The Ex(45)

I skimmed over the part Hannigan had recorded where Neeley talked about showing up to the help’s house unannounced, young Max in tow, to teach him to appreciate the wealth he’d been born into. Neeley must have gotten a warning look from his lawyer that made him realize that other people didn’t think much of his great parenting story. When he finished telling it, he immediately began listing more traditional efforts he had made to be close to his sons. I flipped pages as Neeley made himself sound like a regular Ward Cleaver: fishing at a camp in Pennsylvania, golf lessons at the country club in Connecticut, coin collecting, teaching the boys how to spiral the pigskin, spring breaks scuba-diving in the Caribbean. I stopped and flipped back a page, hoping I hadn’t actually seen what I thought I’d just read.

No. No, no, no.

I pulled up Buckley’s cell phone number and she answered immediately. “Olivia, hi. Do you want me to get Dad—”

“No, just a quick question for you. The files that your father had about the civil case—would he have had a copy of Neeley’s deposition transcript?”

“Deposition?”

“When the families’ lawyer, Gary Hannigan, got to ask Neeley questions under oath.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. The lawyer sent us everything he thought was important. He calls it—what did he say? A client-focused approach to lawyering or something. Anyway, we kept it all in the file cabinet.”

Right, the file cabinet filled with documents that Jack said he never really paid much attention to.

When I hung up, I looked again at the transcript open on my desk.

A. I met Todd every single Wednesday morning at the park by my office to work on passes. Seven AM, like clockwork. No matter how busy I was, we always did it.

Q. You don’t think that was a little rigid that you kept your hobbies with Todd on a timed schedule without exception?

A. Routine was good for Todd. And football was the only sport he ever showed any interest in.

Q. Other than shooting, you mean.

A. I mean physical sport. Todd said he wanted to be able to play football in high school, the way I did, and the way his brother did. I knew Todd wasn’t good enough or strong enough or fast enough to play on any kind of team, but he liked it. And I liked teaching him. Those were probably the best times we ever had. Even now, I still take my coffee to the football field on Wednesday mornings, just to keep the schedule. To take a few minutes and remember the best of my son. I was a victim that day, too. I know your clients will never accept that, but I lost my boy, just like they lost their families—

Q. Let’s talk next about your son’s move from the Dutton School to the Stinson Academy.

It was the fifth school Todd would attend in seven years, but that’s not what interested me. I wheeled my office chair over to the smaller desk where my computer lived, and then wiggled the mouse to wake up the screen. I typed “Sentry Group” into the search window of the browser, hit Enter, and then clicked on the Map function.

Malcolm Neeley was shot at approximately 7:09 in the morning on a Wednesday, at a football field only seven blocks from the building where his hedge fund occupied the nineteenth and twentieth floors. And somewhere among the four file cabinets of material seized by the police from Jack’s apartment was a piece of paper that proved Jack knew exactly where the man he blamed for the death of his wife would be at precisely that time.

I slapped a Post-it on the side of the page where I had stopped reading, closed the transcript, and threw it across the room.


JACK ANSWERED THE DOOR WEARING a loose Columbia University T-shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was damp, and his face was unshaven. He looked good—relaxed and healthy, a completely different person from the one I’d seen the previous afternoon. He even smelled good. I remembered how much I used to love tucking myself into the crook of his arm at night. I fit there perfectly, and he always seemed to smell like soap and cedar.

“Hey, if I’d known you were coming, I would have changed. And straightened up the apartment.”

His version of messy was clean for me. “No problem,” I said with a smile. “I’m the one coming by unannounced.”

“Guess you knew I’d be here,” he said, gesturing toward his ankle monitor. “Is everything okay? The judge didn’t change his mind, did he?”

“No, of course not.” It was all the reassurance I could offer.

Once we were seated in the living room, I asked if Buckley was home. She was at a movie with her friends.

“Are you sure everything’s okay? You’re kind of freaking me out, Olivia.”

“Sorry, it’s all fine. I just need to talk to you about a couple of things you’d probably like to leave in the past. We’ve never talked about it because—well, we never talked. But I know about the year you spent getting counseling.” I was trying hard to avoid any mention of our breakup, Owen’s death, or the “hospitalization” word. I started to reach a hand toward his knee, but stopped. “Charlotte finally told me after I called her nonstop for a month.”

“I don’t talk about that with anyone, Olivia. It’s over. I went through—it was a bad time.”

We went from being engaged to never speaking again, but all he wanted me to know was that it was a bad time. “Well, you need to talk about it with me. The prosecution will probably find out, if they haven’t already.”