“I’m going for a walk.” Willow trotted down the stairs after her husband. As he’d gotten dressed for work, in the navy suit and striped tie suitable for the accounting job they’d found for him, she’d yanked on a black sleeveless knit dress and flat shoes, then packed what she needed in a woven gypsy bag she’d kept from California. She could no longer see anything unusual in Avery’s backyard—no police, no guards, not even crime scene tape. No dog, either. What had happened to the dog?
What worried her more: What if the police were now watching their house? Or following them? She was paranoid, sure, but was it paranoia if it made sense?
“Willow.” Tom shook his head, continued down the stairs. “If you’re not here, the police will just come back.”
“Okay, you got me,” She smiled, trying to act natural. “But, sweetheart? I really don’t want to face them alone. Bad enough that you’re working late tonight. Maybe I’ll stay out, too. Have dinner somewhere.”
Willow had to make Tom believe she was not only dodging the police, which was true, but also that taking a walk was her only agenda. Which wasn’t true.
“What’s gotten into you?” Tom asked. “Did you sleep at all? Honey? You go for walks every day. You don’t have to ask permission to do anything. Why is this a big deal?”
“Oh, Tom, what if we have to leave again?” She couldn’t hold it in. Couldn’t. She was exhausted, drained, hadn’t slept, not a minute. “What if they’ve found us? What if they killed Avery as a warning that we’re next?”
She had to stop. Her brain was going too fast. “Or by mistake? Thinking she was me?”
“Willow, honey. Willow. We don’t look the same as we did, you and I.” Tom put down his briefcase, gestured at her. “Look at your hair. Your eyebrows. Some mornings even I don’t recognize you.”
She looked nothing like the old Daniella, she knew that. But they couldn’t change Dunc’s—Tom’s—cheekbones, and even his gray hair didn’t make him someone else.
“Exactly!” She was almost crying now. “That’s how they could have made a mistake! Because we don’t look like we used to! And—”
She stopped, mid-tirade, with yet another fear. What if the police suspected her of killing Avery? She hadn’t, of course, but how would she defend herself? It would all come out. She thought of yet another undefendable horror.
“What if they try to blame you?” Her voice tensed to a wail. She could hear it, but couldn’t help it.
“Me?” Tom came closer, gently smoothed her hair away from her face. “Oh, honey, don’t do this. Okay?”
“But Roger—” She almost choked on the name, couldn’t say it, the name of the man whose fault this whole hideous thing was. The head of Untitled.
“Roger Hayden can’t hurt us,” Tom said. As if he’d read her mind. “He’s in custody. In California. Remember?”
“But what if Hayden helped the feds somehow? Like we did? What if now—he’s free, too? What if he found us? We ruined his life. Don’t you think he’d want to ruin ours? That’s why we’re—” She waved an arm, flailing, gesturing to everything. “Right? Right?”
Willow felt her heart race again. It got worse when she saw Tom’s face change, his forehead furrow. Because it proved he was considering what she’d said. As he should. Yes, Tom had made some mistakes, huge ones, but only at the behest—demand—of studio head Roger Hayden. And when it got too much for Tom’s conscience, he’d taken the studio’s books, the real ones as well as the duplicate ones, to his lawyer, and then to the feds. Untitled Studios collapsed, with Roger Hayden, threatening his eternal revenge, taken into custody. Soon after, the two of them, accountant and actress, were federally reborn as Tom and Willow Galt.
Now she’d blown the whole charade. But what else could she do? Avery was a friend. Kind of. She second-guessed herself, regretting. Keeping quiet was always better. She’d remember that now, forever and ever. Never say another word.
“Tom. What if it gets out that I’m talking to the police? What if someone takes a photo and puts it on TV? What if the police start looking into our background? What if they find out who we really are?”
“You’re making this up. All of it.” Tom hefted his briefcase, as if to signal their “discussion” was over. “Don’t get hysterical, honey. Avery Morgan is dead. It’s sad, but she can’t be connected to us. It has nothing to do with Roger Hayden, and he can’t find us. The police will solve their case, and go away.”
His face had softened with a curve of his eyebrows, the hint of a smile. “Honey? Of course you’re upset. Anyone would be upset.” He tucked his arm around her waist, walked her to the front door. “But don’t make it more than it is. Deal?”
