The Last Flight(85)

“Like many women in this situation, I was stuck in a cycle of abuse for years. Afraid to anger him, afraid to speak up, afraid that if I did, no one would believe me. Living like that breaks a person down, one tiny piece at a time, until you can’t see the truth in anything or anyone. He’d isolated me from anyone I might have gone to for help. I’d tried before to leave him. To tell the truth of my marriage. But powerful men make powerful enemies, and no one wanted Rory Cook as an enemy. The only way out that I could see, that didn’t involve public scandal or a prolonged court battle, was to simply disappear.”

“But a plane crash?”

“That was a tragic coincidence. I wasn’t supposed to be on that plane to Puerto Rico. I planned to disappear in Canada. A last-minute scheduling change derailed everything. But then I met a woman at the airport willing to trade tickets with me.” I think about the people still looking for Eva and deliver my line. “Unfortunately, she perished instead of me, and I will forever be grateful to her, for giving me the chance to escape.”

“Tell us what you were escaping from.”

I imagine Rory somewhere, called to the television to watch the resurrection of his dead wife, rage pounding through him as he stands, helpless, while I snatch his precious reputation and tear it to shreds. “Almost from the beginning,” I say, “he would berate me for laughing too loud, for eating too much, or too little. For missing his calls. For spending too long talking to one person at an event, or not enough time talking to another. If I was lucky, that’s all it would be. Yelling and insults, followed by days of silence and icy glares. But about two years into the marriage, the yelling progressed to shoving. And shortly after that, to hitting.”

A photograph fills the screen behind me, an image of Rory and me walking on the beach in the Hamptons. It had first appeared in People magazine, then quickly became one of several stock images news outlets used when reporting on Rory’s private life. “This picture was taken last summer. You can only see what’s in the frame—a couple walking on the beach, holding hands. What you can’t see is everything beneath it. How angry my husband was with me, how tightly he gripped my hand, so hard my ring cut the inside of the finger next to it. My long sleeves hide bruises from the night before, after I’d forgotten the first name of an old friend of Rory’s. You can’t see the lump on the back of my head from where it slammed into the wall, or the pounding headache I had. You can’t see how lost I felt. How alone.”

I look down at my hands, the fear and desperation I felt in that one captured moment cascading over me once again. And how much I didn’t want to do this, to have to recount every blow, every indignity, as a way to justify myself.

Kate’s voice is quiet in my ear. “Why come forward now? You’d gotten away. You were set up in California. You were free.”

“I was never free. First of all, I had no identity, and no way of getting one. I had no money. No job. I was able to get temporary work with a catering company, which led to my image being posted on TMZ, forcing me to come forward.”

I look into the camera, keeping my gaze steady, and imagine I’m speaking directly to Eva. For a short time, we inhabited the same skin. The same life. I know things about her no one else will know, and that binds you to a person, a gossamer-thin thread crossing time and space. Wherever I am, she will be too. And wherever she is…I hope it’s far from here.

“But I also felt that I needed to honor the woman who died in my stead,” I say. “There are people out there who loved her. Who might want to know what happened to her. They deserve to have closure as well.” I pause for a moment, thinking about the scrap of paper I found at Eva’s, still shoved in my pocket. “I’m ready to step beyond the fear,” I tell Kate. “I want my life back. Mine. The one that belongs to me. My husband has stolen a lot from me. He’s stolen my confidence. He’s stolen my self-worth. And I don’t think he deserves to steal any more. From anyone.”

Across the studio, the digital clock flips from 1:59 to 2:00.

Zero hours left.

I’m free.





Claire


New York City

One Month after the Crash

I’ve never been in the townhouse on Fifth Avenue when it was this empty. There was always someone here, cooking or cleaning, scheduling appointments, standing guard outside Rory’s office. But in the wake of my CNN interview and the subsequent grand jury investigation into Rory’s involvement in Maggie’s death, everyone has been dismissed. The rooms are silent, and I feel like a ghost, walking the same route I used to take in my middle-of-the-night wanderings. Perhaps I am one, returning to haunt the life I left behind, and finding everything changed.

At first the story was slow to take shape, while Rory’s attorneys battled to uphold the nondisclosure agreement. But once he lost, a crash of information flooded the media, with something new released almost every day—the fight Rory and Maggie had the night she died, how it had ended with her unconscious at the bottom of the stairs and Rory scrambling to save himself from what he believed he’d done. How Rory had driven straight to Charlie’s apartment, only a few blocks away from his on the West Side. At the time, she’d tried to help him. She believed the story he’d told, a deer in the road on his way back to the city, the car on the verge of going into a ditch, a close call that had him severely rattled. Until news of Maggie’s death started to emerge. Charlie, who was young and in love with Rory, and had once hoped Rory would leave Maggie for her, began to grow alarmed. When she started asking questions, Rory’s father paid her to keep quiet and then slammed her with a nondisclosure agreement so steep it guaranteed she’d stay that way.