Lies of the Heart (53 page)

“Okay, Kay-tee,” he says, straightening in the chair. “I ready.”

“Do you remember the group session you had that morning?”

Jerry lowers his head, eyes scanning the table. His mouth moving.

“Jerry? Do you remember?”

“We talk. We talk about love. About being married.”

“Did you talk about anything else that morning?” she asks lightly.

Jerry stares at her.
“Sex,”
he whispers.

“That must have made you very upset.”

“It bad.”

“Did talking about sex make you mad, Jerry?”

Jerry looks down again, talking to himself. “No, Kay-tee. I . . . I . . .
scared
.”

“You weren’t mad at Nick?”

Jerry’s lips move, practicing first. “Scared, Kay-tee.”

“Why were you scared, Jerry?”

“For Nick.”

“Why? Why were you scared for Nick?”

“He tell us,” Jerry blurts out. “In group.”

Not on the list, but she has to ask. “What did he tell you?”

“Nick tell us he not go home anymore!”

It’s like knives plunging into her body in a hundred different places. Nick told his clients that he was leaving Katie for good, before he even talked to her? How could he do that to her? But wait—only Jerry now.

“Are you okay?”

Jerry tilts his head at her, confused. “Okay?”

“Jerry,” she says quickly, remembering the correct wording again. “Why were you scared for Nick?”

He rehearses the words first, eyes on the table. “You . . . you not have a baby, Katie. Nick have sex. With someone else. He have a baby with someone else.”

She gasps, asks it before she can catch herself: “Nick said he was going to have a baby with someone else?”

“He say someday he might. At lunch he say maybe.”

It takes a few seconds for her to remember the next question.

“Jerry, can you tell me where Nick is now?”

“He gone.”

“Can you tell me where Nick is now?”

He says the words to himself first, then, “Nick in heaven now.”

“Why is he there?”

“I . . . I . . . ”

He practices the words, eyes moving back and forth, almost as if he can see them.

“I save him dere.”

“You saved Nick?”

“Before he do it.”

“Before he did what?”

“Nick go to heaven
before.
”

“Okay,” she says. “Before he did what?”

“What my fadder do. Make sin.”

“You thought Nick was going to make sin?”

“My dad make me, and God got mad. He send him to hell.”

“You thought Nick would go to hell?”

“Nick say someday he might meet a new lady. Not you.
You
his wife. He might have a baby with a new lady, and
you know.
”

“God would be mad?”

Jerry nods, turns his head to try to wipe his nose on his shoulder, fails.

“Jerry? Why would God be mad about that?”

She watches his eyes tracking back and forth over the table—like he knows what he’s trying to say, he can see the words right in front of him, but he can’t understand them.

Katie stares, feels a tingle of recognition—the look on his face vaguely familiar, but she can’t quite place it. And then, as she watches him struggling, she suddenly remembers: that first time he slept over, when he tried to repeat his mother’s Scripture. Or when . . . or when . . . that time in the cafeteria . . .

It finally hits Katie, slams into her chest. That exact expression on Jerry’s face, his mumbling lips.

“God punish him,” Jerry says. “I not want him—I not want him to go to hell, Kay-tee. I . . . I send him to heaven. Time to go,
before.
Not like my fadder. Nick go to heaven
before.
”

Katie turns to the two-way mirror, imagines Patricia’s satisfied smile.

You did it,
she thinks, and turns back to Jerry’s hopeful look for understanding.

Patricia waits for Katie right outside the room. Next to the door of the adjoining room, Richard consults quietly with the DA and Donna Treadmont.

“You coached him,” Katie whispers fiercely to Patricia. “You told him to say those things.”

Patricia frowns, looks at the group only a few feet away. Richard’s eyes lock with Patricia’s, and then Patricia is signaling for Katie to walk with her. They move to the end of the corridor.

“Like when we first met in the cafeteria,” Katie says, turning to her. “Word for word. You told him what to say.”

Patricia crosses her arms. “I did what I had to do. For Jerry. I wasn’t sure if seeing his mother in the courtroom would be enough.”

“For what?”

“His reaction, a mistrial. Even if it worked, I wasn’t sure what would come next. We might’ve been right back at the starting line.”

“But was any of it true? What he said in there?”

“Parts of it, I think.”

“What parts—what parts were true?”

Patricia checks on the group, lowers her voice. “You had a conversation with your sister, before Nick left. At your parents’ house. Do you remember what you said?”

“We went over there all the time. I said lots of things—”

“The one Jerry overheard? About Nick having an affair? Jerry told us about that. He could repeat
that,
word for word, himself.”

Sitting with Dana outside, talking about Nick. Telling her how they hadn’t had sex in two months.
Sometimes I can actually see him with another woman . . . I couldn’t handle it if he decided to be with someone else, if he wanted to start a family with another woman.

“I should have talked to Jerry about that—”

“Yes, you should have. But at the time you were busy.” Her glance leaves no room for doubt: busy stalking Nick.

“So then it’s true? What he said in there?”

