Best Intentions (24 page)

“You can e-mail it to me. We'll print out copies.” He gets out his card. “You'll call if you think of anything?”

“Yes.”

“We'll be in touch.”

“You'll keep us apprised as soon as you learn something?” Sam asks.

“Of course. Thank you for your help.”

While Sam sees Callahan out I put my head between my knees, rocked by torrents of nausea, my bowels churning.

When he comes back, he gently rubs my neck. “I'm sorry, Lisa.
I'm so sorry. I know what Deirdre meant to you. I can't believe this is happening.”

I push his hands away. I cannot stand him touching me, it repulses me. “I should have told him,” I spit out. “I should have told him everything.”

“Told him what?”

“About you and Deirdre.”

S
am takes a step back. “What do you mean?”

“How could you, Sam? How could either of you?”

“Will you calm down? I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I stare at his unshaven face, guarded, alert to danger but impenetrable, wearing his stubborn ignorance like an amulet, giving me nothing, and I feel a sudden and fierce hatred mixing with the anguish and disbelief. I pick up his coffee mug from the table and throw it at him, missing. We both watch as it shatters on the wall behind the counter, shards of the blue and white ceramic raining down.

“Don't tell me to goddamn calm down,” I hiss. “I saw pictures. Of the two of you.”

“What pictures? You're not making any sense.”

“How long were you having an affair with Deirdre? How long were you lying to me? Tell me. I really want to know. Tell me.”

“What on earth makes you think I was having an affair with Deirdre? That's insane.”

“Is everything a lie, all of it, our entire life? God, you two must have thought it was funny, what an idiot I was. I can just imagine.”

“Are you crazy? I was not sleeping with Deirdre.”

“Stop lying. For once, will you just stop lying? I told you, I saw pictures.”

“What pictures? Lisa, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“There are photographs of the two of you together.”

He stops, takes this in. I watch as he readjusts his position, internally, externally.

“You were following me?” he asks, unsure what is called for, offense or defense.

“No. I wasn't. I didn't think I had a reason to.”

“Then where did these so-called pictures come from?”

“Stop talking to me like I'm one of your goddamned interviews.” His stonewalling infuriates me. “They are not so-called.”

“You didn't answer me. Where did they come from?”

“That's not the point. A friend of mine. You don't know him,” I answer impatiently.

“Just what is it you think you saw?”

“You and Deirdre together.” In the café, their heads touching, the whisper between them. On the street, their arms around each other. Arguing. “More than once,” I add.

Sam closes his eyes, there is no place left for him to go. “All right,” he says, so quietly I can hardly hear him. He is talking to himself really, psyching himself up before diving off a precipitous cliff. “All right.”

We are here, then. Finally here.

“I'm sorry.” He exhales and begins to speak as if there is nothing left, no way around it. “Yes, Deirdre and I were seeing each other. But it's not what you think.”

I remain motionless, waiting, careful not to make any sudden movement or sound that might put him off his confession.

“I certainly wasn't sleeping with her,” he continues.

“What were you doing, then?” I ask bitterly.

“It's complicated.”

“I'm sure it is.”

He begins pacing back and forth across our tiny kitchen.

“Stop that. You're driving me crazy,” I snap at him.

He sits down at the kitchen table, inches from me, and looks directly into my eyes. “I borrowed money from Deirdre.”

“You what?”

“I needed fifty thousand dollars.”

“Good Lord. What kind of trouble were you in?”

“It was just a bridge loan. I was going to pay her back in a couple of weeks.”

“I don't understand.” My head is spinning as I try to grasp the meaning of his words, they are so garbled and unforeseen, so foreign and detached from anything I expected.

“Last month, when I was reporting that ill-fated story on Eliot Wells, I heard rumors of a start-up he was going to back, UniProphet. They were keeping it hush-hush until all the financing was set. It was by far the best idea I've heard of in a long time. It will change the nature of online marketing.”

Sam looks at me with a fragment of all that obstinate, glittering hope I'd seen six years ago, but I don't care about that now.

