The Better Sister Read online

  After forty minutes, it was clear I wasn’t even close. I woke up my computer and googled “Jeremy Lyons.” The second hit was the stranger who had used my powder room. He was a research fellow at the University of Kansas. According to a recent faculty news sidebar, he would be speaking at NYU the next day about monetary policy.

  So maybe he was a helpful stranger after all. Given Nicky’s history, I felt no guilt about checking.

  I closed my browser when I heard a tap on the office door. It was Nicky and Ethan. Seeing the two of them together, I realized how much Ethan was beginning to resemble her as his face matured. He had his father’s dark hair and eyes, while Nicky was still a dark blond with only minimal help from L’Oréal. But like his mother, Ethan was long and lanky, with a thin nose and angular features.

  “Kiddo here says you made a reservation at some swank hotel for me.”

  “The Marlton, right down Fifth Avenue.” It was relatively new and nicer than the Washington Square hotel where we usually put her, but the real reason Ethan liked it was for the pastries they sold at their coffee bar. They had some fancy French name we always forgot, but they were known in our family as crack croissants.

  “Thanks for the offer, but if it’s okay with you, I’m fine on the couch. If I’m going to be here, I want to spend actual time with you guys.” Nicky had never balked about staying in a hotel before, but apparently that was because we were living with Adam. She did a double take at the far wall of my office. “Is that a Murphy bed? I don’t think I knew you had that. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve been in here before.”

  “It’s really uncomfortable. And the bathroom’s all the way down the hall.” I knew I was being obvious, but didn’t care. I did not want Nicky underfoot twenty-four hours a day for however long she was planning to stay with those giant suitcases.

  Before I could stop her, she had pulled the bed open. “This is perfect,” she said, plopping down on the neatly tucked-in white coverlet. I noticed Ethan slip out of the room while he had the chance. “And I promise I’ll stay out of your way. This room is huge. Quite a step up from your original middle-school home office.”

  My father had made Nicky switch bedrooms with me when I was in the eighth grade so I could have the room that was large enough to house a desk. By then, it was clear that I was the one who would actually use it, but Nicky always saw it as punishment for dropping out of college after the first semester.

  I tried one more time as Nicky was rolling the first of her suitcases into the office. “Seriously, don’t you want a whole room to yourself where you can unpack and spread out? Have a little privacy? And really, I don’t mind paying for it at all.”

  “I know. You’re always so generous, but really, I don’t want to go to the hotel. You won’t even know I’m here, I promise.” She swallowed hard and then added, “Please, Chloe.”

  I nodded, averting my gaze. “Of course. Whatever’s best for you.”

  “And I’m sorry again about offering your bathroom to Jeremy. I should’ve texted you first, but my battery was dying. And for what it’s worth, I’ve been seeing someone anyway, so I wasn’t cruising him, if that’s what you thought.”

  “Really, Nicky, it’s okay. And I’m happy for you about seeing someone.” Nicky’s habit of unloading the personal details of her relationships had ended once Adam left her. I had no idea whether it meant that there were no details to be had, or that she had simply figured out that I could no longer be the person with whom she shared them.

  “We’ll see. He’s fifty-two. Divorced with two kids. I haven’t even told him about Ethan yet, so—” She stopped abruptly at the sound of footsteps approaching in the hallway.

  Ethan was lugging Nicky’s second suitcase into my office when my cell phone rang. It was a 631 area code. Long Island. I decided to answer.

  “Ms. Taylor, this is Detective Guidry. I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a few more things I’d like to go over. I have to come into the city for a district attorney thing anyway. Is it okay if we talk in person? I could come to your place, if that’s okay.”

  I was suspicious about whether Guidry was actually planning to be in the area, but if I couldn’t find a way to stop Nicky from occupying my office, I didn’t know how to refuse a police officer’s request to see me in person. I wondered if I had made a mistake asking Guidry to be the one to call Nicky with the news about Adam. I had no way of knowing what she might have said about me.

  Because as much as Nicky said she loved me and was grateful for the life I had given her son, I knew she had never forgiven me for marrying her husband.

  16

  I never meant to fall in love with him.

  The first time Adam actually met me was when he came by the house to pick up Nicky for a date and ended up giving her kid sister a lift to her friend’s house in Shaker Heights. But I remembered knowing about Adam when he was still in high school. I must have been in the sixth grade, and my parents would let me hang out at the mall with my friends all day on Saturdays.

  Maralyn Fisher, Kristin Hoesl, and I were sitting on the bench outside Limited Express, right by the food court and movie theater. We spent the afternoon protecting our prime mall-watching territory no less seriously than gangsters fighting for turf, until Kristin’s older sister and her friends decided that they were going to take our space if we all wanted a ride home at the end of the day. We stood nearby and eavesdropped as they rated the various classmates who walked by: hot or not. Their attention eventually landed on the kid with the dark wavy hair and green eyes taking movie tickets at the Regal.

  “Great jawline, but he’s a total dork.”

