Chapter 23
Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised Shannon to learn that the cops couldn’t help.
After all, they’d been useless when she and her mother had gone to see them before.
And now, faced with the photographs of Dina and Fred, loved-up in various hotels around Yale and elsewhere, gazing into one another’s eyes as though nobody else in the world existed, Officer Turnwell shrugged and said, “This doesn’t prove that this young lady is attempting to blackmail your mother.
What’s more…” He raised his eyebrows and looked at first Shannon, then Russell, as though he were instructing them in school.
“Your mother should not have sent money to whomever it is who’s ‘blackmailing’ her.
It brings me back to the same question. Why would she send the money if she’d done nothing wrong? ”
Russell’s hand was in a fist that he didn’t let go of anywhere. “She was frightened,” he stammered. “She just lost her husband to a stroke. She wanted to preserve the life they had together. She didn’t want to know his secrets. Is that so hard to understand?”
Officer Turnwell looked annoyed and also eager for the conversation to be over.
“We’re asking you to interview her,” Shannon said. “She obviously knows something.”
Officer Turnwell handed the photographs back to Russell. “This seems like a domestic problem rather than one requiring police intervention,” he said. “Here’s a question. Have you shown these photographs to your mother yet?” He blinked at Shannon expectantly.
Shannon couldn’t believe the nerve of this man. But before she fought back, Russell took her hand and told the officer, “We’ll be talking to your supervisor about this.”
“Good luck to you,” Officer Turnwell scoffed. “It’s smack-dab in the middle of summer on Nantucket Island. Our problems are miles long. Get in line.”
Russell and Shannon went back to Shannon’s place, where they found Arietta on the veranda.
The nurse was in, tending to Shannon’s father, and Arietta was bright and sunny, asking Russell and Shannon how their day was going.
In her eyes, Shannon saw a thousand questions about what Shannon and Russell were up to and whether their relationship had changed.
Rather than answer, Shannon made an announcement. “Russell and I are going back to New Haven tonight,” she said.
Arietta closed the book she’d been reading. Her smile melted off her face. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened,” Shannon said, trying to smile. “I’ve been here a little longer than I planned for, and I need to take care of a few things for next semester. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Honey, you don’t need to worry about me,” Arietta said firmly. “Now that I have the nurses coming, I’m really happy here. I have a good flow.”
“I want to be here,” Shannon said, glancing at Russell. “It’s been lovely spending time with you.”
As she said it, Shannon was surprised to find how true it was.
She’d always been closer to her mother than her sisters were.
She’d always been closer than she’d been to her father.
But over the previous few weeks, Shannon and Arietta had lived side by side, forging a routine that kept Fred’s comfort a priority.
They were also up against the blackmailers, whoever they were.
“I promise, I’ll be back soon,” Shannon said. She knelt and scooped her mother into a hug, telling herself that everything would be all right.
The reality was that she didn’t know what she and Russell were getting themselves into.
They decided to take Russell’s car back to campus.
Shannon was too jittery to drive, and Russell said he liked to feel “in control” when things were so topsy-turvy.
Shannon ached with attraction for him. On the ferry, Shannon wrapped her arms around him and watched as the island receded into the horizon.
“You look a lot like your mom,” Russell said suddenly.
Shannon pulled her head back to gaze up at him. She’d always thought her mother was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, that she had an elegance that Shannon herself would never be able to present.
“I’m sure my sisters look more like her than I do,” she said.
Russell shook his head and kissed her cheek. “I’ve met your sisters, remember? They’re nothing like her. Not like you.”
When Shannon and Russell reached New Haven, it was nearly nightfall.
They went immediately to Shannon’s apartment, where she unpacked her things as they strategized how they would do what they’d come to do.
According to social media, Dina was still in and around campus, and according to friends of friends (which they texted for information as breezily as they could), Dina had been seen at a bar not far from campus numerous times that summer.
People said that her boyfriend worked there.
“What if we just, like, smack the photo of my dad and Dina onto the table in front of Dina’s new boyfriend?” Shannon suggested, furrowing her brow. “Maybe the boyfriend will freak out and make Dina explain herself?”
“Maybe,” Russell offered, although he didn’t sound sure about any of it.
Shannon knew it was a loose plan at best. What she hated to admit was that Officer Turnwell was right.
Just because Dina and Fred had had a relationship didn’t mean Dina was the one blackmailing her mother.
Before her father’s stroke, Dina and Fred had been two consenting adults.
They’d fallen in love of their own accord.
It wasn’t like Shannon could dispute that.
More than that, now that her father’s life was, in many respects, over, Shannon had complicated feelings about her father’s love life.
Because his body had failed him, because his mind was gone, Fred couldn’t love any longer.
He couldn’t feel anything, as far as she knew.
Was it better that he’d been allowed another love while he was conscious?
When she said this aloud to Russell, Russell took her in his arms and said, “You can be angry with your father for cheating on your mother, you know. Even though he is the way he is now.”
“I know that,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to be angry. It feels like a wasted emotion.”
They held each other like that for a few minutes, each of them stirring in thoughts about romance and what it means to love someone “till death do us part.”
At nine thirty that evening, Russell and Shannon entered the bar where Dina frequently drank beers, hung out, and maybe flirted with the bartender, her boyfriend.
