Claim of Innocence Read online

  “Too old?” The indignation in my voice was strong. I huffed. “And it’s not a scooter, it’s a Vespa.”

  We found Maggie’s black Honda and got in it. It was blazing hot, and we both rolled down the windows.

  “You’re thirty now,” Maggie said.

  “So? You’re thirty, too, and you’re driving this crappy Honda.”

  “But I have a reason. I don’t want to go into this crappy neighborhood with a nice car. What’s your excuse?”

  “Why do I need an excuse?”

  Maggie backed out and headed for the exit. “Well, there’s more than just you being thirty. There’s also the fact that you have been followed by thugs and investigators and such more than once over the past year.”

  I fell silent as Maggie turned from the garage onto the street. When Sam disappeared last year, I had been tailed by the feds—and by other people, as well. We were back to Sam.

  “So, what did he—” Maggie said before I cut her off.

  “I don’t know anything more than I told you. Literally, he said he was engaged, but he wouldn’t set a date if I didn’t want him to.”

  Maggie whistled then added, “Holy shit. Or as you would say, ‘Blessed poo.’”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “So do you want Sam to cancel the engagement?” she asked.

  Confusion seemed to swirl around me, seemed to make the heat thicker. “Doesn’t your air-conditioning work?” I fiddled with the knobs on Maggie’s dashboard. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not until I talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  Good question. I talked to Maggie about most everything. “Because I don’t want you to shoot it down. Because I don’t want you to be pragmatic or to remind me what happened before. Because I want to hear what he has to say.”

  We were both quiet for a second.

  “Fair enough,” Maggie said. “Getting back to the Vespa…”

  I shook my head. “I’m just not willing to give up something I love so much like the Vespa.”

  Maggie nodded. “Well, if you won’t get rid of it, maybe you can borrow Theo’s car sometimes. What does he drive?”

  I paused. I blinked.

  “You don’t know?” Maggie asked, laughing.

  I felt myself blushing a little. I looked at her. “I don’t. I really don’t. When we go out, he gets a cab and picks me up, or we meet somewhere.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t know what kind of car your boyfriend drives.”

  I looked out the front window, mystified. I used to know everything about Sam. “I don’t even know if Theo owns a car. He has a plane. He must have a car, right?”

  “Ah, the plane,” Maggie said with a wistful tone. Theo and his partner had a share in a corporate plane, and Maggie and I had been lucky enough to use it earlier that summer.

  “You know what’s nuts?” I said. “I haven’t even seen his apartment.”

  Maggie braked hard, making the car screech. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been dating him for five months.”

  “I know.” I shrugged. “He always stays at my condo.”

  Maggie shook her head and kept driving. We passed a bar where an old motorcycle hung from the sign out front.

  “He never wants me to come over,” I continued, “because he says his place is awful, and he’s been there since he was nineteen. I think the word he used was hellhole, which didn’t make me want to see it very badly.”

  Although he was only twenty-two now, Theo was mature in many ways, having run his own business for a while, but in other ways he was still in the throes of those postteen years where you could live in a hovel and have just as much fun as if it were a mansion.

  Maggie started driving again. “Jesus, your life is fucked up.”

  “I know.” I couldn’t even take it personally. “But in an interesting way, right?”

  When she didn’t respond, I pulled out my phone and I texted Sam three words. Meet me tonight?

  9

  The restaurant was called Fred’s. It sat atop the Barney’s department store like a little sun patio hidden amidst the city’s high-rises. The roof had a geometric shape cut into it so diners could gaze up at the sky-scraping towers blocks away, their lights twinkling against the blue-black sky arising from Lake Michigan behind them.

  Fred’s was more formal than Sam usually liked. I wondered what this meant. He had decided the rendezvous point.

