THE VINE THAT SNAKES UP THE BACK OF THE HOUSE below Izzy’s bedroom is thick as a tree trunk. We all climbed in and out of the house this way during high school—usually with flashlights in our mouths and booze in our backpacks. Izzy has opened the sash and waits for me inside as I climb. She grabs my wrists and pulls me up so I can leverage my body weight and push myself through. They should just eliminate doors in this house all together.
Izzy promised that our old trick could get me back in without triggering security or revealing to Uncle Christopher and Aunt Evelyn that I was on the premises, and she delivered. Recent practice sneaking in a guy she met in Athens has kept her on her game. She told me where to leave my car, behind an abandoned silo a half mile from the house. From there, I picked my way through the twigs and leaves that covered the overgrown pathway from the unused farm to avoid detection. Izzy told me that there was no video surveillance trained on the back of the residence; Christopher is concerned only with recording the comings and goings of his business associates and protecting whatever precious information he keeps in the office about King Family Construction Company. And he never suspected Izzy would be anything but a virginal princess, so why would he worry about her? I’m impressed once again by Izzy’s flare for deviousness.
I pull a few stray bits of nature off my shirt and chuck the mess into Izzy’s bedazzled trash can.
“You might as well throw everything you’re wearing in there too.” She stands in front of her closet, its double doors thrown wide open.
“Nothing with sparkles,” I say. “Or logos. Or deliberate holes where no holes are supposed to be.”
“Is this outfit for business or pleasure?”
When I texted James to tell him I was ready to sign the papers, but only if I could go over the details alone with him first, he invited me to meet him at the office this afternoon, which would be empty on a Sunday.
We can talk, he wrote. Lawyer to lawyer.
I sizzle a bit all over again thinking about his text. How can I help it? He was my first. I’ve been actively avoiding him all these years because I was afraid of exactly this feeling. But now, the razor-thin opening that my past with James allows is the only path I have left to learn something real about Paul. Am I above using it? What other choice do I have?
“Definitely business.”
James works for my uncle now. On the one hand, I must question his allegiance. On the other hand, he has access to the information I need. And who doesn’t work for Christopher in this town? Even Bashiir installed his security system.
Bashiir. Those disapproving eyes of his cut through me like I’m made of paper. No way he would condone what I’m thinking about doing. But his disapproval started long before I walked into that jail today, because Paul told him I couldn’t be trusted. Fine, Mister Too-Principled-to-Take-My-Help Abdi. Sit in that jail cell. I’ll get what I need without you. I’m not sure what I’m willing to do in James Hollings’s empty office today, but it’s not going to happen without the exchange of some vital information on his part about my brother.
Izzy emerges from her closet holding an eggplant-purple pencil skirt in one hand and a pale peach V-neck silk tank with fabric buttons down the front in the other.
“Do you have anything black?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes.
“You said business, not a funeral.” But she hangs the shirt back in the closet and replaces it with a lace short-sleeved pullover top. In navy. It’ll do.
I give myself a quick sponge bath with a packet of Izzy’s cucumber-scented face wipes while she throws a camisole, clean underwear, and gold hoop earrings on her bed for me. My flip-flops will have to stay—her feet are bigger than mine.
“Can I at least give you a pedicure?” she asks, surveying my toes with a critical eye.
“No time.” Izzy’s skirt hits me just above the knee—with her longer legs it must be a mini on her. But I’m glad for the extra bit of professionalism today. Antonia King, attorney at law, must show up for real.
Izzy is attacking my head with hairspray when her computer pings several loud chimes. Gone are the days when we all had to share the family computer—Izzy’s screen is gigantic.
“Ooh, that’s probably my latest batch of video footage,” she says. “This guy I know from town, Brian, films Michelle for me. I review his clips to find the best WTF moments, and he makes them into GIFs.”
I wave her off of me, grateful for the distraction before she can turn my hair into a pile of spun sugar. I look into her full-length mirror to pat it back down into something in between Izzy’s vision and the way I showed up.
Andela stares back at me, shaking her head. This is James Hollings we’re talking about. Remember?
As if I could forget. My biggest goal when I left for college was ridding myself of this man. But I startled every time a tall, dark-haired, slightly older man passed me in the Yard. Which happened a lot. Professors, graduate students, random strangers walking across Harvard Square—any man who had a certain lanky gait, who looked fly in a suit, whose fingers were long and tapered, had the ability to send me into paroxysms of longing. So, when my econ professor second semester introduced the PhD candidates who would be leading the small sections, a tall, dark-haired grad student who towered over the others became my fixation. His section was the only one that didn’t fit into my schedule.
I changed my schedule.
I didn’t stop there. Fall of my sophomore year I set my sights on another tall, dark-haired teaching assistant, this one in poli-sci. I became a prompt and regular visitor during his office hours twice a week. They were like candy, these men—so very easy to binge on, but none of them satisfying enough for a full meal. And I found that I was always ravenous.
If none of them was going to hold my attention for more than a night, I didn’t want to waste my time anymore in pursuit of men just because they bore a passing resemblance to the one I left behind. That’s when I turned to younger guys. Easier guys. Freshmen. Even seniors in high school staying overnight in the dorms as prospective students. You’d better believe they left campus with Harvard as their first choice. Nothing but sex, though, thank you very much. I made sure to keep my friendships, female and male, separate from my Saturday night party prowls. I just needed the booze and the boys so I could sleep through the night.
During the week, I studied instead of sleeping. In that regard, I fit right in. I was determined to show anyone who was looking over my shoulder that I belonged with the elite in Cambridge, even though privately I had no idea how to categorize myself. Was I a hick from northwestern Minnesota who’d never been out of the state? A refugee from one of the most well-known genocides of the post-Holocaust twentieth century? Alone at college, both identities felt equally strange to me. My family of birth was dead, murdered by unknown people before I could even remember them. My family of record now seemed like foreign objects to me—away from them for the first time, I viewed them as I viewed the glass-eyed Neanderthal family at the Museum of Natural History where I had to research for my intro cultural anthropology class. Immovable. Immutable. Over. And my brother, the only person in the world who could be a bridge between the two, the only person who seemed real enough to matter, had left me behind.
