Chapter 3 Jesse
Jesse
Human beings need to lie.
We lie for reassurance, for self--preservation, for compassion.
I’m on my way! When you’re not.
Does my butt look fat in this dress? No, you look great.
I floss daily. It’s my natural hair color. I have read and agreed to the terms of service.
So, yeah, everyone lies. The real question is what are you lying about, and why?
After working in polygraphy for so long, I’ve gotten pretty good at sussing out when someone isn’t truthful.
Some people look up or away, but that can also be a sign of memory recall.
You have to watch for the inconsistencies: the jittery leg when the rest of the interview has been static; the throat clearing when you broach a topic.
Really, the only thing you can say for sure about lying is that you’ve done it.
If you say you haven’t, well. That’s a lie.
When I come downstairs with Adie in my arms, the dining room is completely empty. I know Molly is still with Evie; I heard Evie crying and Molly’s soft voice when I passed the bedroom door.
I look down at my daughter, who blinks up at me. “Now what?” I ask.
This whole situation is a fucking Gordian knot. Frankly, I don’t care if Evie is butthurt or Adam is being unreasonable or if Georgia is in crisis. I care about what this is doing to my wife. Molly and, now, Adie are my baseline, and I will move heaven and earth to keep them happy.
I carry Adie to the window and look out to the driveway. Georgia’s car is gone.
Stop fucking running, I think. Molly has made it clear to me, to Georgia, that she wants her mother back in her life.
My own feelings about Georgia are complicated.
Although I fully believe she left Manhattan on 9/11 in a desperate act to protect her baby from herself, to me that doesn’t quite justify staying away without any contact for twenty--five years.
Also, I’m a cop. You can’t work in public safety without running into someone who lost a brother, a colleague, a friend on 9/11.
Georgia’s escape from the Twin Tower attacks doesn’t diminish the sacrifices of everyone else who did die that day—-but it still leaves me feeling like there’s an unfairness to it.
A lie that is literally carved in stone on the memorial.
For what it’s worth, though, Georgia’s been through the wringer this week. The news leak led to her being discussed, in absentia, in the press and on social media as a charlatan or a sociopath. It had bothered Molly so damn much. “Why won’t she speak up for herself?” she asked.
“Same reason I wouldn’t, if I was her,” I said. “Because of you.”
I’m not sure if that’s what led those cogs in Molly’s extraordinary mind to start turning, but within hours she had reached out to Adelaide McCann at 60 Minutes to offer her an exclusive.
Given that it’s Georgia’s story, and also Molly’s, that has gripped the country for the past week, I would have expected Georgia to be a little skittish at this dinner. Instead, she had arrived with flowers and an apology.
And then Evie had gone hard on the wine and lost her shit.
Has Evie been harassed these past few days? Yes. Does she have the right to be upset? Absolutely. Yet something about her behavior tonight reminded me of when I used to set fires. Then--Jesse would have said he wanted to burn the whole world down. Now--Jesse knows I was desperate to be seen.
“All right, then,” I say to Adie. “Let’s find your grandpa.”
Adam is sitting on the couch in his study, hands clasped between his legs, staring into an unlit fireplace. There’s a folded quilt and pillow on the cushion beside him.
Interesting.
“Georgia left?” I ask.
He blinks up at me. “Yeah. Is Evie—-”
“Still with Molly.” I tilt my head. “You okay, Adam?”
He faces me, bleak—-the same kind of look I’ve seen on perps who’ve been convicted.
“I don’t know how to do this, Jesse. I’ve been trying so hard to hold it together, you know?
Like, someone has to. But Molly’s right—-she deserves to have her mother back in her life.
And Evie’s right—-she never asked for any of this. ”
“And Georgia?” I ask, cradling Adie and sitting down across from him in an armchair.
“Georgia,” he sighs. “Well, that’s the crazy thing. All this time I blamed myself for what happened to her.”
I’ve thought about that a lot. If Molly had showed signs of postpartum psychosis, would I have gaslit myself into believing I didn’t see them? I get why Adam might have been desperate to convince himself there was nothing wrong.
But Adam, it turns out, is talking about something else. He pulls at the back of his neck. “I’ve never told anyone this. Not even Molly.”
It is a warning, a request for me to keep this from her. I don’t respond, and he continues anyway.
“The morning of 9/11 I flew into Newark,” Adam says.
“I’d been in California for work and I took the red--eye so often the flight attendants knew me by name.
