A Good Marriage(78)

At the bottom of the stack was something she’d never seen before: emails from the Brooklyn Country Day headmaster’s office to Zach’s personal email. Three of them, to be exact, all with the exact same text, though slightly different formatting—there’d been an unfortunate incident involving Case that Country Day needed to discuss as soon as possible—followed by details about how a meeting could be set up, with what was probably a drag-down selection of dates. Three such messages over the past three months, starting about a month after they’d arrived—April 24, May 19, June 5.

Of all the clerical mix-ups, Country Day had emailed Zach about something so important? They might as well have flushed the emails straight down the toilet. She couldn’t even blame Zach for ignoring them. He would have assumed that Amanda had gotten them, too. That she was dealing with the “incident” as she ordinarily would have, completely and thoroughly and alone. The messages were maddeningly vague, too. Were they about something Case had done or something that had been done to him? Was he the problem, or was it a problem he was having?

Amanda closed the folder and clutched it to her chest. She couldn’t even call Country Day now to find out, because they were closed for the first two weeks of summer. And how could she ask Zach about the emails without revealing that she’d discovered them by rifling through his desk?

She’d have to figure out a way. She couldn’t let Zach’s absurd rules, the ridiculous standards she’d come to accept, get between her and protecting Case. She’d already let Zach haul them to Brooklyn in the middle of the year, which was probably what had caused the school problems to begin with. It had been a mistake not to speak up then. It would be a mistake not to speak up now—about her dad, about these emails, about her right to a voice. She would not, could not, let her son pay the price for her weakness any longer.





Lizzie





JULY 10, FRIDAY


I stood there, ears ringing, as the guard at Rikers walked away and left me holding Zach’s signed power of attorney. The paper trembled in my hand.

Zach’s been hurting himself. Zach’s been hurting himself.

What. The. Fuck.

I went to sit outside the Bantum building, letting bus after bus back to the Rikers main exit come and go. I couldn’t stay there much longer without somebody telling me to move. Attorney or not, you couldn’t just hang out on Rikers Island. But I also couldn’t leave without confronting Zach.

I let one last bus pass before going back inside, hoping the guards would be willing to let me talk to him again without requiring I go all the way to the main building to make a formal request.

“Excuse me,” I asked the same guard who’d helped me with the power of attorney. I smiled helplessly. “I forgot to ask my client something.”

“About the face thing, huh?” The guard looked vaguely annoyed, but also sympathetic.

I nodded. “I’d really appreciate it.”

“All right,” he relented. “Just this once.”

Fifteen minutes later, Zach and I were seated again in the same interview room.

“Couldn’t get enough, huh?” he asked, eyes darting down. Leg bouncing.

I stared at him in silence. Where to even begin.

“Why did you lie?” I asked finally.

“Sorry, you’ll have to be, um, more specific,” he said. “There are quite a few allegations swirling around at the moment.”

I pointed at Zach’s face, even though he was looking down, then clasped my hands tight so they wouldn’t shake. “You did all that to yourself.”

Zach’s leg froze. And for the longest time, he didn’t move.

His head lifted first, eyes meeting mine, then his hands came to rest on the metal shelf in front of him as he sat up straighter. He blinked, once, his gaze strong and steady. He was suddenly someone I did not recognize. Someone I had never seen before.

“Surprise,” he said. And then he smiled. “It took you long enough.”

I squeezed my hands tighter, my fingernails digging into my flesh.

“Why?” I asked, the word scratching the back of my dry throat.

“Why am I surprised it took you this long?”

“No, why me?” My voice was too loud. The guards might come. But I couldn’t help it. “There are so many other lawyers. You have so many other lawyers.”

“Well, we’ve already established that you’re loyal to a fault.” He smirked. “Determined, too. Once you started helping me, I knew you wouldn’t give up.” He motioned to his face. “This was added incentive.”

“Is this because I didn’t want to date you?”

“Please, Lizzie,” Zach huffed. “That’s patronizing. This isn’t some love thing. Though what you did back then—both you and I know it was wrong. You used me.”

“We were friends.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” he said, casually. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Like I said, it’s not like I’ve been sitting around thinking about you all these years. You’ve seen what Amanda looked like, right? I did okay in the wife department. This is just me wanting to get the hell out of jail.”

I pushed to my feet. “I’m withdrawing from your case, effective immediately. I’ll find you replacement counsel.”