So: reinvention. With no one from family near enough to visit and only the bursar’s office and the Harvard registrar in need of information about my whys and wherefores, I was free to make up a childhood that could blend into the background until I could accumulate enough on-campus experience to make talking about home a thing of the past. My imaginary family was boring. Minnesota, middle class. Two parents, a sister, a dog. A best friend who stayed in state for school. I made my father an accountant, my mother a teacher. How simple, how dull, nothing anyone could care enough to ask about, especially when there were house parties to attend, and clubs to join, and endless opportunities to show off my smarts and knowledge.
I filled my summers with on-campus jobs and internships. And after freshman year, I had invitations from New England students I befriended to visit them over holiday breaks. I accepted every invitation that came my way, and every opportunity to study the lives of others to see what I could make into my own.
I also scrupulously avoided taking any classes that touched on the events in the Balkans of the early 1990s. No genocide studies. Nothing that would invoke the wrist and the sleeve.
If I was going to be new, I would be new from birth.
BACK HERE, THOUGH, IN IZZY’S MIRROR, ANDELA AND I blink at each other. She’s been waiting for me. What is she trying to do: warn me off or draw me close?
My phone buzzes. A text. Paul’s wife? Bashiir? Melanie? My pulse quickens at the thought of any one them weighing in.
Dear Antonia, I would like to speak with you.
It’s Evelyn.
“Izzy, does your mom know I’m in the house?”
“No way. She and Dad don’t get home from church for at least half an hour.”
There’s something we need to discuss.
First Harrison, now my aunt. Christopher has activated his minions. Well, too late—my own plan is in motion now. I’m not talking to any of them again until I know what happened to my brother. I look at the frazzled little orphan from Bosnia who stares back at me from the mirror, with her borrowed clothes and borrowed moxie. We can fix this, I tell her silently. All you have to do is wait until I take care of business here, and then you and I can go back to Minneapolis and be a successful lawyer.
She looks back at me skeptically. Rightly so. I don’t have time for her reservations though, not now. I have to focus. If I don’t have all of my wits about me with James this afternoon, I’ll never get what I need.
Yes, I text Evelyn. Later.
Behind my shoulder in the mirror, Izzy works at her computer. I imagine my aunt in her early twenties when I look at Izzy, so similar are they in coloring and expression. Imagine her face when she found out, at that age, she had to raise four children, not two.
I add another text: I promise.
Light from Izzy’s screen pulses across her face as she scans frame after frame of slow-motion video featuring the beautiful girl whose image she sent me earlier: the girl’s hand outstretched to take a selfie in the center of a group of teenagers raising red Solo cups. Teenagers holding beer bottles. Teenagers throwing their arms around each other in drunken glory. They flip by, inverted on Izzy’s monitor behind my own reflected image in a blur that could be a replication of all of my own high school years: me, alone, uncomfortable and serious in the front while everyone behind me parties with each other in an endless loop of fun things I’m not invited to do. I’m done with the portion of today that’s about wallowing in sad past lives, though. I’ve advanced from hideous outfit to mediocre outfit thanks to my cousin—hopefully it will be enough to give me the confidence to stand up and—
“Izzy! Wait! Stop!” I say.
Izzy pauses, hand on her computer mouse.
“What?”
Something in the corner of my eye from her screen leapt out at me. Something out of order. I run to her side.
“Scroll back,” I say. “Again. Again. Once more.”
There.
The frozen frame is another party shot. Nighttime, a string of lights dotting the periphery of the image, the kind that someone hangs on their back patio to make it look festive. Michelle looking straight at the camera surrounded by screaming revelers . . . and a blurry man stooping behind her, his face half obscured by the longish blond hair that sweeps across his eyes, his mouth locked on the side of Michelle’s pretty neck.
“Izzy, do you know who that man is, the one all over Michelle?”
She squints at his image.
“No, I’ve never seen him before—but eww, gross! He looks old! This is not okay. How did I miss this? It must have happened when I was posting my behind-the-scenes stories.”
I guess it makes a perverse kind of sense. Where would an internationally recognized playboy go to play where he could be anonymous? Some house party in a backwater town with a bunch of drunken teenagers who think only someone who’s had a show on the Disney Channel could possibly be famous. I look at the time stamp of the image: sure enough. June 19, 2014, 11:23 p.m. It tracks with Per’s visit to Thebes.
“Play the whole segment again,” I say. “As slowly as you can.”
As Izzy clicks her mouse, stop-motion Per drapes his arm around Michelle, kissing her again on the neck, then on the cheek. He’s clearly drunk. She’s smiling, a fixed, staged smile. For the video camera? Because of him? She moves away from his arm. He lunges forward—it could be a drunken stumble, or it could be deliberate—oh God, his hand is down her shirt! And now his back is between the camera and Michelle. A few frames later, he stumbles out of view. Michelle’s frozen smile hasn’t changed one bit, but her eyes have.
No. Oh, no.
Per’s so-called peccadillo is more than off-brand: it’s with a teenaged girl.
And he’s my client.
A wave of bile brings the grease from lunch back into my throat. What am I doing? And what do I do now? I close my eyes—will the whole thing go away when I open them again?
It looks even worse.
Get the facts, Toni. Lawyer up.
“Izzy, do you know where this video was made?”
“It was here.”
“Yeah, I know, here in Thebes. But whose house?”
“No—here. As in, here at this house. The back patio.”
I look more carefully. The string of lights is temporary, the people and what they are doing is distracting . . . but yes, now that I adjust my eyes even more to the scene, I recognize the edge of one of the patio chairs, a sliver of the familiar sliding glass door leading into the three-season porch.
I rub my temples. My stomach does another flip. My client. My house. And . . . ick.
“Okay, why are a bunch of high school students having a party on the patio?”
“Because I staged it. I have to buy them beer to make sure lots of people will show up, so I need Brian to film at the house. I’m like a straight-up art director. But not for this—I have to make sure she’s okay. I can’t believe she didn’t she tell me this happened. Oh no, what if she thought it was part of the plan? Ugh!”
“Why is Per . . . why is the older man here at all?”
“I think he’s one of Daddy’s business associates,” Izzy is rapid texting as she speaks. “Daddy had one of his catered closed-door dinners on Friday—and Brian’s video must have been running when I was off to the side posting—hey, wait!” She looks back up at me. “Why do you know him? Toni, this creep isn’t your boyfriend, is it? The one you mentioned at the Parth?”
Too much is happening: Per is at my childhood home when he commits the act I’ve been dispatched to bury. Izzy feels responsible. But as disgusted as I am at this moment by the image of a drunken Per slobbering over a drunken girl, I also see, all at once, that it’s expedient to continue my ruse.