We landed twenty minutes early, plenty of time for me to get to the psychiatrist’s office in the World Trade Center before nine.
I expected Evie to meet me there, with the baby and Eloise.
That was the plan. I didn’t know Molly was running a fever, didn’t know that Evie had sent Eloise downtown in a cab alone.
It wasn’t like there was Wi--Fi on planes back then. ”
My detective skills kick in. “And then?”
“I stopped off at an airport lounge; I knew they had a shower there. I’d just traveled fourteen hours in a single day, and I was so fucking exhausted, and I just .
. . I wanted to be awake for this meeting with the psychiatrist. Plus, we hadn’t turned the water back on in the master bath, because Eloise hadn’t finished that damn mosaic, and I could barely fit in the guest room shower.
I thought I’d be delayed by fifteen minutes at the most.”
I nod.
“During those fifteen minutes, there was an accident near the Holland Tunnel. By the time the cab reached Manhattan, I was already late, and both towers were on fire.” Adam swallows. “Otherwise, I would have been in there when the plane hit.”
“I’m so glad you weren’t,” I say.
“For years, I’ve felt so guilty. One stupid, selfish act saved my life.”
There’s something called the burnt toast theory—-it’s when a minor inconvenience, like burning your toast, might keep you from experiencing a bigger disaster.
Because you spent another sixty seconds toasting a fresh piece of bread, you weren’t at an intersection where there was a bad car crash.
Because you got stuck in traffic, you avoided a terrorist attack.
Because you stumbled onto a bus, you wound up nine hundred miles away from an infant you’d tried to kill.
“One stupid, selfish act saved your life,” I repeat. “You could say the same about Molly.”
I’ve been on family leave, but it’s unpaid, so Molly and I decided I’d go back to work six weeks after Adie was born—-assuming her mental health was all right.
On my last weekend before reporting back on the job, we take Adie to visit my family.
Because my parents live in Upper Darby, they haven’t gotten many chances to see her.
My mother immediately snatches Adie out of her car seat, rhapsodizing over how much she’s changed in three weeks. My niece, Anna, trails them, obsessed.
Kate gives Molly a tight hug. “How are you doing?” she asks, and that could mean anything from How is motherhood?
to How are you coping with being a news story?
I wing my sister a grateful glance as she tucks Molly’s arm in hers and pulls her into the living room to debrief.
“Listen, I’m not one to judge,” I hear Kate say as they disappear.
“I still wear pregnancy granny panties because they’re so damn comfortable. ”
That leaves me with my dad, Brian. We’ve had a complicated relationship, because that’s the endgame when you’re a fireman and your teenage son turns out to be an arsonist.
My father stands with his hands in his jeans pockets.
Since having Adie, there’s been so much I want to talk to him about, but I don’t really know how to get started.
It’s not like we’ve had many heart--to--hearts.
Most of my childhood was sucked up by Kate’s illness and Anna’s death, and by the time my family emerged from the rock tumbler, I was an adult, out of the house.
“Root beer?” my dad asks.
I nod, and he pulls two bottles from the fridge and walks out the kitchen door into the backyard.
Across the patio is the garage—-an outbuilding with a bedroom above it that belonged to me when I was a kid, making it supremely easy to sneak out at night or smoke or drink or do any of the other hundred things that made me a total pain in the ass.
My mother uses it now as a ceramics studio.
When she quit being a lawyer, she took up pottery.
For Christmas every year, I get a new mug.
My father sits down on a piece of the wrought--iron patio furniture we’ve had forever. The cushions are new, though. Cheery, yellow. “So,” he says. “How’s work?”
“I go back tomorrow,” I reply.
“And Molly?” my dad asks.
I let out a long breath. “She’s . . . good. I mean, all things considered.”
He takes a drink. “Must have been a real shock, having that woman show up.”
“At first, she wanted nothing to do with Georgia. They’re getting closer now, and Georgia’s been a huge help with the baby. But in order to build that relationship, Molly kind of had to use the bricks from her old family. So now that foundation’s a little rocky.”
“Families are messy,” my father says.
The understatement of all understatements. I click my bottle to his in agreement.
He glances at me. “You know, I used to have dreams about Anna coming back. I’d find out it was a mistake, and she had been alive all this time. I got so excited, and then, she showed up, and I didn’t recognize her. For me, she’s stuck at thirteen. I had no idea who she was anymore.”