by Tracy Wolff
His words have fresh guilt washing over me. Because it was my mother who put things in motion, my mother who tore Chloe apart. And she used my money to do it. Some days—and today is definitely one of those days—the shame is so great that I can barely look at myself in the mirror.
“I can’t absolve you of your guilt, Miles. I have my own.”
“I’m not looking for redemption, man.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
“Restitution, maybe. A chance to help, definitely.” He pauses, waits for me to say something. But I don’t know what to say. “Tell me what to do, man. I know you’ve got stuff planned. You said you’ve got a meeting planned to figure out how to fix this. Let me help you, help her. Tell me what to do.”
The request is so unexpected that for long seconds, I don’t know how to reply. Don’t know what to tell him to do. I’ve got the release of information planned down to the second—and to the most minute detail. But Miles—or anyone from Chloe’s family, really—never factored in. Until now. And the truth is, he can help. He can tell the story that I’m not willing to let Chloe tell. And because he’s a man, and because he’ll be admitting his own culpability in the situation, he’ll be believed. It sucks, but that’s the way the world works.
But more than that, Chloe is still his sister. And he wants to help her. Who am I to turn him down just because of the anger I have for him? He has the right to defend his sister if he wants to.
“You need to talk to the press,” I tell him.
“That’s easy. They’re camped outside my doorstep right now.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the epidemic going around.”
“So what? You want me to just open the door and tell them my story?”
“No! No, that’s the last thing I want you to do.” Already I’m texting Stu his number, filling him in on the situation as briefly as I can. “My publicist is going to call you in a few minutes. I want you to tell him what happened, how it happened, how you feel about what happened. And then I want you to let him help you. He’ll polish up your statement, make sure you’re putting the most tragic, most convincing story forward. And then he’ll pick the best place to release your statement. He’s very good at his job, so I’m going to need you to trust him, to listen to what he tells you. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah.” There’s no pause, no hesitation at all. Just firm, absolute resolve. It’s enough to convince me when his words didn’t.
“I’ll make sure Stu gets you started with whatever you need.”
“I don’t need anything,” he tells me, and for the first time I hear the tears in his voice. “I’m just tired of watching my sister get kicked.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” I consider it admirable restraint not to mention that he’s done some of the kicking. But then, again, so did I. I wrote the check, after all.
“Thanks for your help, Ethan. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You’re welcome. I know you didn’t have to do this—”
“I do love her, man, and it kills me that I let her go through this alone for so long.” He clears his throat. “Okay, I’ll let you go. But I’ll be waiting for that call from your publicist.”
“Good. And, Miles, thank you, for stepping forward to help your sister.”
“Yeah. I just wish it wasn’t seven years too late.”
Chapter 23
I don’t make it home until well after seven. I left LA at three-thirty, but I stopped by Frost Industries for one last meeting with Stu before making my way back to our house. Back to Chloe.
On the plus side, the narrative is changing. My lawyers got two girls to come forward and speak out against Brandon—which isn’t as many as I’d like, but that doesn’t mean I’m not exceptionally grateful to the two of them for the sacrifices they’re making. Marybeth appeared on CNN at five and Lisa just finished being interviewed live on the nine o’clock EST show MSNBC was doing. Besides, there might very well be more as the days go on and the ones who don’t want to step forward see others speaking out.
Stu and his team have been working via social media all day to get all the new information disseminated and half an hour ago, three major news stations led with the information that FBI agents had just shown up at Brandon’s house with a search warrant. He wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop them from entering the property. Pictures of the whole thing are all over the internet. On the negative side, so are disgusting, vile Tumblrs and Instagrams devoted to objectifying Chloe and calling her unimaginable names.
Stu has a team member doing nothing but scouting for sites like that, and still we can’t get them taken down fast enough. Every time we get the plug pulled on one, three more crop up. We’re still trying, though, and will continue to scout for them. I never again want to see the look on Chloe’s face that I saw this morning when she was on social media.
Fuck. Sometimes I just don’t get people. I don’t understand what makes them want to lash out at some woman they don’t even know. Why they want to hurt her just because they can.
It’s always been like that, though, and probably always will be. Nothing I say or do is going to be able to change it. Which is why I spend too much of the day reminding myself to concentrate on the things I can change and to let the rest take care of itself.
It’s a lot harder to do than it is to say. Especially on days like today.
When I let myself into the house at seven-thirty, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to find. I’ve been in contact with Chloe all day—phone and text—and she seems like she’s holding up pretty well. But then, she’s a master of disguise. God knows, she’s had years of practice at falling apart on the inside while staying totally calm, totally composed on the outside. Chloe doesn’t like to be exposed, doesn’t like to show her wounds to anyone, not even Tori and me. So trying to gauge her moods sometimes is more like practicing magic than actual human observation.
Which is just one more reason I’m so glad to be home. I’ll let her keep the stiff upper lip as long as Tori is here, but once we’re alone, I’m going to push. The woman who was so upset that she spent the morning dry-heaving in the bathroom isn’t suddenly okay with what’s going on, no matter what she says to me when I call.