  I watched Sam across the table from me as he searched the room for the waiter. It was as if he could hardly look at me. Was that because being together was overwhelming, emotionally speaking? Because he was nervous? What? I used to be able to read him so well. I understood him in ways he didn’t even see himself. Like the fact that he had been wounded by his family, even though his mother and siblings were all very nice people. When an abusive dad finally moves out, and you’re the oldest and only son, some male instinct kicks in and you become the dad. You take over. And that will wound. Nobody’s fault.

  Finally, the waiter arrived, and Sam ordered a Blue Moon beer.

  “Sorry, sir,” the waiter said congenially. They didn’t have any.

  “A different Belgian white?” Sam requested.

  The waiter apologized and helpfully offered other options, but Sam stalled, seeming a little off-kilter somehow. I jumped in and placed my order to give him time.

  “I’ll have vodka and soda,” I said. “With two limes.”

  Sam’s eyebrows hunched forward on his face. “When did you start drinking that?”

  I thought about it. “A few months ago? My friend introduced me to it.”

  Sam searched my eyes. “Your boyfriend.”

  I nodded.

  He laughed shortly, gruffly.

  The waiter still stood at attention. “Sir…?” he asked Sam.

  Sam looked up at him. “Patrón tequila. On the rocks.”

  “When did you start drinking that?”

  “Just now.” He smiled a sardonic grin. “You inspired me to change.”

  A few moments of silence followed. They felt like a settling of sorts, a shifting into us with a recognition that us wasn’t the same. But somehow, it felt okay. It felt normal.

  “I don’t want to screw things up with you and your boyfriend,” Sam said. I could tell by the way he pronounced boyfriend, in sort of a lighthearted, almost dismissive way, that he didn’t think much of my new relationship.

  “Very little could disturb our relationship,” I said, giving a little more weight to Theo and me than might be accurate.

  Sam looked at me, blinking a few times.

  When I said nothing, he spoke. “I’m just gonna put it out there. Alyssa and I decided to move out of the city. And that was okay with me, because…” He drifted off. Then he slowly nodded. “It was okay because sometimes it’s hard to be here without you. Because Chicago is you. And me.”

  He looked at me, and this time I didn’t hesitate to save him. I nodded back. I knew exactly what he meant. Sometimes Chicago without him was not exactly the city I knew before. It was a little more exciting. A little more dangerous. Less consoling than it used to be.

  “So anyway,” Sam continued, “we decided to move. Then somehow we started looking for engagement rings. But we couldn’t figure out what we wanted. Everything she sort-of liked, I didn’t. Everything I kinda liked, she didn’t.”

  I nodded at him to continue.

  “I just kept thinking about our engagement ring,” he said, swiftly unloosening the bolts of my heart with the words. Our engagement ring.

  “Remember?” he said.

  “Yeah, of course. You saw it in that jeweler’s window.”

  “I couldn’t find anything better. Not even close.” He stared at me with a heaviness in his eyes, which momentarily made me sad for him. For me. For us both.

  But then I thought of something. “You found a ring eventually, right? Because you’re engaged.”

  “Yeah. Sapphire cut.” Sam rattled off a few more specifics t
hat made it clear that a hell of a lot more money was spent on Alyssa’s ring than mine. But the truth was, I couldn’t have cared less.

  Sam spoke up. Just one raw sentence that filled me with warmth. “It doesn’t feel the same with her.”

  We nodded in silence. Kept nodding. And nodding.

  Finally, I spoke. “A minute ago, you said I inspired you.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Meaning?”

  “I want to take a page out of your book. I want to be able to start all over like you did, with grace.”

  The emotional warmth I’d felt at his statement—It doesn’t feel the same with her—turned into an angry heat. I could feel my face turning pink, then ruddy, then redder still. Instead of being embarrassed, I let it lift my anger up until I could really feel it. “You think I started over with grace? Do you think I could possibly handle you disappearing two months before our wedding gracefully? I know by taking off you did what you felt you had to. You were fulfilling the dying wishes of a man you thought of as a father. You made a promise. But don’t forget that you’d also made me a promise when we got engaged, and do not assume I handled it well. Do not assume that, Sam.”

