Page 5 of False Evidence
“If you’re pregnant, you’ll never get a dime of my money. All your scheming for nothing. Fucking around without birth control to better your odds of conceiving. Really stupid for a woman with a genius IQ.”
She stared at him, shocked by everything he considered her capable of.
She held his gaze for a moment, then, without a word, turned and headed for the hotel lobby and the exit. She’d take a taxi to the apartment she shared with Kendall, grateful she’d made the choice to keep her own address after she’d essentially moved in with JT last year.
After years of wanting to fall out of love with JT, her wish had finally been granted.
ChapterOne
Montgomery County, Maryland
Seven years later
December 21st
Alexandra was running late and would be charged a fine by the daycare. Again. But sorting through her deceased friend’s belongings had been gut-wrenching. Kendall’s suicide in late October was a heartache she hadn’t yet begun to process.
Spending the day with Kendall’s sister, Tanya, had opened the floodgates for the grief she’d been holding back as the fall term wound down. She’d had to get through her first semester teaching again after taking a yearlong maternity leave before she could let herself feel.
The mind was a strange, wonderful, and terrible thing in how it could pack stuff away until one had time to process it.
Today was that day, but as a result, she and Tanya had gotten less done than they’d hoped. They’d spent too long going through photo albums from college, back in the days before everything was digitized.
The digital photos that were taken in subsequent years could be viewed at her leisure, as she now had the hard drive of the computer they’d shared when she and Kendall had been roommates. It was bound to have hundreds of photos.
Her heart ached. Kendall had emailed her in October—days before her suicide—to ask Alexandra if she wanted the computer and other items Kendall had that belonged to her. They’d made plans to meet, but then Gemma had gotten sick and Alexandra had canceled.
The next day, Kendall was gone. Alexandra had missed her chance to reconnect with her friend and heal the rift that had widened again right before Alexandra moved to Switzerland.
Now all she had of the friend who’d meant so much to her since freshman year of college were the photos on the old hard drive and a box of trinkets in the cargo space of her SUV.
She wasn’t ready to look at the photos from grad school, including the early years of her time with JT, but she was glad to have them. Maybe in another seven years or so, her brain would be ready to process that hurt and anger that she’d given so much of her life to JT, she’d nearly been too late to start living for herself.
But today had belonged to Kendall. The friend she’d loved. The friend who’d hurt her. The friend she’d left behind when she finally forged her own path.
She drove down a rural road, away from the farmhouse Kendall had moved into after she’d negotiated a part-time telework agreement with the Bethesda office of T&D, where she’d worked for the last nine years of her life.
Lee had been the one to hire Kendall, in one of his last acts as manager of the Bethesda office. At the time, Alexandra had been excited for Kendall to have landed on her feet after a difficult period, but then Brent had weaseled his way back into her bed, and the yo-yo started up again.
Kendall had lived alone in the house, only going to the office two days a week. No one had seen the signs that her ongoing battle with depression had taken a sharp turn.
Regret filled Alexandra. She’d been so busy as a single mom. Combined with returning to teaching, she hadn’t been there for her friend in need. It didn’t matter that they’d drifted apart. She should have gone to see her the moment Kendall reached out.
Gemma was sick with a stomach bug and fever.The mental reminder changed nothing. Guilt never gave way to logic. It joined the mountain of regret in her heart as she navigated the dark road.
Now that the semester was over, today had been the first opportunity to help Tanya sort through Kendall’s belongings. Much as she’d ached at putting Gemma in daycare during winter break, Tanya needed help, and Kendall deserved her attention. Now, she was running late after a teary goodbye with Tanya, who was heading back to her home in Pennsylvania until after the New Year.
Alexandra’s heart thrummed with a surge of happiness that poked through the grief. As soon as she picked up Gemma, their winter vacation would begin.
She was so eager for this time with her baby. It was her daughter’s second Christmas, and this year, she was walking and talking and excited by the lights and sparkles that came with decorating. She wanted to savor this holiday. She’d been dreaming of these kinds of moments for more than a decade, and now, at last, they were upon her.
Blue lights flashed in the rearview, and she frowned as she glanced at the speedometer. Even though she was in a hurry, she hadn’t been speeding. Maybe there was some sort of emergency, and the officer wanted to pass on the dark two-lane road?
She spotted reflectors marking a driveway on the left, and the opposite shoulder widened to accommodate a mailbox on the right. She braked quickly, stopping just in time to park on the widened shoulder.
The cruiser didn’t pass by. Instead, it pulled up behind her fast, the officer likely forced to slam the brakes. The headlights hit the rearview, and the bright light blinded her.
Shit. The late pickup fee would double after thirty minutes. Quickly, she used a voice command to call Erica, who answered immediately. “Hey, Alexandra, what’s up?”