“When the piece on Wells didn't pan out,” he continues, “it freed me up to talk to the start-up guys. They offered me an opportunity to buy in on the ground floor. The upside would have been huge, but no one would give me a loan. I knew that as soon as Wells announced his involvement, the money would flow in and I'd be able to pay the fifty grand back, but I had to move quickly.”

“Where does Deirdre fit into all this?”

“I had no place else to go and she has the money. Had the money,” he corrects himself. We both flinch. We haven't absorbed it, it doesn't yet bear the horrific weight of reality. Once we enter that universe of grief there will be no turning back. It is just seconds away.

“I'm not getting any of this,” I say. “Why would she give you that kind of money? Why didn't either of you tell me?” It is one more incomprehensible riddle added to all the others that have turned the last twelve hours into a funhouse distortion of everything and everyone I thought I knew.

“I don't know, maybe she felt guilty about what happened six year ago.” Sam looks at me intently. “You have to understand, she didn't do it for me, she did it for you.”

“What do you mean, she did it for me?”

“She thought all of our problems stemmed from our financial pressures. You all but told her that. She was trying to help. She figured you had too much pride to take money from her. If it makes you feel any better, she hated lying to you. The only reason she agreed was that it was just supposed to be for three weeks. Unfortunately, it didn't quite turn out that way.”

I can absorb only pieces of this, stray facts that make their way through the confusion and ever-widening ache.

“You weren't having an affair with her?” I need to hear it again, need to hear it until it sinks in.

“Of course not.”

With each word Sam utters, a new wound forms. Deirdre, Deirdre in her apartment, hurt, battered, I can't use the word
dead
yet, can't even think it, but it is everywhere inside of me, inside this room.

Two thoughts collide in my head, overtaking each other, separating, joining: Sam was not sleeping with Deirdre; Deirdre is gone.

In the moment of regaining my husband I am losing my best friend for good.

It pierces through me, a knife-edged lesion that makes me double over.

“Why didn't you tell me you needed money?” I ask when I am finally able to speak again. “Why didn't you come to me when this all started?”

“I was going to. But Merdale took over and you were worried about losing your job. The timing couldn't have been worse. You never would have been willing to take the risk even if we had that kind of money.” He looks at me. “Would you have?”

“I don't know.” Neither of us believes me.

“You blame me for losing the money six years ago,” Sam goes on. “You've never come out and said it. And I appreciate that. But it's true.”

“That's not fair. I never blamed you.”

“No? Anyway, I wanted to make it up to you. Prove that I could do it. And this was different. It was a sure thing.”

“There are no sure things. You of all people should know that.”

“At least let me tell you what it is,” he pleads.

“Not now.” I do not care, I will never care.

“All right, but you have to understand that the only reason I did any of this is that I believed it would be the solution to all of our problems.”

“What problems?”

“What do you mean, what problems? Don't you think I know how stressed you are about money? How unhappy you've been lately? Do you think I like watching you go to a job you hate every day? I get that I'm not making enough money, you've made that quite clear,” he says bitterly.

“I've always been proud of what you do. Whatever decisions we made, we made together.”

“I know that. But I got the feeling that you were beginning to wonder if it was worth it. If I'm worth it.” There is a raw anguish in his face that makes me look away. “You make fun of all those Upper East Side matrons but deep down you're constantly comparing our lives to theirs.”

“I don't want their lives.”

“No, I don't believe you do. Even so, it's hard not to feel small around them, not to question your choices.” He touches my hand. “I felt you slipping away. Don't you see? I was trying to make things better for you, for us.”

“How could you think all I cared about was money?”

“Not all. I never thought all.”

“You were gambling with our future.” It is at once an observation and an accusation.

“Not with, on,” he says. “I was gambling
on
our future.”

We stare at each other, frustrated. Between
with
and
on
there is an oceanic differential we may never be able to cross.

“Is Deirdre's money gone?” I ask.

“No. It's just going to take longer to get back than I thought.”

“What happened?”

