Page 37 of The Better Sister

I did it. I took his side. I signed an affidavit the next morning, swearing that I had seen a decline in my sister over the course of more than two years that was consistent with the self-destructive behavior she had exhibited as long as I could remember. And when she tried to say that Adam was lying about her, I signed another affidavit detailing the many times that she had told me horrific things about her lovers when she was mad at them, only to retract them later after they had reconciled.

Adam was a lawyer who had friends who were other lawyers who were willing to represent him for free, however long it took. And Nicky was... Nicky. She had no lawyer and no plan, only denials about the severity of what she had done.I swear, Chloe. I have no idea what happened. I must have fallen asleep. You have no idea how exhausting it is to take care of a kid all day.

They agreed to a divorce that gave Adam sole physical custody but did not permanently terminate her parental rights. I don’t know whether she signed it because she didn’t care anymore or because she actually believed she could work her way back into a shared custody situation.

But instead of getting better, she got worse. She would have been homeless if it weren’t for my parents. I’ve always wondered if they both would have lived longer if they hadn’t been constantly dealing with Nicky and her drama.

When Adam first moved to New York, I persuaded my mom and dad that it would be best for Nicky to stay in Cleveland, where they could keep an eye on her. What we thought would be monthly visits became less regular as my parents got older, Nicky got worse, and Adam and Ethan got more settled in Manhattan. When I called Nicky to tell her that I was seeing Adam and that it was serious, she actually sounded grateful. “All I ever wanted was for Ethan to have a happy life. You’re better at it than I am. Maybe he’ll turn out to be more like you than me. But funnier. That would be good.” I could tell she was wasted, but I think she meant it.

Somewhere along the way, Nicky started to clean up her act. She never told me the details of how she did it, but I think a switch was flipped after our father died. She had always been so resentful of him, blaming him for all of her troubles. It was like she refused to be who he wanted her to be, just to spite him. And then once he was gone, she leveled out. Mom swore she was getting better, and I could hear a newfound clarity in Nicky’s voice when I called and the couple of times a year she’d visit. And then Mom died, too.

Nicky thought about moving closer to us, since she no longer had my parents to watch over, and vice versa. But there was no way she could afford to live in New York with no job or higher education. And besides, it was just too late. Ethan was thirteen years old by then. And he was a good, happy, stable kid. He didn’t need the disruption of a biological mother he barely knew.

To this day, I really don’t believe that Nicky was trying to kill her baby. She was simply never meant to have one.

Part III

People v. Ethan Macintosh

23

They brought Ethan into the crowded Suffolk County courtroom through a side door. He was wearing the same striped T-shirt and navy blue sweats he’d had on when he was arrested the previous day and was still in handcuffs. Olivia was with him. So far, only she—not I, and not Nicky—had been allowed to meet with him.

I was now into my fourth day without any meaningful sleep, but Nicky was the one I felt trembling next to me when she saw him. He looked both older and younger at once. Under the fluorescent lighting of the courtroom, his skin seemed gray. His long bangs, usually swept high with product, had fallen straight across his forehead. Beneath them, he peered out like a frightened little boy pushed from behind a curtain onto a brightly lit stage.

Olivia led the way across the courtroom to the counsel table. A deputy of some kind—bald, wearing a black bulletproof vest emblazoned with white letters reading “New York State Courts”—was at Ethan’s side. Ethan’s eyes bore into me, asking for help that I couldn’t give him.

“Has he been in those cuffs all night?” I tried whispering to Olivia. Nicky and I were seated in the first row behind the defense’s table, but I felt so far away from my son.

Olivia brushed off my question as a court clerk called the case. Olivia and Ethan had barely stood up and sat down again before the prosecutor started reading case numbers and statutes from a folder in front of her. My son was now a file. And he was being charged with the second-degree murder of his father. His case was technically being handled in a special “youth part” of the criminal courts, but the murder charge meant there was no way to move the case to family court, which meant Ethan would be facing an adult-like trial and adult-like penalties if he was convicted. Olivia had warned us to expect it, but Nicky let out a guttural cry upon the reading of the murder charge. I may have, too. I could hear nervous movement and whispers in the galley behind us, but didn’t want to turn and look.

