Page 71 of To Have and to Hold

Law school introduced me to all sorts of energy enhancers, both under and over the table. I couldn’t admit to being completely innocent. Ativan, Xanax, coke, even nighttime cough medicine were introduced and some were dismissed. If anyone thought law school was filled with straightlaced geniuses who wore spectacles, went to bed at eight and drank cans of pop—never soda—they were kidding themselves.

“He was giving her a few lines off his keys here and there. He had his supplier come by, some man I’d never met before and who certainly wasn’t in school with us, and was making some money off selling eight balls to students. I think he was his supplier’s in—there is nothing like desperate middle and upperclassmen who want your drugs. I didn’t think much of it. Didn’t think he was involved in a trafficking ring. I took a few hits myself, but I knew my limits. And I thought…I thought she knew hers. It never occurred to me that this was her first time. That she’d never done drugs before.”

I rubbed my mouth. The repercussions of this conversation were hitting with the heft of a round of bullets.

“He told me not to worry about it, and I’d somehow convinced myself that it was fine. He wouldn’t deliberately overdose her—couldn’t’ve, because he wasn’t that kind of guy. I wasn’t the type of person to hang out with people like that. Chrissie was out for a good time, actually allowing herself a brief moment of letting loose before becoming part of the corporate grind. All the reasons I shame myself with to this day. And so I put them both in a cab and went home. I left her alone with him.”

“And…” I prodded gently.

“And I received a phone call two hours later from him that Chrissie wasn’t breathing. I told him to call the cops but he was out of control, screaming at me over the phone, begging and crying for me to come over and help him, to teach him CPR, anything. He was so beside himself that I was on the street and heading toward him before my brain knew what my feet were doing.”

I reached for a cup, anything, to clench, but realized there was nothing before me. “When you got there, was she still alive?”

Jack collapsed into his hands. “No. No, she was white, her lips were blue, she was gone. I ran to the phone to call 9-1-1 but he tackled me. Actually fought me to the ground, yelling, spitting at me not to get the police involved. To help him. To help myself, because now that I was here, my potential was over. This kind of smudge on one’s character record…It’s enraging to think of it now,” Jack said. “As a kid, I thought my life was over, but looking back, all I want to do is strangle that idiot. It is so much worse living with a secret than it is to face the consequences of doing the right damned thing.”

“You were young. Scared,” I said. “You had a dead girl in front of you and I doubt you’d ever seen a body before, never mind someone you cared for.”

Tears were pooling in the bags under Jack’s eyes, escaping free and streaming down his cheeks. “He’d made enough connections through the drug trade to get help making Chrissie disappear on paper, to remain permanently missing. I was the grunt who—who helped—dispose…” Jack couldn’t go on. He bent forward in his chair, his hands trembling to keep his head upright.

“I am not a proud man. I was a proud kid, but not anymore. And I was made promises, that if I did everything I was supposed to, this would all go away. I could keep on the upward track, follow along with my friend and act like this never happened. And I did it. I became him. It was the only thing I could think of doing in order to delete that moment.”

I dared to lay a hand between his shoulder blades. “No, you’re not him. You left that life, moved away to start over with a baby daughter and new wife because you couldn’t take being cold anymore.”

“I wanted a pretend life, away from the truth, from him. He reminded me often to keep my mouth shut, and at this point betraying him would’ve been the end of me. I had a chance before, when I ran to the phone. I didn’t take it. So, I lived within a lie, then created more lies by moving as far away as possible and becoming someone else. A guy who opened a quaint grocery store with his sweet Southern, pregnant wife. Years went by—years—and I said nothing. But watching my daughter grow up and picturing a man doing to her what was done to Chrissie…” He choked, the reality of Emme’s current situation coming down on him so hard the floor could’ve opened underneath his feet and he wouldn’t feel the fall. A twisted kind of fate, a sin-for-sin no parent wanted to be set against their child.

“I ignored a lot of things that night,” he said.

“You can tell me,” I said softly.

“Scratches on his forearms, one scoring across his cheek.” Jack traced the area on the side of his face. “A sort of…bruising…on her neck. But I looked away so fast. My mind shut down so deliberately I couldn’t…there wasn’t any way to keep functioning if I truly understood…”

“I know.”

“Ten years I waited. Ten years of pretending before I became a coward and ran away. I was going to do the right thing,” Jack sobbed through his fingers. “I finally told my wife a few months ago. This secret was necrotic and if I didn’t amputate it somehow, it was going to kill me. I was convinced Perry would divorce me, or, worse, hate me. Look at me like a…like a killer. A murderer. But she listened and I hope you never have a woman regard you the way she stared at me. The disappointment, I could feel the instant she splintered. She said, for the love of our daughter, I had to tell the truth. I was going to call the police and tell them everything.”

My hand slipped from his shirt. “Did you tell your friend that your wife knew? That you were going to do this?”

“I…yes. It’s hard to comprehend, especially considering what he did, but I just had to, had to, get it all out. Leave no sin behind and be honest. With everybody.”

“Jack,” I said, ever so slowly. “Jack, listen to me. You have to tell me his name.”

He shook—his body, hands, head. “I…no. I can’t. Now that I’ve thought about it, I…that’s the point of no return.”

“You have to,” I said, speaking so close to him my breath was probably hitting his cheek.

He glanced up, blood vessels prominent in the whites of his eyes. His mouth formed into an O. “No. It couldn’t be.”

“I’m doing it, Jack.”

Perry’s voice interrupted us. She’d been standing near the door for a length of time that could’ve comprised this entire conversation. She stood in her robe, her face paler than white hotel pillows behind me.

She told me the name.

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