Page 47 of Dirty Liars

“You know what hurts the most?” he asked. “I keep thinking if I’d been better—more like Jack, maybe—she might have trusted me enough to really tell me what was going on. I might have been able to protect her.”

“You don’t know that,” I said gently.

“I do know that,” he insisted. “She didn’t trust me because I’m not trustworthy. I’ve spent my whole life proving that to everyone. I’m unreliable. I drink too much. I sleep around. I use my money to paper over all my problems.” He stared into his coffee. “And the worst part is, I like being that guy. It’s easy. Comfortable. There are no expectations.”

“Dickie,” I said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “You came here today. You left the bottle in the car. That counts for something.”

He looked up, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “Does it? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like too little, too late.”

“It’s never too late to change,” I said. “Trust me, I know something about family legacies.”

He nodded slightly. We both knew what I meant—the shadow my parents had cast over my life, the darkness I’d fought to escape.

“How did you do it?” he asked. “How did you become…you, instead of them?”

I considered my answer carefully. “I stopped waiting for permission to be better. I decided that their sins weren’t mine to carry. But mostly, I let people help me. Jack, his parents, you guys?—”

“I’ve never let anyone help me,” Dickie admitted. “Not really. I’ve let people bail me out, clean up my messes, but actually help me? That would mean admitting I needed it.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m sitting in your kitchen at—” he checked his watch, “—five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, stone-cold sober for the first time in…I don’t even know how long. And I’m terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of finding out who I really am without all the…artifice. What if there’s nothing there?”

I reached out and took his hand. “Richmond Dexter Harlowe, I’ve known you for most of your life. Before the fancy cars and the designer suits. Before you learned how to charm your way into any woman’s bed. You were kind. You were funny. You were the one who helped me pass Ms. Tompkins’s computer science class when I was failing miserably.”

“That was a lifetime ago,” he said, but I could see a flicker of something in his eyes—recognition, maybe.

“That person is still in there,” I insisted. “And I think you came here today because you want to find him again.”

Dickie’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how.”

“You start by asking for help,” I said. “Real help. Professional help.”

He tensed. “My father?—”

“Isn’t the one who has to live your life,” I cut in. “What do you want, Dickie? Not what your father wants, not what the Harlowe legacy demands. What doyouwant?”

He was quiet for so long I thought he might not answer. When he did, his voice was small, almost childlike. “I want to not hate the man I see in the mirror. I want to be someone who could have deserved Chloe. I want to be the man she could have loved. I want to stop drinking just to make it through the day.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired, Jaye.”

I squeezed his hand. “I know a place. It’s discreet. Private. The kind of place where even a Harlowe could go without making the society pages.”

“You think they can fix me?” he asked, a hint of his old self-mockery in his voice.

“I think they can help you fix yourself,” I said. “But you’d have to be all in. No half measures.”

He took a deep, unsteady breath. “What about the investigation? Jack told me to stay in town.”

“Did you make a formal statement?” I asked.

“This morning,” he said. “With my attorney like Jack said.”

“Good, that’ll make it easier. I’ll talk to Jack. He loves you and will want the best thing for you. And this is the best thing.”

Dickie stared down at our joined hands, then back up at me. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d known—earnest, uncertain, but with a good heart beneath all the bravado.

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