  I took a gulp of the cocktail, the taste reminding me vaguely of kissing Theo after he’d been out with friends. I wanted that right now. I did not want to be assumed— assumedly fine, assumedly good-natured, assumedly graceful, assumedly a roll-with-the-punches kind of girl. I wanted to be consumed. And so I stood from the table, tossed back another gulp and I left.

  10

  Sam walked up the flight of steps to his apartment. His legs felt heavy, the way they did when he’d been playing a lot of rugby. Izzy’s anger and her abrupt exit had shocked him. And yet it had made him love her more, respect her more.

  When he reached his apartment and opened the door, Alyssa was there. He knew she would be, and yet he felt surprised. He always did when he saw her, as if he couldn’t force himself to remember on a regular basis that they were together.

  He kissed the top of her blonde head. Felt a wave of guilt. But it wasn’t just Izzy that was causing the guilt. There was more. More that he hadn’t told either of them. Hadn’t told anyone.

  The decision he had to make was technically easy. It could be communicated quickly, by phone or email. But the ramifications were bigger. Much, much bigger. Life-changing bigger. He couldn’t believe he was considering it. Would never have believed this of himself.

  Which scared him. And thrilled him. He hated himself a little. But he couldn’t deny the thrill.

  11

  When I got to my condo—the third floor of an old three flat in Old Town—I stomped up the stairs and slammed the door. Silence answered. A minute later, when Theo buzzed and I hit the intercom, I heard him make a growling sound, telling me he was in the same mood as I was. Or at least the same ballpark. I hit the buzzer, felt lighter already.

  I heard his heavy footfalls on the stairs. With each one—thump, thump, thump—my stomach clenched and unclenched in anticipation. And then there he was, opening the door, standing there for a second, his six-foot-two body taking up most of the frame. He grinned, looking at me, and still he just stood there. He wore a powder-blue T-shirt that had some kind of white lettering writhing across it. The shirt had been washed so many times that it looked incredibly soft. It also couldn’t hide his body underneath—the chest, the rippling stomach muscles. He took a step toward me and I flushed, every cell of my body alive and dancing with a desire that ramped up every time I saw him.

  My reaction to Theo was so intense each time I saw him that I had begun to wonder if I was… God, I could hardly think it. Well, here was the thing—I had been starting to wonder if I was falling in love with him. Because it seemed nothing else could explain the constant ratcheting up of longing and emotions.

  Yet it was hard to judge whether Theo was in the same place. And now there was something else. Now there was Sam.

  Looking up at Theo, imagining lifting up that blue T-shirt, I reminded myself that whether Theo and I had perfect timing or not, it didn’t matter. Because here he was. Now. And where was Sam? With his fiancée. I felt rage again. My face flushed as an ever-so-slight tremor ran through my body. Was the tremor caused by the thought of Sam with Alyssa or the sight of Theo? No idea.

  “Girl,” Theo said simply, what he always said. “What time do we have to be at your mom’s?”

  His large body moved toward me, his chin-length hair, shiny and brown, swinging with the movement.

  I banished Sam from my thoughts. I grabbed Theo’s T-shirt and used it to pull him around, shoving him into a seated position on the couch. I climbed on top of him, my legs on either side of his. “We’ve got time.”

  12

  The first time he had gone to see the killing, the first time he had walked in that house, there was no emotion. That was what he noticed. The people there nodded at him. As if it were simple.

  Everyone knew who he was. They seemed to expect him to know where to go, too. When he stood and looked around, feeling helpless—an unfamiliar emotion—someone pointed. He walked the hallway, trying not to think, trying not to blame himself. Other people were as responsible for the imminent destruction of this human being. The killing didn’t rest on his shoulders.

  But he dropped the rationalizations quickly. He had been telling himself these things for years, especially about this killing, planned meticulously. And still he had done nothing to change it.