“You’re underestimating the complexity of this situation, of who Jerry is and what he’s been through. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the entire truth,” she says. “And I think it’s better if we leave well enough alone.”

“I can’t do that, I just can’t. I wish I could.”

Patricia scowls at her. “I don’t think you want to hear this.”

“Please,” Katie says. “I have to know.”

Patricia sighs through her nose. “Fine,” she says. “We aren’t sure of everything, how it all adds up. But do you remember telling your sister that if Nick left you to be with another woman, you’d die?”

Katie scans her memory. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe not in those words.”

Even if there’s the off chance he
is
seeing someone else . . . you would still live your life,
Dana had said to her
.

No,
Katie had replied.
No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to.

“You were his ‘best,’ Katie,” Patricia says. “Right from the start. Jerry didn’t want to lose you.”

“Why would he?”

“You said if Nick was with another woman . . .” she begins. She sighs loudly, impatiently. “Well, Jerry interpreted your words that day literally. If Nick was with someone else, you wouldn’t want to live. He couldn’t let that happen.”

“Oh, God,” she says, placing her hand against the wall.

“I’m sorry to tell you so bluntly, but we think there’s a good chance it factored into his decision. You were like a mother to him, Katie.” Patricia’s gaunt face fills with accusation. “His mother, and probably more, now that he’s finally opened up to me.”

It’s like Katie has stood up too quickly, her head filled with small pinpoints of light as she stares at Patricia. “What—”

“Months, Katie. For months I’ve tried to persuade Jerry to talk to me. I knew something was missing in this equation. Imagine my surprise just last week when it all came together. When I finally coaxed it out of him.”

“I don’t know—” she begins, but Patricia’s look silences her.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the shoes, Katie? Didn’t you find that behavior disturbing? Or at least relevant?”

“Dana—my sister, Dana, said he didn’t feel sexual toward
me.
They helped him relax. It wasn’t hurting anyone.”

“Surely,” Patricia says, “you can understand the danger of encouraging a situation that complex? Surely you’re not that naive?”

“I wanted to say something, I did. I knew it was complicated, but he trusted me.”

“Yes,” Patricia says, “he did. He trusted you with his life.”

She’s in the parking lot just outside the prison, her family gathered around her. The tears have finally come, guilty and crushing, as she repeats Patricia’s words—though she is careful, even in her frenzied state, to keep the last disclosure to herself. Her father snuggles her against his body, her mother stroking her hair slowly while she tries to make sense of Katie’s confession. Dana stands close, her hand in Katie’s.

“We’ll never know the whole thing,” Katie chokes out at last, “but don’t you see? It was
me,
too. Not just Jerry.”

Her father pulls her closer, his face pale.

“Let’s get you home, hon,” her mother says. “Let’s talk about it there, okay?” The look on her mother’s face—the tenderness and shock combined there—makes Katie’s body suddenly go limp.

“Let’s go
now,
” Dana says, helping their mother and father half carry her to the car.

And then Katie turns, sees why her sister’s tone is so urgent: Richard is striding out of the building, heading right toward them.

Dana is the first to move. She steps in front of Katie, holds both hands up before Richard gets close.

“You’ve done enough, Richard,” she calls to him. “Walk away.”

Katie sees the anger radiating off him, and suddenly she is wrestling away from her parents. There’s this at least—the comfort of her own anger.

“You used me,” she says, swiping her face. “The whole time. You—”

“Why the tears, Katie? You got your way, didn’t you?” he demands. “And when this guy hurts someone else, when he—”

“Listen here,” her father barks, taking a step forward. “I suggest you take my daughter’s advice and move on.”

“No, Dad, no,” Katie says, pushing away the hands that reach for her.

“Kate,” her mother says. “It’s time to go home.” Her eyes boring into Richard’s as she says this.

“I want to know, I have a right,” Katie says.

“You,” Richard says to Katie, “I owe you nothing. He belongs in prison. Through all this shit, and all your”—he stops, shakes his head derisively—“your obsession with your husband, your lack of professional merit—I could have worked around it. You wouldn’t be the first woman to lose herself in a man.”

“Sir,” her father says, “you are about to cross a line here. Do you understand that?”

“With all due respect, she wants to know.” He turns to Katie. “You want to know when I realized you were a lost cause?”

“Stop this. Stop this now,” Dana says, her arms circling Katie’s trembling body.

“She told me,” Richard says. “She was there for the final footage, this woman.
Patricia
. And she pulled me aside. Do you know what she told me, Katie? Can you imagine?”

It’s like her whole family is holding her breath with her. “I get it,” Katie says, because she hasn’t told her family this part—they can’t know
this
part.

“Do you? Really?” he says. “Patricia certainly knew. ‘New information, ’ she called it. She didn’t even tell Donna. Thought she might screw it up, or if it came out, Jerry would appear even more dangerous or twisted. Patricia was willing to sacrifice you—this woman you just worked with to help Jerry served you up on a platter to me. And you should get this, too: If this played out differently? I would have found a way. I would have made sure you took your share of the blame. Maybe not legally,” he says, “but everyone would have known what you did. I would have made sure of that.”