The Wrong Man

13

The throaty hum of the sports car lulled Ashley into sleep almost instantly, and she didn’t stir for nearly an hour until she abruptly opened her eyes and sat up with a small gasp, disoriented. Scott saw her look about wildly and punch at the air in front of her for a second or two, before she slumped back again in the contoured seat of the car. She rubbed her hands across her face to clear the sleep from her eyes.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did I pass out?”

Scott didn’t answer the question. “Tired?”

“I guess. Maybe more like relaxed for the first time in hours. It just came over me. Feels kinda weird. Not bad weird, but not good weird, either. Just weird weird.”

“Should we talk about it now?”

Ashley seemed a little hesitant, as if with each mile that slid beneath the Porsche’s wheels, and Boston fading in the rearview mirror, whatever trouble she was in grew smaller and more distant. In that space of time, Scott asked a third question.

“Maybe you should just fill me in on what you told your mom and her partner,” he said quietly, aware that he had given a stilted formality to Sally and Hope’s relationship. “At least that way we’ll all be up-to-date on the same stuff. It would make sense if we could all put our heads together and come to some sort of reasonable plan for you to follow.” He wasn’t sure that making a plan was exactly what Ashley was coming home to do, but it was the sort of thing she would expect him to say, and that in itself was likely to be reassuring.

Ashley paused, shuddered, and then said, “Dead flowers. Dead flowers taped outside my door. And then he followed me instead of meeting me at a restaurant like we’d agreed, where I was going to get rid of him, and it was just like I was some animal, and he was a hunter, closing in on me.” She stared out the side window, as if organizing her thoughts in a way that would make some sense, then said with an immense sigh, “Let me start at the beginning, so you can understand it.”

Scott slowed the car down to the speed limit and moved into the right-hand lane, where the Porsche almost never traveled, and without saying a thing, listened.

By the time they reached the small college town where Scott lived, Ashley had pretty much filled him in on her relationship, if it could be dignified with that word, with Michael O’Connell. She had glossed over the initial connection as much as possible, not exactly being comfortable discussing alcohol use and her sex life with her father, using seemingly benign euphemisms such as hooked up and sloshed instead of words that were dangerously more explicit.

For his part, Scott knew exactly what she was talking about, but restrained himself from probing too aggressively. There were some details, he guessed, that he’d rather not know.

He shifted the car once or twice when they left the highway and started beating their way through country roads. Ashley had grown quiet again and was staring out the window. The day had risen brightly, a high, pale blue sky overhead.

“It’s nice,” she said. “To see home again. You forget about how well you know a place when you’re involved with so much other stuff. But there it is. Same old town common. Same old town hall. Restaurants. Coffee shops. Kids playing with a Frisbee on the lawn. Makes you think that hardly anything could be wrong anywhere.” She breathed out with a snort. “So, Dad, there you have it. What do you think?”

Scott tried to force a smile that would mask some of the turmoil he felt.

“I think we ought to be able to find a way to discourage Mr. O’Connell without too much trouble,” he replied, although he wasn’t sure about what he was saying. Still, he made certain that his tones were filled with confidence. “Perhaps all that is really needed is a talk with him. Or maybe some distance-this could cost you some time before your graduate program gets going. But that’s sort of the way life is. A little messy. But I’m sure that we can sort it out. He doesn’t really sound like as much of a challenge as I initially feared.”

Ashley seemed to breathe a little easier. “You think?”

“Yeah. I’ll bet your mom has pretty much the same take on it as I do. In her practice she’s seen some pretty tough guys, you know, in divorce cases or some of the low-rent crimes she handles. And she’s seen her share of abusive relationships-although that’s not exactly how I’d characterize this one-and so she’s pretty competent when it comes to getting all this sort of stuff straightened out.”

Ashley nodded.

“I mean, he hasn’t hit you, has he?” Scott asked, although Ashley had already given him the answer.

“I said no. He just says we’re made for each other.”

“Yes, well, I may not know who made him, but I know who made you, and I doubt that you were made for him.”

A small smile creased Ashley’s face.