Outside, the beginnings of a summer morning—an insistent cardinal, the rustle of elm trees, a white butterfly dancing across their tiny front lawn. Together they looked left, then looked right, but they were alone. No police, no sentries, no lurking guys in pretending-to-be-civilian outfits. Willow could almost breathe.
“See? There’s no one waiting to pounce.” Tom clicked his remote at their silver car. “Okay? You okay?”
“I’m okay.” She waved as he backed out of their driveway. Tom was much better at this than she was. He didn’t need pills, like she sometimes did. He’d been fast asleep last night, this morning really, when she’d sneaked out of bed and locked herself in the guest bathroom. She’d balanced on the cool molded edge of the white porcelain bathtub, turning the heavy black pages in her scrapbook.
Contraband, certainly—beyond contraband, and into land mine. Time bomb. She’d retrieved the scrapbook from its safekeeping place under the guest room mattress. Even Tom didn’t know she had it. In the safety of the white-tiled bathroom, she’d paged through, seeing her childhood. Millie. Her California home. And the studio.
She turned the page, knowing what was next. The photo at the Untitled annual party, the photo of her and Dunc. On the very day they’d met. This captured moment was a treasure, her treasure. She would not rip that photo to pieces. She couldn’t.
But in the same photo, a smiling Avery Morgan. Even though Willow had never met her back then, she’d recognized Avery in the photo because she’d looked at it so many times. She’d never thought it would matter. Now it proved their real identities. Proved they’d all worked at the same California studio. Proved a past. The photo blew their cover and ruined their new lives and ended their safety.
If the police searched their house, they’d find it.
She could not destroy this book, not ever. She needed it, to remember Duncan and Daniella. But even the possibility of discovery meant she had to get it out of the house. Had to hide it. Somewhere safe, and, equally important, somewhere she could retrieve it when the time came.
And, thanks to Avery, poor Avery, she knew exactly where that would be.
EDWARD TARRANT
He wasn’t gawking, not like some feeble-minded, tabloid-reading lowlife fascinated by death. This was purely business. Edward had every right to be at the Morgan House. He would decide how to present himself when he arrived. If he decided to arrive.
Edward stepped up his pace as he crossed Brookline Ave and turned into the leafy boulevard that marked the edge of The Reserve. A couple of silvery airplanes on the westbound takeoff pattern from Logan left slashing contrails across the cloudless blue sky. He remembered that opening day of school in 2001, when the planes stopped, leaving Adams Bay and all of Boston in eerie silence. He remembered the days, just at spring break, after the Marathon bombing, when the streets went empty, save for jungle-camouflaged National Guard members and their menacing German shepherds. What happened to Avery Morgan wouldn’t stop air travel, or clear the streets. But it might prove equally earthshaking to his life.
An imaginary conversation began in his head as he squinted into the morning sunshine, the irritating red light at Regatta Road slowing his progress. Did you kill Avery Morgan? some cop might ask. He could feel his blood pressure rising as he contemplated the audacity of that question. But the answer was no, he hadn’t killed her. And that was the truth.
Next question: Did you know anything about it? The light changed as he measured out his answer to that one. No, he didn’t, he’d say, and that was probably true. It might have been a vagrant, or a hophead, some dope dealer. Or some sob-story-telling stray, some random roustabout who bighearted Avery had allowed inside. Or hell, it might have been the next freaking Boston Strangler.
This chaos, and the inevitable questioning to come, threatened to upset Tarrant’s personal applecart beyond repair. Unintended consequences. He’d brandished that phrase to so many of his students. What you do has consequences, and I’m the one who will tell you what they are. He smiled, even now, remembering their anxious expressions and dawning understanding.
And there it was, the Morgan House, a block away now. Red brick, with black wrought-iron fencing, knee high, around its patch of green lawn. Tarrant’s office paid for that damn lawn. The yellow crime scene tape, festooned like a macabre holiday decoration, looped through the curved iron and draped across the front door. A barrier to keep out intruders.
But he wasn’t an intruder. He was the landlord. And possibly the best defense was a good offense. Should he approach the cops? Calculating, he adjusted his tie, loosening the paisley silk, feeling his starched shirt collar fail in a puff of August heat.
