The Better Sister Read online

  “Yes, unfortunately,” I said. “I received—and still receive—multiple rape threats on a daily basis.”

  “Do these comments tend to come from a wide number of users, or is it a small number of people writing multiple comments each?”

  “There’s no way to know, really, because one person could in theory have two hundred accounts with different user names. I’d say there are a number of account names I’d recognize as repeat offenders, but usually it’s just some random person spouting off.”

  “How about Bilbo B? Does that sound familiar?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Alpha3?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been posts.”

  “KurtLoMein?”

  “Yes, that one I remember. The irony is that my husband was a big Nirvana fan—the lead singer was Kurt Cobain—so the name stuck. But I don’t want to give these people any further attention, if you don’t mind, Mr. Nunzio.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, setting down the sheet of paper he’d been reading from. “And have you ever spoken to your stepson, the defendant, about his feelings regarding your work?”

  Olivia objected on the basis of the state’s privilege for parent-child communications. I didn’t mind answering this particular question, but my guess was that she was raising the privilege now so we could learn one way or the other whether the judge was going to apply it to my relationship with Ethan.

  Rivera beckoned both lawyers to the bench. A few minutes of whispering later, she directed me to answer the question. Apparently I was not, in this court’s view, Ethan’s parent.

  Nunzio repeated the question about Ethan’s feelings toward my career. “If he sees my name trending or something, he might mention it to make sure I know. He’s made it clear he’s proud of me. When I received an important award last May, he attended the ceremony with me. If you watch the YouTube footage of it, you can hear a couple of guys whistling and cheering. That was Ethan and Adam.” I smiled sadly at the memory. It seemed like another lifetime. I remembered thinking at that moment that maybe Adam and I were going to be okay after all.

  Nunzio suddenly shifted gears, turning to a series of questions about the security alarm at the house.

  “Isn’t it true that you and your family regularly set the alarm each time you entered and exited the house?”

  “Not every time, I’m certain of that.”

  “More often than not?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  I had practiced this subject area with Olivia and made Nunzio earn every piece of information. He was, however, eventually able to establish that I had twice told the police that we rarely used the alarm, but that records from the alarm company demonstrated routine use. He had already brought in an employee from the security company to establish that on the night of Adam’s murder, the alarm had been set shortly before I left for dinner, disarmed when Adam was dropped off, rearmed shortly after 9:30 p.m., and then disarmed once again at 11:10, about twenty minutes after Kevin Dunham claimed to have dropped Ethan off at the beach.

  “So despite your claim that your family rarely used the alarm except when you were in the city or sleeping out at the home alone, that very night, it was turned on and off four times in a matter of a few hours.”

  “Yes, apparently.”

  “You say that as if you’re surprised, Ms. Taylor. Are you claiming not to have known that your own security alarm was used regularly?”

  “Of course not. In hindsight, after seeing the records, I realize it’s one of those things that has become so routine that I don’t even think about it anymore.”

  “When you came home and found your husband murdered, and your home apparently broken into, didn’t you wonder why the alarm never sounded?”

  “I assumed it wasn’t set.”

  “Isn’t it true, Ms. Taylor, that you lied to the police about rarely using the alarm because you yourself wondered why an intrusion hadn’t set off the alarm?”

  I looked at Olivia and then the judge. “I’m not sure I even understand that question.”

  “I’ll be more clear. Isn’t it true that you suspected your stepson Ethan from the moment you first spoke to the police?”

  “No, that’s absolutely false.”

  “Let me ask you this, Ms. Taylor. Who other than you, Adam, and the defendant knew the code to your security system at the time of the murder?”

  “The housekeeper and a handyman.”

  “And after your husband was killed, did you change the security code?”

  It seemed like a silly question until I was about to answer it. No, I hadn’t changed it. Someone had broken into my house, killed my husband, and disarmed the alarm, and I was still using the same code. Why hadn’t I changed it? I shot a quick glance at Olivia. Her expression was blank. There was no way to avoid the question. I had to answer.

  “No,” I said.

  Before I could figure out whether the jury would read into my failure to change the alarm code, Nunzio had shifted gears again and was asking me about Adam’s intention to send Ethan away to military school.

  “He never mentioned that to me,” I said. “My guess is he wasn’t serious about—”

  Nunzio objected to my speculation, and the judge directed me to answer only the posed question.

  “Is it fair to say that your husband and stepson had a tense relationship before the murder?”

  Olivia objected on the basis of vagueness.

  “Would you say that your husband and stepson were close?” he asked instead.

  I answered affirmatively even as Olivia was objecting.

  “Did they argue?” he asked.

  “Of course, all kids argue with their parents. But it was normal stuff—was he doing all his homework, how late could he stay out, that kind of thing.” I looked over at Ethan. He was gripping the edges of his chair’s armrests.

  Nunzio walked to his counsel table and picked up one of several thin stacks of paper lined in a row. I could see that some lines had been highlighted. “You’re a loser, a druggie zombie.” Olivia was on her feet, objecting, but Nunzio kept reading. “You’re losing your mind, just like your mother. Is that what you want? To be a dysfunctional invalid?”

