Chapter Forty-Five Harriet
Chapter Forty-Five
Harriet
I push into the nearest bathroom, desperate for a moment alone so I can finally allow my tears to fall.
Nic has every right to be mad; I know he does, but I wish he would just listen to me for a minute. I’d tell him he was right. My priorities were all mixed up. I’d somehow missed the forest for the trees.
The article isn’t what’s important. Sara is.
He is.
More practically, I need to share what Kozel said.
How he told me that he doesn’t believe Sara’s guilty.
He told me to keep pushing, but I haven’t been.
Since the gun went off in George’s office, I’ve been paralyzed with indecision, fear, worry.
And the one person I want to talk about everything with won’t give me the time of day.
On the other end of things—Frankie. My article. That Times piece.
After Frankie saw it, she called me, ranting into my voicemail about how I’d been scooped.
Since then, I’ve been ignoring her numerous emails, texts, calls—each angrier than the next. Telling me I better come up with another angle if I want to ever get my job back.
I don’t care about that fucking job anymore.
I just want to get Sara out of jail.
I brace myself against the counter, studying my reflection in the mirror.
I need to stop avoiding this. I know what I need to do. I’ve known since the conversation Steven and I had in his apartment. It’s time I finally fix this.
My phone’s heavy in my hand as I dial her number.
She answers on the first ring. “Harriet, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for days.
You’re screening my calls? Are you fucking kidding me?
We have to talk about that Times article—I should have known you couldn’t handle this.
I should have known I couldn’t trust you. I should have known—”
I want to hang up and go hide under my bed.
I force myself to speak. “I—”
She keeps going. “You fucked up majorly, Baker. You have one shot to fix this or you can kiss your chance at working at Humans again goodbye. You told me initially that girl Sara’s the real story.
That little Podunk paper didn’t mention anything about her.
Maybe go talk to her again. Play up the doubt.
People love stories about pretty girl killers.
Look at Amanda Knox. They’re still making shows about her! ”
“The entire point is to get Sara out of jail!”
Frankie scoffs. “At this point, her being behind bars helps you. If she gets out, you’re shit out of luck.
The corruption angle’s been done. It’s over.
So get the fuck to work. We can call her…
Hot Killer Chef. Or something like that.
Send me some copy ASAP. I’m waiting forever.
You’re lucky I’m even giving you another chance here—”
“Actually,” I say, finally getting to why I called, “I’m not writing that.”
A pause.
“Not writing what?”
“Anything.” I’d rather be unemployed for the rest of my life than work for this bitch again. “I’m not writing anything for you.”
A beat of silence, then an explosion. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she screams.
“Not kidding at all. If I do write something about all this, I want it published by someone I trust. Someone who’s familiar with the word ethics. Not someone who fired me to protect their own ass. So sorry, not sorry, but I quit.”
“Harriet.” Frankie’s voice is a low growl. “If you do this, you are done. Do I make myself clear? You will never work in this town again. We will sue you for breach of contract—”
I laugh. “Do your worst. You might remember you never had me sign anything?”
She’s still screaming as I hang up.
I catch my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks are warm, my eyes glassy and wild.
I look completely unhinged.
A loud laugh escapes through my lips.
I want to text Nic and tell him everything but decide I should finally respect his wish for space.
I’ve matured so much in the last five minutes.
That call to Frankie revived me. I’m more determined than ever to solve this fucking thing.
But how?
Was George’s murder connected to the casino? If so, maybe he and Mayor DiPetrio had a falling out and she killed him? Or maybe Sharkey got nervous that George was going to expose his corruption? Or Fire Chief Dutton? Or…or…
My mind is spinning with questions. I don’t know what’s important anymore.
What I need right now is to clear my mind.
Talk to someone who has nothing to do with any of this.
“Harriet!” my grandmother exclaims as she opens the front door to her townhome. A smile stretches across her face. “We weren’t expecting you!” She hesitates. “Were we?”
I pretend like I don’t hear that. “You weren’t,” I say.
“Are you here to say goodbye?”
“Goodbye?” It hits me—my dad and Cynthia got back late last night, which means Vicky is leaving for London soon. “Oh, right! Yes. Of course. When does she leave? I wish we could have spent more time together.”
