A Good Marriage(35)

SUBJECT FAMILY 0006: Female Primary Parent (FPP) stated voluminous and disturbing pornography, including so-called peeper porn, was emailed to her along with a demand for $20,000 cash transfer and the claim that said offensive material had been found on subject family computer. Failure to comply with the cash transfer demand would result in the offensive material being posted to PSP along with information that it belonged to Subject Family 0006.





Lizzie





JULY 7, TUESDAY


The sun set as I sat on Zach’s front steps, waiting for Millie to arrive. Reaching out to her had been a reflex, though as I waited I couldn’t shake a sinking sense of unease. On the one hand, as a former police sergeant turned respected private investigator and old family friend, Millie was an obvious choice. On the other hand, calling Millie came with obvious complications, especially given all her recent emails I’d ignored.

I didn’t usually avoid Millie’s emails, but they also didn’t usually have “please call me” in the subject line. And I’d only just heard from her a few weeks ago. Something was up, clearly. And, yes, I was deliberately delaying finding out what it was. Poor Millie. All these years, all she’d been trying to do was help. And she had. Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

Of course, Millie being Millie, when I called and asked her to come she hadn’t mentioned my ignoring her. She’d asked only for Zach’s address and assured me she was on her way.

At least the calls about Case were now behind me. They’d been much worse than I was prepared for. The young residential adviser who’d answered the phone at Case’s camp had burst into tears when I told her about Amanda and then was in such a rush to put Case on the phone that I’d barely managed to stop her.

Luckily, I’d then spoken to the significantly calmer camp director, who’d agreed to keep Case away from the news and then had given me the number for the parents of Case’s friend—Ashe, it turned out, not Billy. That call had been even more upsetting. Ashe’s parents had known Amanda well, had been friends with her. The wife was so distraught she’d dropped the phone and screamed.

“This is so awful,” Ashe’s father said over and over when he was finally on the line. “God, Case—he’s like a member of our family.”

It was difficult to hear him over his wife’s guttural sobbing in the background. But eventually he had pulled it together enough to come up with a plan. By the end of the call, I was certain he would pick up Case and Ashe that weekend and deliver the news in a responsible, caring fashion.

I felt so relieved when I finally spotted Millie’s compact, athletic frame headed my way. Her once-forceful stride was noticeably slower, but it had been a long time. And even from that distance, Millie still exuded that air of comforting forthrightness that had always been her best quality.

I was in the eighth grade the first time I ever really talked to Millie. Lots of cops came into my parents’ diner because it was right around the corner from the Tenth Precinct in Chelsea. Millie wasn’t just another cop, though. She’d been a good friend of my mom’s for years.

Millie was never as charmed by my dad, though. She always seemed to be peering into him, trying to figure out what made him tick. For my part, I was mostly trying to steer clear of him in those days. My father was obsessed with my studying for New York City’s hypercompetitive public-high-school entrance exam. It was all he talked about. Do well on that test, and my dad was sure it would be my ticket to a whole new economic class. His ticket, too, I could tell.

Luckily, my mom could not have cared less about that stupid test. To her, I was perfection the moment I was placed in her arms. She loved me with such raw ferocity and blind faith that I was all but convinced I could fly.

My mother’s love was outmatched only by her protectiveness. By eighth grade, she had finally started to let me walk alone to the Apollo in the afternoons. My school was only a few blocks from the diner, and all my friends had been taking the subway alone, much longer distances, for years. Still, for her it was a huge concession to permit me that small measure of independence. She worked twelve hours a day at the Apollo my entire childhood, but only when I was in school or asleep so that I would have sworn that I had the world’s best stay-at-home mom—homemade costumes for the Greek Independence Day Parade and lovingly baked koulourakia and hours of attentive listening; my terrible piano playing, my reading aloud of the trashy romance novels she hated, and my overly detailed tales of childhood triumph and occasional tragedy.

I’d arrived late at the Apollo that day. It was pouring rain, and I’d left a book at school. But my mom didn’t even seem to notice the time. She was sitting in a booth with Millie, who was dressed in plainclothes. Millie looked more human that way, but she had the usual fierce look in her eye—a woman accustomed to forcibly moving men. She always had a warm smile, too, and a big laugh that my mom seemed to find contagious. It was only with Millie that she laughed with her head tipped back. But not on that day. On that day neither of them looked happy. And they were holding hands.

“Sit, sit.” My mother waved me over the second I was in the door.

When Millie looked up, I could see that her eyes were teary. Later, I would learn that her wife, Nancy, had just been moved into hospice. Breast cancer. But I was thirteen at the time, and all I cared about was not being around an adult who was about to cry. I was desperate to slip away, but no one disobeyed my mother.