  I didn’t know the source for the phrases Nunzio was quoting, but it was obvious whom they were about. I tried not to look at Nicky as Olivia argued. I was convinced that as long as she didn’t have to see my eyes right now, she’d be able to make it through this without breaking down.

  “This is outrageous, Your Honor. I have no idea what the prosecutor is reading from. It has not been provided to the defense in discovery, and I see no basis for its relevance.”

  Judge Rivera called the lawyers to the bench again, and this time I could overhear bits and pieces of their conversation. Said they were normal father/son. Impeach her testimony. Discovery violation. Ambush.

  When their huddle broke up, Rivera announced that the jury should ignore the material that Nunzio had read from the documents, and then Nunzio announced that he had no further questions for me. Olivia had no cross-examination, but reserved her right to call me back to the stand as a defense witness. Rivera then announced a brief recess so the lawyers could confer with her privately.

  I was stepping down from the witness chair as Ethan rose from his to follow Olivia into the judge’s chambers. As we passed each other, I reached out a hand, and his fingertips grazed mine. The sheriff’s deputy at his side shook his head sternly, but I mouthed a silent “Thank you” for the brief moment.

  Once I resumed my spot next to Nicky, she leaned close to my ear. Her whisper was intense. “What was all that loser druggie stuff he was reading?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea, but it sounded exactly like something Adam would say.

  Nicky and I remained in our seats for the entire recess. We had learned that reporters who had no qualms about yelling out questions and snapping photographs in the hallways and restrooms would not approach us wi
thin the four walls of this courtroom.

  Nearly forty minutes later, Nunzio, Olivia, and Ethan emerged from the judge’s chambers. The bailiff headed for the courtroom exit, which I had learned was a sign that he would soon return with the jurors.

  To my surprise, Olivia bypassed the counsel table and crossed the bar into our section of the courtroom. “I need poker faces from both of you right now, okay?” Neither of us flinched. “We’ll only have one more witness today, and I don’t want the jury here looking at the two of you when he testifies. So you’re going to stand up right now, walk out calmly, and go back to the hotel and wait for me.”

  “Is this about the argument Nunzio seemed to be quoting between Adam and Ethan?”

  She shook her head. “No, but we need to talk about that, too, so I’ll meet you after court lets out.”

  “Olivia, what’s going on?”

  “Poker faces, remember?” We both nodded. “The next witness is the police department’s tech guy. Ethan is KurtLoMein. Now go.”

  29

  Olivia had only one copy of the printout. I held it while Nicky and I read it together, perched side by side on the edge of the hotel bed.

  It included every single message that KurtLoMein had ever posted on Poppit. The bulk of them were about video games like Fortnite and 2K, but a disturbing number hinted at feelings of isolation and resentment, both against parents who no longer seemed to understand him and girls who refused to pay attention to him. He was also a frequent participant in threads about #ThemToo and specifically about me.

  It wasn’t only the clever name that had made this Poppit user stand out. Instead of the typical let’s-all-rape-the-man-hater posts, the person always wrote with such authority, appearing to claim some form of insider knowledge. He portrayed me as weaker and less secure than the persona I had managed to cultivate. That I was only pretending to be strong. That I was a hypocrite. Full of tough talk about the world needing to change the way it treats women, but she’s a coward in her own life. Cares more about her picture-perfect image than actual reality. That one had hit particularly close to home, and now I knew why.

  In fact, every one of KurtLoMein’s posts about me was negative, until the final one—a reply to widespread speculation on the website that I had killed Adam: We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. For all we know, she’s a victim, too. The note was published only hours before Ethan was arrested for the crime.

  “How can they be sure this was Ethan?” I asked.

  “They can’t, but they definitely know it came from his laptop, which was logged in variously at your apartment, house, and Casden Prep. We’ll lose the jury if we even try to argue it’s someone else.”

  “But maybe Ethan knows who—”

  Then I realized she would have already asked him. Ethan would have already confirmed that he had written these awful things about me.

  “Why did he do it?” I asked.

  “That’s not for me to try to explain to you. I’ll argue that kids say things they don’t mean when they’re online. I’ve already got a call in to an expert witness from Yale who writes about adolescent social media use.”

  “Most of those jurors have kids,” I said. I couldn’t stop rereading the words, each one like a punch to the stomach. “They’re going to know this isn’t normal.”

  “Unfortunately, we also need to talk about this.” She opened her laptop and clicked on a message near the top of the in-box. As the attachment slowly downloaded, she explained what we were about to see. “The quotes Nunzio started to read from in the courtroom? When he asked about tension between Ethan and Adam?” We both nodded to indicate we remembered. “The police found a video on Ethan’s laptop. It looks like he recorded this without Adam knowing about it. It was two weeks before the murder.”

  We sat in silence until the file had downloaded. Olivia hit play.

  We were all the way to the Montauk Highway before Nicky turned off the Howard Stern station.

  “So how often was Adam like that?” she asked.

  With my eyes closed and seat reclined, all I wanted was to float away until I never had to answer another question about Adam again. “Never. Not for the first ten years he was here, at least.”