I need the video. Not just to protect my client.
James Hollings’s client needs protection from it too. I have something James will want. He has information about Paul that I want.
I swallow my bile, and my pride. Yes, that’s my boyfriend, I force myself to nod.
Izzy puts down her phone to stand up and take me by the shoulders.
“Toni, I don’t care how much you like this man—look at what’s on the screen. You deserve better than him.”
She is a bundle of goodness. And I’m about to use that goodness to save my job and give me the leverage I need to help find my brother.
“You are right. So right,” I say. “Can you send me that video clip—and convince Brian to delete it from his phone? And delete it from your computer too? And make sure it’s wiped out completely, not just sitting in the trash?”
“Yes. Brian has a huge crush on me. He’ll do whatever I ask. And I definitely don’t want Michelle to be afraid anyone will ever see it. But shouldn’t we keep the video to prove he’s gross, just in case? Like, as an insurance policy?”
“I need it to confront him myself. It’s my relationship.”
Izzy sighs. “As long as you promise you won’t let him keep behaving like this. It’s so sad. Harrison can’t be public about who he loves, and you can’t love someone who treats women right.”
And I’m lying to my sweet cousin to keep her innocent about the real reasons I need that video.
Izzy has nothing behind her eyes other than concern about me. About my heart. No double-dealings. Her biggest secret is the occasional visit from some guy—and she’s twenty-one so it’s not even an ethically challenging secret. It’s a secret of kindness to her old-fashioned father, who just doesn’t want to know. Her hands are still on my shoulders. I reach up and cover her hands with mine, squeezing them hard.
Izzy’s the one I don’t deserve.
________
Evidence found. All sources neutralized. Video attached. File deleted everywhere else.
I text Melanie from my car behind the abandoned silo before I head back into downtown Thebes. I thought long and hard about what to say while I tramped back through the woods from the house, this time trying to navigate the path while wearing a purple pencil skirt. Do I bring up anything about Per’s trip to my hometown? About his dinner meeting with my uncle at my childhood home? I decide to rely on my legal training: give exactly the information I’ve been asked to provide. No more. At least not until I’ve done all that I can while I’m here to dig up the rest of the story on my own.
Nice work, she texts back.
What is Melanie aware of and what not? Her reply reveals nothing. It’s no surprise that Air Trek would be in talks with manufacturing companies around Minnesota. But Per himself at my uncle’s house the day he signs the retainer with Grogan? I think back to Melanie’s whispered reassurance to Per last night at the party: she’s exactly what you’re looking for. I must confront the very real possibility that I might have been sent on a fool’s errand—or worse—by my boss and my client.
This time as I drive down Route 35, it’s not memories that flood my thoughts but calculations. It’s true that Per Olufsen got himself into a compromising position with a teenaged girl—one that could damage his reputation if there was evidence that could be leaked. It’s true that I found the evidence. As his lawyer, I can’t reach out to Michelle, but Izzy, who knows her, is ready to provide support. If this was a genuine search-and-destroy mission, I did my job quickly and well. It’s barely past 2:00 p.m. and the case I’ve been assigned is solved. But there’s much more going on than my assignment. I can’t assume anything here is as it seems. Was I supposed to find the evidence that Per was in Thebes when I scoured his files, or was that an unanticipated outcome of my research? If it was all planted there for me, then by whom? Per or Melanie? If Per had a secret dinner with my uncle on Friday, is it a secret from Melanie or from me?
The man I’m about to confront has information, conveyed to him yesterday by fellow King Family Construction employees who were discussing my client at the Parthenon Diner.
Bashiir Abdi’s moral standards may be too high to allow room for any quid pro quo. I know, firsthand, that James Hollings’s are not.
________
The lobby of Roberts and Hollings has that office-on-a-Sunday kind of feel: dim, cool, the faint lingering odor of industrial cleaning products from Friday’s janitorial service still undisturbed due to forty-eight hours without human stain. The blinds are drawn, adding to the hermetically sealed atmosphere. I perch on a burgundy leather armchair, staring up at the reception desk ordinarily staffed by the one and only Barbie Mitchell. Wouldn’t she have a lot to say at her next mommy-and-me gym class or whatever she and her other former cheerleading squad members do with their free time and their babies if she knew I was sitting here right now?
I yank the hem of Izzy’s skirt down toward my knees. I want my second first impression to be one of icy control. I’m the one who decides what to offer and when to offer it. He’s gaming me right now—he buzzed me into the lobby a full five minutes ago but has yet to emerge from the inner sanctum to escort me in.
Anodyne art hangs on the lobby walls: mauve, blue, and pale green abstract floral prints in plain silver frames. The only personal touches on display are matching headshots of the two partners, one on either side of the long reception desk. Roberts’s photo is the same one from years ago; he’s in full military regalia with his Korean War service medals pinned to his uniform. Hollings’s is more recent, but he has the same empty non-smile smile I remember from his Minnesota state legislature headshot back in the day. He can turn it off as effectively as he turns it on. Is the fire-free James Hollings the one who shows up in the bedroom with his lady’s slipper? I shift my position on the chair again. Even though I know his stall tactic is designed to make me antsy, it’s making me antsy. Also, the more I think about James in bed the less in control I feel. I close my eyes, breathe myself back to the task at hand. Information, Toni. That’s the goal. The means to that end is yet to be determined.
“Catching up on lost sleep?”
I open my eyes to see him in the doorway. He’s changed his clothes since this morning too. In Christopher’s office he wore a suit. Now he’s casual, in a T-shirt and jeans. His hair is slightly wet, like he recently showered. Oh, my. He recently showered. I stand up and see him take in my change of clothes as well. I’m the formal one this time. I let him look.
“I have been up since four thirty this morning, when your client so kindly called to summon me here,” I say. “I’ll admit I’m a little tired.”
“Well, we’ll have to find you something relaxing to do,” he says. “After you finish signing those papers, of course.”
Flirtation or invitation? Either way, I find it off-putting. A little too obvious a little too quickly.
I smooth the front of my skirt and pick up my bag.
“We have lots to discuss. And perhaps lots to catch up on. Shall we get started?”
He blinks at my response. I’ve slowed the pace and he didn’t expect it. Did he think I would try to jump him in the lobby and throw us both on top of the reception desk? Okay, based on our history, he probably did. And based on my own tendencies when it comes to sex, I probably would.
