Mad Honey: A Novel (16 page)

“People in your school think you lied. And if your coach is one of them, he can’t be a character witness, either.”

“Then I’ll do it myself. Just put me on the stand,” Asher says.

“Look. The whole burden of this trial is on the State. They have to prove everything. We need to be able to rely on the fact that they don’t have enough evidence of the crime of murder to justify it sufficiently to a jury. When it’s our turn to put on evidence, what we really need to do is to pick holes in what
they
have presented. We can disprove their entire case without ever having you testify.”

“That makes no sense,” Asher argues. “Who could prove better than me that I didn’t do it?”

“We don’t have to prove
anything.
Having you on the stand could actually come back to hurt us. You can be asked almost anything about your relationship with Lily—conversations you had, messages you sent, fights you got into—anything about your background that is even
slightly
heated, if not violent. You think you were unfairly blamed for that cheating scandal?” Jordan says. “The prosecution would make that look like a walk in the park.”

“But I’d be telling the
truth,
” Asher insists.

Jordan meets his gaze. “Remember when I said that if I can convince the jury that the reason you’re innocent is because the night Lily
died, you were in Tokyo training for the Olympics? I don’t have to prove it. I just have to raise the
possibility
of it. But if you take the stand and you contradict what I’ve said, or if you refute anything that the State has evidence you said at any other time…then you look like a liar. And that is a
huge
risk. Because juries tend to think that people who lie about little things are equally likely to lie about big things—like killing someone.” A muscle ticks in his jaw as he looks from Asher to me. “Any other surprises you’d like to lay on me? Have you defaced federal property or maybe been arrested for grand theft auto?”

“Jordan,” I say. “The cheating thing…it was just a misunderstanding.”

“There is no
just
anymore,” my brother says, and I wonder if he intended for me to hear both meanings of the word.

SELENA SHOWS UP
at the house as I am putting away Christmas decorations. The holiday was, needless to say, a bust this year. I visited Asher at the jail. I never even put up a tree. But I also never took down the greenery on the mantel and banister or the Christmas lights on the porch, pretending to myself Asher might be home in time to see them.

“Jordan didn’t tell me you were coming today,” I say. It’s a Wednesday, and she rarely comes during the week. “What about Sam?” I wind a rope of fairy lights around my arm. I am getting inextricably tangled in a web of my own weaving.

“He’s with my mom and…Here, sweet Jesus, before you strangle yourself.” Selena drops her purse on the floor and holds out her arms like two goalposts, allowing me to wind the lights around them like we are playing cat’s cradle. “Jordan and I are partying tonight. Dinner and drinks, baby.”

“Ooh-la-la,” I say. “What’s the occasion?”

I slip the rope of lights from her hands. “The anniversary of my surgery,” Selena says.

It’s been nine years since her hysterectomy. It was a major surgery, with the ovaries being removed, too, and there was some kind of
complication that kept her hospitalized longer than she should have been.

“Jordan swore to me when I was sick that if I pulled through he would treat me like a queen, and we’d celebrate every year. We were going to spend it in Aspen, but…” She shrugs.

“God, I’m sorry,” I say. “You two are completely upending your life for me.”

“Don’t be stupid, you’re my sister,” Selena says. “Besides, Aspen’s a zoo this time of year. And I’m pretty sure that Dunk’s Beef-n-Burg is
not.
”

“At least make him take you to the Mount Washington Hotel.” I bend down, coiling the lights on top of the other decorations, and when I straighten, Selena is staring at me.

Not
at
me, actually, but
into
me.

“Come with us,” she offers.

“No thanks. The last time I accompanied Jordan on a date I was seven and my babysitter canceled and he brought me to an R-rated movie where he proceeded to make out with a girl and I learned four new swearwords.”

I pick up the lid of the Rubbermaid box and attempt to snap it in place, but it has warped and refuses to fit. “Dammit,” I mutter, yanking the plastic top off and hurling it like a discus across the room.

Selena puts her hand on my arm. “Hey,” she says gently. “What’s wrong? Other than the obvious, I mean.”