“And, trust me,” Scott said, trying to make a small joke that might leaven the mood a little further, “it doesn’t seem like such a substantial problem that any well-respected historian couldn’t figure it all out. A little bit of research. Maybe some original documents, or eyewitness accounts. Primary sources. Some fieldwork. And we’ll be right on track.”

Ashley managed a small laugh. “Dad, we’re not talking about a scholarly paper here.”

“We aren’t?”

This made her smile again. Scott turned in his seat, just enough to catch all of the smile, which reminded him of a million moments and was more valuable than anything else in his entire life.

Saturday was game day at Hope’s private school, so she was torn between getting over to the campus and waiting for Scott to arrive with Ashley. By experience, she knew that the morning sunshine would help dry the pitch, but not completely, so she expected something of a slogging, muddy game that afternoon. Probably a generation ago, the notion that girls would play in the mud was so alien that the game would have been canceled. Now, she was certain that the girls on the team were looking forward to the sloppy, messy conditions. Dirt-streaked and sweaty were positives now. Mud-defined progress.

She was hovering in the kitchen, half-watching the clock on the wall, half-peering out the window, her ears attuned to the unmistakable sound of Scott’s car as he downshifted at the corner and came winding down their block. Nameless was waiting by the door. Too old to be impatient, but unwilling to be left behind. He knew the phrase Want to go to a soccer game? and when she spoke it, no matter how quietly, he would instantly go from near comatose to wildly overjoyed.

The window was cracked open and she could hear sounds from her neighbors’ homes that were so routine for a Saturday morning that they were nearly clichéd: a lawn mower starting up with a cough and a roar; a leaf blower whining; high-pitched voices of children happily at play in a nearby yard. It was hard to imagine anything even vaguely approaching a threat to their orderly lives existed anywhere. She had no idea that nearly the same thought had struck Ashley only a few moments earlier.

When she looked away, she saw Sally standing behind her in the doorway.

“Will you be late?” Sally asked. “What time is the game?”

“I have some time.”

“Today’s game is important?”

“They’re all important. Some are just a little more so. We’ll be okay.” Hope hesitated a bit, then added, “They should be along any second. Didn’t Scott say he was leaving early?”

Sally, too, paused before replying, “I think we should ask Scott in, because he’ll want to be a part of any decisions made.”

“Good idea,” Hope said, although she was less sure.

Anything that involved Scott put her in what would once have been termed an awkward position, but which went far deeper and was far more complicated. She believed Scott hated her, although he had never said anything so explicit.

At the very least, he hated the sight of her. Or maybe hated what she stood for. Or hated what she’d done to attract Sally or hated what had happened between them. Regardless, he carried within him a package of anger toward her, and she believed she was helpless to ever make him change.

“I wonder,” Sally said, “whether it’s a good thing for you to be here when he arrives and I tell him to come inside.”

Hope was immediately angry with Sally, and disappointed at the same time. It seemed to her that it was completely unfair; enough years had gone by so that civil behavior was the norm between them, even if the undercurrents were always much stronger. She was pitched into fury by the idea that Sally would want to somehow accommodate Scott’s feelings and trample over hers at the same time. She had put years into raising Ashley and, while she could not claim her as blood, felt that she had as much a stake in her happiness as anyone else.

She bit her lip before replying. Be judicious.

“Well, I don’t think that’s really fair. But if you think it is important, well, I’d bow to your superior knowledge in these matters.”

This last bit might have sounded sincere or sarcastic. Sally was unsure which.

She took a step back, a little shocked at herself for even asking Hope to stand aside when Scott arrived. What am I doing?

“No-” she started to reply, but was interrupted by the sound of Scott’s car coming up the slight rise to their house. “There they are.”

“Well,” Hope said stiffly, “I guess I’ll be here, then.”

Nameless bounced up, recognizing the sound of the car. They all went to the front door, and the dog shoved his way past their legs just as Scott slid the Porsche into the driveway. Ashley was out of the car almost as quickly as the dog exited, and she immediately bent down and stuck her face into his muzzle, then let him cover her with wet dog affection. Scott, too, stepped out of the car, a little unsure what the drill was going to be. He half-waved at Sally and nodded toward Hope.

“Safe and sound,” he said.

Sally crossed the lawn to the drive, pausing only to embrace Ashley. “Don’t you think you should come in, and we can figure out some sort of plan?” she said to Scott.