James opens his door wider and moves out of the way to usher me in. I’m not above letting my arm brush against his as I pass by. I’m not above walking in front of him, knowing Izzy’s skirt is tight and I look good from the back. I do, however, feel a small, surprising pang of weirdness about it.
Everything inside the office is slick and matching. No more Leo Roberts–led Depression-era unbend your used staples and put them back in the stapler mentality. The mauve and burgundy theme from the reception area continues here. Clean, plush carpeting, no threadbare patches. The doors to the offices are burnished glass now—the illusion of transparency but nothing visible from behind them but a shadowy outline of a desk, a lamp. Only the door to the stockroom remains opaque, although it’s been replaced with thick plaster painted the same mauve color as the walls, and a large brass door handle equipped with a visibly well-functioning lock. We used to reinforce the old finicky lock by pushing a footstool up against the inside of the door for extra security back in our lunch-hour days.
James comes up next to me.
“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?”
Again, that squeamish feeling.
I’ve fantasized about our days in the stockroom all these years, invoked images of us together during sex with other men to keep things hot for myself—it’s my private reel of personal porn. Even this morning, seeing him for the first time brought the images back in the most searing way imaginable. So now that I’m here, in the very place and with the very man who still inhabits my fantasies, why does it all seem so much . . . less? I glance up at him for a gut check—yes, still handsome. Yes, still my type. But that teenaged girl who flew back inside me with a vengeance this morning at my uncle’s house to rage and fume doesn’t seem to have made it here. That was the girl who found James Hollings to be the most sophisticated, brilliant, powerful, urbane man she’d ever known. The man who inspired her to become a lawyer so she could surpass him. The man who has been in residency in her brain ever since that summer together.
Now Per Olufsen is the most sophisticated, brilliant, powerful, urbane man I’ve ever known, and the image of him—slovenly, drunk, with his hand down the shirt of a teenaged girl in my childhood home—casts a different light on everything. On my younger self.
James Hollings hasn’t changed. The eyes I see him through have.
I cross my arms and turn away from the stockroom to face him.
“Are you ready?” He’s holding the same manila folder that he tried to give me earlier.
“James. I’m not here to sign the document,” I say. “And I know this might come as a shock to you, but I’m not here to revisit our past. It’s a shock to me, in all honesty.” At least he looks disappointed. But I’m not about to change course now.
“I have something I need to show you,” I continue. “I’d like your promise that you’ll tell me exactly what I’m seeing and why I’m seeing it.”
He runs his hand through his hair. He doesn’t have a read on me right now and he’s not pleased. But he nods.
I pull my phone out of my bag. The still from the video Izzy sent me glows to light. I turn the screen in his direction. And wait.
His jaw tightens just a bit. He’s thinking. I watch him take it all in, watch his calculations about what he’ll say, what I might want.
How many pictures of pretty girls have altered the trajectory of a person’s life? When I saw that photo of Denise Hollings in the local paper nearly a decade ago, I viewed it with the detachment I recognize in James right now. I chose not to see a person, but instead a representation of everything I feared and loathed as a sixteen-year-old girl. She was the epitome of female success in the minuscule realm in which I lived and the symbol of how meaningless and powerless female success, even if you achieved it, would always be. A state flower. I didn’t want to see a human being. I just wanted to keep James. And hold on to the tiny bit of power I’d found for the first time in my life.
My heart hurts as I send a silent apology for the girl I was in Denise’s direction.
“Let’s sit down,” James says, gesturing to the small mahogany conference table in the center of the room. “I’ll answer any questions you have. It’s only fair.”
The one thing he’s always been to me is fair. No pretense—when we were having sex it was about having sex. Now I can see he’s made a decision that I’ll get the real thing I’ve come for today: the truth. At least the truth about this.
Sitting across the table from me in his white T-shirt, James looks younger than he did this morning when he was all suited up and businesslike on behalf of my uncle. I could be talking to a friend, a peer. It’s a funny element of time that while the number of years in age between us remains fixed forever, the meaning of that difference shrinks as we all move forward. We really are talking lawyer to lawyer; it’s not just a gambit anymore. He looks directly at me, no flirting, no double entendres. My phone with that image sits face up on the table between us.
I begin.
“I assume you know that the man in this picture is a client with my firm.”
He nods.
“Okay. So why don’t you start by telling me how he ended up at my uncle’s house for dinner on Friday. I know you won’t insult me by pretending this is a coincidence.”
The manila folder rests on the table in front of him. He drums his long fingers atop it, a gesture I recognize from years past. His mind is turning over possible replies before he chooses a direction.
“Everyone knows about Per Olufsen’s business interests in Minnesota,” he says at last. “There’s natural alignment between King Construction and Air Trek.”
“Uh-huh.”
He drums his fingers again. Once, twice, three times.
“I’ve been a member of the state assembly for five years. We’re only paid for the two months a year we’re in session, and not well.”
Okay . . . where is he going with this? Now he picks up the fountain pen he brought to the table and twirls it in his left hand, like he did in my uncle’s office this morning.
“Roberts and Hollings had no conflict of interest as the firm representing your uncle’s public dealings. It would have been negligent of me as this district’s representative if I didn’t try to bring Air Trek’s business to Thebes. Public-private collaboration is the only way to effectively lift the region’s economic prospects.”
I will not roll my eyes. I will not jump in and yell at him for crafting this image of himself as a selfless, devoted public servant instead of directly answering my questions.
“Olufsen has been on my radar for the past year,” he says. “Winning a hub for Air Trek in Minneapolis required some legislative jujitsu to get our approvals in before Chicago or Cleveland or Indianapolis nabbed it. The assembly fast-tracked a few proposals and helped make the match. A couple of weeks ago when his secretary reached out to me here in Thebes, I thought it was probably a pro forma thank-you, making nice with the state government hacks—our session ended in May and we don’t reconvene in person till October, so the call was forwarded from St. Paul. When it turned out to be about a business opportunity for my district that Olufsen himself wanted to discuss with me personally, I got pretty excited. Understandably. You know Thebes, Toni. How many international corporations come to us like that?”
None. Ever. Which is why this is suspicious. He knows that. This isn’t just James telling me the information I’ve come for. He’s building a case.
“Per began to describe his idea,” he continues. “He wanted a centralized manufacturing plant, parts for his planes, the space that our area has to offer. I’m on the phone, taking notes about the environmental regulations he’ll need to offset, the real estate I think might be available, crunching some initial numbers. Numbers in the tens of millions. It’s insane.”
