Page 67 of The Better Sister

“About eight tenths of a mile.” I thought about all the times I had stolen away to walk alone on the beach, only to turn left after the Maidstone Club to circle around to his house. I hated that I was doing this to him, but reminded myself that I had to for Ethan.

“Did this man ever express any animosity toward your husband?”

Another objection from Nunzio, this time on the basis of hearsay. Olivia responded with something about it being an excited utterance and state of mind, and Judge Rivera instructed me that I could answer.

“The last time I saw him before Adam was killed—about two weeks before the murder—he noticed another bruise.” That part was true. Adam had worked late and came home to find me already asleep in the middle of the bed. He kicked me, saying he couldn’t get me to move, but I knew it was because he was mad about getting stuck at work all night. “I finally told him that the bruises weren’t from Pilates—that Adam was violent, but I was afraid to leave him. He was furious. The only thing I can think of is that he did this to protect me.”

Nunzio, still searching wildly for cell phone evidence he wouldn’t find, was slow to object. “Speculation.”

The objection was sustained, but the damage was done. I could tell from the disgusted looks on their faces that the jurors had believed me. In their eyes, I was a slut, but not a liar.

“Mr. Nunzio. Do you have a cross-examination or not?”

Watching Nunzio still flipping through those records, I realized how many dots Olivia had to connect to be confident about this plan.

She had predicted this very moment the night before in her suite. “We’re not going to give him a name,” she’d said. “He’ll assume you’re lying to protect Ethan. He’ll look in the cell phone records for a Friday-night call, and he won’t find it. So he’ll have two choices: flail around in the dark and ask questions he doesn’t know the answer to, or wait until closing to argue that you made up a nonexistent boyfriend to distract the jury. He won’t even cross-examine you.”

Now, here we were, and Nunzio had a decision to make.

“No questions, Your Honor.”

34

At Olivia’s request, Jake had been waiting in the courthouse. The plan she came up with the previous night worked best if he walked into the courtroom expecting to be asked his impressions of Adam’s relationship with his son.

I saw a small smile cross his face as he walked past me on his way to the witness chair. I knew it was intended as a sign of optimism for me, but it only made me feel more horrible.

I kept my hands clasped in my lap and stared straight ahead as Olivia walked him through the basic questions she’d ask of a standard character witness. His name and age. His employment with Rives & Braddock for the past fifteen years. The fact that he first met Adam and his family approximately six years earlier through the law firm’s head partner, Bill Braddock, who representedEvemagazine. The additional fact that the firm subsequently welcomed Adam in as a law partner to handle white-collar criminal cases a little more than two years before his death.

“Would you call Adam Macintosh a friend?”

“Definitely.”

“You socialized together?”

“Yes. Often, in fact, once he joined the firm. Our weekend houses are within a mile of each other, so we saw each other out there quite a bit. And, of course, at work.”

“You had cases together?”

He paused. “No, not per se. He was primarily a criminal defense attorney. I’m a transactional lawyer. But we were partners at the same firm, so, in that sense, all our work was shared. And a few clients had a need for both of us, in which case we’d team up.”

“Did you even take trips with the Macintosh family?”

He nodded. “Yes, a couple of times.”

“And what were those?”

“The firm had a big celebration for its fiftieth year. About a hundred of us went to Anguilla together last January. And then a much smaller group of us—more our social crowd from the East End—went up to Boston together for a Yankee-Sox game, if you could even call that massacre a vacation.”

“And did Ethan Macintosh and Chloe Taylor go on both of those trips?”

He blinked a couple of times at the mention of my name, but I doubt anyone else noticed. “Yes.”

“So you had a chance to get to know both of them?”

“Yes, I’d say so.”

“And did you commence a sexual relationship with Chloe Taylor?”

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