I wind through the house looking for my wife, end up following the sound of music to the kitchen. That’s where I find her, cooking dinner and drinking what looks like Pellegrino out of a champagne glass. Although, cooking dinner is somewhat of a loose term in this situation. What she’s really doing is dancing around the kitchen with Tori to Mark Ronson’s and Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.”
It’s so far from what I’m expecting to find that it takes me a little time to adjust. So I just stand there, in the shadows, watching my wife giggle as she tries a particularly intricate dance move. She looks good. She looks really, really good. And, judging from the empty bottles of sparkling water sitting out on the counter, she isn’t even drunk. Which makes her a better person than I am, because if I’d gone through what she has today, I’d probably be drowning my sorrows at the bottom of a tequila bottle.
The song ends with a flourish and Chloe catches sight of me as she takes an imaginary bow. There’s a part of me that expects her to flinch or to grow pale—something, anything that lets me know that she blames me for getting her into this mess to begin with. But she just smiles and holds out a hand to me as a Needtobreathe song comes on next.
I take her hand—of course I do—and pull her into my arms. Then I dance her around the kitchen as the words to “Something Beautiful” wash over us. It could be any other night, one whose day hadn’t started with half the English-speaking world calling my wife a whore. I don’t know how she does it. How she can stay so calm and look so happy even in the face of everything that’s going on around her.
I search her face, her eyes, for telltale signs of stress. She’s still too pale, but her eyes are soft instead of anxious, the skin around her mouth relaxed instead of drawn. The time with Tori has
obviously done her good.
I look over at my wife’s best friend, find her leaning against the counter, a champagne flute filled with water lifted to her lips. It’s the first time in pretty much our entire acquaintance that I haven’t seen her with an alcoholic drink in close proximity to her person and I mouth a heartfelt, “Thank you” to her as I spin Chloe around the center island. She nods back, a silly grin on her face.
The oven timer goes off just as the song ends. “So, that’s what you spent the day doing?” I ask as Chloe reaches for a pot holder. “Cooking?”
“Only the last couple of hours. We spent most of the day alternating between watching John Hughes films and the news.”
“And don’t forget cursing Brandon Jacobs’s existence,” Tori adds. “We did plenty of that, too.”
“Well, yeah.” Chloe looks a little embarrassed admitting that, but to be honest, I’d be more shocked if she hadn’t spent the day wishing my brother dead, or at least badly maimed. God knows, it’s what I did.
“We turned off the TV a while ago,” Chloe tells me as she reaches for a pot holder. “Couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I get that.”
But still I walk over to one of the cabinets that line the side of the kitchen and push a button on the side. The top opens up and a television set slowly lifts out of the console below.
“We have a TV in here?” Chloe asks, dumbfounded. “Why do we have a TV in here?”
“In case you want to follow along with a kitchen show while you’re cooking. Or catch up on the news. Whatever.” I grab the remote from the small alcove carved into the wood next to the TV stand and change the station to CNN. Currently they’re just starting their Washington recap, which means that—while they’re talking about the president’s economic policy right now—it won’t be long before they hit on Brandon. He was the huge front-runner for his district, and as such makes for good political fodder.
“We’re just about to eat,” Chloe tells me as she pulls a pan of roasted chicken out of the oven. “Maybe we could watch this later?”
“I’ll turn it off in a couple minutes,” I promise. “But right now, there’s something coming that I think you’ll want to see.”
I hate the way her voice has suddenly gone small and stressed. And if I hadn’t gotten that text from Stu a few minutes ago, I never would have turned the TV on to begin with. But I did get the text, and something tells me she’s going to want to know Miles is standing up for her. It might be seven years too late, but it’s something, especially today. Especially right now. And she deserves to see it.
“I think I’ve pretty much seen it all today. But thanks—”
“It’s not what you think. I mean, it is. But Stu just messaged me. In a few minutes—”
“Miles!” Tori exclaims.
“What?” Chloe turns to look at her as if she’s crazy.
But Tori’s pointing to the screen as I turn up the volume. “He called me today. He wanted to know how to help you.”
We’ve missed the reporter saying who Miles is and the list of his credentials, but not what he has to say. Which, it turns out, isn’t that much. But, looking at my wife’s face as she watches her brother explain how Chloe was railroaded into signing that agreement only to have her parents use the money to start a company for him, I also know that it’s everything.
He’s taking the last shred of doubt away, turning Chloe from a pariah into a paragon. And I couldn’t be happier.
“You did this,” she tells me, voice choked and tears pouring down her cheeks as she buries her face in my chest.
“No. He’s the one who called me because he wanted to help. I just gave him the vehicle to do it.”
“It’s a good vehicle,” Tori says from where she’s still lounging indolently against the cabinet. But there’s something in her voice, that makes me think she’s a lot more perceptive—and a lot more interested in what Miles had to say—than I was giving her credit for.
