November 29, 2015
Alexandra Weston
Sitting in a living room far smaller than the one she’d sat in many years earlier, Alexandra did what she didn’t do best. She waited. Stared at Paula Page. Paula stared at the floor. Alexandra wanted to move things along, but knew she couldn’t. Not yet. First she needed to allow ample time for Paula to absorb what she’d just said.
A minute ticked by.
Then two.
Paula, it seemed, was too rattled to speak.
Not that Alexandra blamed her.
Writing a “where are they now” version of the most famous criminals Alexandra had interviewed over her thirty-five-year career was something she had no interest doing. The idea was good, and she had no doubt the book would sell well. The problem was, it didn’t fit into her plans to publish her memoir and retire. With this project taking up so much of her time, her memoir would have to wait until the following year.
Since publishing Elias’s story twenty-five years earlier, Alexandra had come to see him in a different light. No longer young and naïve like she was when she wrote about him the first time, she could now see how he’d manipulated her, clouded her mind into writing the story he wanted her to tell. She regretted it. No man had ever managed that before, and no man since. Even now, she didn’t know how she had been so blind.
The opportunity to fix past mistakes was an opportunity at redemption. It wouldn’t be jaded or muddled with confused emotion. It would be filled with only one thing: truth. Part of that truth was sitting across from her now.
At long last, Paula’s mouth opened, and what followed was exactly what Alexandra expected. “What are you going to do with the information you know about me?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What do you mean yet? What do you want to keep quiet?”
“I don’t want anything,” Alexandra said.
“Then why are you telling me?”
“I thought you should know.”
“How do you think it’s going to look when everyone finds out you knew I shot Sandra and you kept it to yourself?”
Alexandra crossed one leg over the other. “How stupid do you think I am? I’m not going to say I found out all those years ago. I’m going to say I only recently discovered it.”
“Then I’ll say you always knew.”
Alexandra bobbed her shoulders up and down. “Do whatever you like. No one will believe you over me.”
“Look around, Mrs. Weston. I’ve lost everything. My husband. My home. Thanks to you, he divorced me after finding out I lied about being raped. Imagine how it felt to lose the life I had and then find out you left it out of the book anyway. I don’t understand why you did it.”
“I made Elias a promise, and I shouldn’t have.”
“How is your promise any different now than it was then?”
“It isn’t. I just see things clearly now. And the truth is I don’t care what you think or what you want or what will happen to you when my book is released. I care that he made a fool of me, and now I intend to set it right.”
“You’re a bitch.”
Alexandra stood, slung her handbag over her shoulder, patted Paula on the shoulder, and laughed. “Good for you! Get it off your chest. Feels good, doesn’t it, to say what you wanted to say since the moment I walked in here? I like your spirit.”
Alexandra headed for the door.
“We’re not done talking.”
Alexandra turned. “Oh yes, we are.”
“If I’m going down, she is too.”
Interest piqued, Alexandra asked, “Who’s she?”
“Sit back down, Mrs. Weston. There’s something you should know about Sandra Hamilton.”