I brush away the sudden tears in my eyes. “The more I listen to Jordan, the less I think Asher is going to get a fair trial.”

Selena presses her lips together, as if she is going to say something she doesn’t want to.

“What?” I press.

“Nothing.”

“Selena.”

She sighs. “At least your son is going to
have
a trial. If Asher looked like my Sam, he might not have even made it to that point. The cops who came into the house and found him sitting there might have just shot him, instead of arresting him a week later.” Selena’s
gaze is an odd combination of pity and jealousy. “What’s shocking to you isn’t that the justice system is flawed, Olivia. It’s that you were naïve enough to believe all this time that it
wasn’t
.”

Just as I’m feeling as if I’ve been slapped, Selena wraps her arms around me.

“It’s a lot to take in,” she admits. “I’ve had my whole life to learn it, and you’ve had five seconds. But maybe while you’re counting all the ways this could go wrong for Asher, you can also count all the ways it’s already gone
right
.” She pulls back, holding my shoulders. “Let’s go find you a dress,” Selena says. “It’s date night for three, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

IN THE END,
we do not go to the Beef-n-Burg to celebrate Selena’s anniversary. Jordan instead suggests we drive forty-five minutes south to Lyme, to a much fancier restaurant called Ariana’s, which is nearly empty on a Wednesday night in January. This comes in handy, since he wants to discuss Asher’s case. “The prosecutor’s office has an open-file discovery policy,” he explains to me. “That means I can make an appointment, come check out the whole case file, take notes, whatever. That way we don’t have to file motions back and forth. So, today was my first appointment. Some lackey let me into the conference room with the file. The cause of death, based on the medical examiner’s report, is intracerebral brain hemorrhage, caused by blunt force trauma to the head.”

My breath hitches. “You mean Lily was
hit
?”

“Not necessarily,” Jordan says.

“She could have fallen down the stairs and smacked her head on the stair treads,” Selena jumps in.

“That’s good, right?” I ask, looking between them. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you’re always talking about, with reasonable doubt?”

“It would be,” Jordan agrees, “if Asher’s fingerprints and DNA weren’t all over Lily’s bedroom.”

“I was with him during the police interrogation. Asher said he wasn’t in her bedroom,” I say.

Jordan looks at me. “He was, Liv.”

I can feel my cheeks burning. “Aren’t you supposed to be on his side?”

“If there’s physical evidence, there’s physical evidence. Asher may have an explanation for it, but he
was
in her room.” He pauses. “He was dating her for three months. The real question isn’t whether he was in there…but why he lied about it.”

Selena, ever the peacemaker, jumps between us, signaling for another bottle of wine. “Even if Asher and Lily had a fight, Lily could still have tripped and fallen down the stairs all on her own…”

“Which is not first-degree murder,” Jordan finishes, “but manslaughter.” He meets Selena’s gaze, and they nod slightly. I do not understand the legal rationale behind it, but I know manslaughter is accidental death, not intentional. That this is their backup plan, should all else fail.

“Anyway,” Jordan adds, “I tried to have a follow-up conversation with the medical examiner, but he’s a part-timer in the ME’s office and was working in the hospital and couldn’t talk. Guy’s busier than a mosquito at a nude beach.” He smiles at Selena. “He offered Monday afternoon, but it’s down in Concord.”

“Monday afternoon’s visiting hours with Asher,” I point out.

“Which is why I am hoping my brilliant, beautiful investigator can do the interview for me.”

“Your brilliant, beautiful investigator will be at Sam’s school for the parent-teacher conference you said you couldn’t make because of visiting hours at the jail,” Selena says.

“Ah, damn,” Jordan says, as the waitress hands him the first sips of the new bottle of wine to taste. “I’ll have to hound the guy again and reschedule. God, I thought I was done with parent-teacher conferences after Thomas. Not to mention diapers, chicken pox, acne, and driver’s ed.” He lifts his glass. “You were smart to stop after one kid, Liv.”

I pick up my wineglass and drain it entirely. “Cheers,” I say.