“A really good vehicle,” I think Chloe says. It’s hard to tell since her words are muffled against my shirt. And because she’s still crying.
“It’s okay, baby.” I card my fingers through her curls, rub the tips of my fingers against her scalp in the way that usually makes her purr. “Let it out. If anyone deserves a good cry right now, it’s you.”
“You have no idea,” Tori says with a snort.
Before I can even begin to puzzle out what that means, she’s handing me a glass of tequila with a squeeze of lime. “Here. I figure after the day you’ve had, you’ve earned it.”
“I’m not going to disagree.” I take a grateful swallow, savoring the way the liquor burns all the way down my throat.
Chloe spends a couple more minutes pressed against me, but finally manages to pull herself together enough to start plating the roasted asparagus she pulls from the oven while Tori puts the mashed potatoes in a serving bowl. I want to pull Chloe back into my arms, want to hold her so close that nothing can ever hurt her again. But she’s not that kind of woman—she might have been willing to let me take care of things today since I already had the plan in place, but if I try to take over anything else, it’ll probably end with her taking a shot at my balls.
Deciding discretion really is the better part of valor, I start walking toward the bar. “What kind of wine would you ladies like me to open?”
There’s an odd silence, and when I turn back to Chloe her cheeks are flushed and her eyes downcast. “What’s going on?” I start to ask, but I’ve barely got the first word out of my mouth when a breaking news graphic flashes across the TV just as a commercial ends.
One of CNN’s Washington anchors comes on the screen, looking a little confused and a little shocked—like she’s still in the middle of being fed whatever story her producer considers breaking news. But within seconds she gets it together and starts talking, just as a graphic of my brother flashes across the right half of the screen.
“And in a truly bizarre, and tragic, turn of events—in a story that has been filled with bizarre and tragic twists, it’s now being reported that the body of Brandon Jacobs has been found in his house by the FBI team executing a search warrant on his property. I repeat, the body of Brandon Jacobs, best known as the younger half brother of noted philanthropist and tech genius Ethan Frost, as well as a candidate in this year’s election for the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts’s seventh district, has been found in his house by the FBI. We have no other details at this time, but will keep you posted as we learn more.
“As many viewers know—if you’ve been watching our coverage throughout the day—it’s been a bit of a rough afternoon for Brandon Jacobs. He—”
The sound of breaking glass distracts me and I look around, searching for the source. It isn’t until Chloe grabs on to me and guides me to one of the breakfast nook chairs that I realize hazily that the noise came from me. My drink had slipped from my hand, the glass shattering on the hardwood floor.
Chapter 24
Oh shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This isn’t happening. Someone, please, tell me this isn’t happening. But it is. Oh, God, it is.
Ethan hasn’t moved since I got him seated in the breakfast nook. Instead, he’s just sitting, hands clasped, elbows on knees, staring hard at the floor—and the broken glass that is strewn across it.
The TV continues to drone on about Brandon’s life—and the bizarre turns that led to him being found dead. At the moment, there are no other details. No cause of death, no location of the body in the house, nothing like that. Just the confirmation that came from the FBI when the local coroner’s van was dispatched to Brandon’s property.
“Ethan.” No response. I put my hand on his arm, on his cheek. Still no response. “Baby, please, can you look at me?”
He doesn’t so much as blink. He just keeps staring, eyes wide and pupils dilated in what I’m pretty sure is shock.
I can hear Tori moving behind me, her heels clicking on the wood as she crosses the kitchen
. Even though I don’t turn to look, I know where she’s going. Sure enough, the TV snaps off seconds later.
“Take him in the other room,” she tells me and this time I do look at her. She’s crouched down next to the glass Ethan broke, mopping tequila off the floor and gathering up the glass shards. “I’ll take care of this and let myself out.”
“I’m fine,” Ethan says, pushing to his feet.
“Baby, I think—”
“I’m fine,” he reiterates. “Leave the mess, Tori. I made it, I’ll clean it up.”
She ignores him, keeps cleaning, so that his words hang in the air between us. They’re so eerily similar to the ones he’d uttered this morning—Don’t worry, Chloe. I will clean this up—that they give me pause. I can see by his hesitation, by the way he suddenly can’t figure out what to do with his hands, that he recognizes the echo, too.
Ethan had tried to clean up the mess his mother made and now his brother is dead. Whether or not his actions today caused his brother’s death—and I don’t think they did—doesn’t matter. But the fact that he believes he did—and it’s obvious that he does—matters a lot right now.
I stoop down beside him, start to help him pick up the bigger pieces of glass. Except the smell of the tequila turns my stomach so badly that I have to breathe in through my mouth, have to swallow half a dozen times before I can focus on anything but the desperate need to throw up. I force the nausea back down. This isn’t the time or the place for it.
After we’re done cleaning up, Ethan stands. Holds out a hand to help me to my feet. Then turns and walks away without a word. It’s one of the eeriest things I’ve ever seen.