Binds that tie, p.14
Binds That Tie, page 14
“Maggie, please, we need the white lace stockings, not the pink ones. The pinks don’t match, see?”
The girls would make an entrance, amid sighs and polite clapping. Maggie hated the parties. She found them dull, and the stench of intermingling colognes and perfumes gave her a headache. She’d curl up under the dining room table, hidden beneath the sheer tablecloth, and she’d watch the crowd. Mostly, she’d watch her father.
Phillip circulated and, like a choreographed ballet, small circles would open to him. He laughed with the men or lightly flirted with the women, his palm low on their backs. Maggie watched with seething jealousy, searching his face for clues. The women soaked up the smiles he bestowed as if he had millions of them tucked inside the breast pocket of his two-thousand-dollar suit.
The wait staff served small, dainty pickings piled on glinting, silver trays. Maggie shrank back against the middle leg of the dining room table, watching the parade of shoes—shining, and sparkling, open toed with perfectly painted nails, black wing tips and Italian leather. The room emptied as the crowd migrated to the ballroom.
Maggie’s eyes grew heavy, and she slept intermittently under the table, awakening to the sound of soft giggling. She peered through the gauzy tablecloth. Phillip leaned back against the wall, his arm encircling a woman Maggie did not know. His hand rested on the small of her back, his fingertips dancing up the length of her spine. Maggie pressed up against the center leg of the table and watched a red, spiky heel move up and down her father’s calf. Maggie inched toward the edge of the table and dared to look up. Phillip was giving the woman a smile Maggie had never seen, a secret smile. The woman leaned in and nipped her father’s ear. Maggie put her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming.
Later, when the clock struck midnight and everyone cheered, Phillip kissed Charlene with the same mouth that had kissed the woman in the red dress. Maggie shrank back against a row of books and watched Miranda skip around the room, waving a noisemaker. Maggie met Phillip’s eyes and he waved her over, his mouth turned up in a happy grin. Maggie turned to see if someone was behind her. There was no one. Five.
She pulled up in front of Miranda and Jake’s, and Isaac and Rebecca came running out to greet her. Her nephew and her niece never failed to put a smile on her face. Miranda stood in the doorway and waved the kids back in. It had been a while since they’d seen each other, and Maggie studied Miranda with a critical eye. Her sister looked worn. Heavier. Tired.
When Maggie reached the porch, Miranda enveloped Maggie in the way that only Miranda could. It wasn’t the cool hug of affectation that Maggie usually got from her mother or the detached half pat she’d get from Phillip, but a real down-to-your-bones hug. Maggie pulled out of the hug, rubbing her thumbs under her eyes.
“God, Maggie, are you okay? I don’t think I’ve seen you cry since we were kids. You’re always like the ice queen.” Miranda whistled to the kids, who ran up the steps and thundered to the back of the house toward the playroom.
Miranda lived in a new McMansion a few miles from their parents. Her house was a mini-version of Phillip and Charlene’s, and Maggie almost laughed. How could Miranda not see this? It was uncanny. The brick, the sterility, the lack of decorating. I’m the ice queen?
Miranda led Maggie into the kitchen, alternately chattering and yelling commands back toward the playroom. Maggie glanced around the industrial kitchen—all stainless steel and poured-concrete countertops, like out of some kitchen makeover show. Maggie thought of her kitchen with its chipped tile floor and wooden countertops, her dying spider and aloe plants, her hanging brass pot racks and dusty cookbooks. Miranda poured Maggie a cup of coffee, and Maggie took it gratefully. She blew across the top of her mug as she settled onto a stool at the marble-top island.
“Mom made me tea!” Maggie curled her lip.
“Of course. Have you ever seen her not drink tea?”
“Ugh, I hate tea!”
“She doesn’t care. She’ll make it anyway.”
They laughed softly, in shared connection. Maggie had missed her sister.
Miranda touched Maggie’s hand. “What the hell is going on?”