“The exposé on Wells, that's what happened. The minute all the accusations about him pre-dating options was in the news, everyone got gun shy. The VC guys went running for the hills. Wells was supposed to be the big draw to get other investors to go in. Suddenly that wasn't looking as likely. The start-up isn't off, it's just going to take more time to get sufficient funding.”

“I can't believe that you kept all this from me,” I say. “If you had just come to me we could have talked it out.”

“And if you had said no? That would have been it.”

“So rather than risk it you worked around me?”

“Yes. Maybe that was wrong, maybe I shouldn't have done it that way, but that's what happened.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Maybe?”

“Okay, yes, it was wrong. I was wrong. I'm sorry. But I was trying to fix things. I didn't want to lose you,” he admits.

“You were never going to lose me.”

“No? These last few months, you seem to resent everything I say or do.”

“You're the one who's been so preoccupied, pulling away. Lying to me.”

He doesn't reply.

“When were you going to tell me all this?” I ask.

“I wanted to come to you with good news. Something concrete. I wanted you to be proud of me, not give you something else to worry about. I love you, Lisa. I've always loved you. That has never changed.”

I rise, pacing myself now. It is too much to untangle all at once, too much to grasp, how far we have drifted, what strangers we have become, misguided interpreters of each other's desires and fears.

I shake my head and begin to cry, the realization that has been hovering on the edges, held back by shock, crashing through now, carrying with it an infinite pain. I cry for Deirdre, for my inability to apologize to her for my own worst thoughts, for the phone call to Jack that I never should have placed, for all of our missed and faulty
conclusions, all of our best intentions gone awry, a knotted ball with no beginning, no end. It is too late to matter anyway.

“Say something,” Sam implores.

My head is spinning. I am about to turn to him for comfort, I am leaning into believing him, maybe even forgiving him, at some point forgiving him, when I remember the rest of it, Sam and Deirdre's affair in college, and I am filled with doubt once more.

T
here is a long silence as the sediment shifts, settles, unsettles, resettles.

“What about you and Deirdre in college?” I ask, numbly.

“What about us in college?” Sam asks, his eyebrows knit in bewilderment.

“You slept with her while I was in London.”

He looks up, stunned. “That's ridiculous. What gave you that idea?”

“Jack told me he saw the two of you.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “That's impossible. There was nothing to see.”

“Are you so sure about that?” I challenge.

“What exactly did Jack tell you?”

“He said he came back from a tennis match late one night and went to Deirdre's room to surprise her. He saw the two of you in bed together.” The words come out slowly, there is so much internal bruising.

“I don't know what Jack saw. Or what he thinks he saw. But I never slept with Deirdre. Not really.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? That's like being a little bit pregnant. There's no such thing as ‘not really' when it comes to sex.”

“Oh God, Lisa, it was all so long ago.” Sam runs his hands through his hair, his eyes shut tight. Deep horizontal lines crease his skin. “It was a mistake. A horrible, drunken mistake. But it was one night. And we didn't go through with it. We couldn't.”

“You expect me to believe that?” I glare at him. “I'm going to need more than that.”

“I had just gotten that famous letter of yours from London. I thought you were breaking up with me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“It seemed as if you were questioning everything. Me, us.”

“That's what we did at that age.”

“I didn't.”

“Go on,” I say.

“I ran into Deirdre at the pub. She and Jack had one of their fights and he was off at some tournament. She was upset, I was missing you. We starting talking, drinking. You remember what it was like.”

He looks over at me, hoping that I've heard enough to get the gist and he will be excused from offering up the details.

I do remember what it was like. All those nights in the dingy campus pub, the floor sticky with beer, the inconstant couplings and uncouplings, all that talk, all that specious reasoning when you are nineteen and it is late and you think there is some sort of answer waiting just beyond your fingertips and regret is still a lifetime away. The rush of cold when you finally leave at closing time, standing just outside the door as you listen to the locks slide into place, rocking back and forth on your toes in the clean crunchy snow, waiting for whatever will come next.

“What happened?” I ask flatly.

