Five months later
The fire licked hungrily at the thick logs. The smell of the warm hearth permeated Melissa’s apartment and mingled with the scent of hot apple cider. What she had proposed as a simple Christmas Eve open house menu of spiral-cut ham, Parker House rolls, and a tossed green salad had grown into a full spread as her mother had continued to come up with additional dishes for the table.
By Melissa’s count, Riley was on her sixth trip to an inviting bowl of crab dip. Melissa’s mother joked that somehow the child was going to be a Cape Cod girl after all.
She watched as Mac quietly refilled her mother’s teacup. He had withdrawn as Brian Bloom’s attorney of record immediately after the arrest, on the grounds that his client had retained him under a false identity for the purpose of facilitating a crime. He was now her regular cohost on The Justice Club, which had quadrupled its audience since the summer. She was not certain the rest of the Eldredge family would ever fully forgive him, but she understood how much it had pained him to do what a lawyer had to do for his client.
Catching her eye, Mac waved her over to a quiet corner of the living room. “Did you hear anything more from the DA’s office last week?”
“They think they’re going to reach a cooperation deal with Rebecca.”
So far, Rebecca Bloom was the only conspirator to speak with law enforcement. Melissa no longer thought of the siblings as Charlie and Rachel Miller. Those people had never really existed. She was having a harder time accepting the truth about Katie.
Rebecca told police she and her brother met Katie after they reached out to the district attorney’s office during the trial of Jennifer Duncan and she was appointed as their contact person. Since the prosecution had no intention of calling them as witnesses, Melissa never met either of them. Katie, on the other hand, had what Rebecca described as “instantaneous chemistry” with her brother. Even as their relationship grew more intense, they kept it cloaked in secrecy because of Katie’s work.
By the time Katie stopped practicing law, the two had a different reason for hiding their connection—the fight for Doug Hanover’s estate. According to Rebecca, she witnessed a growing obsession in both her brother and Katie as Jennifer Duncan not only prevailed in her exoneration case, but also spun the story for wealth and celebrity status. She described Brian’s disgust as being targeted primarily at Jennifer, while Katie was the one who seethed with resentment toward the lawyer at Jennifer’s side.
“If Rebecca’s going to testify against Brian and Katie,” Mac said, “does that mean she’ll finally admit she knew the plan all along?”
In her first statement to police, Rebecca claimed she had no idea that her brother and Katie were planning to kill Melissa until Charlie left their motel with a gun only hours before they were all arrested. She thought they were going to frame her for kidnapping and then force her to admit that Jennifer Duncan had supposedly planned the shooting of her husband.
“The prosecutors hope so,” Melissa said. “In some ways, it doesn’t matter. The phones they were using that night prove they were all involved in drafting my so-called suicide note, and that alone is enough to make her an accomplice to attempted murder. She says she was afraid Katie and her brother would turn on her next.”
“Too bad for her that’s not an actual defense,” Mac said.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see her brother. “I hear law talk,” he said. “This is ironic coming from me to you, but maybe now’s a good time to choose to be happy. Clear those people from your mind and allow yourself a little Christmas cheer. I’m about to pop some wine open.”
“Those are all excellent ideas,” she said.
A tap on the apartment door was followed by the appearance of Amanda Keeney, her long blonde hair dripping wet. “Merry soaking Christmas Eve, everyone! Sorry I’m late. I hope Neil explained. The NYPD does not close for holidays—or rainstorms, apparently.”
Riley wiped her dip-smeared fingers on a Santa Claus paper napkin and ran to Amanda for a hug. She was growing so fast, all the way up to hip height on Amanda already. Neil Keeney greeted his wife with a kiss and a mug of cider.
Melissa’s brother moved to the kitchen and began opening a bottle of red wine. She was pleased that Mike no longer asked permission before touching anything in the kitchen. He had been visiting the city almost every month. At her suggestion, he was going to leave a few of his things in the guest room so he could come and go for short trips without even packing a bag, and he had reached a tentative deal to work as a boat captain in the Hamptons during the summer.
Once the bottle was open and on the dining room table, Patrick held an empty glass up in her direction, and she nodded her approval. He brushed her wrist gently with his thumb as she accepted the wine-filled glass from him, happy they had begun spending time together again once she understood why he had broken off their engagement. Unbeknownst to her, Katie had gone to Patrick, pretending that Melissa had confided in her that she did not want to have children, even though having a family was something Melissa and Patrick had discussed. Katie insisted that Melissa had only agreed to have children to give Patrick what he wanted. Katie’s exact words were “Melissa thinks she can just choose to be happy even though she’s forcing herself to go through with this. She will be miserable, and it will be your fault. If you really love her, you need to set her free.” And Patrick did in fact love her—so much so that he had made the terrible mistake of ending their relationship.
It was possible Katie simply needed Melissa to be single and heartbroken to fall prey to Brian Bloom’s attention, but Melissa suspected she had a secondary motive that was more personal. Though some of TruthTeller’s hateful comments had been posted by the Blooms, the police had traced nearly all of them to Katie’s laptop. She had enjoyed watching Melissa in pain. Despite knowing as a lawyer that she should not speak to her directly, Melissa had even tried to visit Katie in jail to understand how she had come to despise her so deeply. Not surprisingly, Katie had refused to see her. The next time she’d be in the same room with her former best friend, it would be to testify against her.
Neil Keeney was on his feet, ready to make a toast. “I want to thank my old friends Melissa and Mike—”
“Watch it, Neil,” Mike called out as he joined them from the kitchen. “You’re older than either one of us.”
“My dear friends, Melissa and Mike, and of course their mother, Nancy, for including us.” She knew that Neil felt terrible guilt for helping Katie steer Melissa to a group counselor where Brian Bloom was already pretending to be a client named Charlie Miller, but Melissa assured him that she knew he had only been trying to help. “I still remember my parents recalling warmly how grateful they were to be invited to the Eldredge home after another difficult time for your family, so it means the world to Amanda and me to be here with you today, celebrating your first Christmas with little Riley here to join us.”
Riley squealed out a delightful “Cheers” along with the rest of them. She felt herself smiling as she watched Patrick help her to clink her juice cup against the other adults’ glasses. When Riley was finished, she set down her cup and replaced it with the stuffed reindeer Patrick had brought for her. Only time would tell, but she suspected he had enough love in his heart to be there for both of them in the long run.
Riley was still clutching her new toy when she climbed onto Melissa’s lap. To Melissa’s surprise and delight, Rebecca had actually agreed to Melissa’s appointment as Riley’s legal guardian while she was incarcerated. Melissa’s best guess was that Rebecca thought the move might help her legal defense, but the district attorney’s office was confident that, even if Rebecca reached an agreement to testify against her brother and Katie, she would not be getting out of prison until Riley was at least eighteen.
Melissa’s arms tightened around Riley as her body weight grew heavy from sleepiness. This child was not her daughter, nor even her stepdaughter. To each other, they were simply Riley and Missa. They would figure out the rest along the way. She had no idea whether Riley would continue to have contact with her mother in the coming years, or how much she would remember about her mother or her uncle Brian as she grew older, or what kinds of questions she might ask or when. Maybe she would be like Mike and have the courage to process the unvarnished truth. Or maybe, like Melissa, she would try to believe that the trauma of the past doesn’t have to define us. The only certainty she knew, from the wellspring of her being, was that she would find a way for Riley to have a chance at true happiness, because this little girl had given that to Melissa.
She realized that the sleet was no longer pelting the windows, that the moaning sound of the wind had died. Riley stirred on her lap. Before slipping back into soft, even breathing, Riley murmured a single word. “Momma.”