The Better Sister Page 14

And then, boom, the prosecutor said it. “The same friend who said that Ethan was out of his presence for an hour the night of the murder told police that when he picked Ethan up at Main Beach afterward, he was carrying a backpack that he hadn’t had with him earlier in the night. Although he did not see what was inside the backpack, when the police searched the defendant’s New York City bedroom yesterday, they found an empty backpack, and they found items matching the three supposedly stolen items—including the very distinctive sneakers—on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, covered by a blanket.”

  The judge removed his reading glasses and looked directly at Olivia, waiting for an explanation that didn’t come quickly enough.

  “There is an explanation, Your Honor. The defendant’s parents have two residences.”

  “So you’re saying that he owned two pairs of those shoes?”

  “Your Honor, a bail hearing should not be a mechanism for the government to force my client to give testimony or to trick me into previewing my entire case for them. What matters here, Your Honor, is that there is no reason why Ethan needs to be held pending trial, where he will be vindicated. He can be released, on bail if you so require. He has no prior criminal history and will remain with his stepmother—whose reputation is beyond measure. Any remote concerns you might have could be addressed with electronic monitoring.”

  The prosecutor jumped in without an invitation. “With all due respect to Ms. Randall, that’s just offensive. Would any other defendant—who didn’t have two residences, designer tennis shoes, and impeccably credentialed parents—have any chance of being released on bail in a murder case? I have only given you a few pieces from the mountain of evidence we have against this defendant, because we fear that he might tamper with potential witnesses, as when he tried to rope a friend into a false cover story. But as far as his stepmother being an appropriate safeguard for him, I will add this. She told the police multiple times that the family rarely used their home security system, but records from the alarm company show that the system was used regularly as members of the family moved in and out of the house. And on the night of the murder, it was armed shortly after a car service dropped Adam Macintosh at the home and was subsequently disarmed—in our view, by the defendant. But the important point is that we believe Ms. Taylor—despite her, quote, ‘reputation beyond measure’—is motivated to protect her stepson. Quite understandably,” she added as an afterthought.

  I noticed the judge glance quickly in my direction. I could feel him reassessing whatever it was he thought he had known about me.

  “Well, we don’t need to get into any of that,” he said. Despite his conciliatory tone of voice, a burn building in my throat and stomach forewarned of what was coming next. “But your point about equal treatment is well taken. You’ve shown that the case has merit. The consequences of a conviction for this young man would be quite severe. I don’t want a situation where we release him, only to find out he’s left for the Swiss Alps on a private jet.”

  When a snicker erupted behind us, I thought Nicky was going to break my hand. If she had eyes in the back of her head, that person would have gotten knocked to the floor after court.

  “The defendant is remanded without bail.”

  I could still hear the judge’s words ringing in my ears when we walked out of the courtroom. The press was waiting for us and started yelling questions the moment they saw me emerge into the hallway. Is it true you lied to the police? Do you think Ethan killed your husband? And some of the questions were obviously about Nicky. Is that your sister? Are you his actual mother?

  Olivia shuffled us through the crowd and down the hall to an unused jury room she had arranged for just this purpose. Once the door was closed, Nicky and I were talking at once. How do we appeal? When will Ethan get home? What if we offer to hire private security to watch Ethan around the clock?

  Olivia tried to calm us down by telling us that Ethan would be housed with other juveniles, not in county jail, and that this was only the beginning of the process.

  Nicky slapped the table. Hard. “Stop fucking saying that. It’s the beginning of a shit show, but it’s the end of everything that was good for him. The only question is how bad it’s going to be from now on.”

  Olivia took a deep breath and nodded. “Fair enough. I just wanted you to know how many people do get cases dismissed prior to trial. Or get acquitted. Or reach some agreement that involves far less serious charges. You haven’t lost him. You’re not going to lose him.”

  I was still trying to recover from what I’d heard in the courtroom. “I don’t understand. Why would he take those things from the house?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have attorney-client privilege with Ethan, not you.”

