Good as Dead(37)

“This garlic bread is amazing,” Logan raved as he helped himself to a second piece, making sure to offer the basket to Savannah before he set it back down. We ate family-style, passing bowls back and forth and all helping ourselves. Libby asked Logan a million questions—Are you still living at home? What will you study at Harvard? What inspired you to take a gap year? She even got away with the dreaded So how did you two meet? without eliciting an eye roll. She was a skilled conversationalist, peppering her questions with anecdotes about her own schooling, why she chose William & Mary for undergrad and Columbia for her PhD. Andy chimed in as well, describing how he dumped his premed track for an economics degree once he realized what a “bitch” organic chem (whatever that is?) turned out to be.

I enjoyed hearing their stories, but I had absolutely nothing to add. As they chatted about favorite professors and books, I tried to make myself as small as possible, praying the conversation would not turn to me. I never went to college. Me and my rudimentary math skills took a job as a bookkeeper right out of high school. I had no idea who William or Mary was, or what you might learn from going to school with them, and I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself for asking. Libby was kind enough to only look at me when the conversation turned to simpler things, like my salad—Were the croutons homemade?—or what restaurants we’d been to—If you haven’t tried Delmonico’s, you must!—or if I thought this heat wave will ever break?

Everything about the evening confirmed what I already knew.

I was a complete and total fraud. I didn’t belong in this house or this neighborhood. And I was not going to be friends with Libby.

I was both an outsider and a prisoner in my own home.

They could never know what I’d done, where I came from, who I really was.

I could never be close to anyone. I could never again be myself.

This was the life I’d chosen with my lies and my crimes. The only question that remained was if it was worth living.





EVAN


Three months ago

The changes I was making to Jack’s legal documents had to be notarized, which meant letting one other person in on our sin.

I decided not to use my regular notary public, or one that would come to my house, choosing a high-volume UPS Store instead. I dressed down so I wouldn’t be memorable and showed up for my appointment early so as not to risk pissing anyone off.

As was the case with most rich people, Jack’s money was all spread out. He had business accounts, investment accounts, real estate holdings, a personal savings account, a flow-through S corporation, a joint checking account with Kate, an equity line of credit, and—just in case all hell broke loose—a safe full of hundreds in his closet.

Jack’s cash flow was an intricate matrix of wire transfers taking money in through one entity and paying it out through another. Money was deposited into Jack’s business account from the studio. The business account paid him a salary through his S corp. If he produced a movie, we set up a production account just for that picture, and he got an additional salary, or salaries—depending on how many jobs he was doing—that flowed through his S corp to whatever account he specified.

Jack had a business manager and a CPA, but all transactions were monitored by Jack’s wife, Kate. In her job as CFO of Jack’s company, she authorized every transaction and audited the books every month for accuracy. She personally approved the movement of every dollar in and out of their accounts. In normal times, this was a huge weight off Jack’s shoulders. But now it was a problem. Because Jack needed money. More money than was in that safe. And he couldn’t tell his wife.

There was one account the Mrs. didn’t monitor. She didn’t monitor it because she understood that it was not to be touched. It was the trust fund Jack had set up for their son. Money was put into this account but was never taken out.

Jack started depositing money into his only son’s trust fund the day he was born. Now, after many movies and many years, it had grown to over $5 million. Jack and Kate went to extreme measures to keep this money safe. No couple plans to get divorced, but in the event they ever had to divide their estate, Jack and Kate wanted to make sure their son’s money could not be touched, even by the two of them. So they made me the trustee. I had total control over it until their son turned eighteen. I never imagined I would do anything but gift it to him.

But Jack told me I would no longer be giving this money to his son. Instead, I was to give it to Holly. Every last cent. I was to change the terms of the trust without telling anyone, including Kate.

“Sign here,” the gray-haired notary instructed without so much as looking at me. I was grateful for her indifference, and I complied in silence. There were so many ways this could end badly. It wouldn’t take much for our circle of trust to collapse, so I tried not to think about the obvious weak link, and how this financial juggling act might break our fragile pact wide open.

I rolled my thumb on the inkpad and stamped my fingerprint in her ledger.

This bribery plot suddenly—literally—had my fingerprints all over it.

If one person cracked, we were all going down.





CHAPTER 20


I woke up in a cold sweat.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had a nightmare about the accident, but this dream was particularly gruesome.

I was back at the scene of the crash, walking toward the wreckage, just as I had done in real life. As I peered down at Holly’s husband’s dead body, his mangled limbs suddenly came alive like Medusa’s head of snakes, snapping at me with foaming white fangs. The snakes’ eyes flashed with rage as they strained against their tether, desperate to bite me but unable to reach. The dead man’s bloody brain matter was oozing out of his skull like hamburger meat through a grinder. I tried to run, but as so often happens in dreams, I couldn’t move my legs. My feet were cemented to the pavement as Medusa’s snakes engulfed my feet, my legs, my torso. I cried out as I braced myself to drown in a rising sea of blood and guts.