When Shannon and Russell slid into a booth, they saw Dina’s boyfriend behind the counter, filling a glass with beer from the tap.
He was chatting to a woman Shannon knew from the neuroscience program.
Her name was Georgina, and she came from Alaska.
There were rumors that she was about to fail out of Yale.
From the looks of things, she didn’t seem panicked about it.
Shannon watched as Dina’s boyfriend poured her another beer.
“Shannon?” Georgina spotted her and waved. “Where have you been?”
Shannon felt drawn into her orbit. It was now or never. She moved toward the bar, her heart pounding. She felt the bartender’s eyes burning into her as she fell into a hug with Georgina. “I was out of town,” she said. “Visiting family.”
“Oh, right. Your poor dad,” Georgina said, squeezing her shoulder.
At this, Shannon thought that the bartender’s eyes flickered with recognition, as though he’d suddenly realized who Shannon was. Unless she was imagining things? It was so hard to tell.
She wasn’t a spy. But she was a neuroscientist, accustomed to searching for clues under a microscope. Surely, that should help her in this case. Surely, she could pick up small details.
“Yeah,” Shannon said, sliding onto the barstool beside Georgina. She wanted to bide her time and watch the bartender for clues.
“Mikey, can you get a drink for my friend?” Georgina asked the bartender.
Mikey blinked at Shannon, as though he’d been waiting for her order since the dawn of time.
“Just a beer, thanks,” Shannon said. She turned and beckoned for Russell to come over. Russell came begrudgingly, his eyes furtive. He ordered a beer from Mikey, too.
“So, Georgina,” Shannon said, “are you, um…”
“You’re going to ask if I got kicked out?” Georgina asked, laughing. “I didn’t. Not yet! But I’m on probation. Oops.” She laughed. “Mikey keeps telling me I should give up on neuroscience, anyway.”
“I think we know too much already,” he said stoically. “About the brain. We weren’t meant to know everything.”
“Huh,” Shannon said.
Mikey gave her a look of resentment.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Russell asked Mikey.
“Dunno. Do you come to this bar?” Mikey asked.
Georgina chimed in, “He’s Dina’s boyfriend. You and Dina used to be best friends, right, Shannon? Mikey, does Dina still talk about Shannon? I never figured out what happened between you guys.”
Shannon flared her nostrils. “People drift apart.”
Mikey didn’t answer. He turned around to scrub the counter.
Shannon was beginning to sweat in her armpits and on her palms. She had no idea how she was going to get Mikey to confess to blackmailing her mother, if he even was.
She kept the recording app open on her phone at all times, but she hadn’t yet found a reason to start.
For a little while, Georgina regaled them with stories from what she called her “lost semester.” Apparently, she’d had a whale of a time, dating around, avoiding assignments, forgetting appointments with professors, and “digging myself into a big, old pit,” which was how she put it.
“I’m so sorry, Georgina,” Shannon said. “You should let me know if you need anything.”
“That’s so sweet, Shannon!” Georgia raised both of her hands and slurred. It was clear that this wasn’t her first beer of the night. It wouldn’t be her last, either.
And then, all at once, Dina was there. She stood like a shadow to Shannon’s left, waiting for them to notice her. Georgina called her name first. “Dina’s here! We were just talking about you.”
Shannon turned her head slowly, wondering if she’d be able to sense Dina’s guilt at once. But Dina’s face was difficult to read, just as it always had been. Even back when Dina had copied her lab experiment two years ago, Shannon hadn’t been able to tell.
Shannon and Russell had talked endlessly about being strategic. They’d discussed ways they could get Dina and Mikey to confess to their crimes. But now that Dina was before her, her eyes enormous, Shannon felt herself losing her cool.
This woman before her—the same woman who’d lived with Shannon for years in undergrad—had had an affair with Fred Peters. This woman had snuck around behind Shannon and Arietta’s back and created a separate, parallel life with their father and husband.
Shannon felt rage bubbling up in her stomach. She reached for the envelope, ready to show everyone at this bar what Dina had been up to.
“Shannon,” Russell muttered in warning. “Do you want to go outside and talk?”
“No. I don’t want to talk,” Shannon said. “I want Dina to tell me, here and now, in front of every person in this bar, why she had an affair with my father. I want her to confess.”
Georgina let out a gasp, but everyone else in their immediate vicinity was quiet. Dina looked like she wanted to murder Shannon. Mikey looked vaguely bored.
Dina wet her lips. She seemed to be weighing up exactly what to say and what to reveal.
At the last second, Shannon remembered to press Record on her phone’s app.
“Oh, babe,” Mikey said finally. “Is she talking about that guy who had the stroke?” He cracked an ominous yet strangely gooey smile, then explained to Georgina, “We had this plan to blackmail Dina’s fake older boyfriend for cash. But he basically kicked it when he was over in Italy.”
“It was Greece,” Dina corrected, her tone dark.
Mikey’s smile waned. Georgina didn’t seem to know what to do, so she kept giggling like her life depended on it. Something about the dynamic was off.
Dina muttered, “I’m getting out of here,” then turned on her heel and fled the bar. Shannon was hot on her heels. She wouldn’t let Dina get away with this. The app on her phone continued to record everything.