  “You know how grown-ups say ‘she’s got a good personality’ about ugly girls? He’s like, the opposite of that. Everything’s blah but his face. I tried glancing at his algebra test last year, and he nearly knocked over his desk trying to block my view.”

  It was Kristin’s sister who reserved judgment, watching him like a collector summing up a piece of artwork. “I don’t know, you guys. I think he’s gonna be that stud we all regret blowing off one day when he shows up at the high school reunion with his Harvard degree and a private jet.”

  When he disappeared at the end of August, I wondered if he really had gone away to Harvard. I noticed him a few times around Christmas and the next few summers, but never actually talked to him. To me, he was just that smart movie theater guy that Kristin’s sister had lodged in my imagination.

  But then, more than ten years later, when I was the recent college graduate coming home for a visit, he showed up at my parents’ to pick up Nicky. As it turned out, no one who went to Jefferson High School got into Harvard, but Adam did get a full ride to the University of Michigan. And he was the guy my sister had been talking about ever since she’d gone to her ten-year high school reunion that summer. I remember how different she looked that weekend, opting for natural makeup, a loose blowout, and simple, tasteful clothes instead of her usual hippie-dippie woo-woo outfits. Nicky never looked that good—ever. I remember feeling sorry for her, like she was pretending to be someone else to impress her former classmates.

  But it must have worked—at least on Adam, who had finished his first year of law school at Case Western and was nothing like the usual guys who were sniffing around in Nicky’s direction. Even in the few weeks I spent in Cleveland before starting my assistant job at City Woman, I could see the roles they were playing. He was the local boy done good, crushing the grading curve and landing the plum positions on the law review board. And Nicky duped him into thinking she was exactly what he needed—a fun, loyal girlfriend whose number one priority would be helping him achieve his every goal.

  And then, much to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, Nicky actually got her act together. Being Adam’s girlfriend gave her an identity that helped guide her conduct and decisions. I wouldn’t usually want to see a woman make a man her sole purpose in life, but for her, it worked. Instead of sleeping all day until her shift at the
restaurant, she’d drive Adam to and from campus so he didn’t need to hassle with parking. In between, she’d run not only her errands but his, so he’d have more time to study at night—often in the back booth at the restaurant where she waitressed, so he could spend time with her when it was slow. Most restaurant owners might have resented a regular lingerer, but with Adam in the picture, Nicky didn’t miss work and even showed up on time. And I assumed my parents and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t miss the parade of horribles that would often drop in to see my sister.

  Nicky held it together for more than three years—mostly. I’d learn later that there had been a couple of episodes where she got wasted at his law school parties, but it didn’t stand out that much compared to other students. In her most serious early transgression, Adam threatened to break up with her when she got stopped for a DUI and then insisted the police officer call her boyfriend because he was “your boss.” At the time, Adam had just finished an internship at the DA’s office and had accepted an offer to work there after graduation. The episode could have derailed his career before it had even started, but the officer offered to release Nicky to a family member if she promised she’d never drive after drinking again. Then, instead of breaking up, they moved in together. Adam would tell me years later that Nicky convinced him that the only reason she’d been drinking so much was that she was worried he was going to leave her once he was a lawyer because she wasn’t as educated as he was.

  No one in the auditorium cheered louder at the graduation ceremony than Nicky did when Adam walked across the stage, magna cum laude. “We did it, babe!” she screamed, earning applause from the rest of the audience. For Nicky, the accomplishment was as much hers as his.

  Adam started working at the DA’s office, and Nicky stopped waitressing. Amid talk about her going back to college, he bought her a big stack of SAT prep books and even made flash cards so he could help her study at night. By my count with the calendar, it was probably right around then that Nicky got pregnant. She said she forgot to take her birth control pills a couple of times, but I had my suspicions.

  Of course he married her. They told everyone they had been planning to get hitched and start a family anyway, but now had a reason to skip the headache of a big ceremony.

  Even then, Nicky seemed to rise to the occasion. She managed (by all appearances at least) not to drink or smoke while she was pregnant. But once she had that baby to take care of, she just couldn’t keep up the charade. Nicky had never been able to look after herself, let alone another person. She was done faking it.

  I could tell something was off, even when I flew back to Cleveland to meet my newborn nephew. By the time I was packing to return to New York a week later, she was pounding Bloody Marys, swearing she had enough breast milk in the freezer to get the baby through while “Mommy could finally celebrate.”

  Over the next two years, old Nicky gradually but assuredly consumed the new, improved Nicky. And then the night of the Met Gala, Nicky did something so awful that Adam had no choice. He took Ethan and left her for good.

  So I know what it sounds like when people hear that I married my sister’s husband, but it wasn’t like that. I tried to warn her. She’s the one who decided to lose it all.

  17

  Poppit

  Thread: Who Stabbed Attorney and Father Adam Macintosh?

  Latest Comments:

  Posted by JamBoy

  We all know it’s the wife, right?

  Posted by BilboB

  So which one of them was cheating: him or her?

  Posted by FireStarter

  Two words: Chloe Taylor.