“I don't know. We were both hurt and looking for comfort. After the pub closed we ended up back in Deirdre's room. Just to talk. And then one thing led to another. The point is, we stopped. I know that's no excuse, not really. But we both realized what we were doing. And we stopped. Whatever Jack saw, that's all that
happened. It was just drunken fumbling. If he had ever asked Deirdre, or me for that matter, we would have told him the truth.” He stops, leans back. “This is why Jack always hated me,” he says, one more revelation in a room already too filled with them.

“How come you never told me about that night?”

“What would have been the point? It would only have caused unnecessary pain. I told you. Nothing happened.”

“Something happened. A barrier was broken.” I pause. “You both knew something I didn't.”

“Deirdre and I never spoke of that night, we never mentioned it again. It felt like someone else who did it. It felt like someone else even at the time.” He tilts his head. “Why are you asking me about this now? When did Jack tell you all this?”

It is my turn to take a deep breath, hesitate. “Last night.”

“You saw Jack last night?” Confusion plays across his face. “But you told the detective…”

“No, I didn't see him. I called him. After I saw the pictures of you and Deirdre.”

Sam shoots up. “You told Jack that you thought Deirdre and I were having an affair? Are you out of your mind? I can't believe you would do something like that before you even talked to me.”

“You have no idea what it was like, seeing those pictures,” I reply, feeling that staggering desolation once more. “I had just spent the afternoon with Jack. He was buying an apartment for the two of them, he was planning out their whole future. I had to tell him.”

I stop short. The tenor of that call, the sickening realization of what I may have unleashed, begins to hit me, slowly at first, then fully. “Oh God.” I shake my head, it can't be. “I never should have called Jack, it was a horrible mistake.”

Sam sits back down, rubbing his temples. When he looks at me it is with different eyes, his tone eerily calm, as if he is speaking to a child having a tantrum. “What exactly happened last night?” he asks. “What did Jack do after you talked to him?”

“He was furious. Beyond furious. He thought it was a repeat of the past. After I told him he hung up on me. I have no idea what he did or where he went.”

“And you? What did you do?”

“I walked. I didn't want to come home. I was too angry to talk to you and I knew the girls would still be up. I couldn't imagine going through the motions of pretending everything was okay in front of them.”

“You walked for all those hours?” he asks skeptically.

“My world had just been blown apart. I couldn't see straight. I don't even really remember getting there, but I ended up at Deirdre's.”

“You told the detective you didn't see her.”

“I didn't. I stood outside her building for a long time, but I just couldn't bring myself to go up. I couldn't face her. Eventually I started walking again. I stopped and had a glass of wine at that place on Seventeenth Street, Bar Jamón. Then I came home.”

“You went to everyone, Jack, Deirdre, everyone before you even tried to talk to me.”

“There was more at stake with you.”

The ache grows stronger, pressing from the inside out, drenched in loss and regret and a sadness that will never dissipate. Deirdre is gone.

I can feel my insides being hollowed out.

I start to say something but Sam hushes me. “I need to think for a minute.” He bends his head between his hands. I watch his back rise and fall with his breathing.

“All right, let's back up,” he says, clinging to the last shreds of control. “You still haven't told me about those pictures. Who the hell would have done something like that?”

“It was all a mistake. A misunderstanding.”

“Yes, so you've said. But that doesn't explain how it could have happened to begin with.”

“There's this guy, I met him through Carol. She wanted me to try to land him as a client. She thought it would help me with Mer
dale. We starting meeting about that and we became friends. He was giving me advice, helping me deal with what was going on there. We talked.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't see how you go from trying to sign a new client to having your husband followed. You'll have to enlighten me a bit more than that,” Sam insists. “Does this guy have a name?”

“David. David Forrester.”

Sam rears back. “David Forrester did this?”

“You know him?”

“He didn't tell you? No, he wouldn't,” Sam says dryly.

I shake my head, I am falling farther and farther down a bottomless well. “How do you know David?”

