“Callahan. Get up. You got a visitor,” the corrections officer said, rapping on the bars of Aidan’s cell.
“Is it my lawyer?”
“Civilian.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Get moving.”
A civilian? Could that mean Tommy? The whole way to the visiting room, Aidan thought about what he would say to his brother. He wanted to proclaim his innocence, to reassure Tommy that he hadn’t fallen that far, hadn’t done what they claimed he did. That all of Tommy’s efforts hadn’t been for naught. But why would Tommy believe him? This wasn’t their first rodeo. They’d been through it all before. Aidan remembered swearing to Tommy that what happened with Matthew Bostick was an accident. A fight over a girl in which Aidan hadn’t even thrown the first punch. Tommy believed him then—and stood up for him, at some risk to his own reputation. And again, on the night of Jason Stark’s murder, Tommy took a huge risk for Aidan, throwing him out of Caroline’s house without reporting the break-in. Aidan promised to go to Tommy’s house, to look out for his family, to stay out of trouble. Instead, he went back to Caroline’s house, and now he was charged with her husband’s murder. How could he ask Tommy to believe that was a mistake? The same man keeps getting wrongly accused? Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Anybody would laugh.
Besides, Aidan couldn’t even be certain that the accusation was false. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember the events of that night after he walked out into the storm. He was starting to think a piece of flying debris must’ve smacked him in the head, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. The problem was, that left him not knowing what had happened. If they asked him to swear on a Bible that he was innocent of Jason Stark’s murder, he’d have to decline.
As Aidan walked into the visiting room, he realized there was nothing he could say to excuse himself. He’d hold his brother’s hand and thank him. Then tell him to go home and hug his kids and forget about Aidan. He was a lost cause.
He had that whole emotional conversation with himself. Then he got to the table and saw that his visitor wasn’t his brother at all. It was Brittany Pulaski, Samantha’s sister, the catering manager at Harbor Gourmet. He had no idea why she was here.
Aidan sat down across from Brittany and stared at her.
“Brittany. What are you doing here?”
Brittany was two years older than Samantha, and pretty, with the same gray eyes and curly dark hair. They’d been good friends back in high school. But after Matthew died, Samantha’s whole family turned their backs on Aidan, including Brittany. In recent years, she’d thawed some. Brittany would now say hi when they crossed paths. She’d even hired him for that bartending gig at Caroline’s house. Though, look how that turned out. The Pulaskis were bad luck for him, it seemed.
“Hey, Aidan. How you doing?” Brittany said.
“Uh. Not great.”
“Yeah, well, I won’t take a lot of your time.”
“Whatever. I got nothing else to do,” he said.
He squinted at her, puzzled.
“I came because Samantha asked me to deliver a message.”
“Oh. Samantha knows about this? You told her?”
Samantha had gone away years ago, right after Matthew died. She moved to Pennsylvania, where her grandparents lived, and never came back. Aidan hadn’t spoken to her since.
“I didn’t have to tell her. She saw it on TV. You’re famous.”
He laughed bitterly. “Great, just what I wanted. What’s the message? She’s relieved they finally got me?”
“No, not at all. The opposite. She wanted me to tell you how sorry she is.”
“I don’t need her pity.”
“It’s not pity. She wants to apologize.”
“What for? This isn’t her fault. She broke my heart years ago, but that’s water under the bridge now,” Aidan said.
He realized he meant it. Finally, Samantha was in the past. The spell she’d cast over him had been broken by somebody else’s spell. A more powerful witch. Did he never learn?
“Not for breaking your heart,” Brittany said. “She’s sorry she didn’t speak up for you back in the day. She feels bad about that. When Matthew died, she was still a kid, and it was all too much for her. She freaked, she ran. She wants you to know she regrets how she behaved. That she left you in the lurch.”
Right after Matthew died, Aidan had begged Samantha to come forward to back up his claim of self-defense. The prosecutor was coming after him with some ginned-up story of how he killed his best friend with his bare hands in a fit of jealous rage. It was a lie. What happened was Matthew’s fault. Samantha and Aidan met in the cave down on the beach, where they’d always gone to be alone together. Samantha was tearful, apologetic, begging Aidan to take her back, begging forgiveness. Then Matthew showed up, and he wasn’t looking to apologize. He was the one in the jealous rage, not Aidan. Matthew started the fight. Aidan only defended himself. Samantha could have told them that, but instead she abandoned him. That was truly when she broke his heart.
“It’s true. She did abandon me. My life went wrong then. I went to jail when I should’ve gone to college. Never got a decent job since. And here I am again. I’m not saying that’s Samantha’s fault, though. Most of it’s on me.”
“Samantha can’t change the past, Aidan, and neither can I. But she asked me to help you.”
“You? How can you help?”
“There’s something I never told you, that struck me as weird at the time. I thought of it again when I saw that woman’s picture in the paper, and I told it to Samantha.”
“The woman? You mean Caroline Stark?”
“Yes. I told my sister, and she made me promise to tell you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Okay. I’m listening. What is it?”
“Remember when I hired you to work a bartending gig at her party?”
“Yeah, but don’t go feeling guilty about that. You offered me work, and I took it. The mess that came after—that was my own stupidity.”
“Okay, but—I can testify that this lady was after you, Aidan. She had the hots for you back then. I know that, because she requested you for the party. Not just asked for you. She insisted. I don’t know whether that helps or not. But, in the papers, they’re making you out to be a stalker. I know that’s not true. Caroline Stark came after you hard, and I’m willing to say that in court.”
“It’s true, Caroline came after me. But that was later. We didn’t meet for real until she came into the Red Anchor for a drink one night, maybe three or four days after that party. Before the party, she saw me once on the beach, but she didn’t know me from Adam.”
“You’re wrong. She definitely knew you before the party or she never would’ve asked for you like that. I had Eddie Morales lined up to work Mrs. Stark’s job that night. He’s my main bartender. Caroline Stark called me and instructed me to fire him and hire you instead, or else I wouldn’t’ve done it. Aidan, she asked for you by name.”
“That can’t be. Caroline didn’t know my name then. Well, wait a minute. She knew my first name. But not my last name, or where I worked.”
“I’m telling you, she did. She said she wanted Aidan Callahan from the Red Anchor to work her party. She said she knew you from the bar and liked your style, thought you’d add flair to the event. I told her I had someone else slated in, but she didn’t want to hear that. She told me to drop Eddie and hire you instead. It was like, if I wanted her business, I better honor this request.”
“I’m certain Caroline didn’t come into the Red Anchor until after the party. You’re mixed up on the timing.”
“How could I be? Something like that, I’d remember. You’re not nobody to me, Aidan. With the history we have, I pay attention to what you do. Me and Samantha, we talk about you sometimes. We keep tabs. Some rich weekender chick comes in asking for you, I’m gonna remember.”
“You thought I was sleeping with her?” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “I wondered. I thought, maybe you got yourself a sugar mama.”
“Well, I didn’t. I wasn’t sleeping with her.”
He paused, remembering his lawyer telling him to keep his mouth shut. But he couldn’t resist.
“Not then,” he said, and wanted to kick himself. Caroline had her hooks in him so deep that, after everything that happened, he still felt the need to brag about their relationship.
“I don’t know what happened between you and that woman,” Brittany said, “but I want to help. Samantha’s married, you know. She’s having a baby in December. She feels bad that—well, she feels bad. And so do I. You should tell your lawyer what I said.”
“I will. Thanks for coming.”
As he watched her walk away, Aidan thought about what Brittany had said. He believed her now, but he didn’t know how to process the information. Caroline had known his full name and requested him to work at her party. Why would she do that, and what could it mean?