After Mindy was shot, Vicky was amazing; she brought her food in the hospital, checked in on me daily.
I’m going to miss her.
“Tomorrow,” Gogo sighs, her wafer-thin hand drifting to her collarbone. “Who knows when she’ll be back? I’m not getting any younger. In another ten years…who knows where I’ll be?”
“Gogo! Stop.” I hate it when she talks like that. With her recent memory slips—no. I can’t think about it. I came here to decompress, not pile on more worries.
“Well, it’s true, Harriet,” she says. “When you get to my age, death is something you learn to live with. That said, I do want to spend more time with my daughter before it takes me. I wish Vicky had never left New York. She had a whole life there, but she never looked back. I do understand why, but I miss her every day.” She leads me into the living room.
“Have you ever seen pictures of her back then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Here.” She pats the couch. “Let me show you. She took that city by storm, I tell you.” She walks over to the bookshelf by the window, crouching in front of it, her knees cracking loudly.
“Let me see…oh yes. Here we are.” She tugs an old, spiral-bound photo album out of the row of books and brings it to the couch.
“Vicky stored some of her things here when she moved overseas.” She flips to the first page and taps a photo. “Look at my girl,” she says with pride.
It’s unmistakably a much younger Vicky, with the hair to prove it. She’s wearing a graduation cap and a long purple robe.
“Her graduation from NYU,” Gogo says. “What a day! She was so excited. I thought she’d stay in that city forever. She loved it so. She had so many plans…”
She flips through more pictures, taking me through Vicky’s mid-twenties. We’re almost to the end when Gogo yawns.
“I need to make my tea.” She sets the album between us and stands. “Would you like one?”
“Sure. I’ll make it!” I’m not sure she should use the stove.
“Thank you, peanut, but I can handle it. You’re as bad as your aunt, hovering like I’m a child. I’m perfectly capable, you know.”
I swallow my argument. How much trouble can she get into when I’m sitting in the next room? “Okay. Yes, I’d love one.”
She disappears into the kitchen, and I pick up the album, absentmindedly flipping through more pages. Vicky on the tram to Roosevelt Island. Vicky in Washington Square Park. Vicky standing beneath a gold banner that reads Happy Birthday!, her arm slung around the shoulders of an attractive man.
An attractive man who’s somehow familiar.
Have I met him before? Maybe they came to visit at some point?
Gogo’s head pops through the doorway. “Milk?”
“What?” It takes me a second to register her question. “Oh, sure. But—hey. Who’s this guy?”
I turn the album so she can see it.
“Hold on. My eyes are no good anymore.” She walks to me and cranes her neck toward the photo. “Oh! Oh my. That’s Vicky’s fiancé.”
“Fiancé?” I didn’t know Vicky had been engaged. “What happened? I didn’t think Vicky had ever been married. Or…is she divorced?”
“Oh dear.” Gogo sinks down next to me. “It’s a very sad story. We don’t really talk about it. It nearly broke her. He died the weekend before they were supposed to be married. It was tragic. Vicky was inconsolable, understandably. She moved to London about two months later.”
I’m stunned. All this time, I thought Vicky moved to London because she was a free spirit. I had no idea that she was running from heartbreak.
“That’s awful,” I breathe. “Did I ever meet him?”
Gogo frowns. “Not that I remember, but…let me think. You could have, I suppose. But you would have been quite young. A year, if that? I doubt you’d remember him.”
The kettle starts whistling in the kitchen.
“I’ll go fix our cups,” Gogo says. She pats my hand and climbs to her feet.
I study the picture again. I swear I’ve seen that face before. It’s something about his hair…the shape of his jaw. He looks a little like John F. Kennedy Jr., actually—
Wait.
I grab my phone off the coffee table and scroll through my photos until I find it—the picture of the obituary I found in George’s desk drawer.
Adrian Pruner (1977–2001) written beneath a black-and-white photo of a man who looks a hell of a lot like JFK Jr. The man who Matthew’s mom told us died in the warehouse fire George set.
I hold the phone up next to the picture in Vicky’s album, my heart thundering in my chest.
And I see that I’m right.
The man who died in that fire is the same person standing next to my aunt.