Page 77 of The Better Sister

“It’s not what I wanted, Chloe, but Ethan called me Thursday night—it was after you won that First Amendment prize. He said he spent the whole time scared shitless that Adam wouldn’t show up and that it was going to set him off if you got upset about it. I guess it all worked out that night, but I could tell Ethan felt like he was living in a tinderbox. He said you were heading to East Hampton for the weekend, and he was going to spend the night with his friend so he wouldn’t have to deal with Adam. So I jumped in the car first thing the next morning and was, like, fuck it, I’m going to call Adam out on this myself if I have to. Then I got to your house and had no idea what to do next. I actually saw you leave for your party. You looked so pretty.”

I let her keep talking. There was nothing for me to say.

“Then I just waited, and Adam came home. I finally got up the nerve to knock on the door. He let me in.” That had to have been when the alarm was turned off. “I told him Ethan saw through him better than I ever could, and that I wasn’t going to let him do to him what he’d done to me. I wasn’t going to let him break our son. And then that dark side came out, and I felt so powerless again. I have workedso hardto improve myself. To be a different person. And in a matter of minutes, it was all gone. I felt small. Meek. And then, I wasn’t.”

“Were you defending yourself? Did he try to hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I could say that, but it wouldn’t be true. I remember his face when he realized what I had done. He was so shocked. And he looked at me, like, Oh, you are going to regret this. But then I pulled the knife out and did it again.” I knew she had stabbed him a total of five times. “I’m so sorry, Chloe. I know you loved him.”

“Your cell phone. You knew to leave it in Cleveland. And the knife. We weren’t missing one.”

“I still carry Dad’s old Buck knife everywhere I go—or at least I did until that night.” He had loved that thing. I had tried buying him fancier ones over the years, but he remained loyal to that twenty-five-dollar blade. “And I left my phone at home because I was terrified that he was going to haul me into court for showing up at the house unannounced. I figured I’d just lie and deny, deny, deny, and then produce my phone records showing I was getting a signal in good ol’ Cleveland all weekend.”

She had been planning to gaslight the gaslighter, but had ended up killing him instead.

“You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you? At this point, I don’t even care what happens to me anymore. I wanted Ethan to be okay, and I know he’s going to be all right with you—now that Adam is gone.”

I wasn’t going to turn her in. It would destroy my son—our son.

“Do you still have the knife?”

She said she had it hidden at the house in Cleveland.

“Well, I think it’s about time you moved some more of your things to New York.”

40

Bill welcomed me at his front door with one of those big, warm bear hugs I used to savor. His bright blue eyes twinkled as he stepped back and flashed a contented smile. “I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to see you again, Miss Chloe.”

We had exchanged a few phone calls, but I hadn’t seen him in person since the week before Ethan’s trial had started. Now it was the day after Christmas, and he was spending the week at his house in Amagansett. It was only fifteen minutes away from our place in East Hampton.

I handed him a gift box from Thomas Pink, tied with a black silk ribbon. “Spoiler alert. I meant to wrap it in proper paper, but I’m afraid all my usual standards have gone out the window this year.”

“Well, that’s a very polite way of saving an eighty-one-year-old man from embarrassing himself in a battle with wrapping paper.” He led the way to his living room, where a fire was roaring. “I’m having a hot toddy. I think you need one, too.”

He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass mug, complete with a cinnamon stick, to match the one waiting on the coffee table, and a bright blue gift box tied with a white ribbon. “Merry Christmas, my dear. We do know each other’s favorite stores.”

A navy cashmere scarf for him. A lead crystal and sterling silver martini shaker for me. “Oh, I will be putting this to excellent use,” I said.

“If I’d gone through the year you’ve had, I’d be drunk until the next presidential election.”

I exchanged the empty shaker for my current toddy and took a sip of the warm, honey-touched whiskey. “I’m not the only one who’s had a few surprises thrown my way,” I said, arching a brow in his direction. “I had no idea that Adam was talking to the FBI. You know that, don’t you?”

He waved away my apology. “If he had just come to me, I could have explained he had nothing to be concerned about. Adam was new to M&A, and probably jumped in too fast. He was used to being on the other side of the aisle and didn’t understand how deals get done, let alone the big international ones.”

“But the FBIisinvestigating Gentry. And the agent who testified at Ethan’s trial made it sound like they were looking at your firm, too.”

“The feds are always trying to drag lawyers into their clients’ scandals. It’s a scare tactic—to keep us from doing our jobs. The long and the short of it is, they don’t believe in the Sixth Amendment.”

“But why would Adam have been trying to work out a cooperation agreement if there was nothing to worry about?”

“That husband of yours—with all due respect—was always a bit too sanctimonious for the private sector. He thought he was above the work, but your loyalty is always to the client. End of story. You know what I mean by that, certainly.”

I shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“No, but you just survived a monthlong trial where the government was accusing Ethan of murder. And I saw how you went to bat for him. You never believed Jake was a killer, did you?”

He was staring at me with those charming blue eyes so intensely. I looked away. “No.”

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