  He kept walking. In his mind, his feet sounded like drums on the hard floor—bang, bang, bang—heralding something momentous, something terrible.

  He had wanted people killed before this, had told others to kill. But he had never been there for the act.

  Now, back in the present, that house a mere memory, he shook his head, tried to shake away the memories. It did no good for him to remember, no good at all. He told himself this all the time, and yet he kept slipping into these thoughts of the past. They sucked him in whole, so that he was entirely removed from today.

  He sat up straighter in his chair now and shook his head again. In the back of his brain he heard a low bang, bang, bang—the drums still in the distance.

  “Go away,” he said softly.

  He had been trying to make retributions. But it hadn’t made a difference. He kept hearing the sounds, kept trying to wrench himself from that memory. But there was one thing in particular that wouldn’t leave him—the words the man had said in the minutes before he died. The feel of those words hitting his ear as he bent over him.

  He sat even straighter now. Once again, he shook his head, trying to jar loose the recollection, wondering if the man had known his utterances would stick with him all these years. Was that what he intended? Or were they just more lies falling from the lips of someone who had already caused so much pain?

  He tried to believe the latter. He had gone about his business after that day, although he became curious as to whether people saw it in him, whether they saw what he had done. All those years, he walked the streets of Chicago, a city as human as those living inside its borders, and he had wondered.

  13

  When my mother opened her front door, I saw again the change in her.

  To say our family had gone through a lot in the past year was an understatement. My mom’s first husband—my father, long-presumed dead—had returned to this world and to our city. I had expected this to flatten my mother, as it surely would have in the past. But instead, she was stronger, more self-assured, her eyes more vivid than I had seen since I was eight years old.

  But as I stood on her stoop with Theo, I was struck by a void—an empty space of words. I didn’t know what to say to her these days. This woman, so alive, didn’t seem to be the mom I had always known. So I stepped up and hugged her, wordless. Then I waved a hand behind me and introduced Theo, reminding her she’d met him briefly a few months ago, and she led us through the big front door and into the cool of her home.

  The living room was a
large space with ivory couches, ivory walls and gentle golden lighting. Soft Oriental rugs guarded over wide-planked, honey-colored wood floors, glossed to a high sheen. By this time of the night, my mother and anyone with her would usually be at the back of the house. The living room faced east and when it got dark in the afternoons, it increased my mother’s “melancholy,” as I usually called it in my head. But today, the room’s lighting blazed brighter. Charlie, my younger brother by a few years, and Spence, my mother’s husband, sat at a grouping of couches and chairs around a fireplace tiled in white marble. Inside the fireplace, my mother had placed a flickering candelabra.

  I blinked a few times, unused to the sight. I glanced at Charlie, with his brown curly hair that had tinges of red. He gave me a shrug, as if to say, Don’t ask me.

  Spence was a pleasant-looking man with brown hair now streaked with white. It fell longer on the sides to compensate for the balding top. He had on a blue button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves and sharply pressed khakis.

  “Hello, darling girl,” he said, standing and giving me a firm embrace. He pulled back and looked at me with his powder-blue eyes, his most striking feature. He appraised my face, and then moved to Theo. “Spencer Calloway,” he said, shaking Theo’s hand. “What can I find you to drink, son?”

  Theo glanced at the coffee table where there was a plethora of food—artisanal cheeses surrounded by grapes and water crackers, prosciutto and paper-thin slices of melon, little croquettes that I knew likely held chicken and sun-dried tomatoes. Next to the food was my mom’s glass of white wine, my brother’s glass of red wine and a cocktail glass with clear liquid and a large chunk of lime in it.

  “What are you having?” Theo asked Spence.

  “Helmsley gin with a splash of tonic.”

  “I’ll join you in that.”

  I smiled, pleased. The truth was, I’d never known Theo to drink gin, but I loved that he was making an effort with my family. I squeezed his hand. When I had dated Sam he’d never joined Spence in a cocktail, and this fact, although meaningless, made me beam at Theo more.