Ashley lifted her head toward her father and mother, waiting for a second. She was aware in that second how rarely they were ever within arm’s length of each other. A well-defined distance always marked their meetings.

“It’s up to Ashley,” Scott said. “She might not want to just dive into the whole thing right now. Maybe she needs some lunch and a moment or two to decompress.”

They both looked at Ashley, and she nodded, although she sensed that she was doing something cowardly.

“All right,” Sally said with her take-charge lawyer’s voice. “This afternoon, then. Say around four or four thirty?”

Scott nodded. Then he gestured toward the house. “Here?”

“Why not?” Sally said.

Scott could think of a dozen good reasons why not, but he managed to stifle them all. “Well, four thirty it is, then. We can have tea. That would be very civilized.”

Sally did not respond to the sarcasm. She turned to Ashley. “Is that all you’ve brought with you?” she said, pointing at the overnight bag.

“That’s it,” Ashley said.

Hope, standing aside, watching and listening, thought that Ashley had in truth brought much more. It just wasn’t quite as obvious.

Ashley gingerly hip-hopped around the edge of the muddy field and took up a spot where she could see Hope coaching. Nameless was leashed to the end of the bench, but he thumped his tail when he spotted Ashley, then put his head back down. Lions, she thought as she looked over at him. They often sleep as much as twenty hours in an African day. Nameless looked to be closing in on that standard, although he wasn’t very lionish in his attitude. Sometimes she wondered whether any of them would have survived if not for him. She was always disappointed that her mother didn’t fully recognize Nameless’s importance. Rescue dog, she thought. Seeing Eye dog. Guard dog. Nameless had metaphorically managed every role, and now he was old, nearly retired, but still almost a brother.

She let her eyes scan across the distant range of hills. The locals called the Holyoke Range a group of mountains, but she understood that that was exaggerating their significance more than a little. The Rockies are mountains, she thought. The local hills were given some undeserved grandeur, although on a fine fall afternoon they made up for their lack of elevation with generous streaks of red, brown, and russet.

She turned back to watch the game. It wasn’t hard to imagine the time some five years earlier when she would have been out there in blue and white, running up and down the left side. She had always been a good player, although not like Hope. Hope always played with a kind of reckless freedom, but something had always made Ashley hold herself back.

She felt a curious thrill when the girl playing her old position scored the winning goal. She waited through the cheers and handshakes, then saw Hope unleash Nameless and roll a ball out toward the center of the field. Just one, Ashley realized, and not thrown nearly as far as he was once capable of retrieving. She watched as he gathered up the ball and gleefully pushed it back to Hope with his nose and forelegs, filled with dog joy. As Hope scooped up the ball and tossed it into a mesh bag, she saw Ashley standing to the side.

“Hey, Killer, you made it over. What did you think?”

Hearing the nickname that Hope had given her in her first varsity year made Ashley smile. Hope had come up with the name because Ashley had been too reticent on the field, too shy around the older players. So Hope had taken her aside and told her that when she was playing, she was to stop being the Ashley who worried about people’s feelings and transform herself into Killer, who would always play hard, give no quarter and not expect any, and do whatever it took to walk off the field at the end knowing that she had left everything she had out on the pitch. The two of them had kept this secondary persona between themselves, not sharing it with either Sally or Scott or, indeed, any of the rest of the team. And Ashley had at first thought it silly, but had then come to appreciate it.

“They look good. Strong.”

Hope looked past her. “Sally didn’t come with you?”

Ashley shook her head.

“We’re too young. Not enough experience,” Hope replied, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment behind her words. “But if we don’t get intimidated, we might just do okay.”

Ashley nodded. She wondered if the same could be said for her situation.

Scott sat a little uncomfortably in the center of the living room couch flanked by empty spaces on either side. Each of the three women was in a chair by herself, across from him. It had an odd formality to it, and he imagined that it was a little like sitting in a grand jury hearing room.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I guess the first thing is, what do we really know about this fellow who seems to be bothering Ashley? I mean, what sort of guy is he? Where does he come from? The basics.”

He looked over at Ashley, who looked as if she were sitting on a sharp edge.