It is insane for a place like Thebes. I can imagine his wildfire thoughts about the future of this place with the infusion of capital that Per might bring.
“When Olufsen paused, I shared some of my thoughts. When I came to the part about what it might take to start a manufacturing business from the ground up around here, he stopped me. ‘I’d like to buy an existing entity. Work with someone who already knows the ropes, has the permits and licenses and relationships. I hear from a new lawyer on my team that there’s an established company in your jurisdiction—King Family Construction?’”
Your secrets are safe with me, Per said, as springtime rain pinged against the windows of the Minneapolis Four Seasons.
“What day was this phone call?” I ask. “Do you remember?”
“Yes, it was Tuesday afternoon, June 10, around four. I remember specifically because we had a freakish storm that day. It was raining, and suddenly it turned to hail. Golf balls.”
When we met at the hotel, I wasn’t his lawyer. My coffee with Per was part of the finalist interview process; he hadn’t yet selected us as his firm. At least as far as I knew.
“He told you about me?”
“Not in so many words. But who else could it have been?”
Per jumped on the information he got from me to make a play for my uncle’s company. Is that part of why Melanie has me on this nauseating cover-up?
I lean forward, closer to James. “Why would you think I encouraged him to buy the company? You of all people know I would never spend my time putting more money into my uncle’s pockets.”
He shrugs. “Maybe you knew Olufsen was looking for a takeover opportunity and saw yourself as part of the deal? Help Olufsen get it for a song, avenge your childhood anguish. Or I figured you might be throwing me this opportunity because of our . . . history.” He flashes me a loaded look.
I ignore it. “I didn’t know he reached out to you. I’ve been unaware of any connection until today.”
“I’ve learned that since,” he says. “When he called, I wasn’t your uncle’s lawyer of record. Leo technically still held that position. Christopher was waiting for you come back to the fold. So, when Olufsen talked about the lawyer on his team—who could only be you—I had to keep the secret that you’d made a professional decision Christopher was still unaware of. Toni, you should have heard him go on about how excited he was that you’d be joining the business. About your Harvard Law degree. He was devastated when you didn’t come home.”
Christopher was devastated when Paul left. I saw it, felt it. But me? Nothing I did when I was still living at home was enough for my uncle’s approval. James is trying to twist my heart back to the King camp.
“Why are you shaming me for staying away? Isn’t it in your best interest—on every level—if I do? Stop with the setup. What do you want?”
That glint. He admires me for calling him out now. He nods.
“I want the money that a big deal with Air Trek would bring. Because—and this is still confidential—I want to run for national office in 2016. Congress, Toni. The House of Representatives. Can’t you see it?”
His green eyes are alight with ambition, excitement. I can read it to perfection—after all, Washington is my ambition too.
“I envisioned everything coming together for me,” he continues. “Income to support my family and access to resources to run a statewide campaign through the backing of a man like Per Olufsen. When I heard you were on his legal team, I joined your uncle’s. His personal team, not just his public business. I could get what I wanted through working on the King family side of an Air Trek deal. And keep it separate from my role in the assembly.”
It makes sense: Hollings sees Per as his ticket beyond Minnesota.
“I started pitching Christopher on the idea and pitching him hard. He could see the upside—all that money, who wouldn’t be interested—but he didn’t want to sell to an outsider. I promised him I’d get something inked that would ensure your family could run everything on the ground, employment in perpetuity for your cousin Harrison and everyone working for him in Thebes. But there was one sticking point, one issue he just couldn’t get over.”
I know before he says it. Christopher’s baby, ten years in the planning. His vision for Thebes, for transforming it into a retail center of his own making.
“The Big Dig.”
He nods. “The Big Dig. Air Trek Industries won’t support the project. It will be outdated in three years, Olufsen’s people argued. We can’t pour resources into brick-and-mortar stores when we need to build a business of the future. I believe they’re right. As your uncle’s attorney I’ll stand behind his business decisions, but it’s a dying model. I keep trying to convince him. He won’t listen.
“Olufsen was ready to scrap the whole relationship. He can go anywhere he wants with his money. He doesn’t need trouble. But I begged him to give it one last shot. I told him I thought if he and your uncle sat down together, broke bread, made a connection, it would change everything. He agreed, one last shot, given how close we were to a deal. And he likes you, Toni, and liked the idea of building a Minnesota family connection for Air Trek’s subsidiaries here. Said it works well for him in European hubs. He’s secretive though; he didn’t want any media pickup in case the deal fell through, so we agreed to keep the face-to-face off the record. As I’m sure you’ve learned, he likes his public image to be fully under his control. So I arranged for a car to pick him up and bring him to Thebes off the record. And your uncle was too proud to invite Olufsen himself—I had to surprise him and let the man’s charm and savvy work its own magic. I bought a spectacular bottle of scotch to help the surprise go down more smoothly.”
“I take it the dinner didn’t go so well.”
“It went incredibly well. They hit it off just as I suspected they would. The scotch didn’t hurt. Neither did the case of Burgundy that Olufsen brought as a gift. Toni, we were minutes from a compromise—the room stank of the money we were all about to make. Everyone was drunk and delighted with each other and your uncle was almost ready to shake on a deal to postpone the Big Dig for eighteen months. It would have satisfied everyone, and I know by then he’d be willing to give it up—when your brother burst into the room.”
Paul! Not what I expected to hear. My heart starts beating at twice its usual rate. But I keep steady.
“His eyes were red, he was agitated. Really upset,” James continues. “He walked right up to your uncle. Got in his face and screamed ‘you’re a monster.’ ”
“That doesn’t sound like my brother,” I say. Paul is the philosopher between the two of us. I’m the hothead, the yeller. His activism is in the Gandhian vein, all pacifist and impoverished. He always refuses to get angry—in fact, he gets calmer and calmer the more I thrash around.
“He was out of control. Your uncle stood up and said, ‘If this is about you and those renters in town again, I’m done hearing about it. Get off my property.’ Your brother said, ‘You know what this is about. You know what you did.’ Then Christopher hit a buzzer under the table and told us he’d called his security team to have your brother removed. I got Per out of there before I could find out what happened next.”
My brother. My client. I believed they were separate. Instead, they’ve smashed into each other with the force of a storm front.