“I was doing a story on insider trading a couple of years ago. His name kept coming up. He managed to shut it down before I could nail him. I don't know what he threatened people with. Or who he paid off. He did everything he could to destroy my credibility. You don't remember any of this?”

I vaguely recall something along those lines, but I'm not sure Sam ever told me his name. Perhaps he did and I wasn't listening.

“I still don't get it,” Sam continues. “Help me out here. You're meeting with Forrester supposedly about business and the next thing you know he's putting a tail on me. There are a few holes in your story.”

I hug my knees to my chest. “I never asked him to, if that's what you think.”

“You must have said something. That kind of thing doesn't happen out of the blue.”

“I told you, we were friends. I was going through such a rough time. You and I were hardly speaking to each other. It felt like we were living in separate rooms. It's not as if I simply decided one day to blurt out every detail of my personal life to him for no reason. You were acting so strangely,” I remind him. “I couldn't figure out what was going on. There were all those lies. I needed someone to talk to.”

“What lies?”

“Your trip to Chicago.”

“I explained that.”

“There were other things.”

“What other things?”

“I found your phone.”

“What phone?”

“Your disposable phone. Claire found it in the coat closet.”

“I never had a disposable phone. Why would I?”

“To call—whoever.”

“I don't know what Claire found, but it wasn't mine. Even if you believed all this, why would you tell Forrester of all people? Were you sleeping with him?”

“No. Sam, it wasn't like that.”

“Yeah? What was it like?”

This is what it was like, I think: David made me feel attractive, made me feel a sense of possibility, isn't that what all seduction is, however false or aborted, and I fell for it, just a little but yes, I fell for it, because I was lonely, in some gut way so deeply lonely, because we weren't making love the way we used to, because everything between us was so flat and distanced and I thought you had deserted me. But all I say is, “I thought we were friends.”

“Where are they?” Sam asks finally.

“Where are what?”

“The photographs.”

“I don't have them. David does.”

“That's fucking great. He's just the guy you want messing with your life. You don't know him. You have no idea what he is capable of.”

“I'm sorry,” I repeat.

Even that one warm flush of flattery I allowed myself to feel at his attentions was rooted in a lie, the attraction manufactured at will. It was never about me at all.

“I've never heard Jack so angry, Sam. If I had any idea something like this could happen…Oh God, what did I do? This is all my fault, all of it.”

“Let's remember that we don't know what happened yet.”

“No matter what happened, Deirdre is gone,” I sob. The ache spreads through every cell, stealing the last bit of oxygen from my lungs.

“Lisa, you are going to have to tell Callahan about your phone call to Jack,” Sam says softly. “You are going to have to explain this all to him.”

“I can't,” I protest.

“I don't like this any more than you do. It doesn't exactly make either of us look good. But the minute David Forrester hears about Deirdre or reads it in the paper, those pictures are going to be all over the goddamned place, starting with the police. He'll make sure of that. You need to tell them first, you have to control the story.”

I don't move, neither of us does.

“Call him,” Sam prods grimly.

I stand up, splash cold water from the kitchen sink on my face, the back of my neck, sit back down. Sam hands me the phone.

“Mrs. Barkley,” Callahan says as soon as I get through. “I was just about to call you.”

“Oh?”

“Are you sure about the name of the law firm you told me Handel was starting at?”

“Yes. Loring, Marcus. He's been made a partner.”

“They have no record of him. No one there has ever met with him.”

“That's impossible.”

“They have no reason to lie.” There is a pause before Callahan speaks again. “Handel's cell phone hasn't been used since early evening yesterday. The records indicate the last call received was from you. Can you tell me the nature of that conversation?”

“Yes.” I catch my breath and I tell him of my call to Jack, of my mistaken interpretation, of Jack's rage and my regret. “I should have said something to you earlier,” I apologize, “I wasn't thinking. I was just so…shocked.”

“We are going to have to talk to both you and your husband,”
Callahan says flatly when I am done. Everything is different now. “And I'll need David Forrester's contact information. We'll have to get those pictures from him.”

“Of course.”

Callahan gives us the address of the precinct house and hangs up.