good than bad. Marrying you, being a father. Working on the software for diabetes.”

“Does your mom even have diabetes?” Aimee asks.

He smiles. “Yes. She does. Type one, autoimmune. Anyway, in the end, the question I asked myself is: Who am I? Am I someone who can be trusted? I like to think that I am. That I have become a good person—fair, kind, compassionate. A lot of that is you, Aimee.”

She looks away, feeling the tears coming. He has no right, she thinks, to be kind now.

“I was so blinded by fear when I saw my mom. It just pulled me right back to that night when she drove me to the Greyhound station, gave me cash for a ticket, and told me not to come back. I lived with that fear for a long time, and when she showed up here, it was all reactivated.” He snapped his fingers. “I didn’t handle it well. I’m not trying to blame her. But she was frantic. Said her life was in danger, so was Ray’s. She told me I’d end up either dead or in prison if I didn’t leave. I panicked. I should have been honest with you from the beginning. But I never thought I deserved you. I thought if you knew the real me, you’d run.”

She turns back to him. “You never gave me that chance.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry.”

“But when you had the chance to run again, you didn’t. You came back.”

“I hope that counts for something.”

“What about your mom?”

He shrugs. “She’s gone. I don’t know where. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never saw her again, to be honest. In the end, she was more concerned about what my coming back and testifying would mean for her and Ray than what it would do to my life.”

They talk until their allotted time is up. The goodbye embrace is longer, more difficult, because she doesn’t know when she might get to hug him again. But she won’t cry. She won’t make him worry about her. She’ll save her tears for later, even if she is overcome with grief. It doesn’t matter what he did, she realizes, she loves him and wants him in her life. She knows with certainty that, whatever it takes, she will fight to get him back.

“I love you,” she whispers in his ear.

“I love you more,” he whispers back.

The wind is whipping up the trash in the parking lot when she leaves. She sits in her car for a good ten minutes, allowing herself to cry. Last week she was a typical suburban mom, stressed about balancing work and parenting, worried that Noa might have ADHD. Those concerns seem so trivial compared to what she will face in the coming weeks—explaining all this to the kids, figuring out if she can afford to stay in Bethesda, navigating the criminal justice system from afar.

She gets back on the road and, without even realizing it, finds herself winding her way through downtown Bethesda, toward her home. It’s the last weekend in September, and a few overly excited neighbors have begun putting up Halloween decorations in their yards. Once news of what has happened on Nassau Court hits the media, she doubts she will ever feel comfortable trick-or-treating around here again. No, she thinks, as she pulls onto Nassau Court, they will have to move.

A news van is parked outside Lisa and Marcus’s house, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s home. She can’t blame Marcus if he left, another refugee from the chaos here. Aimee pulls up in front of her house, a plan formulating in her mind. It’s only one month into the school year. Maybe she should pull the kids out and move back home with her dad for a while. There’s room. She would save money. She gets out of the car. The plan is half-baked. She’ll talk to her dad and see what he thinks. But she knows she won’t be able to stay in this house.

After packing up a few suitcases and dragging them out to the truck, Aimee decides to see if Gwen is around. It seems doubtful. There is still yellow caution tape strung from the trees at the periphery of the property, although someone has cut it, leaving it to flap in the wind.

She knocks on the door and waits. No one answers, and she peers inside. Usually, Sababa comes rushing to the glass panel next to the door to see who’s there, but it is still inside.

“No one’s home.”

Aimee turns to see a young man wearing a suit and a caked-on tan.

“Austin Byrd.” He sticks out his hand. “Channel Five News.”

Aimee ignores the hand and starts to walk past him.

“Hold up,” he says as he jogs alongside her. “Are you a friend of Gwen Khoury’s? What about Lisa Greco-King? Did you know her?”

Aimee stares ahead, ignoring him until she can get safely into her truck. She starts the engine. Was she a friend of Gwen’s? Did she know Lisa? Good questions , she thinks. Ones she’ll be mulling over for a long time to come. She pulls the truck out, pausing for the stop sign at the end of the block.

Aimee looks in the rearview mirror. She can almost see them all—her and Scott, Lisa and Marcus, Anton and Gwen—seated on lawn chairs, watching the kids ride their bikes, drinking around a firepit on Halloween. It all seemed almost perfect at the time. Was it better then, when she was happy but clueless?

Yes. She would trade in the knowledge she has now to go back to those times.

But she can’t. None of them can. Gwen and Marcus will have to rebuild their lives without their cheating spouses. Kai lost his mom, and Rafi and George lost their dad. And whatever the future holds for her and her own kids, it won’t happen here.

She steps on the truck’s accelerator, takes a hard right, and says goodbye to Nassau Court.

THE END