  “So he told you why he had those things in his closet?”

  She pressed her lips together. “What if, hypothetically, he just got confused. Maybe in the chaos of carrying items back and forth between your two houses, it’s hard to keep track of what gets left where. And maybe you were also both still in shock when the police asked you to do the walk-through so soon after Adam died.”

  “So he said he was confused? But then why didn’t he have his backpack with him the first half of the night with Kevin?”

  “It’s not for us to explain their evidence, or even to take it at face value. You have no idea how much pressure they put on his friend to get him to say what they wanted.”

  But Olivia didn’t know what I knew about the backpack being empty that first night back in the city. And the police had discovered the items on the top shelf of his closet. It didn’t take camera footage to conclude that Ethan had removed the things from his bag and put them there. No jury in the world would buy some story about his being in shock while he did it. And I knew for a fact that Ethan never put anything away.

  When Adam and I decided to get married, I swore to myself that I would never treat Ethan as anything less than my own son. I researched the school districts. I went to the doctors’ appointments. I met with the teachers. I did “all the things,” as Adam liked to say. When Ethan had a problem, I was the one to solve it, because I was good at that. Now he was in desperate need of help, and I felt completely powerless.

  “Oh my god, why are we having this conversation right now?” Beside me, Nicky was still standing, her breath fast and heavy. “There is no way Ethan did this. We have got to get him out. Like, today. Now! Those so-called kids he’ll be held with? You can’t tell me they’re going to be sweet, soft kids like Ethan. Let me talk to the judge. I’ll do anything to get my kid home.”

  Olivia nodded calmly as she allowed Nicky to rage. When she finally spoke, her voice was sympathetic but calm. “That’s not going to happen, Nicky. The detention decision has been made. He will not be held with any adults during any stage of the process.”

  “He’s sixteen years old, Olivia. I’m not a lawyer, but you can’t expect me to believe that New York puts a sixteen-year-old in the same place as some little kid who went on a shoplifting spree.”

  Olivia pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. He’ll be in a special facility for older teenagers. The official term is an ‘adolescent offender.’”

  “Okay, so a bunch of hard-ass criminals and sociopaths. There has to be a way to get him out of there.”

  I was as terrified for Ethan as Nicky was, but I was desperately trying to contain my emotions and process the evidence the prosecution had claimed to have. “Do you have that picture? The one they showed the judge?”

  Olivia looked at both of us with sympathy. Two sisters: one bouncing off the walls with indignation, the other trying to pull a Sherlock Holmes and magically solve the case with her powers of observation. “Don’t do this to yourselves. You two are his only family. That’s your job right now, and it’s not going to be easy. But let me do mine.”

  “I want to see the picture,” I insisted.

  She reached into her bag and handed it to me.

  I immediately saw the problem. The glas
s from the broken window was on top of the guest bed duvet and inside the open nightstand drawer. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Because my husband had just been murdered. If I had seen it—if I had known I needed to protect Ethan—I wouldn’t have done the walk-through. I wouldn’t have answered a single question or let them speak to Ethan. They would have nothing.

  I pictured Ethan telling Olivia that he had just been confused about carrying those items back to the apartment. It sounded exactly like the story I had fabricated after he took the gun to school. A person could only forget what’s in his bag so many times. No jury would buy it.

  And I didn’t want to admit it, but I wasn’t sure I was buying it, either.

  “Did he really tell you he was confused?” I wanted to believe there was a rational explanation.

  “Like I said, I can’t reveal anything he said to me.”

  Nicky paced back and forth in frustration. “This is bullshit. It’s obvious that’s what he told you—hypothetically—and it sounds ridiculous, so it’s not true. Just let me talk to him. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  “This is what I meant about it only being the beginning,” Olivia said. “Even if you thought you had everything sorted out today, there’s nothing procedurally we could do with it right now. I know it’s frustrating to be stuck in a system, but that’s what this is, and I promise that I’ll work the system as well and as fast as I can. But I need to be the one to do it.”