  I tilted my head and could see Nicky running the numbers. “So the last two years?”

  “Not even. And then it wasn’t all the time. One or two blowups at first, and then more, and worse. It was this slow-building burn.”

  I had no way of knowing whether the incident on Olivia’s laptop was the only time Ethan had seen his father that out of control, but the fact that he’d recorded the incident suggested that it was not. According to Olivia, Nunzio claimed not to have disclosed the video earlier because it wasn’t relevant until I testified that Adam and Ethan were close and had a normal father-son relationship. Judge Rivera had lectured Nunzio for playing games with discovery, but she would nevertheless allow him to show the jury the video in the morning.

  In it, Adam was even worse than he’d been when he found the bag of pot. Worse, even, than after the gun fiasco. Not as mean as he’d been with me at times, but much crueler and more heartless than I ever could have imagined him being with Ethan.

  Nunzio had provided a transcript, the pages he’d begun to read from when questioning me.

  Ethan: Oh my god, Dad. You just sent me to my room and then you come in here to keep yelling at me.

  Adam: Because your room is your fucking sanctuary. Your room is where you can throw your three-hundred-dollar sweaters on the floor, pull on your thousand-dollar headphones, and disappear onto a computer that lets you ignore the real world.

  Ethan: What exactly do you want from me right now? To clean my room? Fine, I’ll clean my room.

  Adam: I want you to get your act together. You’re walking through life like nothing matters. You don’t focus on school. You don’t have hobbies. Chloe put you in that school full of spoiled brats so you’d have all the contacts to open all the doors she thinks matter, and you don’t have a single friend there.

  Ethan: That’s not true—

  Adam: Instead, you hang out with losers who have you selling drugs. You’re carrying around a gun.

  Ethan: Jesus, Dad, I told you a million times. It wasn’t my pot, and I was just, I don’t know with the gun. Like, trying to get attention or something.

  Adam: Well, you’ve got mine, that’s for sure. I don’t know when you got like this, son.

  Ethan: Like what?

  Adam: You’re a loser, a druggie zombie. Don’t you even see that you’re losing your mind, just like your mother? Is that what you want? To be a dysfunctional invalid?

  Even the harshness of the transcript wasn’t as blistering as the actual video, where Adam was screaming, waving his arms around, his face red, as Ethan sat on the bed, his knees pulled to his chest. I knew what it was like to be him in that moment—to be willing to do anything, anything, to make the shouting stop.

  I pictured Ethan walking home from the beach, stoned from hanging out with Kevin, and encountering Adam when he thought the house would be empty. If Adam had laid into him? If Ethan was maybe carrying a knife to be cool, the way he’d shown off that gun? Could the bad, dark side of Adam have brought out a bad, dark side of his son?

  I had no idea how to explain to Nicky how it had all started. “I never should have pushed Adam to go to the law firm. He was so resentful. I think he felt pressured to do it because I was earning more—like, a lot more—and he felt like he had to keep up. Every single day, the hatred for that job kept building. And he was drinking. A lot.”

  “That doesn’t excuse him for being a fucking asshole.”

  No, it didn’t, and that’s why I had felt entitled to start what I had with Jake. “I swear, the only time I saw him act that way with Ethan was once when he found pot, and once with the gun. And under the circumstances, I couldn’t say he was completely wrong either time.”

  “That wasn’t easy for me to watch, Chloe. Is that what you guys told Ethan
about me all these years? That I was a druggie and an invalid?”

  “No, of course not.” We never used those words, but of course Ethan knew that Nicky’s problems had led to his moving to New York with only his father.

  “Because that’s exactly how Adam used to talk to me,” she said. “When no one was around. He’d seem like perfect, sweet Adam one minute, and then I’d make too much noise cleaning the kitchen while he was studying and suddenly he’d be screaming at me, telling me I had no idea the pressure he was under because I hadn’t even gone to college. He’d belittle me and make me feel worthless. If I tried to argue with him or walk away, he’d grab me so hard, I’d see those little oval bruises on my arms for days. And then for a while, everything was fine again after I got pregnant, but once the baby was born, I just couldn’t be who he needed me to be. It took me forever to realize it was probably normal postpartum, but I was inhaling booze, antidepressants, sleeping pills—anything to make it feel okay for just a little while, day by day. I remember him screaming at me like that. Telling me I was a ‘loser’ and didn’t deserve him or the baby. He’d do these little slaps on my face”—her fingertips of one hand whipped across her cheekbone—“telling me that I wasn’t listening to him.”

  I shook my head. “You never said anything,” I muttered.

  “I did. Yes, I did! When the two of you had me committed after what happened in the pool, I tried to explain.”

  But by then, I didn’t believe her. I thought she was blaming Adam for her problems, just like she had always blamed our father. Even after I saw how Adam had changed over the last year, I never connected his anger—not once—to what had happened between him and Nicky. Maybe I just didn’t want to think of myself as being like Nicky.

  “Why didn’t you say anything while it was actually happening?” The tone of my voice made it clear that I wasn’t blaming her. I believed her and was trying to understand.