Chapter 68
Allison
I spend the early next morning with Grayson, who moves through the house like he’s walking underwater.
Every motion slow, deliberate, as if he’s afraid to disturb something fragile.
He hasn’t said much since he woke around four in the morning.
He’s wearing the same gray T-shirt he put on after showering last night, wrinkled, collar stretched. Shadows linger under his eyes.
He pours coffee, though he doesn’t drink it, just stares as the steam rises, his fingers wrapped too tight around the mug.
His face looks older. Not in the way a boy becomes a man, but in the way grief presses down and leaves an indelible mark.
When he finally looks at me, there’s a hint of something raw behind his eyes—confusion, guilt, disbelief.
“You okay?” I ask, though I know how pointless the question sounds.
He shrugs, eyes fixed on the counter. “I keep seeing him,” he says softly. “When I close my eyes. He’s just…there.”
I want to tell him it will get easier, that memories blur, shock dulls. But I can’t lie to him, not about this. So I just nod and step closer, placing a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t lean in, either.
I leave before seven to retrieve my car.
I can’t call an Uber because that is a recorded transaction that the police could find later, wondering why I didn’t just drive to the condo on April 2.
Where was your car? So I walk to the train station, buy a new train pass with cash, and take the Green Line down to State and Lake, where I hail an old-fashioned taxi, again paying in cash.
I get dropped off at the Erie/Ontario parking garage and walk to my SUV, pull out of the lot, curb the car, and screw my front license plate back on.
Then I drive a block to the condo’s underground parking garage.
Inside my condo, the morning light off Lake Michigan spills across the floor. Everything is exactly where it should be—the sectional and club chairs, the coffee table and the items topping it, the meticulous fireplace—yet the place feels unrecognizable.
I walk farther in, my heels clicking softly on the walnut floor. Every sound feels intrusive. I used to love this space—the quiet, the light, the view that made everything feel expansive. Now it just feels like a stage after the actors have left.
The dreams we had when we bought this place. We might sell the big house, once empty nesters, and call this home; we might hold it for Grayson, should he live in Chicago after college. This would be our summer home during retirement, with somewhere warm for the winter.
Now I don’t think I can keep it. The walls know too much.
In the kitchen, I text with Aaron and Vivian and promise I will be in the office tomorrow.
I text Finley’s phone. I call it and leave voicemails.
All to make a record. I tell him he can’t keep breaking contact with us, please don’t be so dramatic, just tell us you’re okay, you’re worrying us, we want to help, I’m here at the condo, please make contact with us one way or another.
At half past noon, I stand along the LaSalle Street Bridge, overlooking the Chicago River running beneath me, a winding ribbon of green and black.
The ironwork rattles and hums with traffic.
The weather is predictably nippy, even worse on the bridges, where the winds tend to swirl.
But it seemed like a good place to meet.
Trinity and Luke sidle up to me a moment later. “I hope you didn’t bring your phones,” I say. They assure me they did not. I discussed it with Luke this morning when I called him. It would seem odd to the police if they later tracked us all to the same area the morning after Fin’s disappearance.
Trinity looks at me with feeling, her head tilted, eyes watering. She tucks a strand of hair off her face and behind her ear. “Allison, I…”
“I’ll bet you went through a lot yesterday,” I say. “I saw him in the afternoon. I can only imagine how bad he was by later that evening.”
“I just…I want you to know, it happened really fast. I didn’t go there meaning to do that.”
“Oh, I know that, Trinity. From the look of the fireplace, seems like he was trying to destroy all your work on the documentary.”
She nods. “He said I was trying to hurt him, to ruin him. He said it had to stop. I only grabbed the letter opener after he pushed me against the window.” She winces, closes her eyes. “He came at me and it just…it just—”
“If you want to explain this to me someday, fine, but not now,” I say.
“We shouldn’t spend all day here. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.
We should assume we’ll all be interviewed by the police.
Personally, I’m going to refuse to answer questions for a while.
I have my own reasons. Luke, we talked about this briefly last night—”
“I’ll do the same,” he says. “Because I’m charged with another crime involving many of the same people, I take the Fifth.”
I nod. “That makes sense. Trinity, I would think you’d want to talk.”
She shrugs. “If I didn’t, it would look weird, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would. How did you get into the condo? That rear entrance?”
“Yes,” she says. “So there’s no record of my being there.”
I sigh. “Yeah, but you should admit you were there,” I say.
“Your phone will put you there. And you should admit he got a little rough with you. Don’t overplay it, but anything that physically happened, you should probably say, because who knows what their forensic team might find.
” I lean into her. “But the bottom line is, you left, he was alive and well, and he even texted you that apology later last night.”
She manages a quick smile. “I did not know what was happening when that text arrived.”
“What should we do about this other stuff we’ve had going on?” asks Luke. “The video of you planting the drugs?”
“Oh.” I let out an awkward laugh. “That. I think, ultimately, it doesn’t prove that I actually put drugs in the car. But let me worry about that—”
“Wait,” says Trinity. “The only person who has that video is me. I saved it on my work security app. I’ll just delete it.”
“I don’t think you should start deleting stuff off your phone,” I say. “They can recover things. And then you start getting into the territory of obstruction of justice and evidence tampering.”
“First of all,” she says, “I can’t imagine why they’d look at that app at all. And second of all, I don’t think they’d be able to tell what I’ve deleted. Not on a third-party app.”
I think about that. “Fair points. But…what about Luke’s case? He needs a defense in the drug case. Losing the video takes away his defense.”
We go quiet.
“There’s got to be something we can say,” says Luke, “without that video.”
An idea comes to me. “Actually,” I say, “there is.”
Ten minutes later, we have a story. I can’t find any holes.
“I’m freezing,” I say. “We’ve talked long enough. If we need to talk further, let’s do phone calls. It wouldn’t be suspicious for us to be talking, and they won’t know what we’re saying. Text messages leave words they can read later.”
“Allison, I…” Trinity’s eyes start to fill again. “I don’t know what to say. You and I are not friends, and what you did last night, the risks you took…”
I clear my throat and take a deep breath. “I did it for two reasons,” I say. “One, I think I’m the one who got Finley so riled up last night. I primed him pretty hard, and he took it out on you.”
Luke looks at me. “And the other reason?”
I lower my head, then raise it again. “Because I owe both of you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “Finley didn’t cut the brakes on your bike that day, Luke. I did.”