“I’ve already told you what I know,” she said. “Which isn’t really that much.”

She was coldly waiting for one of the other three to add something along the lines of Well, you knew enough to let him into your place for a one-night stand, but no one said this.

“I guess what I’m getting at, really,” Scott said quickly, filling up a small silence, “is that we don’t know if this guy O’Connell will just respond to a simple talking-to. He might. He might not. But a modest show of determination…”

“I tried to do that,” Ashley said.

“Yes, I know. You did the right thing, really. But now I’m suggesting a little more forcefulness. Like me,” Scott said. “Don’t you think the first step here is not to assume the problem is greater than it is? Maybe all that’s required is a bit of a showing. Dad muscle.”

Sally nodded. “Maybe we can make it two-pronged. Scott, you go say to this guy, ‘Leave her alone,’ and at the same time we sweeten the approach by offering some cash. Something substantial, like five grand or so. That has to be a significant amount of money to someone working in gas stations and trying to get a degree in computer sciences on the side.”

“A bribe to leave Ashley alone?” Scott asked. “Does that sort of thing work?”

“In many of the family disputes, divorces, child-custody cases, that sort of thing, my experience has been that a monetary settlement goes a long way.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Scott didn’t believe her. He also had his doubts that talking to O’Connell would make any difference. But he knew the simplest path had to be tried first. “But suppose-”

Sally held up her hand, cutting off his question. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The guy has behaved creepily. But as best as I can see, he hasn’t really broken any laws yet. I mean, down the line we could talk about private eyes, calling the police, getting a restraining order-”

“Those sure work,” Scott said sarcastically. Sally ignored him.

“-or examining other legal means. We could even have Ashley move out of Boston. It would be a setback, sure, but it’s always a possibility. But I think we should try the easiest first.”

“Okay,” Scott said, glad that Sally was thinking more or less along the same lines he was. “What’s the drill?”

“Ashley calls the guy. Sets up another meeting. Take cash and your father. Do it in public. A little no-nonsense, forceful conversation. Hopefully, end of story.”

Scott started to shake his head, but stopped. It made some sense to him. At least, enough sense to pursue it. He decided that he would follow Sally’s plan, with a wrinkle or variation of his own.

Hope had remained silent throughout the conversation. Sally turned to her. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s an appropriate approach,” Hope said, although she did not believe any of it.

Scott was abruptly angry that Hope had been given any opportunity to speak. He wanted to say that she had no standing in the room, shouldn’t even be here. Be reasonable, he told himself. Even if it’s irritating. “Well, that’s the plan, then. At least for starters, and until we know it won’t work.”

Sally nodded. “So, Scott, did you really want tea, or was that one of your jokes earlier?”

“I just have trouble believing…,” I started, then I stopped and decided to try a different tack. “I mean, they had to have some idea…”

“What they were up against?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “They didn’t know about the assault on the erstwhile boyfriend. They didn’t know about the, ah, accident Ashley’s friend had after their dinner. They didn’t know anything about Michael O’Connell’s reputation, nor the impressions he’d made on coworkers, teachers, you name it. The critical information that might have led them in a different direction. All they knew was-what was the word Ashley kept using? He was a creep. What an innocent word.”

“Still, talking to him? Or offering money? Why would they think for a minute that this approach might work?”

“Why wouldn’t it work? Isn’t that what people do?”

“Yes, but-”

“You second-guess instantly. People always believe that they would have answers when the truth is, they wouldn’t. What alternatives did they have, right then?”

“Well, they might have been more aggressive.”

“They didn’t know!” Her voice suddenly picked up in pitch and passion. She leaned toward me and I could see her eyes narrow and flash in frustration and anger. “Why is it so hard for people to understand how powerful the forces of denial are within each and every one of us? We don’t want to believe the worst!”

She stopped, taking a deep breath. I started to speak, then she held up her hand.

“Don’t you make an excuse,” she said. “Don’t you imagine that you wouldn’t want to believe the safest thing, when in reality the most dangerous thing was lurking right there in front of you.”

She took another deep breath. “Except for Hope. She saw it. Or, at least, she had some inkling…the vaguest of notions. But for one reason or another, and all of them goddamn wrong and foolish, she couldn’t say anything. Not then.”