Don’t show your feelings. Don’t let him stop talking. Silence is a good lawyer’s greatest weapon.
I remain still.
“At this point I was desperate to save the deal,” James continues. “We were both three sheets to the wind. I suggested we call it a night, no one saw him come and no one would see him go if his car service pulled up to the back of the house. That’s the place where your uncle hasn’t installed cameras.”
“Yes, I know.” I’ll leave it at that.
“I called Per’s car with instructions, pointed him to the back door, and left out the front so everything would be consistent when security came, and I’d be the one on camera if they needed any information. I thought I still had a shot at bringing the deal home.”
I imagine the scene: Hollings leaves Per alone to wander on the back patio until his car came. Drunk, most likely annoyed at having wasted his time. And there right in front of him is a beautiful girl, glowing under the staged lighting Izzy rigged.
But Michelle was glowing for herself, not for him. She wanted to star in a GIF that would go viral and set the internet, and her life, on fire. Did he see that? No, he saw some object. A ripe piece of fruit ready to pick. We all treat Per like a god, dazzled by his money, his power. No wonder he acts like he can have anything he wants. James and I dance around him with brooms and dustpans, ready to sweep up his garbage in case we find a few gold coins amid the trash. And we both learned our dirty tricks by dancing around my uncle, the small-town Per, hurling his own lightning bolts hither and yon. I ran away from him; Hollings ran to him. Either way, it was all, always, about Christopher King.
I swallow. Force myself back to the moment.
“James, is there anything else you remember about the evening. Anything at all? About Per or about my brother?”
He pauses, thinking.
“Actually, yes. I recall Paul yelling something else. He said to your uncle: ‘You’ve been lying to us the whole time.’ I didn’t understand what he meant. I wanted to get Per out of the house, so I didn’t stick around to find out.”
Us. Paul said us.
There is only one us in the context of Uncle Christopher’s you when it comes to Paul—and there’s no way that James Hollings would know what it meant.
My brother was talking about me and him.
Lying to us about what? What did Paul learn that forced him to confront Christopher with such venom and fury?
I grab James by the hand from across the table. I sense that my own hands have gone ice cold. He feels it too and his eyes widen.
“Where is my brother?” I can’t keep the fear from my voice now. “What is my uncle trying to get me to sign, for real? Tell me the truth!”
I’ve surprised him. But he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“Toni, I told you these papers merely state that Paul is acting on his own, that the rest of the King family supports the Big Dig. Signing them ensures that none of you will make statements to the media.”
I feel from his grip, see in his eyes, that he doesn’t know. Christopher is keeping whatever Paul learned a secret from Hollings.
This scares me even more.
My uncle is domineering, yes. Overbearing, for sure. But Paul had separated himself from all of that, and what it meant for our childhood, years ago. So if Christopher hadn’t pulled any dirty tricks about the Somali neighborhood, what lie could make my brother furious enough to confront him like that?
“Something’s wrong,” I say, as much to myself as to James.
“What are you talking about?”
What is my uncle hiding? And what does it have to do with me and Paul? I’m frozen in place, a mass of half memories, half nightmares. What’s real? What’s a myth?
You were Andela, my brother whispered. And I was Mujo.
My phone lights up with an incoming call.
Melanie Dwyer.
I pull my hand away from James.
“It’s my boss. I need to take this.” James steps into another office to give me privacy.
I pick up the phone. Autopilot.
“Melanie.” My voice makes the right kind of sound, the sound of a confident first-year associate who just delivered the goods for her supervisor. “I’m wrapping up a couple of things for family and I’m heading back soon. Anything else you need today?”
“We have a problem. A serious problem.”
“What can I do?”
“Toni. The problem is you.”
Wait. This must be a mistake.
“I got a call from IT. A security alert came to them earlier today—an external server appears to have obtained access to highly confidential files belonging to our client, Air Trek Industries, and downloaded copies of these files illegally.”
No. Oh, no.
“Even worse, when our people traced the address, they found it belonged to another law firm: a Roberts, Hollings and Associates in a town called Thebes. I assume that the name of this firm is ringing some bells for you.”
“Melanie, it’s a misunderstanding.”
“A level-two security code appears to have been used by this firm to steal our client’s files. Guess who tech told me was issued that code, just this very morning?”
“I can explain. There’s no Wi-Fi here, it’s like the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t get a signal—I was in the car, not even in the building, but I remembered their password! I swear, everything is only on my laptop, nothing is on the firm’s computers. They have no idea I even used their internet. I promise you it’s harmless.”
“Well, that’s an interesting interpretation of what happened—and one that I might even be willing to entertain if it wasn’t for a parallel set of circumstances. A quick search of Roberts, Hollings reveals that their largest client is one Christopher King, and his company, King Family Construction. Any relation?”
Any relation to Christopher King. The same question that doomed me when James asked it almost a decade ago.
“No. I mean yes—yes he’s my uncle, but . . .”
“So now you know that Per was in negotiations with his company. When I upped you to level-two security, I neglected to realize how much information would download from our files. That’s my error. I wanted to keep you out of that piece of the business to avoid any conflict of interest. Before Per began talks, he had us research whether you were a named beneficiary of the company. Turns out you are not, so I gave him the go-ahead.”
Christopher must have stripped me from the paperwork within minutes of learning I wasn’t coming back.
“Melanie, I promise, this isn’t what you think.”
“What do I think, Toni? You seem to believe that you know better than I do what I’m thinking. So, you must know that right now, I’m thinking about all the violations of confidentiality you’ve committed. I’m thinking about how much your family must have to benefit by gaining access to Per Olufsen’s financial records during a negotiation. What would you have done next if you were me, Toni, since you’re so very skilled at knowing what I think?”
My eyes are closed, I’m sitting at the conference table with my head in my hands, pressing the phone into my ear with my shoulder so hard that pain rattles my neck. “I would have alerted the client,” I say in a whisper.
“Excellent! You have a well-trained legal mind. Fine instincts. Raw, of course, but you’re young. If you listen to your mentors and supervisors and let them guide you, you have a promising career ahead of you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes—”
She cuts me off. “I indeed alerted the client. And since you’re so good at guessing games, let’s play another one. Guess what he said?”
“I—”
“Oh, never mind, this game has grown tiresome. I’ll just tell you. He said that in the middle of a business negotiation with your uncle, things got a little tricky. He was thinking about pulling out. But your uncle’s lawyer, James Hollings, convinced him to keep going. The very same Hollings who appears to have benefitted from your level-two security access. A Minnesota state representative, no less! Stealing files for his client and enlisting his client’s niece to do his dirty work. Quel scandale! This could bring a career to its knees.”