I HAD TIMED
it perfectly, but in the end, circumstances beyond my control ruined my best-laid plans. There had been an accident on the Mass Pike and the doctor had been two hours late to work; everything was backed up as a result. After hours in the waiting room, it was finally my turn. As I lay on the table, staring at a ceiling light overhead, I wondered why no one bothered to clean out the dead flies that had accumulated inside the fixture. Given how many women had this view, you’d think someone would have noticed.

I knew that Jasmine, the teenager who lived next door and babysat for us, would stay even if I came home late. She would never leave Asher; she was mature enough to know that something must have come up because I was punctual to the
dot.
Timeliness had been, quite literally, beaten into me. My worries stemmed from the fear that the quadruple bypass Braden was performing today would end early and he’d get home before me and wonder where I was.

My eyes filled, and the nurse holding my hand leaned closer. “Almost done,” she said.

She looked like rising dough. White and round and kind. She looked like the kind of person you could fall into, and have a soft landing.

I heard the suck of the tiny vacuum pump, felt the tug in my abdomen, and the doctor’s gentle hand on my thigh. “You,” he said, “are no longer pregnant.”

This time, the tears spilled over. The nurse squeezed my hand more tightly. I’m sure she had seen this before; the surge of emotions, the pain of loss laced with relief.

But I wasn’t crying with regret, or out of fear of Braden’s retributions for my absence. These were tears of joy.

Braden would never know that I’d come to this clinic.

And I would never bring another baby into that house.

“YOUR HAIR, FROM
Lily’s bed,” Jordan says, staring at Asher. He had begun the visit by listing the physical evidence in the case file, as I watched Asher flinch with each item. “Your fingerprints on her
dresser. And the statements you made to the police saying you’d never been in her bedroom. Care to explain?”

“I didn’t say I was
never
in her bedroom,” Asher offers. “I wasn’t in it
that day
.”

“Are we splitting hairs now about semantics?”

“No. I mean, I sneaked out to Lily’s
sometimes
. I climbed a tree and went into her room through the window.” He slides his glance to me. “I would spend the night.”

I blink at Asher, certain I have misheard him. I would have known if he snuck out of our house. Every morning, when I knocked on his door to make sure he was awake, he grunted. And there he was at breakfast, without fail.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t sneak back
in
.

“The entire night?” Jordan asks.

“I’d leave before the sun came up. Then I’d go back home.”

“So your mother never knew,” Jordan says, a statement.

A streak of color stripes each of Asher’s cheeks. “No.”

“How often?” Jordan presses.

“Maybe a half dozen times. But
not
the night before she died.”

“When was the last time you were in her room?”

“About a week…before,” Asher says.

“Did Lily’s mother know you were there?”

Asher raises a brow. “I climbed a
tree.
”

“Did you have sex with Lily while you were in her room?” Jordan says, and I suck in my breath at his bluntness. He turns to me wryly. “You sure you still want to be here?”

I stare at Asher, who looks away. “Yes,” he admits.

“Starting when?”

“The first time was in October.”

“Did you have sex every time you stayed with her?” Jordan asks.

Asher shifts in his chair. “Do you really need to—”

“Yes, Asher, I do,” Jordan snaps.

“Then yes, I guess so.”

Jordan rubs his hand over his face. “God save me from teenage boys.”

“
You
were a teenage boy,” I murmur.

“Did Lily ever indicate that she felt pressured, or didn’t want to have sex?”

Asher’s face flushes scarlet. “Only the first time.”

“Jesus, Asher,” Jordan says. “What does
that
mean?”

Please,
I pray silently,
don’t let him have forced her.

“Lily got really…strange afterward. She wanted to do it—I swear she did—but I thought maybe she’d had second thoughts. She stopped answering my texts and phone calls, and she avoided me in school. She finally admitted she needed some time to think things through.”

I think back to what Asher has said about the days before Lily’s death; how she didn’t respond to his messages and didn’t want to talk to him. So this makes two times, then, that she kept him at arm’s length. And he’d done the same to her, I knew.

“Eventually, she told me the truth,” Asher says, worrying the cuticle on his thumb. “She was afraid our relationship would be different after we had sex. I promised her that it wouldn’t change anything.”

“How long did you get the silent treatment?”