The Girls I've Been(87)

“Do me a favor.” And I wait a beat, so she can hover on hope just a little longer. So it hurts when I deliver the words to crush her. “And actually think for once. You taught me everything you knew. Everything.”

I want to lick my lips. They’re dry, but it’s a sign of nerves. “You’ve been trying to piece together what happened that night and right after. And this whole time you’ve been asking yourself: What would Natalie do? But that’s not the right question.”

She swallows. Her throat bobs a little—weakness. My eyes flick, and she knows I’ve seen. Her mouth flattens. Mommy’s angry.

So I go in for the kill.

“What would you have done?” I ask her. “If he’d been a mark, and not the love of your life? What would you have done, with all your tricks and sparkle, if your mother let a man put his hands on you? Not in the name of the con. Not for money. Not for any of the things that you taught me were important. No. You did it for the love of an abusive man who tried to kill you and wants to kill me. So don’t ask yourself what Natalie would’ve done. Ask what Abby would have done. What would the woman who raised me to bite back do?”

She shudders, and God, I want to be the kind of person who smiles. I want to be that hard. I want to feel triumphant.

But I’m just sad.

I’m just trying to survive. Her. Him. Myself, whoever that is.

“What would you have done?” I ask her again.

And this time, she finally gives me the answer.

“I would have made a plan and allies. And I would have found my way out of it.”

I can see it clicking together in her head; dominoes falling down, leading her farther into the tunnel I dug with bare hands.

“Keep going.”

“I would have gotten a weapon . . . made my move whenever the opening presented itself. I would have run and never looked back. I would have done whatever it took.”

“And that’s just what I did,” I say. “Whatever it took.”

It’s there, the hint at more, and then the goose bumps prickle across her skin, telling me I’m digging in exactly where I need to.

I’ve played this out in my head a hundred times on the plane ride over, in the hotel room bathroom, on the drive to the prison. I had a script of how it’d go, and she’s playing her part. Now we’re at the moment.

Don’t falter now, Nora. Home stretch, then home. Back to them.

Please let me get back to them.

“What’s the most important thing, Abby?” I let my voice go high. I ask the question whose answer she drilled into me with each different name and hairstyle and personality. I mimic her right to her face, wearing her damn face, and those goose bumps across her skin spread down to her neck.

“Always have leverage,” she whispers.

I smile. It is cruel this time, because I have reached the moment when I have to be.

“What did you do?” she asks, and I am finally ready to tell. The secret I’ve kept so close, for so long.

“Alongside the hard drives in his safe, there was a thumb drive. It was encrypted differently than the others. I handed the big stuff over to the FBI so they could put him away and I’d get the protection I needed. They didn’t need to know about the thumb drive.”

“You kept it.”

I push forward. “It took me years to learn enough to break through the encryption. But I did. And what I found . . .” I just smile then. What I found is nothing to smile about—it’s fucking wretched, a sick treasure trove of sordid secrets and dirty deeds—but it’s also the reason I’m going to win.

How I’m going to protect everyone.

“He really did deal in the dirtiest kind of information, didn’t he? Kindred spirits, the two of you.” I stare her down and I resist throwing in a hair twirl, because I’m afraid she’ll lunge at me.

She’s never put her hands on me—never needed to. There was always a bigger threat to sacrifice some part of me—my self, my body, my innocence, my safety—to them . . . her marks and the love of her life who turned her into one instead.

But it’s just us now. No marks. No Raymond.

There’s nothing but the truth between us, and it’s never been this way before. It’s always been lies and slippery dodges. But she can’t hide anymore.

And I’ve chosen not to.

“You have his blackmail file?”

“It was a mess when I got it open. Barely organized. But I took care of that. Color-coded it. You know, red for politicians, blue for dirty cops, green for drug dealers, et cetera.”

“Natalie . . .” she says, and there is warning in her voice. There is a shred of motherly concern that I can’t be sure is fact or fiction, because at this point, what of her is fact and what is fiction? “You need to run. Far and fast.”

“No.”

“Baby, he is up for an appeal next year. It’s an uphill battle, but he’s got the best lawyers.”

“And you’re cheering him on,” I say, and she can’t look at me. She’s got six years left on her sentence, and if he’s free by the time she’s out, that’ll make things even sweeter for her. They’ll fight and they’ll fuck and scream and throw things and make up, all in the span of twenty-four hours, and the cycle will turn and turn until one day, something breaks it and I won’t be there to tilt the ground to save her anymore. He’ll kill her. That’s the only way it ends. She knows it. I know it. But she can’t stop. And I had to let go.