Page 61 of The Better Sister

“Did she ask whether your father was violent toward your stepmother?”

“No.”

“It was pretty clear that you didn’t want that known, in fact. Is that right?”

He nodded, and then added “Yes” for the record.

“All right. But now that it’s out there, you saw your father, Adam Macintosh, use violence against your stepmother, Chloe Taylor?” Olivia deserved an Academy Award for acting as if this was all old news to her—a mere distraction by the prosecution—but I was absolutely certain this was the first she had heard of it.

“No, I didn’t actually see it happening. But I could hear it. They think when I’m in my room, all I do is listen to my Beats, and it’s like I’m not there. But I could tell when there was tension. I’d listen when they were fighting. I was afraid they’d get divorced, because Chloe’s basically my mom, and I didn’t know what would happen if they split up. And some of the fights were... bad, really bad, like I could hear thuds and stuff. And then a few times, it was clear he was hurting her.”

I realized I was biting my lower lip so hard I had drawn blood. The metallic taste was the same as the one time Adam punched me in the face with a closed fist. When people saw the bruise on my cheek and the cut on my mouth, I told them, “Can you believe Iactuallywalked into a wall? Adam says I need a better cover story, or the police are going to come for him.” And then everyone would laugh.

“How could you tell he was hurting Chloe, Ethan?”

“Because she’d literally be screaming, ‘Adam, you’re hurting me.’But when he got mad, you couldn’t get him to stop. And that’s why I taped him. I couldn’t figure out a good way to tape him hurting her, so I decided to record him yelling at me, so he’d at least see how crazy he got when he was angry.”

“And to be clear, did your father ever hit you?”

“No.”

“And does any of this have anything whatsoever to do with your father’s murder?”

“No, because I didn’t do it.”

“And why didn’t you tell anyone earlier about your father’s violence toward your stepmother?”

“Because she obviously didn’t want anyone to know, or else she would have done something.”

Just like KurtLoMein said, I was weak. A coward. A hypocrite. I was just like my mother.

32

“I need to talk to Ethan. There has to be a way.”

Olivia and Nicky had managed to get me out of the courthouse when I was refusing to leave unless Judge Rivera permitted me to see Ethan. Because I was a witness in the case, I was prohibited from speaking to him until the trial was over, but I needed him to know that I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. I should have protected him better. Now I was pacing the length of Olivia’s hotel suite like a caged animal, trying to imagine the guilt and fear Ethan had to be struggling with right now.

“Chloe! You have to listen to me.”

“Do you want me to slap her?” Nicky said from the sofa. “I’ve always wanted to.”

I stopped pacing and stared at her. “Seriously, Nicky? Only you would make that joke after what just happened in the courtroom.”

“It worked, didn’t it? Olivia’s trying to explain something to you.”

“It would be malpractice for me to let my client speak to a witness directly in the middle of a trial, especially after a moment like that one. But I know you, Chloe, okay? After six months, I think I know you. I will speak to him. I promise you. And I will let him know what you need me to tell him, short of coordinating testimony. Do you understand?”

I nodded and took a deep breath, trying to slow the pulse that I felt throbbing against my right temple.

“So can we talk about his testimony, please? Nicky, maybe you can wait in your room—”

“No, it’s fine. I want her to stay.” I took a seat on the sofa next to Nicky. “I almost told you last night, when you were talking about you and Adam. It was... exactly what the last year had been like with us. It started out how you were saying—he grabbed my arm once when I was walking away from one of his rants. I told him that if he ever touched me out of anger again, I was done. But then it did happen again. He pushed me—hard—but I told myself in the morning that he was drunk, and I had been up in his face, yelling about something I can’t even remember now. But the line was crossed.”

Adam’s job as a prosecutor had served more than his identity as one of the good guys—it had given him a feeling of power. Once it was gone, he went searching for that sense of control under his own roof, but nothing I did kept him satisfied for long.

“It got worse,” I said, not wanting to relive the details, “but I just kept moving the goalposts. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. And not the way other women say they can’t leave. I really couldn’t leave.”

Nicky rolled her eyes.

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