A sound behind him, and as he stepped into the shade of a Reserve elm, a white Crown Vic slid by, as obvious a cop car as any he’d ever seen, two figures in the front seat, windows closed. The car eased by him, slowed, pulled to the curb across from the Morgan House. The doors remained closed.
Do you know Avery Morgan’s password? He felt his expression change to reflect his infinite skepticism as he mentally practiced his response. No, he’d answer, certainly not. And that would be a lie, but an unprovable lie. The cops could never know he’d guessed it.
If they took her computer, though, he might be screwed. Might be better for him to go back and take another look. Only Mack had seen him the night before. Mack, who’d respectfully tipped his ball cap to Tarrant, then continued his security rounds. Edward hadn’t even needed to try out his excuses. Mack had simply accepted he was where he should be. After all, Mack hadn’t known Avery was dead. Just another evening at Adams Bay.
Edward had been so spooked, though, he’d bolted from the room, controlling every muscle to keep himself walking at a leisurely pace, not giving in to his instinct to sprint back to his office as fast as he could.
He knew exactly what he was afraid of. What he was looking for. The video he’d taken down from YouTube but couldn’t bear to destroy. Who else had a copy? Could be anyone. Could be no one.
Did that video also live on Avery’s computer? Had she also kept it as a souvenir? Of … him?
Edward’s skin had tingled as he’d clicked open one set of his own files last night, then another one, going deeper into his computer. He’d been an idiot to keep it, a sentimental fool, but how did he know it would ever matter? Maybe it wouldn’t. But if the police found it, it could certainly put the lie to “We were simply colleagues” and “We never socialized.” Before the cops asked him, he definitely had to decide how he’d characterize their relationship.
Behind his locked door and back in the darkened privacy of his office, heart rate down to semi-normal, he’d clicked the “play” triangle before he had a chance to second-guess himself. He needed to look at the video through a cop’s eyes, not his own, and see what someone else would see. He was a pro, he could do that, he knew what they’d be looking for.
The music on the video blasted, so loud it had banged off the walls of his office. He stabbed the mouse to mute the sound, then eased the volume up to bare-whisper level. The lighting at the party was tantalizingly random, he remembered as the scene unfolded, fat candles flickering shadows on the round poolside tables, a scattering of paper lanterns dangling from the trees in Avery’s—the Morgan House’s—backyard. A few heads bobbed from the shallow end of the pool. Slashes of underwater lighting proved they were wearing bathing suits. Beer bottles, wineglasses, heads thrown back in laughter. He tried to see the summer gathering without the filter of death, without the filter of what had happened—how? why?—in that very same pool.
He’d pressed his fingertips into his forehead, watching the students singing into their beer bottles. Then Avery herself, in a white dress, her hair held back with a pink ribbon, sipping from a yellow plastic cup. Someone’s shadow moved across her shoulders. Someone who’d stepped away as the camera moved closer. His shadow. His.
He watched as the camera zoomed in on Avery, her eyes shining, candlelight softening her face. She turned to smile at him. He’d seen it on video a hundred times, knew the camera never really included him, but still felt his throat tighten every time he watched, absurdly fearing the student using the camera would somehow move it, just enough to reveal him next to her.
The same student who then posted it on YouTube. Edward had called him in, “asked” him—the word with infinite subtext—to take it down, to protect the school’s reputation, and Ms. Morgan’s, and, more pointedly, the student’s own. The student, wisely, agreed to delete it. Edward had asked for the original, too. Couldn’t be too careful. And no student was going to refuse Edward Tarrant. Especially not Trey Welliver.
Edward had made his own private copy before Trey deleted it. Had Avery made one, too? Had Trey? Had anyone else? The video ended, snapped to black.
Edward had started it again from the beginning, scouring for anything he might have missed. And trying to memorize it. Because, certainly he’d have to delete it. Soon.
But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Not the night of her death. This last memory of her? Of what they had? She’d embraced it, he’d seen it in her eyes.
And now, standing a block from the Morgan House in the next morning’s light, watching two obvious detectives get out of their Crown Vic, he pivoted and, again using every bit of his willpower not to run, headed back to his office.