  I could tell that Nicky hated her, but Jake had said Olivia was one of, if not the, best criminal trial lawyers in the state. But she didn’t know my son.

  “Here’s what we’re trying to tell you, though, Olivia. Ethan can seem sophisticated—he’s been raised around precocious kids, gone to the right schools, all of that. But he’s insecure at heart. He’s always looking for approval. He’s terrified of abandonment. And these little episodes he’s had—the pot, the gun—he’s just going through a lost phase. Not to sound like the ‘it’s a scary time for men’ crowd, but how many teenage boys are on meds, or isolated, or falling behind in school? But I swear, my only fears about Ethan have ever been about a lack of focus or drive. He would never—ever—hurt anyone, let alone his father. I know Ethan.” I could feel Nicky hovering over me. “We know Ethan. I’m telling you he’s innocent, but I’m also telling you that he desperately wants to please people. He will tell you what you want to hear, without regard to the consequences down the road. So you must take everything he tells you with a grain of salt, while at the same time trusting us that he did not kill his father.”

  The frantic expression on Nicky’s face had been replaced by something else. Sadness. Sadness, and regret. I had just told this lawyer more about Ethan’s real personality than I had ever shared with her.

  Olivia thanked me for the insight. “And, although I of course can’t break privilege,” she said with a small smile, “I make it clear to my clients when I don’t think the hypotheticals they run past me ring true.”

  I wanted to trust this woman, but clearly she had a callousness about her cases that was built upon years of representing guilty people. I needed her to understand that Ethan was different, even if it meant saying something negative about Adam. “Adam could be a very demanding father. He had unrealistic expectations—of everyone, to be honest, but especially his son. But Ethan was always trying to meet them. If I had to guess, Ethan had been smoking pot on Friday night, and that’s why he didn’t remember carrying those things from the house. And Kevin was surely smoking, too, which explains him being malleable about whether Ethan had the backpack with him all night or not. And knowing Ethan, when he found his shoes and stuff in his backpack in the city, he just put them in the closet instead of calling attention to himself by correcting the record.”

  For the first time since we’d entered the jury room, Olivia pulled out a notepad from her briefcase and scribbled in it. “This is helpful. Thanks. Both of you.”

  Nicky opened her mouth in disbelief. “That’s it? She just totally explained the whole thing to you. Can’t we just go to the police and clear it all up?”

  “I wish we could, but no. They’ll never dismiss the case this early in the process. I have investigators. We chip away and chip away, and then we use it all together at trial to create reasonable doubt.”

  “So Ethan’s in jail now because he was too afraid to tell the police he was high? For fuck’s sake. I of all people can tell him there’s much greater crimes than smoking a little weed. He’ll tell me. I know it. Let me talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said, “but I can’t let that happen. Neither of you can speak to Ethan about anything remotely connected to the case.”

  As we tried to argue with her, she explained how she had done the legal research already to be absolutely certain. She couldn’t guarantee that the prosecution wouldn’t force either of us to testify against Ethan. “New York has a privilege for parent-child communications, but it’s extremely limited. And I know you’ll find this painful, but it’s not clear that either of you would qualify. Chloe, you’re technically a stepmother because you never formally adopted Ethan. And Nicky, you’re the biological mother, but you haven’t raised him, as I understand it, and the case law focuses on the unique relationship between children and their parents.”

  In a few quick, dry, legalistic seconds, she had laid out the dilemma of our new normal, a situation that we were still struggling to process.

  “I’m sorry,” Nicky said, “but, no, I can’t handle this. There has to be some other way. I’m not leaving this room until we figure out how to fix this. I’ll chain myself to the courthouse doors if I have to.” She clenched her hands into fists and made a primal sound that resembled a growl.

  “Nicky,” I snapped. “You’re going to get arrested, too, and then how is that going to make Ethan look?”

