Chapter Thirty-Eight
“What are you talking about?” I braced for more lies, but then it registered that this was the first time Lizzie wasn’t fidgeting or on edge around me. Instead, she seemed resigned.
“It was an accident,” she said with quiet resolve. “Ali didn’t mean it. He was just trying to protect me.”
My scalp tingled. “Protect you from what?”
“My father.” She walked into the sitting room and over to the window. I followed her. “Daddy was overprotective, and he had a temper, especially when he drank. And he drank a lot. Too much. He caught Ali kissing me.”
“What happened?”
“Daddy walked in on Ali kissing me in our family room when I was seventeen. It was just a kiss. An innocent teenage thing.” Her blue eyes filled. “Ali and I were sitting on the fireplace hearth—you know, that built-in brick bench in front of the fire—”
“I know what a hearth is.” I remembered Nasser telling me about the police report and how Lawrence Martins had died at home after accidentally falling and hitting his head on the raised hearth. “Go on.”
“That’s why I’ve been avoiding you,” she said quietly. “Ali took his secret to the grave. I thought it wasn’t my place to tell you.”
Dread trickled through me. “Tell me what?”
“He protected me when I needed it.” She swiped a tear away. “I felt that the least I could do was protect Ali in death.”
“What happened?” My voice came out as a whisper. I cleared my throat. “I need to know. Tell me.”
“We jumped up as soon as my dad tore into the room, calling me a whore—” She bit her lip, trying to keep her composure. “He was coming at me. I think he was going to hit me. Ali instinctively stepped between us and shoved my father away. That’s when Daddy fell and hit his head.”
I recoiled as though she’d punched me. “No. You’re not saying—” I couldn’t bring myself to put words to the thought.
“It wasn’t like it was a hard push or anything,” she said. “But Ali was an eighteen-year-old high school athlete. Daddy was an out-of-shape man in his fifties. He stumbled backward and tripped over our shoes, which we’d taken off. He fell and hit his head.”
“On the fireplace.” My voice cracked.
“Sit down,” she said gently, coming over and guiding me into the nearest chair. “You don’t look very good. You’ve lost all the color in your face.”
I slumped into the chair, my legs giving out. “Keep going. I need to hear everything.”
Sitting opposite me, Lizzie told me the rest. Lawrence Martins was knocked unconscious by the fall.
Her mother came into the room and told Lizzie to call 911.
And then Mrs. Martins turned to Ali and told him to go home.
Her husband would already be furious when he woke up, and seeing Ali would make things worse.
It’s OK, she’d said to Ali. He’s had too much to drink.
And the paramedics are on their way. They’ll check him out.
Everything is fine. So Ali, a scared teenager in way over his head, had done what Mrs. Martins asked.
“But then the paramedics came,” Lizzie said. “And it was worse than we thought. My father had stopped breathing. They transported him to the hospital, but there was nothing to be done. It was too late.”
“No.” I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I was hearing. “No.”
When Ali heard the news the next day, he told Mrs. Martins that he was going to tell the police the truth. It was an accident, he said. I’ll explain it all to them. But Mrs. Martins had insisted that Ali stay silent.
“We’d already lied to police,” Lizzie said to me. “How would it look if we told them, after the fact, that Ali was there when my father fell, that he pushed him?”
My throat was dry. Poor Ali. “He wanted to tell the truth.” Of course he had. That was the man I knew.
“My mother begged Ali to say nothing. We would all look like liars, like we were guilty of something. There was also an insurance policy.” She hauled a decorative pillow into her lap, her fingers toying with the fringed trim.
“We were going to need that money to live on after Daddy died. If there were any questions surrounding his death, we risked losing everything—the house, the ability to pay for college, everything. Mom told Ali that he’d do even more damage to my family if he went to the police.
And we’d already been hurt enough with Daddy’s death. ”
“All this time.” Nausea stirred in my stomach. “Ali lived his entire adult life with this horrible secret?”
“It was the only way. He was eighteen. His life could have been ruined.”
My heart ached for what Ali had endured. To keep a secret like that, to be unable to seek public exoneration, had to have eaten away at him. “It was wrong of your mother to make him lie.”
“Was it?” she asked. “Mom reminded him that he was his parents’ only son. It would have killed them to have their son accused of murder. It could have ruined Ali’s future.”
“Or maybe you did it to save yourselves because the only real adult in the room, your mother, chose to lie to the police from the beginning.” Anger flared in my belly. “And then she forced a decent, naive kid to go against his principles so that she could get her insurance money.”
“I know this is a shock. It’s hard to think rationally at a time like this.” Empathy coated every word. “Once you’ve thought it through, you’ll have a different view. Who would it have served if Ali came forward? No one, that’s who.”
“It might have been the best thing for Ali,” I choked out. “For his conscience.”