“Oh God, Miranda, I have no idea.” The real story, the truth, ached to be released. Then she thought of Chris, the look on his face as he was led away, and she stopped. If Miranda told Jake, it would hurt Chris. Maggie had done enough to him. “I was asleep, and this guy I’d talked to at the Hut showed up, looking for me. He claimed he didn’t know I was married or something, which seems weird, but the details are fuzzy. Chris said he let him in, which was stupid, but you know Chris—he can be stupidly nice! They talked, and the guy left. Then he was just… pffttt—gone. No one can find him. But I guess they have something because they arrested Chris for murder. I mean, murder! Can you imagine?”
“Jake left here the other day like a bat out of hell,” Miranda said. “I didn’t know what to think. He hasn’t been home for dinner in weeks. You called, and he was out the door. He told me later, but geez… what a mess!”
“I just can’t stay there in that house. I went to see Chris in prison, which was awful. I can’t go back. The hearing is in ten days—well seven now—and will probably last a few days. Jake says everything goes so fast with a judge and not a jury. If he wins, then Chris comes home and it’s over.”
“And if he loses?”
“If he loses… there’s a trial, I guess. But Chris will be in jail for months at that point. Oh God, Miranda, he’d die. He’s so miserable. I couldn’t even stand it.”
“He’ll win, Maggie.” Miranda patted Maggie’s hand. Her palms were warm and dry. “Jake almost never loses.”
“Almost never? What about the ones he’s lost?”
“Oh, well, they were probably guilty.”
They drank wine, bottles of it, long after the kids went to bed. Even with the hearing and Chris and everything going on in Maggie’s life, the conversation centered on Jake and Miranda. Maggie lay on the couch, her feet dangling over the armrest, as she swirled her wine and Miranda prattled on.
Jake was never home. Miranda was alone all the time. Jake was up for partner in two years, and then it would be easy street with giant paychecks. But until then, it was all Miranda, all the time. Alone with the kids, taking care of everything while Jake worked. Jake, Jake, Jake.
Maggie would have, in the past, gotten frustrated at the one-sided conversation. But that night, she reveled in it. Focusing on someone else felt good. Chris and Maggie had been so insular lately, and with all that’d happened, their world had shrunk down to two people. Well, three if she counted Jake.
As Miranda ranted, Maggie tried to picture Jake alone in her house. Would he pry? She tried to envision him in her bedroom, pawing through her silk and lace. The idea was ludicrous. Then again, lately everything had felt ludicrous, like a clown at a funeral.
“But he’ll be partner in two years, and you’ll be on easy street. Everything is so temporary,” she interrupted Miranda’s monologue.
“You don’t get it. I’m alone all the time. I’m a single parent. I doubt Jake even knows what grade Isaac is in. I’m sick to death of it. I’ve been doing this for twelve years. I’m done. We talked about splitting up.”
“You did? When?” Maggie sat up and a spatter of wine landed on the arm of the white leather sofa.
Jake and Miranda had always seemed split-proof to Maggie, which was silly because no one was exempt from divorce. But somehow, despite their brawling and Miranda’s demands and Jake’s absenteeism, Maggie had always envisioned them together, old and rocking and still fighting. Or she’d never allowed herself to think of Jake as free. The idea sent her head spinning.
“A few months ago. The only reason we haven’t is because Jake doesn’t have time to meet with the lawyers. Ironic, right? I’m too bitter to care anymore.” Miranda waved haphazardly.
“How can you not care?” Even in her darkest days with Chris, she’d always cared.
“Oh, it’s not hard to be apathetic. It’s much, much harder to give a shit.”
Maggie laughed because that was so Miranda. For the first time since she’d arrived, Maggie actually saw her sister hidden under the layers of bad hair and baby belly and shapeless cotton clothing.
“Besides, shouldn’t you love your husband?” Miranda continued, running her thumb along the edge of her glass.