  Even when she had come to terms with Adam taking custody of Ethan, I had never seen her this out of control. I found myself feeling resentful about her carrying on. Seeing my son dragged around by police officers made me want to yell and scream, too, but I didn’t have the luxury of an outburst—not now, at least. Olivia needed to focus on Ethan’s defense, not hand-holding the two of us.

  “So then what are we supposed to do?” Nicky asked, collapsing into the chair next to me. “Seriously, what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

  “Go home,” Olivia said. “Take care of yourselves and each other. And get ready for the next steps.”

  Nicky reached across the table and grabbed Olivia’s hand. “I need you to swear to me that you’re going to get Ethan back home. Promise me, or I literally don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

  I could see Olivia’s facial muscles tighten. “I’d be lying if I made that promise—”

  “No,” Nicky said. “No, no, no. I need to hear you say it. I need to know for certain.”

  Olivia shook her head, but then gave Nicky’s hand an extra squeeze. “Here’s the promise I can give you. Right now, I am a hundred percent confident I can get a jury to send him home, based on what we heard today. Okay?”

  That was more than I had expected her to be able to guarantee, but I could tell that Nicky still wasn’t satisfied.

  “And if that assessment ever changes,” Olivia continued, “I swear I’ll let you know. The second I don’t feel good about the case, I’ll tell you—no punches pulled. That I can promise.”

  Nicky shook her head and wiped her nose.

  “Good,” Olivia said. “When Ethan gets processed, he’s going to need you both. It’s going to be a while.”

  “Let me guess,” Nicky said with a sad smirk. “It’s only the beginning?”

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “Down the road, when I hope this is all over with a good outcome, I give you permission to remind me how annoying that lecture is.”

  When we left the room and Nicky broke away to clean up her face in the restroom, I asked Olivia one more question. “Did you mean what you said to the judge? That
you believe Ethan is actually innocent? You sounded so convinced.” I had known she couldn’t guarantee Nicky a successful outcome, but I was looking for something different. I think I wanted to feel as certain as she appeared in court.

  She looked around, as if she were making sure no one would hear us. “I’d like to think I always sound persuasive. But, yes, I do believe it. And I rarely do. And, as I said, I promise I’ll do everything I can to prove it.”

  24

  Six Weeks Later

  I’ve always been a good student, and not only in school. If there’s a task to be done, I can figure out a way to do it. And, if it’s something I care about, I’ll learn how to do it well. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule. If you want to be great, you’ve got to work at it.

  But I had come to accept that no matter how many hours I put into it, I’d never be able to host a party the way Catherine Lancaster could host a party. Her Sag Harbor home was French country, but all chic, no shabby. The food was always perfect—the flavor, presentation, timing, all of it—yet you never saw her scrambling in the kitchen the way I did if I tried to cook more than one course. For years, I was convinced she had caterers hiding in the basement, sneaking upstairs to work like ninjas while we mingled, until I finally knew her well enough to ask her point-blank. Turns out the woman who had an assistant send out her emails and do her Christmas shopping actually did her own cooking. She even curated the guest list so the conversation never faltered. Five people you’d love to meet for a dinner party? That was Catherine’s dining room table every Saturday night.

  Even the playlist was carefully planned to suit her guests’ desires. When “Walkin’ after Midnight” came on, Bill closed his eyes and gave us one line—Just like we used to do—while his shoulders swayed. He loved Patsy Cline so much that he had named his horse after her.

  And now I was bringing Nicky to one of those perfectly curated gatherings.

  Other than the occasional pop-in by friends and coworkers offering condolences and casseroles, this was the first time since Adam was murdered that I had accepted a social invitation. Nicky and I had decided it might be good for us to imitate normal human beings for an evening, but now that we were there, I was still numbed by the same shock and anxiety that hadn’t faded at all after six weeks, with an extra layer of resentment that I couldn’t wallow without an audience.