“James didn’t do anything! It was all me, my stupidity. Please don’t pin this on him.”
“Is this your confession, Toni? Your mea culpa? Are you ready to admit you’ve been playing me as well as illegally betraying your client? Do you know how many of your law school classmates applied for your job? But I turned them down in favor of you. I’m under a microscope here that you can’t even fathom. Your hire is a reflection on me. If a man fails, it’s still regarded as a failure of one man. If I fail . . .”
“You’re my idol,” I say. I’m not even pleading my case anymore. I just want her to know the truth. “I look at you and see who I want to become.”
“Well, lucky for you, you still have a chance. You won’t be disbarred, and we won’t be filing charges against you. Although what you’ve done could warrant both.”
“Thank you,” I say, utterly wrecked.
“Don’t thank me. I’m ready to throw the book at you. It’s Per who insisted we not take it any further. I guess we all know he has a soft spot for an attractive girl.”
I’m disgusted, both with myself and by Melanie’s dismissal of me as one of Per’s “girls,” but now is not the moment.
“You won’t regret it. I promise I can make it up to you, Melanie. Whatever I need to do—”
“Stop right there. We’re not pressing charges but make no mistake: Antonia King—you’re fired.”
________
James peeks out of his office. “Are you okay?”
My call ended I don’t even know how long ago. Minutes? Hours? Either way, I’m still sitting where he left me, staring at the phone in my hand.
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough to assume you no longer have a job.” He slowly comes toward me. Gingerly, as if he’s afraid I’m about to run, or leap at him, claws bared. He needn’t worry. I’m numb, frozen in my chair. When nothing alarming happens, he pulls out the chair opposite me and sits down.
“I’m sorry. And maybe it’s too soon to say this, but . . . what if getting fired turns out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”
Ugh. The worst cliché imaginable.
“I have a proposal,” he says. “Come work for me.”
That snaps me out of my fog. Not in a good way.
“For Christopher?”
You’ve been lying to us the whole time.
“No. Not at Roberts and Hollings. Why don’t you join my campaign? Work on behalf of my 2016 run for Congress.”
I put down my phone, fold my hands on the table.
He takes my silence as an opportunity to go on.
“Think about it. The timing is perfect. We have two and a half years to build momentum with fundraising and grassroots organizing. I have all the statewide contacts we need. You can set up my campaign office in Athens. You’re a millennial and a woman. Two demographics critical for me if I want to win.”
“I’m not a Republican.”
“Even better. You’ll help bring the swing vote.” He’s excited now, pressing his hands on the table. His green eyes light up. “When I win, I’ll hire you as a legislative aide. You’ll be in Washington, DC. You can have more influence there than anywhere else in the world.”
The chance I’ve wanted. What Melanie promised she’d help me find down the road.
“I won’t agree with all of your policy positions.”
“But you’ll agree with some of them. Imagine your future. With this kind of experience under your belt, you could run for office yourself in ten years. Or become a lobbyist. Start your own firm anywhere in the country.”
I imagine myself overseeing a campaign office, phones ringing like crazy, running to be the first to see the latest poll numbers scroll across the television screen.
“What makes you so sure you’ll win?” I ask. “You just said that you need Per Olufsen’s backing. After that dinner, how do you know you’ll have him?”
“Because we can get him together.”
“I’ve been fired from his legal team. I don’t have any influence with Per anymore.”
James points to my phone.
“You do.”
The video.
“Oh, no,” I say. “First of all, I obtained that video while acting as Per’s attorney, so you know it’s classified even if I’m not his lawyer anymore. I barely just escaped disbarment for—never mind, it’s not important—but Per’s the one who saved my ass, and if I use this against him, I’ll guarantee you he won’t save it again. And second of all . . . this is blackmail! Seriously? Not my style. Is it really yours?”
“Not blackmail. Insurance. I hint just enough, he knows it’s out there, it never needs to be seen or spoken of again. There’s no reason Olufsen needs to know it came from you. I was there Friday night when Isobel staged that party. I could have asked her for it myself as her family’s lawyer, just protecting their interests when I saw them serving alcohol, in case there were any minors. And look what I found!”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t say Izzy was involved. And you said you didn’t know how Per found the party.”
He’s silent.
“Did you set him up?”
His jaw tightens again like it did when I first showed him the image. “I did not set him up. But I did notice the kids on the patio. The girl taking pictures of herself. The videographer. Isobel on a ladder adjusting the lights.”
“And Per was shit-faced, and you did what? Plant a thought in his head about how the evening could be salvaged? Tell him you were sure that hot girl was at least eighteen because she was a friend of Izzy’s? What else? Did you stuff a bunch of condoms in his pocket and tell him to have fun and be careful out there?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“But you did see an opportunity and decide to put Per Olufsen in the way of said opportunity.”
Our hands fold across our chests in mirror image of each other.
“Per’s actions are his own,” James says. “I didn’t force him to touch that girl.”
“But you didn’t warn him that she was a minor, either. Though you knew.”
“Per Olufsen is not my client.”
“So your omission wasn’t a legal breach. Isn’t it an ethical one?”
“He’s an adult.”
“But Michelle is not! What about her? Did you even for one second think that you were maneuvering an explosive situation that could impact the life of a sixteen-year-old girl?”
“You’re not talking about Michelle anymore, are you?”
This stops me.
Those eyes—I still feel it when he looks at me, even in this moment.
“I . . . actually, I don’t know,” I say. My voice is quiet now.
The air thickens around us, between us.
He clears his throat.
“When you think back, is that what you remember?” he asks, his voice lowering to match mine. “A pure young girl and a lecherous man?”
The empty office expands. I see myself, my intern self: thrashing, lonely, filled with a need I couldn’t name. And I trained all that insatiability, all that longing on him. Continents of want. Nothing he could satisfy.
“I researched the age of consent before we ever started anything,” I say. “And I chose to keep going, even after I learned that you were engaged. That was my decision, James, not yours. It was probably a stupid choice, but I made it. If this video gets out, Michelle won’t have the option to make any choices of her own at all.”
James is quiet for another moment. He keeps his arms crossed. This time when he speaks, he looks down.
