The Ex(70)

“I’ve known you a lot longer than that. I was one of the many summer associates who was terrified of you years before.”

“This wasn’t supposed to go on for two years.”

He was standing next to my bed, his shirt half buttoned, being beautiful. “I’m happy. I thought you were, too. If anything, I wanted more. You were the one who—”

“I know. I don’t want more. But I also don’t want . . . this. We need to stop.”

“We tried that before, remember? And it was my own wife who asked you to come back.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be for two years. She didn’t know what else to do, Ryan. You were sad and damaged and convinced you had failed at work and therefore had failed as a provider, and for some reason, I made you feel better. But you’re not damaged anymore. You need to go home.”

“Anne’s okay with us.”

“Well, I’m not. Not anymore.”

“So, what? This is good-bye?”

“Yes,” was all I could say. I didn’t think it would be this hard. I was never supposed to care about him.

He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “You’re a better person than you give yourself credit for, Olivia. Don’t forget that.” He touched my hair one last time and left.

When he was gone, I blocked his number and then deleted it from my phone. When I say good-bye, I mean it.





Chapter 20


I WAS BACK at my conference table, thinking about all the same evidence I had reviewed yesterday. How could everything look so different today?

Yesterday, I thought we had a good shot at explaining the GSR on Jack’s shirt. I had multiple witnesses who would confirm that Jack had gone to the West Side gun range a few times in the months before the shooting. And I’d get an expert to explain that residue could in fact linger on fabric for long periods of time. But now I was picturing those same witnesses on the stand. Though they weren’t positive, they seemed to recall Jack wearing T-shirts—as if he was trying to fit in—and not the checked collared shirt in question. And then there was the added problem of Jack not having any writing to prove that he’d gone to the range for research, instead of training to kill Malcolm Neeley.

Same thing with the Madeline e-mails. I could tell a jury that someone else had suggested the football field for the meet-up, but Scott Temple would have a field day on cross-examination. Because the e-mails were anonymous, I couldn’t prove Jack didn’t send them himself. Same thing with whoever hired Sharon Lawson to pose as “Madeline” on the waterfront.

Then there was Jon Weilly, the co-plaintiff Temple planned to call to the stand. With more specific questioning than I’d been willing to risk, the prosecution had refreshed Weilly’s memory of hearing Jack say he hoped Malcolm Neeley would someday learn how it felt to have a gun-happy madman ruin his life. I would argue it was just a comment made in anger; the prosecution would call it evidence of intent.

The murder weapon turning up in the very basket Jack had carried to the waterfront? Was it literally a smoking gun, or even more evidence that Jack was framed?

Like every circumstantial case, every piece of evidence had two sides.

The case looked different today from yesterday because I was no longer on the side that believed Jack. And it wasn’t just the case evidence I was seeing in a new light. In ten years as a defense attorney, I had never encountered a crime as calculated as this one. Hiring a prostitute to pose at the pier. Telling Charlotte about the sighting, knowing how much she loved missed-moment posts. Working the camera coverage to his advantage. Sending e-mails to himself as “Madeline,” using a location from what was supposedly his favorite book, all to create an explanation in the event someone happened to see him at the football field where Malcolm Neeley could be found every Wednesday. A person doesn’t suddenly become that cunning and manipulative.

How had I failed to recognize that part of him?

When his father died, did Jack come to me because he really thought of me as an important part of his life, or did he use his father’s death as a way to get closer to me? I thought about all the times he tried to convince me that he loved me just the way I was. Was that real, or was being “the good one” his way of trying to control me? I had spent the last twenty years feeling guilty for what I’d done to Jack, but maybe my gut had been telling me that something was seriously wrong. He had tricked me into spending five years with him.

When Buckley first called me to the precinct, Jack had pleaded with me to take his case instead of passing it on to another lawyer. You know I didn’t do this, but some other lawyer won’t. He had counted on me being blinded by my own guilt.

I heard a knock at the office door, and Einer poked his head in. “Sorry, I know you didn’t want to be interrupted, but Charlotte’s here. She wouldn’t wait in the lobby. I think she was too uncomfortable with our sexual energy. She insisted on coming back here.”

“It’s fine.”

As Charlotte slipped past Einer, he said, “I could turn you if you gave me a chance.”

“Dear boy, I would break you.”

Once the door was closed, she made herself at home in my chair behind the desk.

“So what’s up, Charlotte?”

“The DA’s about to revoke Jack’s bail, and Jack says you haven’t returned his calls all day. What the f*ck do you think is up?”