“Don’t you?” Maggie held her cold fingers against her wine-warmed cheeks. The question shocked Maggie, who was still pulled toward Chris. When the lights went out and she was alone in her room, she still thought about the way the corner of his mouth lifted to the left when he smiled. Or how he countered her busy impatience with a slow plod and how most people mistook his deliberation for stupidity. Did those things amount to love? What if those things were all that was left? Did Miranda still admire the way Jake’s hair fell in front of his right eye as he leaned over a legal pad?
“I have no idea if I ever even did,” Miranda said. “I mean, I don’t now, that’s for sure. Look at me. Do I look like a woman who gives a shit?”
Maggie had to admit she didn’t. Years ago, Maggie had watched Miranda sing “Cry Me a River,” Julie London style, at the Swansons’ swanky Christmas party when she was barely eighteen. Weeks later, Maggie was visiting sixteen-year-old Wendy Swanson when Wendy’s father jokingly referred to Miranda as jail bait. He’d ducked his head, his neck flushed, when he realized Maggie was still in the room.
“When we go places, to Jake’s functions or whatever, do you think I don’t see the other wives wondering how Jake got stuck with me?”
Maggie cringed as she remembered wondering the same thing when she’d studied her sister’s haphazard ponytail or oversized, stained T-shirt. “Oh, Miranda, I think that’s just your insecurity talking—”
“I wonder all the time what would have happened if I’d left him alone. Would you have married him, do you think?”
Why didn’t the room cave in, the walls unable to support the thing they never discussed? Not Killington, because Miranda didn’t even know about Killington, but the boyfriend-stealing-sister thing that had happened in college. The thing that had altered their lives and ended with Miranda marrying her sister’s ex-boyfriend. Maggie lay back down on the sofa, avoiding Miranda’s steady gaze. Miranda’s eyes glittered in the soft lamplight, and Maggie realized how long Miranda had wanted to ask her that question. Maggie felt wrung out, raw and open from the murder and Chris and the hearing. The weight of one more thing might crush her. Not tonight. No way am I discussing this now.
“Miranda, that was what, almost fifteen years ago? I think we can safely assume we’ve all moved on.” She stood and crossed the living room into the kitchen, where she rinsed her wine glass in the sink.
“Do you think so?” Miranda paused in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. In that moment, she looked lost. Almost pathetic. “Jake talks in his sleep. He has no idea I’ve heard him. I’m not even sure he knows he does it. But every once in a while, dear sister, he says your name.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chris
“Welcome, Mr. McHale from Philadelphia.” Judge Wallace Puckett nodded over his bifocals in Jake’s direction, speaking as though McHale from Philadelphia was Jake’s last name. He held out his hands, palms down, and lowered them until they floated three inches above the bench. The assistant district attorney and Jake sat on their respective sides.
“A few things before we begin,” Judge Puckett continued. “This is a preliminary hearing to find probable cause. There’s no jury here. There’s just little old me. Courtroom theatrics are mildly entertaining, but frankly, I’ve got a docket to keep. I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years. Probably since you all were in diapers.”
Chris looked across the aisle at A.D.A. Janice Farnum, who looked at least eight years younger than Jake. Chris studied the judge. With his white hair and beard and heavy frame, he looked like Santa Claus.
Judge Puckett said, “I will not be swayed by flamboyance, but feel free to showboat if you’re keen on irritating me. Let’s save our drumroll moments for the actual trial, shall we?” With that, he glared at Farnum over the top of his rimless bifocals. “If there is one, Ms. Farnum. You might want to work on your poker face.”
There was a faint din of laughter, and Chris turned to study the gallery. Maggie sat straight and tall directly behind the defense table. She avoided eye contact and watched the judge with a studied interest Chris knew to be contrived. Underneath his anger simmered a pull of attraction meshed with resentment so interwoven, he doubted he could separate the two. Would Maggie always draw him and repel him in equal measure? He could hardly remember a time before she had consumed him. Even with their fight in the prison visitor’s room so fresh in his mind, the hatred he’d felt at being the one in the inmate uniform, he couldn’t help but feel that his life would have been so much easier had she not been so beautiful. He marveled at the way that even then, with the hearing making his heart and his thoughts race, he still found a way to think about her.