“When I met you, I thought to myself, Here’s my fling before I propose. It’s idiotic, I know. But in my own mind, somehow, I was still single. I just . . . I never thought I would like you so much, Toni. It’s no excuse, but I just shut my eyes and kept going, much longer than I should have. I didn’t want to stop.”
Finally. After all these years of silence, years of avoiding downtown Thebes, and my secret drunk internet stalking, and messing around with meaningless guys. James has finally said the one thing he never said before. I was angry and inexperienced. He was in denial about his impending marriage. But what we had, at least back then, mattered.
Despite the sting of my lost job, I feel a small beam of something emanate from my chest. It’s relief.
“It was both of us, James,” I say. “I didn’t want to stop either.”
He nods. Smiles just a bit. “You were too young for me.”
He’s right. I was.
“But, Toni, does it have to keep us from combining forces now? I mean it when I say you’d be a brilliant campaign strategist. Nothing to do with our past other than I know your mind. I know what you’re capable of achieving.” Just like that, his eyes reflect his ambition once more.
This is your uncle’s lawyer, I remind myself. Be careful. Is he so far on the inside now that he’ll even use his former feelings for me to get what he wants? Where is the manipulation and where is the truth? I’m looking and looking, and I still can’t tell.
Did he always think like an operative, and at sixteen, I simply couldn’t see it?
He uncrosses his arms and leans forward. “Let me open this door for you. All you have to do is walk through it and any career you can dream of having will be on the other side.”
I reach for my phone, still sitting on the table between us.
“Not this way,” I say, waving the image in his direction.
If I allow James to use even the implied existence of a video of Michelle to hold over Per, I’ll be colluding with him in a risky game I’m not sure I’m prepared to handle. The same kind of game I was drawn into at Grogan. Just what my brother warned me to stay away from.
I stand up. But before I can leave, James puts his hand on my arm.
“The offer’s still good,” he says. “All you’ve done today is prove to me what a great team we make. Give it some thought. And, Toni—don’t screw yourself over because of something we’ll never have to use. Michelle will stay safe because we’ll be the only ones with this video. Don’t let abstract principles ruin your shot. Hanging on to that video is nothing but how the sausage is made.”
I hesitate. Even Izzy wanted to keep the video as insurance. Am I being too extreme? Is James making a certain kind of sense?
“How do I know if I give you a copy that you won’t use it against me one day? Ruin my career by proving that I stole confidential information from a client while I was his attorney? Maybe I’ll be running against you in some close election, and you’ll see this as the only way to take me down. How can I trust you?”
James takes his phone out of his pocket and taps on it. Then he turns it around.
A photo of his own. A Christmas tree all lit up, so heavy with ornaments that its needles are barely visible. Torn piles of wrapping paper. An old-fashioned sled, a basketball, a giant teddy bear with a red ribbon around its neck. Denise, wearing a ruffled green bathrobe, sits on the floor with a baby in her lap, smiling at a toddler in red pajamas raising two fistfuls of candy canes in the air.
“James Jr. is the older one,” he says. “We call him J.J. He’s almost four now. He’ll start preschool in the fall. And our little guy, Leo, just turned two. This is from Leo’s first Christmas.”
Leo, after Leo Roberts, his partner and my first boss. Somehow, that detail above all goes right to my heart.
“If I ever turn on you, Toni, you could come back and turn on me. This is what I have at stake: more than a career. My boys will never look up to me again if they learn that while their mother was picking out china patterns, their father was . . .”
I put my hand out to stop him. This feels like torment, not reassurance.
“Enough.”
He takes the phone back.
“We know each other’s secrets, Toni. I’ll keep yours because I need you to keep mine.”
________
Back outside under the hot midafternoon sun, I pace the sidewalk. On the one hand, James has given me a way out. A change of plans, I can tell everyone. An opportunity I couldn’t pass up to work on a congressional campaign took me off the corporate track and onto the political track. On the other hand, I would be drawn back into the underbelly of this place, the very place that sent me screaming. Even in Washington, how far away could I run from Thebes if the congressman I work for must answer to these people at the voting booth? And what would our professional alliance be based upon? A handshake across time and space set into motion by sex. Kept private through fear. The threat of mutually assured destruction.
But wait a minute. I still don’t know where my brother is. If I go back inside and say yes, right now, maybe I can convince James to get me access to confidential information from my uncle. I’ll find an excuse to get into the Roberts and Hollings account system. After all, I still know the password . . .
I stop.
No.
Every choice I’ve made since my phone boomed with the sound of Darth Vader’s theme song this morning has been disastrous. I left Minneapolis on top of the world. Now that world is gone.
Thebes didn’t bring my life to its knees. I did.
I can’t work for Hollings.
James and I might each have an image to flash at each other on our phones. But now, given the origins of the video, I would have to make new decisions, different decisions with different values, if I were to go down this path, whereas he stays exactly in the same place, continuing the decisions he’s already made, the path he’s already paved.
I have to find my brother. But I can’t do it through James Hollings.
My phone vibrates with another call. It’s Izzy.
“Toni, thank God you picked up. I’m so sorry!”
“What’s wrong?”
She’s sobbing. “Please forgive me. It’s not what I thought would happen. I was just so worried about you when you left. What if you got into trouble with that guy you’re seeing when you confronted him about Michelle? What if you needed backup?”
“Slow down. What are you trying to say?”
“I went to Daddy. I thought he could help because he knows your boyfriend. I told him you came to the house, and that I was scared you were going to find him, and you were alone . . . He said he had a way to stop you from doing anything you shouldn’t. To stop you from making the same mistake as Paul.”
“What mistake?”
Another sob. “He said he was doing it for your safety. For your own best interests.”
“Doing what, Izzy? Doing what?”
“Antonia King?”
I whirl around to see a uniformed Thebes police officer standing before me. Older than Hansen, someone I don’t recognize. His car, lights flashing, idles on the street behind us.
“Yes?”
“You’re under arrest.”
This can’t be happening. Melanie promised it wouldn’t. Could James have already double-crossed me somehow? Called Per and convinced him I was a snake?
“Officer, I think this is a misunderstanding, if you call Melanie Dwyer in Minneapolis . . .”
“You’re under arrest for breaking and entering the home of Christopher King. I need both of your hands in full view.”
“I’m sorry, Toni, I’m so sorry.” Izzy’s weeping is the last thing I hear before the policeman takes my phone and my bag and leads me to the back of his car.