“Maybe. That’s easy for you to say now. But think about it.
” She toyed with the pillow trim. “His life would have been ruined. He could have been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. That’s a felony conviction.
It would have hurt Ali’s chances of going to college.
And do you think that fancy accounting firm of his would hire a convicted felon? ”
“No, probably not.” But still, what they’d done to Ali was wrong.
I tried to think rationally. To give Mrs. Martins the benefit of the doubt.
She’d just lost her husband. Maybe she truly believed she was protecting Ali.
Had they really acted in his best interest?
Or had they sacrificed him for the insurance money?
“We were all in a state of panic and fear and confusion.” Lizzie released a long, trembling breath. “My father had just died. Everything was crazy. Maybe what my mother did was wrong, but she made the best decision she could at the time. She wanted to protect all of us, including Ali.”
I could only imagine the damage keeping that horrible secret had done to Ali’s conscience. “You mentioned he seemed anxious when you saw him several weeks before the accident.”
“We met very occasionally because I was the only person that he could talk openly with about what happened to my father. That was the only lasting bond we shared.”
“And when you had lunch together in Reston? What was that about?”
“Where?” Her brow crinkled momentarily but then cleared. “Oh, you’re talking about when we met at that restaurant by Lake Anne. That was near the anniversary of Daddy’s death. The anniversary always hit Ali hard. And me too, of course.”
“Did he go see you in North Carolina?”
“Once, when we needed to sign some documents related to the mortgage. He was on a golfing trip with his buddies. I only saw Ali for a couple of hours.”
“But you two talked regularly?”
“Not often. More so in the years since I bought the house on Cozy Glenn, when the secret seemed to fester in Ali. He’d call me to talk or meet up when he needed to unburden himself.”
Queasiness coated my stomach. I swallowed down against the rising bile.
But it was no use. I surged to my feet and bolted to the bathroom.
Slamming the door behind me, I barely made it to the toilet before I vomited.
My belly heaved and I retched, the sour taste filling my mouth as I emptied the contents of my stomach into the bowl.
Tears stung my eyes. My head pounded. I gagged until there was nothing left but dry heaves, my body trying to rid itself of a truth that there was no escaping.
Weak and spent, I slid to the porcelain floor, the chill of the tiles bleeding through my pants. I leaned back against the wall, taking a few deep breaths, shaking my head against the thoughts ricocheting in my mind.
I pictured Adam, our tall and gangly son still fighting the pimples that plagued him in high school. Adam was nineteen, no longer a boy but not yet a man. Ali had been a year younger when Lizzie’s father died, an unseasoned teenager faced with an unthinkable situation.
I believed Lizzie. It made sense for guilt to drive Ali to help both Lizzie and her brother.
That sense of obligation, the idea that he owed them for killing their father, explained why Ali had risked his professional reputation to help Bill Warren.
Why he’d put our marriage, and potentially his own happiness, on the line to help Lizzie buy her house.
There was a light tap on the door. “Amira?” Lizzie’s gentle voice. “Are you OK? Can I get you anything?”
“No,” I croaked, my throat burning. “Just give me a minute, please.” I hauled myself up and over to the sink.
Turning on the water, I tried to rinse the bitterness out of my mouth.
I scanned the personal-care products scattered on the bathroom counter.
Maybe Lizzie had something that would chase away the acrid taste on my tongue.
Among the cosmetics, vials of prescription meds, and skin-care paraphernalia, I spotted a plastic bottle of green breath freshener.
Pouring some mouthwash into my cupped hand, I sucked it and gargled.
My gaze wandered over the products on the counter as I swished the minty liquid around while silently counting to sixty.
Lizzie took her beauty seriously. There were lots of eyeshadows and lipsticks, balms and lotions.
All high end. I didn’t recognize any of the meds, which had long medical names I couldn’t begin to pronounce: escitalopram, alprazolam, citalopram. Why was Lizzie on so much medication?
When my count reached sixty, I spit out the mouthwash.
At least my breath was a little fresher now.
I splattered cold water on my flushed face, relishing the coolness against my hot cheeks.
Grabbing a clean folded white washcloth, I mopped my face.
I took a deep breath to fortify myself and went back out to join Lizzie.
“I don’t want you to think this was easy on any of us,” she said.
“I started having severe stomach problems after Daddy died. I still have to take all sorts of prescription meds to calm my digestive tract.”
It was hard to feel sympathy for her in that moment. People lost loved ones every day and it was a tragedy. I knew that as well as anyone. What wasn’t common was for a good man to live with the guilt of having killed someone as a teenager and never having the chance to defend himself.
I looked at Lizzie and found her watching me closely. I needed to escape. From her at least, since there was no getting away from the awful truth.
I grabbed my purse. “I have to go.”