  Posted by SoxSuck92

  Of course, she was too good to change her last name, but we should use her full, legal name: Chloe Cunt Taylor.

  Posted by KurtLoMein

  We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. For all we know, she’s a victim, too.

  Posted by FireStarter

  Quoted: We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

  When did you become such a pussy, KurtLoMein? You’ve been talking smack against that bitch for months.

  Posted by BilboB

  Are they sure it wasn’t a suicide? Because . . . what kind of man could stay married to that?

  Posted by Anonym2002

  Let’s see how much she hates men when she’s getting passed around by the prison bulldykes.

  Posted by DonkeySchlong

  LOL! Can’t wait to see that elitist bitch behind bars.

  Posted by Bighead

  Lock! Her! Up!

  18

  I told Nicky that I needed to approve proofs for the magazine, but I really just wanted to be alone in my office. I was bouncing among Twitter, Poppit, and a Facebook group someone had started called Justice for Adam. Catherine had told me recently that my compulsive need to read the horrid things that anonymous strangers wrote about me online evidenced a subconscious desire to punish myself. She asked if I felt guilty for being a successful woman. I thought the theory was silly then, but now it was hitting closer to home.

  I closed the social media windows and played yet another round of “guess Adam’s email password,” giving it four tries before calling it quits. I was worried the law firm’s system might have a security setting that would lock me out after too many failed attempts.

  Where were you last week, Adam? The police had taken his phone and laptop, and his credit card statements went to his office, so I didn’t have any of those options to explore.

  I pulled up our one joint credit card—the one we used for restaurants, shopping, and travel to get more points—though I assumed Adam wouldn’t be careless enough to use it for anything he wanted to hide from me. Looking at our recent transactions, I realized how lazy I had gotten about our finances since I began having more money than time.

  There were no smoking guns like hotels, online dating accounts, or pickup bars, if pickup bars even existed anymore. I did, however, see a few charges from Adam: $396 for a New York Law Journal subscription, $25 for some court clerk’s office thing, and, most recently, four Uber rides: three for $80-odd each on Thursday morning and evening and again on Friday morning, and then $320 on Friday night. The times and amounts corresponded to what he had told me about going to a hotel near JFK to meet with the people from the Gentry Group.

  He had used Uber instead of the law firm’s car service, and had billed the rides to our personal card instead of his business account. All of it suggested that Jake had been right. Adam hadn’t been meeting with a client.

  I pulled up Uber’s website and logged in. We had opened a family account because Adam wanted to be able to check on Ethan’s location, as if our teenage son couldn’t find alternative means of traveling in New York City.

  I pulled up the receipts for the four rides. The corresponding maps showed a common pickup and drop-off location: the Union Turnpike–Kew Gardens subway station. It was in Queens, right at the connection between the Jackie Robinson Parkway and Queens Boulevard, nowhere near the strip of airport hotels I’d been picturing.

  I zoomed out and looked up directions from the station to JFK. The airport was more than five miles away.

  I clicked on the “nearby” icon, and then clicked on “hotels.” The closest option was a Comfort Lodge five blocks away, but it was hard to imagine a client like the Gentry Group using such a budget-friendly hotel. Not to mention, there were several more luxurious options located closer to the airport.

  I clicked around the surrounding area in Google Maps and found a FedEx drop-off, a Starbucks, and a cemetery. Queens County Criminal Court was just a few minutes’ walk from the drop-off location, but Adam had told me he was meeting the clients at a hotel. And if he’d been going to the courthouse, why wouldn’t he have asked the driver to take him directly there?

  I was trying to imagine Adam in a neighborhood I’d never been to, meeting someone I had never met, and I simply couldn’t picture it.

  I opened my contacts and pulled up the entry for Carol
Mercer, the wife of the in-house counsel for the Gentry Group. I started a new email message:

  Dear Carol, I can’t believe it has been three years since that epic meal at the Ledbury. At least Roger and Adam have been able to stay in touch with one another more frequently thanks to work. On that note, I have an odd favor: Can you please ask Roger if Adam was meeting with anyone from the Gentry Group last week?

  “Odd” was an understatement. I tried again.

  Dear Carol, I’m sorry to write with awful news and a strange question for Roger.

  My third attempt was interrupted by the phone on my desk. It was the doorman. When I hung up the phone, I closed the email message I had started and hit the print key on the Uber receipts. Detective Guidry was here.

  19

  I found Nicky sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. Panda had twisted himself into a perfect oval to fill the space in her lap, and half of the coffee table was covered with pieces of colored ceramic and various hoops and wires.

  After Mom had passed away, I had given Nicky the half that I was entitled to, and then continued to pay the property taxes and insurance so she could afford to keep our parents’ house. But her day-to-day income came from the extra money she made selling jewelry on Etsy.

  “Be careful with that stuff, okay?” I asked. “Panda has a way of hoovering anything he can get his paws on.”

  Nicky gave Panda a little rub beneath the chin. “A little reckless, are we? You like flirting with danger? You should have seen me in the nineties.”