He focused his attention on the smattering of people in the gallery: one young kid holding a notepad and pen who Chris figured was a freelance reporter, a few rumpled public defenders presumably waiting for their own clients’ hearings, and a fifty-ish woman reading a paperback. Chris studied Janice Farnum. She couldn’t have been more than five feet two and a hundred pounds. She looked like a child, her birdlike face overshadowed by large, round glasses. Chris couldn’t have been less intimidated if he was being tried by his ten-year-old niece. He tried to remind himself that, without a doubt, she held all of the cards in Jake’s house-of-cards analogy. Chris needed to maintain some kind of reverence.
Jake had given him a description of the A.D.A. and the judge in their last meeting before the hearing. “Janice is young, still in her twenties, and ambitious, I’ve heard. She’s very smart, but her biggest issue is overconfidence.”
“How do you know? You don’t even practice here,” Chris had asked, and Jake shrugged. Chris laughed. “Leon, of course. I can’t wait until I’m out of here and can meet the notorious Leon.”
Leon Whittaker, an investigator at Jake’s firm, was renowned for being able to gather dirt on anyone. The good, decades-old stuff, too. Rumor was that Leon had files on every political figure in Harrisburg, from the governor on down. He was also, according to Jake, a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
“Yeah, we’ll all go out for a beer,” Jake said. “Now, listen, Judge Puckett. He’s mostly fair and honest. He doesn’t mess around, but he used to be an assistant district attorney. Which means he could have a slight bias toward the left side of the aisle.”
“Oh, great. Well, at least he’s fair, you said?”
“That’s what I hear. We’ll find out. If Leon’s right, this whole thing will be over in no time.”
“Opening statement, Ms. Farnum?” Judge Wallace leaned back, removed his bifocals, and rested his hands on his considerable girth, taking the relaxed posture of a man about to watch a long, leisurely game of cricket.
Janice Farnum, her legal pad in hand, approached the podium halfway between the tables and the judge’s bench. She adjusted the microphone as low as it would go; a squeal of feedback made Chris wince.
“The People intend to show that on the morning of June second, Logan May visited the Stevens home at roughly two fifteen a.m. From that point on, no one has seen or heard from Mr. May. He vanished without a trace.”
Her loud, deep voice clashed with her diminutive stature, like stripes and plaids. Chris had expected high and soft, girly almost. He stiffened his spine.
“The evidence will show irrevocably that Logan May was inside the Stevens residence. While in their living room, he bled quite heavily. You might ask, why would Logan May visit the Stevens home on the morning of June second? The evidence will indicate that Logan May and Maggie Stevens, Christopher Stevens’s wife, were engaged in an extramarital affair.”
Janice reread her legal pad. She flipped a page up and back. Janice’s slow, deep intonation reminded Chris of being a child and listening to horror stories on an LP in his darkened bedroom. He used to run his index finger along the grooves, slowing the voice to a distorted bellow, heightening the terror. Chris tapped the table in front of him until Jake gave him a sidelong look and nudged his arm.
“In addition, we have statements from Mr. Stevens. Not one, not two, but three separate statements. With three different accounts of the evening. In the first statement, Mr. Stevens maintains that he never saw May on the morning of June second. In the second statement, he remembers, oh yes, I saw him, but we had a nice little chat and he went about his merry way. In the third statement, Mr. Stevens alters his account, yet again, and says they had an altercation that resulted in a fistfight. In all three accounts, May left the Stevens house unharmed and of his own accord. The People will show this is a lie.”
Janice stepped down from the podium and walked around to the front of it. Judge Puckett surveyed the courtroom with a small smile. He clearly enjoyed his job and moments like that. Chris wondered if he’d wished for a bigger gallery, more interest.
“The People believe that Mr. Stevens murdered Mr. Logan May in a fit of rage over his wife’s affair. Panicked over his prior violent history, he disposed of the body.”
