The Ex(47)

I handed him my pen, but he didn’t take it.

“Jack, it’s no big deal. I just need to have this stuff ready to go if the prosecution happens to brings it up.”

He took the pen and signed the most expansive medical release I keep on file. I could get whatever information I wanted. I could find out exactly how sweet, sensitive, fragile Jack responded when things went really bad.


I MADE IT TO LISSA’S in time for the post-lunch, predinner lull. An older couple read the New York Times together at a corner table. The only other customers were both regulars, perched at opposite ends of the bar. “Where’s the boss?” I asked.

“Ran downstairs,” one explained. “I’m minding the store, so feel free to whip up your own drink; I’ll add it to your tab.”

I was tempted, but Melissa’s martinis were better than mine despite years of attempted replication.

Melissa appeared hugging three bottles of Hendrick’s to her chest. Once the bottles were safe on the counter, she leaned over the bar for a quick kiss on the cheek. “Must be some kind of psychic connection that made me grab all that gin.”

“Just set aside one of those bottles and write my name on it. I’m about to get drunk.”

I gulped down half of a martini in three sips while she topped off the wineglasses of the two regulars. When she came back to me, she was carrying yesterday’s edition of the Daily News. “You probably already saw this, but I saved it for you. Maybe I should hire you as my marketing person.”

The News front page was the first since the shooting that had used one of Jack’s publicity head shots instead of his booking photo. With his green eyes staring straight into the camera and a half smile, he looked impossibly harmless. HARRIS CRIES FOUL, COMES OUT SWINGING. Although I had already skimmed all the local coverage of the case since the bail hearing, I opened to the full article to take another quick read while Melissa summarized. “The reporter even interviewed a John Jay professor who says the state’s in trouble if all they have is the gunshot residue.” Melissa tapped her finger on the third paragraph. “He says it won’t be hard for—quote—a legal team as sophisticated as Ellison and Randall—unquote—to create reasonable doubt. We’ll see just how sophisticated you are by the time I’m done with you,” she said, starting to shake another drink for me. “So does the fact that you’re here getting drunk mean that Jack got settled into his apartment okay?”

She knew I’d been nervous about something going wrong with his release at the last minute. “No problem.” Except he might actually be guilty and I just tricked him into waiving his privacy rights so I could get a look at the side of him he never wanted me to know.

“And his kid?” Melissa asked.

“Buckley? She’s fine. I thought she was sort of bratty when I first met her, but she’s basically a daddy’s girl.”

“That’s good. Didn’t seem like Jack to raise a brat.”

I thought about Ryan texting me the other night, saying it “wasn’t like me” to go to bed early. It was just a saying, but he didn’t know what I was like, and Melissa and I didn’t know what Jack was like. Not anymore.

I took a big sip from my second glass and finally got to the subject that had me drinking so eagerly. “He had pictures of me in his closet, Melissa. In an old box.”

“Well, is it really that surprising? You were engaged. He’s not going to throw away all evidence that you ever existed.”

“Then how come he never called?”

“Maybe he just didn’t see the point. It was too painful or something. And then he met Molly, so was he going to mess that up by suddenly healing old wounds with his ex-fiancée? He just moved on. It’s what people do.”

It’s what most people did. Not me, at least not romantically. Short version: I started out okay with Kevin, the Roseburg High quarterback who deflowered me in the back of his pickup my junior year in high school after a year of patient but heavy petting. He cried when I left for college, where I got by on late-night hookups before settling in with Jack the end of sophomore year.

Since Jack, there were a lot of variations on my current situation with Ryan, meaning nothing serious and more than a little dysfunctional. I did manage one other long-term relationship: four years with Jared (in-house counsel at an insurance company), who even floated the idea of marriage, but only on the condition that I set aside what he called my “all-consuming ambition.” Instead of leaving, I turned our relationship into a professional rivalry. Rather than accept my ring and commence with cake tasting, I hardened my efforts to kick ass at work, no matter the personal consequences, so I could make partner in big law, the way Jared never had. But then that hadn’t worked out, either. I lost the job and eventually Jared.

I only really tried one more time after that. Chuck was a good guy, much kinder than Jared. But I met him when I was just starting to work for Don. The learning curve was excruciating, and Melissa had personally vouched for me with her uncle. I was terrified of losing my job, so I kept choosing Don and our clients over me and Chuck. After too many canceled vacations and no-shows for dinner, Chuck made the mistake of saying he was tired of feeling “like the woman” in our relationship. In a wine-fueled rage, I decided to show him what emasculation by me actually felt like. I said things that couldn’t be taken back.