Nicky lowered her head when the prosecutor announced that they were seeking to detain Ethan pending trial. I reached over and grabbed her hand. All these years, I had convinced myself that she was more like a semi-estranged aunt than his actual mother, but she was sharing this pain.

The only thing that gave me hope in that moment was Olivia. She was good. Really good. She took Adam’s best attributes and made them Ethan’s. She described Ethan moving to New York City with his father when he was four years old after his parents divorced. How Adam, who served nearly ten years as an esteemed federal prosecutor, was Ethan’s role model and lifeline. How devastated Ethan was by his father’s murder. She depicted the police as having treated Ethan and his stepmother as suspects from the second they responded to the 911 call.

“There is a presumption of innocence, Your Honor, and Ethan is in fact innocent of this horribly unjust accusation. I know we all get so used to defendants being marched in and out of these rooms, and we say we presume they’re innocent, but do we? Really? No, we treat it as a phrase that represents the panoply of rights we afford to those that we believe are probably guilty. So, please, Your Honor, just imagine for one second that this sixteen-year-old boy, Ethan, isactuallyinnocent. He has just lost the man who was his only constant parent throughout his life. And within seventy-two hours, the police snatch him out of his home and accuse him of murdering the father whose death he has only begun to mourn. Holding him in custody while I prove what an injustice this is will change him, Your Honor. It will rob him of any kind of faith he has in adults, or the legal system. I am telling you: if you allow the prosecution to do this, you won’t be able to sleep when you eventually realize how mistaken the police are in this case.”

I noticed that Nicky’s head was down and her lips were moving. I was fairly certain she was actually praying. I closed my eyes and did the same silently, asking a God I hadn’t spoken to for more than twenty years to send Ethan home today.

The prosecutor could barely hide her disdain as she dismissed Olivia’s narrative as a “fairy tale.”

“Your Honor, the police didn’t need to jump to any conclusions. The conclusions leaped into view from the evidence.” As we expected, she depicted Ethan as having lied to the police, offering as a false alibi a friend who instead told the police that Ethan had asked to be dropped off at Main Beach “for what his friend assumed was the defendant’s ongoing practice of selling marijuana on the East End.”

According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, once Ethan was alone, he walked the three and a half blocks from the beach to our house, killed Adam, and then staged the scene to resemble an interrupted burglary.

The judge asked for more detail about the evidence of staging, and the prosecutor produced a photograph, first handing a copy to Olivia. “The evidence at trial will be more extensive, but this one photo gives you a clear idea.”

The judge’s expression was indifferent at first, but then he donned a set of reading glasses. “These arrows are...”

“Pieces of glass, Your Honor. From the broken window.”

Without a view of the picture, I had no idea what they were talking about, but the tone of the judge’s “Uh huh, I see” had me tighten my grip on Nicky’s hand.

“Also, Your Honor, the detectives asked the defendant and his stepmother if anything was missing from what was supposed to look like an extensive exploration of the house. His stepmother noticed a wireless speaker missing, and the defendant then added that he was missing a pair of headphones and a very specific pair of tennis shoes. They were described as red, yellow, and black, with a cartoon character holding a ray gun.”

The courtroom was silent. It was clear the prosecutor was building up to a big reveal. My stomach suddenly hurt. It’s like my body knew what she was going to say before my brain had figured it out.

His backpack.When we left East Hampton, Ethan wanted to circle back to Kevin’s for his backpack. And when we got to the city, I looked in it and found nothing but a burner phone. If the only thing Ethan had carried off to Kevin’s house was a phone, why had he taken his backpack?

---